Zoo Uses Video to Train Summer Staff

"How is it already June?" Have you heard people saying this lately? 2012 is almost half over already, and there seems to be a collective feeling of "boy, that was a fast six months." June is traditionally a busy month at KIT as we spend a lot of time teaching summer camp staff how to include kids of all abilities in their programs. It is very important to us that children with disabilities have access to camp, and that they create summer camp memories with their siblings and friends. We've worked with a wide variety of types of programs this past month, from museums, to city parks and recreation departments, to Boys & Girls Clubs and one of our longest affiliations, the world-famous San Diego Zoo. For the past ten years KIT has been working with the 50 summer camp educators who will reach thousands of children in their popular summer camp program. The San Diego Zoo has been very thoughtful and progressive in their approach to inclusion, and they have been an absolute delight to partner with over the past many years.

This year's San Diego Zoo training session was this past Friday and I was able to watch our Master Trainer, Nili Mathews, work with the educators. This year the Zoo had the great idea to work with the local youth theatre program to develop short videos using child actors that depicted typical summer camp challenges. At the training the educators viewed the video clips, discussed and received coaching and feedback from Nili. It was wonderful to see the Zoo educators think through each situation, and you could see their knowledge build on itself with each new situation. Video is such a great tool for learning, and this was such a creative, collaborative and inexpensive way to approach staff training.

Here are a few tips for including video in your training program:

1. Plan ahead! Line up your location, talent and crew ahead of time. As the Zoo found, this is a great opportunity for collaboration. Is there an Audio Visual group at a local high school or community college that can produce your videos? Can you work with a local after school program to use their facility or children?
2. Get permission! It is very important to get release forms from anyone appearing on camera. Also make sure that you have permission to use facilities, and bring a copy of any documentation you have about facility use on the day of the shoot (emails work).
3. Check your equipment! Batteries charged? Microphone? How's the lighting?
4. Know what you want to shoot! Don't wait until the day of the shoot to figure out what you want to capture. Kids don't have patience for that. Figure out your scenes and shots ahead of time. Keep them simple and give the kids clear direction. Shorter is better.

Inclusion is...always ready for innovation!

Inspired!

What an inspiring week this has been! I am on the east coast for a couple of events that have really fueled my passion. I came to Connecticut this weekend to help Unified Theater celebrate it's 10th anniversary. If you don't know Unified, you really need to check it out. Especially if you are involved in a high school or middle school in any way. Unified Theatre promotes meaningful inclusion and student leadership through the arts. And in my whole career I do not think I have seen inclusion practiced so thoughtfully and intentionally. I attended a performance at Conard High School in West Hartford, CT on Friday night and what I saw was pure magic. Almost 200 high school students onstage together performing scenes they created and singing and dancing to both pop and Broadway songs. The magical part was seeing the joy in the kids performing and witnessing the deep relationships that had been developed between kids with and without disabilities and from all social segments of the high school population. This is a student-led process, and the kids are trained to see each other's abilities and to use unique strengths in the creation of the show. This is what made it so entertaining- to see everyone's strength emphasized. Seeing and hearing the kids spontaneously erupt in cheers for each other when they did their part well was very heart-warming. Too often we hear stories of bullying, and this was an evening of witnessing several hundred teenagers embracing their differences. If you want to learn more about Unified Theater "like" them on Facebook where you can follow the growth of this wonderful non-profit (as I said at their fundraiser last night and board meeting today- there is no reason that Unified Theatre should not be embedded in every middle and high school in the country).

In between the Unified Theater events this week I had time to drive south to Waterford, CT to Camp Harkness (beautiful place!). One of our dedicated KIT board members, Sandy Rosenberg, invited me to attend a celebration of the lifetime achievements of her aunt, Phyllis Zlotnick, who passed away in October. Phyllis was a tireless advocate for disability rights, and I was very moved by hearing of her achievements at the ceremony. She did a lot of legislative work and advocated for many changes, but it was her work on the National Council on Disability (she was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986) and being a part of the group that crafted the Americans with Disabilities Act that she called her greatest achievement. In January of 1998 President Clinton gave her the Medal of Freedom. I felt so inspired by Phyllis' work, and also grateful to have Sandy as a board member, continuing her family's legacy of promoting inclusion and access for people with disabilities.

I wrap up my trip tomorrow in Baltimore where I will be meeting some great people who want to make sure that children in Maryland are meaningfully included in after school programs. What a nice combination of experiences to remind me of how far we have come, and also how much work there still is left to do.