MOVE!
How Dubuque Schools Special Needs Students Learn Mobility

And how their presence in the classroom raises the level of compassion and builds character among all students.

July 2006

f all the movies and documentaries I've produced during the past 6 years, no subject has touched me as much as this one. It's a story that explains how the Dubuque Community School District's talented teachers use mobility devices to help special needs students become more a part of the classroom and school activities. But as I dealved into the subject with my co-producer, Lori Anderson, DCSD's Transition Coordinator who helps special students get jobs and lead more normal and productive lives, I discovered that this was much more than a story about applied technology, mobility devices, and even these particular students. This is a story about all students in the classroom and how they are positively impacted by normalization.

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What many folks still refer to as "main-streaming," normalization appears to be a term that has replaced it and it defines a slightly more aggressive strategy among educators. Now normalization has a curriculum model that has been adoped by the Dubuque Community Schools, and it's called MOVE.

MOVE stands for "Mobility Opportunities Via Education." The program's objective is to give special needs students every opportunity to interact and participate in day-to-day classroom activities.

The benefits of increased mobility and physical movement are obvious. Increased mobility improves strength, social skills, the ability to communicate, but it's not just these special children who receive benefits. All kids in the classroom benefit from this contact as you will see in the movie. As you look at this film, I hope you'll pay close attention to the other students in the classrooms. I'm sure you will be struck by the same notion I was when I was filming this, and that's this: Exposure and interraction with these students raise the level of compassion and builds character among all students.

To think that not much was done for students like these not too long ago. They were warehoused and segregated away from the "normal" kids. After you view my film, I think you will be thankful that those days are gone.

It's teachers and kids like these that make the Dubuque Community School truly the best place to get a well-rounded education. After I watched the completed show for the first time with Lori, we knew we had an important movie on our hands. It communicates better than anything else how well MOVE is working in our classrooms. Wait until you see the last scene. It summarizes the message so well.

I'm so proud to be working with the Dubuque Community School District and the incredibly talented educators it has managed to hire.