1. CommunityConnections Tiffany NikiasFall 2011EEX 2010Tiffany_Nikias@knights.ucf.edu

2. Florida Childrens Academy The Florida Childrens Academy is located in Downtown Orlando. It was founded 20 years ago to provide childcare services for a growing international community. It has evolved and is now providing inclusion child care, both day and night, to children between the ages of 1 and 12. 3. Florida Childrens Academy They believe that every child deserves theopportunity to develop skills and establish a senseof self that lays the foundation for life longlearning. Childcare services provided on-site arestaffed with professionals aiding children to grow,develop, and improve their chances of leadinghealthy, productive lives. Their team includes not only educators, but alsophysical, speech, and occupational therapists,and behavioral specialists. Inclusion child carehelps children with disabilities to be part of aclassroom that enhances their skills. Children withspecial needs gain valuable learning experiencesand are challenged to exceed in their areas whenthey are part of an early intervention learningenvironment. 4. Engagement Activities I volunteered at the Florida Childrens Academyfor 15 hours. I did this in a period of twoweeks, usually 2-3 hours a day. I engaged with the students by helping outaround the classroom and interacting with themat every opportunity. I read stories with thechildren, had puppet shows, and played withthem on the playground. By the end of myvolunteer work, I had made friendly relationshipswith many of the students. 5. Participant Demographics I worked with about 10 to 12 students a day. This ishow many children are enrolled at the FloridaChildrens Academy. The children range from ages 2 to 5, and one 7year old. The children come from a variety of ethnicbackgrounds. There is White, African American,Hispanic, Bosnian, and Caribbean, just to name afew. Because of the diverse ethnic backgrounds,students have all different linguistic heritages.Many of them have accents that are sometimeshard to understand. 6. Participant Demographics The students are very diverse when it comes totheir culture, as well as their exceptionalities. Thereare some students that have autism, and othersthat have undiagnosed autism. One child hasdowns syndrome. The rest of the children that areenrolled at the Florida Childrens Academy havespeech and/or occupational disabilities. Theyreceive services and therapy to help them. 7. Service in Action 8. Service in Action 9. Service in Action 10. Perceptions of Differences At first I was apprehensive about this assignment. Iknew I wanted to work with children withdisabilities, but I never have been exposed to theactually hands-on experience of it. I have workedwith many students, but I hadnt considered theirADD or dyslexia a disability. I really enjoyed this assignment. I knew this wasgoing to have a positive impact on me the firsttime I walked into my volunteer site and wasintroduced to the kids. They were so welcomingand sweet and at that moment I knew I was goingto enjoy my time there. 11. Perceptions of Differences The experience that impacted me the most wasseeing the students interact with one another.Since this is an inclusion setting, not all the childrenhave a disability. If no one told me there weredisabled children in the room, I wouldnt haveknown. I loved seeing the children learn, work ontheir skills, and grow everyday. They all were soeager to make connections with people andengage in conversation with me they made mefeel very welcomed. 12. Connections to Your Course I was completing this project for EEX 2010, Introduction To SpecialEducation. After completing this project, three topics I betterunderstand are cultural and linguistic diversity, learning disabilities,and emotional or behavioral disorders. Thanks to my experiences at the Florida Childrens Academy, Iwas exposed to students who were culturally and linguisticallydiverse, were diagnosed with autism and downs syndrome, andhad speech/occupational disabilites. One specific lesson welearned in class was about how to protect ourselves from astudent when he or she kicks, hits, strangles, or bites. Unfortunately,this came in handy. One student came at me attempting to hitme because I told him he needed to share. I was able to blockmy face before it was hit. In the future I will no doubt be working with students that aresimilar to the ones I interacted with during this project. This hasgiven me some background experience in how to handle thesestudents and the best ways to teach them. I want the best for mystudents and I want them to be able to learn to their fullestcapacity. 13. Civic Engagement As a method of learning, I think service learning isgreat. A student can only learn the material so much.Its what the student does with that material that reallymatters. Service learning gives us an opportunity to getthe real life experience of what we are being taught. Iwould encourage teachers and students to embraceservice learning. Not only does it let students use theinformation that they learn but it helps the communityout as well by giving out volunteers. This experience motivated me to be more engaged inthe future. I really liked volunteering with the FloridaChildrens Academy and I plan to continuevolunteering with them even after this course is done. 14. Final Thoughts This was a great project and it really opened myeyes. As a teacher, I am bound to come acrossstudents with disabilities, whether I am anexceptional ed. teacher or an elementary ed.teacher. At this day in time, inclusion is happeningvery fast and I will need to know how to work withstudents with disabilities. This project has given methe opportunity to work with students and getsome background experience for the future.