Blog - Afterschool

RCSN's Afterschool Inclusion Project promotes the successful inclusion of children with disabilities in afterschool programs. The story below comes from a father whose child attends the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood, one of the participating programs in this inclusion project. His story reflects how wonderful the experience of inclusion can be.

To provide children with special needs more access to afterschool programs, RCSN launched its Afterschool Inclusion Project this year.

Purpose: To increase understanding and sensitivity to children who suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

Try this activity with your afterschool group this week. Purpose: To help students learn the "etiquette" of treating people with disabilities with respect.

Try this activity with your afterschool group this week. Purpose:This activity allows students to feel how frustrating it could be to have an intellectual disability, and what they can do to help these students to learn.

Try this activity with your afterschool group this week. Purpose: The children will get an idea of what it is like when your brain knows what to do, and you know that you can do the activity, but you just can’t seem to get the answer out right.

Try this activity with your afterschool group this week. Purpose: (1) To explore the emotional effects of put-ups and put-downs, (2) To explore the links between put-downs and conflict, and (3) To explore how group members can be more supportive of each other

Try this activity with your afterschool group this week. Begin a conversation with your group about how some people with disabilities use other parts of their bodies to communicate.  "How do you communicate without words? Many people who are deaf use their hands to communicate.  They use signs and they also spell out words using a special alphabet called the fingerspelling alphabet."

Try these two activities with your afterschool group this week. Start a discussion about people who cannot see, but can still learn how to read.  The human body can adapt to all types of disabilities.  A blind person can learn to read bumps.  The Braille alphabet is made up of a combination of bumps.