UCP HALLOWEEN BASH Serena Utz serenautz@knights.ucf.edu November 16th, 2010 EEX 4070

UCP: United Cerebral Palsy This organization was originally founded in 1969 by parents of children with Cerebral Palsy. Today, UCP is a huge advocate with children and adults of all disabilities. UCP’s mission is to advance the independence, productivity, and full citizenship of people with disabilities through an affiliate network. UCP reaches over 176,000 people through their affiliate network daily in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Scotland. Currently, UCP is working with former congressman Tony Coelho on a nationwide initiative called Life Without Limits, whose goal is to empower those with disabilities to envision and build a better future for themselves and their community.

Engagement Activities The event in which I took part of was UCP’s annual Halloween Bash. This was a one time event that fulfilled the required 15 hours of service. Although the event was only one day, I spent my own time prior to it planning and preparing for it. The community need being addressed was to provide a safe, fun-filled event for children and adults of all ages, regardless if they have disabilities or not. Although targeted more specifically towards children with disabilities, the event was open to all children.

CANDY!

Participant Demographics At this event, we had more children come than adults. The ages of participants ranged from 6 months to over 40 years of age. Overall, the majority of the ethnicity present were African American. For the most part, the main language spoken was English, but there were a few families who were speaking to one another in Spanish. This event served roughly 300 to 350 people!

I.D.E.A For ages 3 and under, I.D.E.A classifies infants and toddlers with disabilities if they have developmental delays in cognitive, physical, communication, social, emotional, or adaptive development, or if they have a diagnosed physical or mental condition that will result in developmental delay. For ages 3 through 21, there are 13 different disability categories which qualifies them for services; for example autism or deafness.

SERVICE ACTION IN

Perceptions of Differences Initially, I was a little nervous about how much time we would have with children on an individual basis, but everything went well for the most part! Parents monitored their children very well, but also gave them an appropriate amount of freedom. If anything, the parents of the children without disabilities were the ones that were letting their children run all over the place and weren’t paying them attention! Currently, I feel much more comfortable. Encountering children and adults of all disabilities in a large group setting helped me overcome some fears that I had previously.

Connections to Your Course The course I completed this project for was EEX 4070. I better understand topics covered in the course regarding children with hearing and visual impairments, children with traumatic brain injuries, and children’s self-concepts of themselves. Knowing more about these topics and how to encounter them in real life settings will better prepare me for teaching in my own future classroom.

Civic Engagement My perspective on volunteerism remains the same; I believe it is incredibly important and should be prevalent in everyone’s life. If anything, this project has just reiterated the benefits of service-learning for not only me, but for the community and for the children and adults involved as well. Civic engagement serves largely for others to give back to the community. It enables those engaged to truly help others while in turn learning valuable life lessons. I think that service-learning is a great method of learning! I think that it is more necessary with certain classes than others. I do not think that it is necessary for all classes to require service-learning, but I do think that it is vital for a special needs class. It makes complete sense; as a teacher it is inevitable that you will have children with a wide array of special needs within your classroom. It’s necessary to have plenty of hands on experience with children in order to better prepare you for your future classes.

It’s for the kids.