Before the 6 games of Mafia...

Outside the Box is an organization that started serving a handful of adult participants in a couple conference rooms 10 years ago. Today, they serve 350 participants every week with 62 wacky and wonderful staff. While we were there, we got to put on a field day full of fun activities for the participants. We lead a group builder with hula hoops, a bean bag toss challenge, an obstacle course, and the biggest board of memory match you have every seen!

The participants were excited to play games and to interact with us. We could tell that the staff and the participants were well supported by the "nurtured heart" approach where positive activity is always recognized and supported. We set the expectations and the reward the good behavior; what a treat to be in a scolding-free environment!

After so many rounds of all of the games and meeting dozens of the participants at the program, we got to have lunch with even more of these great people. We even got to do the cha-cha slide with the staff and participants! They can bust some moves!

We are looking forward to working with them in the future and meeting Jolly, the Outside the Box support dog!

Warren Early Childhood Center
Next, we headed to the Warren Early Childhood Center, a public preschool dedicated to fostering the development of children ages 3-5. We first met with the principal of the center, who gave us with an overview of some of the services the school provides. We were then split up into groups of two and assigned to different classroom rotations.

During our visit to the childhood center, two qualities stood out to me. The first was that 3-5 year olds were all placed in the same classroom. At first, I wasn't sure how this method would work. But after seeing the kids' interactions, it all made sense. I was blown away by how helpful and caring the older students were towards their younger peers, especially the ones who had disabilities. In one instance, I was speaking to a child who was nonverbal. When one of his classmates noticed, he quickly gave me a "run-down" of the child's name, as well as his likes and dislikes. It was heartwarming to see how supportive other children were towards each other, regardless of whether they had disabilities or not.

This brings me to the next outstanding quality that Warren possessed: inclusive classrooms. Inclusive classrooms were essentially classrooms housing students with and without disabilities. It really showed how important it is for people with disabilities to be integrated in society. If kids can learn to interact with those who are different, then adults should be able to as well.

At one point, some unnamed participants accidentally told the students at Warren Early Childhood center that they had a dog at the school and asked if they liked it. They did not realized their mistake until minutes later. Jolly is indeed a resident at Outside the Box, not Warren Early Childhood center. No children were harmed by this mistake.