Body In Question

Body In Question (BIQ) started this week with our Immersion unit. We looked at the beauty and diversity of the human body and the importance of our health and taking care of our bodies. We finished this introductory unit with a session learning about the perspectives of persons’ with a disability. We listened to TED talks to gain a greater understanding of different perspectives and engaged in simulation activities where students entered the classroom and engaged in 3 basic tasks wearing partial vision glasses that simulated a range of eye conditions impacting sight.

A huge thank you to See Differently (formerly The Royal Society for the Blind) who have gifted our school a set of these glasses to use with our students.  To finish the Immersion module, we had guest speaker Rainey Towell (an ASMS old scholar) talk to us about what it is like living with Congenital Myasthenic Syndrome (a rare type of non-progressive muscular dystrophy). She offered a Q&A session in which she informed the students never to be afraid to ask questions, and the importance of educating ourselves. She emphasised that disability access is something that the whole community can benefit from, not just those living with a disability.

Rainey left the students with a poignant question: If you are the engineers and scientists of the future, what could you invent or design to create a more inclusive community for persons living with a disability?