Exploration Station: Building a Better World with Dr. Erenberg, Executive Director of Libenu
More than ever, we know that the way to a better future is together with accessibility, solidarity, community care, and mutual aid. Even more than a better future, we can reimagine what’s next entirely. As Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of The Body is Not an Apology, wrote on Instagram in April 2020, “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.” How do we work to change our own communities to ensure everyone has what they need, especially when we have so much as a country? How do we challenge our own perceptions and biases about the solutions - and center the voices of those most marginalized in our communities?
But how do you talk about these BIG ideas with littles and their caregivers?
We are so lucky to be able to engage in these important conversations and plant seeds during our recent 2022 Coming Together in Niles Township season focused on Sharing Experiences of Disability.
We could not and should not do this work alone. In fact, as directed by the leadership of Coming Together, “all programs should be inclusive and co-created, including at least one co-creator who has a disability and/or who is in a direct role supporting people with disabilities.” I knew exactly who I wanted to work with and early on I reached out to my mentor and former supervisor, Dr. Shana Erenberg, co-founder and Executive Director of Libenu, an organization that is at the forefront of independence and inclusion for people with disabilities. Dr. Erenberg is a world-renowned expert in her field. She maintains a private practice for the diagnostic evaluation, remediation, and advocacy of children and adults with disabilities. In addition, Dr. Erenberg serves as a consultant and provides professional development for teachers in numerous day schools and public schools in metropolitan Chicago and throughout the United States. It was a professional dream come true to collaborate with Dr. Erenberg on our Coming Together program: Exploration Station: Building a Better World, along with my colleague, early literacy expert, Ann Santori. We met with Dr. Erenberg several times to design and refine our Exploration Station program, determining what each of our roles would be and how we would create a positive, open-ended learning experience that included everyone who participated. Her expertise was vital to the design and implementation of this program. I’d highly recommend hiring Dr. Erenberg as a speaker and consultant. Experts should be paid for their work. I’m so grateful that Dr. Erenberg shared her valuable time and energy with us.
I thought I would share a write-up of our program process and plan in the hopes that it could be useful for others looking to do these kinds of activities. Please do reach out if you have any questions or feedback. I will also, of course, share my sources because many of our ideas were inspired by other educators too!
Since community/library program cycles happen way in advance (like 5 months before this program!), we worked on a generic description and then updated it with more information. Here’s our final program description for our Exploration Station: Building a Better World:
Does your child love to build and create? Do you love helping them build up their STEAM skill set? Learn what makes homes and buildings accessible for people with a variety of needs from Libenu, an organization that is at the forefront of independence and inclusion for people with disabilities. Then, with the help of a caregiver, solve a design problem using everyday materials and experiment with making our own structures.
I think it’s important to share the guiding principles/philosophy of this program. This is a useful process for library programs in general, too, to reflect on how they align with your strategic planning goals, mission, and vision for your library. I also highly recommend checking out this Youth Programming Vision guide, created by Angela Jones, Youth and Family Program Coordinator, from Skokie Public Library. She shared it during our recent Reaching Forward presentation about collaborative author visits and I think it’s relevant whenever you’re planning programs for kids and families.
Guiding Principles/Philosophy of the Program
As directed by the leadership of Coming Together, “all programs should be inclusive and co-created, including at least one co-creator who has a disability and/or who is in a direct role supporting people with disabilities.”
Therefore, we are collaborating and partnering with Libenu for this program, specifically with Dr. Shana Erenberg, the co-founder and Executive Director of Libenu.
We expect to include people with disabilities during this program, which may include the caregivers, kids, and staff. We also learn from these caregivers, kids, and staff about their experiences and ways we can support them as a community. As we know, people with disabilities are the experts of their own experiences.
This is an all-ages family program since kids and caregivers will be joining together to participate in the activities.
This program focuses on helping caregivers have these important conversations about disability and accessibly at any age, offering kid-friendly language and definitions to think critically and better understand the world - and how we can change it. We know children from the youngest ages need inclusive, anti-bias education, so these experiences are essential.
Even the youngest children can understand the concepts of same and different, and most importantly, learn that different is good.
As we learn new vocabulary and become familiar with concepts related to disability, it helps us all normalize talking about it.
We will be providing resources to extend the conversations and learning by providing Caregiver Care Kits.
Every experience is different. People with disabilities are not a monolith. We’re all learning together. As Chella Man writes in Continuum (one of our supplemental texts), “The truth is, identity isn’t a monolith. It exists on a continuum, reflecting our own specific experiences and personhood” (25).
Room Set-up
Each family had their own table and were physically distanced. At this point, masks were required. We also opened up our programming room doors to the outdoors for air flow. We set up trays of materials ahead of time to give out to families during the building portion of the program. Each table also had a copy of our core text, We Move Together by Kelly Fritsch & Anne McGuire, illustrated by Eduardo Trejos. We also put out coloring pages from the Learning Guide which kids could color while listening to the presentation.
Materials
We talked through the materials with Dr. Erenberg to ensure supplies we offered included as many people as possible. She had the brilliant idea to include spoons to talk about adaptive devices in homes, so we made sure to include them. We also made sample communication boards with images for people to use, as well as space to draw their own. We basically shared that any materials that are not library owned (ex: Duplo) could be taken home at the end. We also had additional materials on tables in the room so people could get more supplies.
Each family received a tray of assorted materials. Some these things included:
Sample Communication boards
Spoons
Legos/Duplo
Cardboard
ClayTape
Pipecleaners
Cardstock/paper
Scissors
Craft sticks
Clothespins
Spoons
Colored pencils
Program Plan
If you’ve met me you know I love a good expansive program plan. I want to be prepared for all eventualities, including a general script, definitions, and resources - and then have the flexibility to change according to the human beings in front of us. I will include our whole program plan, but we didn’t necessarily use all of the text, especially since we wanted to focus on engaging kids and families - and had lots of young kids joining us.
Introduction Statement for Coming Together/Lincolnwood Reads:
Official Coming Together Statement: For nearly 1 out of every 5 Illinois residents, disability of some kind is a part of everyday life. Yet, the experiences of people with disabilities are often missing from our community stories. In collaboration with community members and expert organizations, the 2022 Coming Together season will bring focus to the voices, experiences, and talents of members of the disability community across Niles Township, as well as advocacy and support resources available to all community members. Through multimedia texts and a variety of public events, we will explore four broad categories of disabilities: learning disabilities, physical disabilities, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and mental health disabilities.
The Coming Together statement is traditionally read before each Coming Together program. We modified it to be kid-friendly.
Ann: We are hosting this special exploration station as part of Coming Together in Niles Township. This year we’re focusing on Sharing Experiences of Disability. We first want to share that every experience is different and we’re all learning together. We have lots of resources for you and your caregivers to discuss and share these ideas.
We were prepared with a variety of definitions of disability to embed in the program. We wanted to incorporate the language naturally into our program.
Vocabulary: Disability
Disability is part of the human experience. There's no singular experience of what it means to be disabled.
Disability means different things to different people
It is visible and invisible
There is a long history of people with disabilities fighting for equal rights and access to things they need, to make our world fair, to give everyone what they need, that is still happening today
I highly recommend reading our other core text, Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau, for a deep dive into many of these ideas. “An approachable guide to being a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more accessible, inclusive place. Disabled people are the world’s largest minority, an estimated 15 percent of the global population. But many of us—disabled and non-disabled alike—don’t know how to act, what to say, or how to be an ally to the disability community. Demystifying Disability is a friendly handbook on important disability issues you need to know about… Authored by celebrated disability rights advocate, speaker, and writer Emily Ladau, this practical, intersectional guide offers all readers a welcoming place to understand disability as part of the human experience.”
Eti introduced Dr. Erenberg:
We are so lucky to be hosting this program in partnership with Dr. Erenberg, who is the co-founder and Executive Director of Libenu, which is an amazing community organization. “Libenu, from the Hebrew word meaning “Our Hearts”, reflects a heartfelt commitment to enabling Jewish adults with developmental disabilities to maximize their level of independence and self-determination in an inclusive community setting. Libenu also offers respite care, social, recreational, and educational programs to facilitate inclusion and enhance the lives of our clients.” And they have done so much that we’ll never know during this global pandemic.
Some More information about Libenu for us to know. Their goals:
Enable people with disabilities to live their best lives as fully included members of their community, in kosher, state-of-the-art, accessible homes with a gold-standard of person-centered care.
Promote self-sufficiency, dignity, respect and personal fulfillment through vocational training, employment, and inclusive day programs.
Enrich the lives of people with disabilities and foster healthy relationships through inclusive social, recreational, and educational activities.
Provide high-quality professional respite services for younger children with special needs to relieve the pressure and stress of constant caregiving for families
Advocate and promote awareness in support of people with disabilities.
Dr. Erenberg’s Presentation:
Dr. Erenberg shared a kid-friendly presentation about how Libenu works to ensure “people with disabilities live their best lives as fully included members of their community, in kosher, state-of-the-art, accessible homes with a gold-standard of person-centered care.” She talked about the mindful and intentional design process that includes people with disabilities in creating homes meant for them. For example, locating home in proximity to cultural life, open floor plan for community living, accessibility related doors (ex: ramps, lifts, stairs). She shared pictures from one of the Libenu houses of the ramp, elevator, adapted bathroom, adapted sink, etc.), which offered tangible ways to see accessibility in action. Dr. Erenberg talked about Universal Design as a important approach to creating spaces:
Vocabulary: Universal Design
What is Universal Design?
Design and composition of an environment or item so that it may:
Be easily accessed by all
Foster independence
Promote inclusion
Everybody can use
Vocabulary: Accessibility
Accessibility means making changes to our rules, buildings, environments, as well as to our own behaviors to make sure everyone feels welcome and is included. Everybody’s body is different, people need different things; places in neighborhood need to ensure they get what they need.
Literacy Connections
You know we wanted to incorporate our brilliant core text, We Move Together, into this program to offer opportunities for making connections between these ideas and the book. It was important for each family to have a copy of the book for themselves, so they could interact with the materials. We also displayed the pages on our PowerPoint. Image descriptions below are from the text description of the book’s illustrations from the We Move Together website under Access Tools. We also included passages from the Learning Guide to help us during our discussion. Again, we didn’t always use all of these statements or questions, but having them with us prepared us to point out specific features in the pages and to respond to what the kids pulled out from the book.
Ann: We are sharing some pages from We Move Together to talk through access challenges and brainstorm how to solve them. This is our core text for Coming Together/Lincolnwood Reads.
Cover Image Description: Five pairs of legs appear against a bright orange background. On the far left, a golden retriever is seated on the ground wearing a brown working-dog harness. Standing next to the dog is a woman with warm brown skin wearing a turquoise skirt and red high-heeled shoes that match her cane. At the center of the cover is a child with dark brown skin standing, hand on hip, wearing brightly coloured bracelets, blue shorts, a pink shirt, and blue sneakers with yellow laces. To the right is a white skinned child, standing with legs crossed wearing pink and purple striped pants and blue and white sneakers. On the far right, a child with golden brown skin is seated in a blue power wheelchair, wearing a green shirt, yellow shorts, knee-high orange socks and red and white sneakers. The title – We Move Together – appears in ornate white lettering at the bottom of the cover.
We will show the scene of the family going to the ice cream shop and there’s a step.
“Sometimes, when we’re together, we get stopped in our tracks. Like when all the fun and flavors of ice cream are just out of reach.“
Image Description: The cat sits on the front stoop outside an ice cream shop licking its paw.
Inside the shop, someone is picking out their ice cream with the shop clerk while outside two people are seated on a bench enjoying their delicious ice cream . The single step at the shop entrance is a barrier for a woman using an electric scooter who wants to go inside for ice cream. She is joined by her family – two kids and their father – who also look disappointed and angry about this barrier.
We will ask what is the problem happening in the scene, what is a problem and what we can do to help solve it. [From Educator Guide: One way to look at this scene is to turn our attention to the inaccessible architecture of the shop. The ice cream shop was designed and built with the expectation that all customers could climb stairs. It wasn’t made to welcome everyone and that means that people who can’t climb stairs are left out. This is an example of ableism.]
We will show the next page where people are coming together.
“We notice when things are unfair and it helps us get creative. We make plans. We solve problems.”
Image Description: Together with friends and community members, the family from the ice cream shop is busy at work in a large yellow workroom. They are designing and building ramps that will make sure everyone can enjoy the ice cream shop and other public spaces in their community. The woman using the power scooter has a clipboard and is overseeing the work. A few kids gather around a man in a power wheelchair who is drawing out plans for the new ice cream shop ramp. Some people are cutting wood, using saws, glue, and drills. Others are painting the ramps bright colors. One kid is painting a picture on the wall. The cat lies on a red carpet with a child playing with a Rubik’s cube.
[Educator Guide: Ramps will be an obvious answer here. In addition to thinking about ramps, also encourage students to think of other possible solutions to the problem of inaccessibility. For example, the entrance could be redesigned to be flush with the sidewalk or a friend who can use steps can bring ice cream out to friends who cannot get in. While this latter accessibility solution is definitely imperfect, it’s helpful to think about people-powered solutions to accessibility in addition to structural solutions.]
We build something better.
Image Description: The ice cream shop now has a new community-built ramp that makes it possible for the mobility scooter user and her family to get ice cream. In fact, new ramps can be seen outside many of the cafes and shops along the crowded city street. The street is filled with activity: cyclists ride up and down the street in bike lanes, one kid is rolling down a ramp, while another runs along the sidewalk. Parents push their baby in a stroller. Someone is delivering boxes using a trolley. A man using a white cane crosses the street at an intersection and our friend the cat sneaks out of the fish store with a tasty treat!
[Educator’s Guide: Talking points: People using wheelchairs and other mobility devices benefit from ramps. In addition to increasing accessibility for disabled people, encourage students to also think about how the ramps make things easier for people pushing strollers, for example, as well as for delivery people with heavy loads or push carts (who are also pictured in the scene). Of course, people with strollers and delivery people are not affected by inaccessibility in the same way as people using mobility devices. While people with babies might be able to park their strollers outside a shop before they enter, people using mobility devices are very often simply excluded from those spaces. We don’t all need or benefit from ramps in the same way but addressing inaccessibility and ableism helps to build a better world for us all!]
Vocabulary: Ableism
Ableism is a form of discrimination. It wrongly considers only some bodies, minds, and behaviors to be normal, worthy, and valuable. Ableism creates barriers or obstacles for disabled people, making it hard to meet friends, learn at school, find a place to live, get a job, participate in community events, or even go for ice cream! (Source: We Move Together glossary)
Design Challenge Exploration:
We then moved to our design challenge to connect the ideas we’ve been discussing to imagine solutions to design problems. We came up with a variety of challenge cards that people could use as prompts to use the materials to ensure everyone is welcome. We both wanted to offer structure, offering a starting point for design, and an open-ended process where kids could decide how they wanted to engage. The challenge cards were also a strategy to offer specific problems to solve with caregivers or independent exploration for older participants. The challenge cards included the text and a visual representation from We Move Together to show the problem.
General Design challenge: Design a home that is accessible for people with a variety of disabilities using the creative materials we’ve provided
Challenge: You’re designing a new home. How can you help ensure everyone is welcome?
Challenge Cards:
There is a step in front of your local ice cream shop. How can you help ensure everyone can enjoy delicious ice cream?
Your school has stairs to get to your classroom. How can you help ensure everyone can learn?
Your playground has lots of fun activities. How can you help ensure everyone can enjoy it?
We then gave out the trays of materials for each table, pointed them to extra materials, gave out the pile of challenge cards, and let the magic happen.
Our staff and Dr. Erenberg, along with her colleague, Dina, circulated around the room to discuss these ideas with caregivers and engage with kids and answer questions about accessibility, respite care, etc. This offered a low pressure environment to engage in conversation. This also enables caregivers to talk with kids about accessibility and creativity within disability culture and practice having these conversations. These conversations also help caregivers and kids use metacognitive skills to talk about their design process, how they think about making things, what their vision is for the design challenge, and applying the vocabulary we’ve all been learning. We often asked kids to talk about what they were making and how they ensured everyone could join them, from an awesome zoo, a beautiful two-storey home, or even curb cuts that were made with clay and Duplo! We were able to take pictures of the fantastic things the kids were creating and share these memories.
Extending the Learning
We distributed Ann’s Caregiver Care Kits: All Bodies are Good Bodies, that included resources from We Move Together, to help caregivers continue these conversations.
You can access a digital version of Care Kits on Ann’s website here, along with TONS of other resources.
We also distributed copies of We Move Together, Coming Together booklet, and promoted our virtual author visit for We Move Together creators which took place in April 2022.
We are so incredibly grateful to Dr. Erenberg and Libenu for collaborating with us for this joyful, thought-provoking program, which I know has planted far-reaching seeds for accessibility and community care. When we come together with organizations who do this important work, it helps us all make things better. Dr. Erenberg kindly spotlighted our program in the Libenu newsletter! Check it out below.
Here’s the text of the article above:
Advancing Accessibility
In another bid to foster belonging, Libenu CEO and Executive Director Shana Erenberg, PhD, presented at a hands-on workshop about making homes and buildings accessible for people with a variety of needs. The Exploration Station: Building a Better World provided young participants with information and guidance to engage in solving a design problem through experimentation with everyday materials to make their own structures.
The event took place at Lincolnwood Library as part of the 2022 Coming Together program, a local initiative to build knowledge and appreciation for the diversity represented in Lincolnwood, Skokie, Morton Grove, and Niles. This year, Coming Together is highlighting the voices, experiences, and talents of members of the disability community across Niles Township, as well as advocacy and support resources.
“This incredibly wonderful collaboration exceeded our expectations and dreams,” reflected Lincolnwood’s Youth and Teen Librarian Eti Berland, who cohosted the event along with Dr. Erenberg and Lincolnwood Library Early Literacy Specialist Ann Santori. “Dr. Erenberg’s insight, expertise, and guidance were instrumental to its success. We know that the conversations we began at this program will continue at home – and beyond.”
“We’re proud that Libenu is setting the gold standard in the field of disability support,” Dr. Erenberg said. “It’s wonderful to know that our leadership will help others create accessible spaces, far beyond the Libenu community of residential and respite clients.”
Let’s keep dreaming big with our communities to stitch that new garment.
We can also, if financially possible, put our words into action to support the editor of our core text, Disability Visibility and amazing writer, activist, and human, Alice Wong, by contributing to her GoFundMe to ensure she gets the care she needs at home. Even if you cannot donate, “Please, please, please continue to share the GFM with your networks. A personal endorsement is the highest form of currency and will allow this effort to stretch far beyond our wildest imaginings.”
*This picture was taken by Lincolnwood Head of Marketing, Seth Anderson, and shared with permission (citation: march 2021).
You should also make sure to order/ask your library to purchase Alice Wong’s new book, Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, available 9/6/22!
Book cover for Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life with a marigold yellow background. On the right side is an illustration of a crouching tiger in red in the style of Chinese paper cuttings with delicate cutouts in various shapes giving form and definition to the tiger. The tiger has a fierce expression, eyes and jaws wide open, teeth bared. The tiger has large paws with four claws extended. On the left in black large text YEAR OF THE TIGER at the top and ALICE WONG below. In the center in smaller red text AN ACTIVIST’S LIFE and in the lower right corner EDITOR OF DISABILITY VISIBILITY. Small, delicate red flowers are sprinkled throughout. Book cover by Madeline Partner.
As promised, here’s a lot of sources & resources:
Coming Together 2022: Voices of Disability Experiences
Coming Together 2022: Community Partners and Resources
Coming Together 2022: Core & Supplemental Texts & Resources
Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Second Edition
Libenu Opens New Women’s Home in Skokie
Picture Book Creators Center Joy While Portraying Disability by Margaret Kingsbury
Resources for We Move Together author visit
Inspiration for Ideas from educators
https://twitter.com/MsRosie_library/status/1479218625374478345?s=20&t=n-nMBmKRHxsoFPC3R8mhdQ
https://twitter.com/MsRosie_library/status/1478847854223441932?s=20&t=XJgRIzOQoUP5DlKSSm2e9g
https://twitter.com/MsRosie_library/status/1478847783444660226?s=20&t=XJgRIzOQoUP5DlKSSm2e9g
But wait there’s more, check out the recording of out author visit!