UCP: Mosaic of Experiences

Our Service Experiences:

Pre-Service Reflections

When I first found out that I would be doing service learning work at an UCP, I was very excited and very nervous. Working with aduclts with cognitive diabilities or mental illness' is omething that I am considering as a future career and therefor was really happy to be getting some experiance. The only potential problem that I forsee is that because the members of UCP do not know me, my appearance may cause some disruption for the UCP members. However, I feel that this experiance will teach me a lot about working with people with these types of disabilties and I hope that the members of UCP will benefit from my time there as well.

-Miri Goodman

I think our assignment might be especially challenging because we will be interacting with individuals with mental retardation who may need more assistance or accommodations in ways that other disabled people may not. (It is hard to explain this point without sounding like I am rating the levels of disability, but as for now, it’s the only way I know how to best explain myself). I expect that I will quickly adapt to the environment at UCP and I look forward to spending time and forming relationships with the clients. I want to be able to learn more about the clients as people, rather than as “disabled” individuals, focusing only on their differences, and I hope that this experience will teach and allow me to do so.

-Nikki Wyman

After being oriented at UPC, I realized that my service to the organization was not going to be a cakewalk by any means. I walked into the establishment and immediately was warped into an environment that I had never been in before. It was not that I had never intentionally put myself in that type of an environment, but rather I have never had the opportunity to be in an environment quite like that. Needless to say, it was quite intimidating for me.

-S. Paul Lukoskie

Service-Learning Journal Excerpts

I really didn't have any idea what to expect when I first went to UCP. However, Stephanie let me know that all the clients had been diagnosed with mental disabilities and explained certain behaviors of some of the people there. The main people that I worked with during my time at UCP were Junior, Dru, and Mark. I did puzzles with Junior a lot, and computer games and crafts with Dru. Dru was very talkative, and we would talk about what was going on, what they had done that day, and what she was up to that weekend. She was always interested in what was going on with me and always asked me a ton of questions! Mark was always so friendly, and Dru and I helped him to crafts a lot. He loves to look at AutoTrader, pick out his favorite trucks, and then Dru and I would paste them on paper for him. He loved the John Deere trucks! For the most part, I got there around lunch, so I helped all the clients get their lunches opened, chatted with them while they ate, then helped them clean up and got started on some activities. I was able to go in the morning once and dyed Easter eggs with them, which was a nice change.

-Anonymous...

When I first arrived at UCP on North Street I was taken back at the people that I initially encountered. I was not expecting the members of UCP to be as “mentally retarded” (as the director Stephanie refers to the people) as they were. As soon as I entered and introduced myself to the other workers at UCP I was asked if I wanted to go to the library with one of the other workers, Becky, and two of the members of UCP, Denis and Howard (or junior as he prefers to be called.) We went to the Bosler public library and headed straight for the children’s section. The entire time that we were in the library, Howard repeatedly told me that I was a good friend and that he was a good friend, he was not able to really focus on much else, but none the less it was welcoming. We were looking for books on cherries and Mexican cooking because these were the themes for the next few days... I didn't really know what to expect of the clients and wasn't sure if they even wanted me there. However, after spending some time with the clients, I felt a lot more comfortable and quickly learned how to approach, talk to, and deal with most of the clients. I ended up really enjoying my time there. I think that I, and all of us, impacted the clients at UCP just by helping them and opening ourselves up to them as friends. They seemed to really like having me there and wanted to do activities as soon as I got there. I really learned a lot from my experience at UCP, and I think the most important thing that I learned during my time there was how to interact with people who have a disability. I don't think I had much experience in the past and that's why I was so uncomfortable in the beginning. After spending a few hours at UCP, though, I feel confident in my ability to have social interactions with a person with disabilities, something that a lot of people who didn't get this opportunity wouldn't have.

-Miri Goodman

UCP experience was different than my past experiences. Typically, Tara, Jen and I work together with a group of clients. Today we all split up for a little while. Bonnie asked me to help Brian, so I went to work with him. Brian does not talk and doesn’t interact often with people at UCP. My time working with Brian was a little uncomfortable for me because I was just standing next to him. I tried starting conversation a few times but he was not receptive to us talking. I know that all I was suppose to do was keep him supplied with block projects but it felt weird for me to stand next to him without speaking. I enjoyed meeting Michael this visit. I had never met him before and he was very friendly. Typically Junior is the only client who feels completely comfortable talking with us. It was nice have Michael join our little group. He told me as I was leaving that he was glad we came to visit.

-Chad Maloney

I was really comfortable this time when I got there. I felt like I had more of an idea of what I was doing and I felt like I actually had a relationship with some of the consumers. Junior was very excited when he saw us, and it was nice to see that they were starting to remember us and our names. Mark was another person that I really enjoyed meeting. I believe he had Crone’s disease and he also could not speak very well, but he really wanted to communicate with people. It was really interesting to watch him try to talk with people and constantly want to touch them or just be around them. At first, I could tell that I was starting to feel sorry for him, but then I started noticing how truly intelligent he was and how he just really wanted to be sociable. He did his first puzzle in just a couple seconds, meanwhile it took Junior more than five minutes to complete the same exact puzzle. I just thought that he was amazing and I really enjoyed being around him. I also had a very good experience with Francis who was also in a wheelchair. She was not very easy to understand, but after a while I could understand her much better and realized that she was very funny. She really enjoyed making people laugh, and so she and I had a good time together, just making jokes back and forth. Then I got to help some of the people make the Rice Krispie treats which was actually a very interesting experience because I realized that one of the consumers has an imaginary friend. At first, I could not figure out who she was talking to but after a while I picked up on it. This experience was very similar to things that I experience when I am working with little children at the preschool I work at during the summers, so I got to apply some of the skills I already had to the consumers there.

-Jennifer Bane

It was interesting to me to actually observe the way Kenny interacts with his surroundings. He wipes his saliva on things. When I say things, I mean anything. Though, he wont wipe his saliva on people. I didnt notice if he salivates more than the average person does, but he certainly produced enough of it to cover an entire desk in about 3 minutes. I guess he is hydrated well. Stephanie (the head caretaker at UCP) says that it is his way of marking his territory. When she told me that my first visit, I was a little freaked out about it. My first thoughts were “I really hope he doesnt decided to declare me as part of his terrirtory” or “remind me to not leave anything of mine near him". I also found it interesting that he really wouldnt communicate with me so much, other than the random gurgles and blurbs he would spew out in between tearing up paper (which he placed neatly into a trash can) and wiping saliva onto the desk top. I wondered that maybe his saliva wiping tendencies were due to just curiousity of the liquid that his mouth produced. Maybe he isnt sure what it is thus the reason he extracts it from his mouth and wipes it onto a desk. Then again, maybe Stephanie is right in saying that he is marking his territory…though I get the feeling that is THEIR reasoning for it. No one else goes near that table…clients or workers.

-S. Paul Lukoskie

Marc is a man, who is in a wheelchair and is hard to understand. I began to do puzzles with him. He was very good at them. Then it was about 9:20 and it was time for current events. Today they talked about cleanliness in the kitchen and ways to prevent germs in food. Then we heard a lecture about fires inside the kitchen. After this was over a list of names that would be going on a van trip was called outloud. Earlier when I first arrived, Stephanie asked me if I could go on a van trip with Becky (another employee), I said yes. She said that the rest of the group would be baking rice-krispie squares and those on the van would be those consumers that were not allowed in the kitchen. I helped call out the names of the consumers going on the van ride. They were instructed to go to the bathroom and get their coats on. Many of these consumers did not listen right away. I helped them get their coats on and line up in front of the counter. We then waited for Becky to drive the van around front. This was chaos because some of the consumers didn’t want to wait and others didn’t want to go on the van trip. Then the van pulled in front and I helped those on to the van. The consumers going on the van trip were, Mary, Jim, Brian, Darlene, Nancy B., Gary, David, and Arlene. Becky and I got them all on to the van and helped them with their safety-belts. Then Becky noticed that Mary was asking a lot about going back to alternatives, she asked me to count the number of times that Mary did so. The entire van ride was quite for the most part except for when “Man I Feel Like a Woman” came on the radio then Arlene sang it as loud as she could. I sat next to Gary who was very excited to see the ducks at the pond. The entire van trip lasted probably twenty-five minutes. In that time Mary asked about alternatives 97 times. We then got back to UCP and I hung around and left a few minutes after. The final few minutes of my time was spent trying to keep Mary out of the kitchen and trying to calm down Arlene who had begun to scream about her pens.

-Tara McFadden

Post-Service Reflections:

After volunteering there I feel as though I have gained an understanding for how to interact with people who have cognitive disabilities rather than a medical understanding of each type of cognitive disability. All of the members of UCP suffered from some form of a cognitive disability and this is something that I had not truly been exposed to prior to this service learning assignment. Being surrounded and working with people with all different levels of cognitive disabilities, gave me a greater opportunity to learn how to interact with all different types of people.

-Miri Goodman

One theme that we have addressed, directly and indirectly, in our class readings and discussion has been the way that disability studies challenges the notion of the American dream. It becomes apparent that American dream ideals such as social and financial mobility, independence, determination and autonomy are taken for granted in “normative” societies. This concept became especially clear to me during my time at UCP where I interacted with individuals who really don’t have much of a say regarding their personal liberties due to their respective disabilities. The fact that much of our society is based upon these values and that any individual with a disability “challenges” those values suggests that maybe we need to both rethink and reshape those ideals so that they work to include rather than exclude individuals in the same society, regardless of difference.

-Nikki Wyman

I found my experience at UCP very rewarding. At the beginning of this course we discussed the way “normative” society looks at the disabled. During class discussions I always felt as if I was better than they average norm. I didn’t think I looked at the disabled any differently than I look at anyone else. My experience at UCP proved me wrong. During my first visit I felt extremely uncomfortable interacting with the UCP clients. I didn’t know why, but I just felt out of place. With each subsequent visit, however, I have become more comfortable interacting with the clients. I now realize that I do, like many people in our society, look at people with disabilities as not “normal.” At the very least, my time at UCP has opened my eyes to the way I treat those around me. Now when I see someone with a disability, I try to focus on the fact that “normal” does not exist and therefore I should take everyone as the come and only evaluate someone after I know them.

-Chad Maloney

After working at UCP for part of this semester, I look back at each of my visits and it is apparent to me how I have learned so much about interacting with people who are disabled in one way or another. I also truly feel that the interactions I have had with the clients of UCP have also expanded on my abilities to interact with people in general...At first I really did not even consider that the clients that UCP helped had cerebral palsy at all. I was not sure what their disabilities were. Some of the clients were very coherent and just seemed a little “slow” if anything at all. Others were really not able to formulate coherent thoughts. There were even some who were unable to physically move, while others were running around the establishment...I learned a lot from working at UCP, and I really enjoyed the time I was able to spend with the clients as well as the workers. After working there I feel that I am better prepared to handle situations in the future where I might encounter someone with a disability.

-S. Paul Lukoskie

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