Omnibus; Carl Harvey School

Climb aboard omnibus fifty four hour journey across the Orange County panorama. Each week on a visit he will make a stop at an area of local government or travel into an issue of minority affairs or explore the world of the arts. This week omnibus spending transports you inside your local government. Channel 15 now presents an omnibus 50 public affairs program about the Carl Harvey school in Santa Ana. Host of the program will be Jim Cooper. There's a magic kind of public school in Santa Ana called Carl Harvey school. It's the oldest of four public schools in Orange County which specialize in hope therapy and education for physically handicapped children. We're going to take a trip inside that school and see some of the good things that are happening there. And we'll talk to some of the people who are making them happen. In addition to the Carl Harvey school there are three other free public schools for special teaching the word

grass cool in Fullerton Baden-Powell school in Anaheim and private school in Fountain Valley. They're supported by local school district state funds and county health department. And they're open to serve any Orange County children. It's a different kind of school in front each morning are long lines of wheelchairs. Each morning from 8:30 to 9:00 the 10 buses arrive from 11 different school districts at the Carl Harvey school. The buses carry all 80 students to their campus. Unlike other students arriving in the morning at the usual school these children are met with wheelchairs. Many arrive with orthopedic devices others come on crutches. Some are carrying. Many are rolled to classrooms in wheelchairs but there is a brightness and cheerfulness about the school and its students and the teaching staff that is difficult to match. It's a positive feeling of wanting to get on with the interesting business of the day. There are two parts to the program. First the handicap students must meet every academic requirement of any public school. But in addition there's an

entire world of care and expert help provided to each student to help overcome difficulties imposed by his or her hand to get to overcome these difficulties many skills and much dedication of teachers and therapy specialists is needed. It also requires the rapport that comes from self-confident children who react with the extraordinary concern and love given to them at this school. Let's go through their work for a very fast day. It will start with a classroom Pledge of Allegiance a song and some schoolwork but later there are sections of speech therapy for speech handicapped children physical therapy and occupational therapy operating the Carl Harvey school is a working team made up of parents the teachers and the many therapists and specialists and diagnosticians no charges ever made. The students in the therapists really can show us best what really happens. That he has the.

Right. To do that. Yeah very good I like my life. Life. Is Apparently he's braced from his toes here he's working an activity living in preparation for walking on very dares and curbs. If you are using a large beach ball here still it is protective extension to strengthen its trunk to help widen his base of support. You'll see here is

he pushing her hand down forward this is to help him learn to be able to catch is here falling and he probably will. We're having him hold his hands up in the air. This is a fun thing to do as well as learning is strength. OK and that they were OK. I'm working with Bobby here he has a brand new bracelet. We're working to strengthen him and legs to prepare him for independent crutch walking. I am trying to help him learn to stabilize his hips so that he will be able to manage himself much better as he learns to walk which. Is very limited in his activities. Basketball is a good act for maintaining the strength in his neck. Greg is learning how to undress and dress himself in occupational therapy.

Craig's movements are dominated by primitive reflexes and therefore sidelining eliminates the influence of these reflexes. It is a good activity. Rihanna ordination has to be encouraged to use both hands. He has a tendency to hold himself up with one hand. Jason has control rolling is a good activity to strengthen and improve his control. Placing him in a prone position such as. In control as well as bring his arms to do another activity. For the high school students there is still another program vocational training. It helps them to

develop a marketable skill before they leap. These include mechanical skills for boys such as small engine repairs carpentry and crafts. The girls learn filing typing in bookkeeping. Both groups learn commercial art. About 10 percent of the students go on to college. Others go on to technical school. A big part of the effort of this department is in counseling for further technical or academic training. Still another service is the placement of graduating seniors and through the help of the school administrator. If you drop by Karl Harvey school during physical training time you usually find a very good basketball game going on or baseball or a half dozen other sports. It might be played in wheelchairs but this in no way diminishes the spirit or the zest for the game. The program here means understanding the need for a whole child to develop with whatever he or she can be despite the physical handicap. It means adjusting socially with the self respect that comes from becoming more independent. It means growing emotionally and physically with difficult orthopedic handicaps. Simply having fun like a basketball game

is considered an important matter of Carl Harvey school. There's a closeness between students and teachers and staff specialists that is not defined anywhere in the education code. It creates a mutual understanding which makes progress possible for students. Probably the main product of Carl Harvey school is hope. Is based on the belief that life is important. And that any handicap can be made much less harmful. If people will only work at it. Well now that we've seen this cool let's meet let's meet some of the people who make it work. Andy Holden was appointed principal of Carl Harvey school in August in 1972. You have a wide background of experience in all levels of education from primary to secondary. You worked with atypical children in a private school which you directed in the valley in military service she served in para medical specialty. She's known for her dynamic and innovative approach to

education. Curtis is president of the Carl Harvey parents organization. He's the father of an 11 year old boy who has been a student at the school since he was three. He's also a Boy Scout Master for troop 29 a troop for handicapped boys. He's an aerospace executive and his wife Nancy have one other child and are strong supporters of the school. You're right it was physical therapist the Harvard School for over 10 years the last five of which he served a senior there. She's now the senior therapist a lab in school in valley. She has also previously served as a physical therapist of various medical facilities. She served on the Senate on a school board for 13 years and very active in civil war. Well I think that we ought to start with with you like that a question that occurs to me what do you feel are the most important progress that you're making and the most important contribution that comes to children out of your school. I would say probably tailoring education to the specific needs of the child. Of course

that's not indigenous just to the north of the hand-count school that's indigenous to every typical school throughout Orange County as well. But we ourselves are going to change the program to the child whatever the child's level of learning for potential and that's what I mean your point whatever it happens to be using testing as a guideline using this like psychologist reports the guideline using the observations of the teacher is a guideline on using classroom tests that are made by the teachers after they get there. Never been to school before. And of course we use that their guidance and medical guidance for our end of the medical program. But everything is done on prescription prescriptive descriptive therapy. It's risky. They're in a what would you say prescriptive prescriptive teaching to someone that just walked in the hall from the street. When I talk about a prescriptive or when I talk about a prescriptive program I mean a program. That is just tailored to the needs of the

test of time to find out where they are just as the doctors will test them and find out what the therapy and find out what the patients have what needs to be brought up where they're headed what kind of a program whether it's a terminal program that we're headed or whether at the college program we're headed for and the program is built to that even within a classroom of children. You can have individualization and you do have you don't have necessarily working on a one to one basis. The town individuals and doesn't necessarily That is the individual that all the youngsters in the group with specific things. You know my feeling that I didn't feel for the war. That's why I say there's no one the education code. You shall give love to your children. You show create war. But it's there it's a matter for all of you with that impression because you're so close. Well I think probably I'm close to it of course. I do think that the people who work in the schools do have a special empathy with children. They don't

last you know last you won't remember what you have to have a sense of humor and if you have a sense of humor you're not a whole person but I think that the people who are in our program are quite special to the principal. Do the youngsters react to humor you get along with our kids having their sense in them or they are just great. Yes Matt is that right and you've seen it from another perspective of the father who had whether you send 11 we came there when he was three you had eight years of watching this as a parent what are your what comes across to you would you do with one of the main things is that the parents have to participate. They have to participate with much more than that that and that of the group at the school and they have to do some things that hold the father of what's carried on in school and it's a continuous effort to try to work out the total program. You have another young threw the other youngsters not handicapped. Right right.

Does it pose a problem in your family being not as someone is not a significant role. There's some competition that you haven't any family with more than one child and that but they get along real well. No real significance that I'm curious about that. And you you must have many of your students who come from homes in which the siblings are completely normal and are not physically typical I guess that's a better word. What kind of advice do you have for parents for that's where the youngsters do not have it and can't get along with brothers or sisters. Create a market for full time printing just exactly like a typical everywhere possibly can I think. I'm curious about the matter of advancement we talk so much about advances breakthrough medicine breakthrough and drug breakthrough and mechanical things and science has been much of a breakthrough in the way we are helping handicapped children grow to deal with life as been many breakthroughs in that I think that you're absolutely.

Well I would say probably the most significant breakthrough that I see in the school is that the combination of the therapy and education are one of the most beautiful things that you could possibly imagine it used to be that there were not an independent type of things that affect one card interest and can buy the therapy unit in one section and eyes met at different campuses and then an educational section somewhere else. And what I have found encountering is the effort in there for things off where the therapists are working on educational things as well as with the teachers are following guidelines or their autographs and on the rare event that one of the biggest crossovers and disciplines that I and others in learning any time and that the council system its a very unhealthy thing is a carryover or continuity that you may not get other than hearing differently so what would you touched on what was talking about the thing that there is after it all with that you mentioned he was bringing up a team approach that when you know

them because the children are started a whole program of therapy even before they are in school and the parents and the child are the number one people on the team then we come after that. I see but this is a beauty about our schools it's that we do have a total approach to the whole child. We don't stop the child up in pieces. Everybody works on the total person trying to build up this person to be a person. We don't study occupational therapy with a hands physical therapy with feet. Education with a yes. I see everybody in this crosses over totaling the whole time. If I'm going to tell them a better test which that way I'd like to hear your answer the quick and rather than the go about the weather had been really any dramatic remarkable advances in physical therapy in dealing with handicaps who were going through the left there. I think there have been some advances. People who have. More or less crystallized their approach to treat physical therapy at creating several thousand children

brain damaged children. I don't think that one system works for every child so this is a break for us who are not devising treatments we can we can use from other people's approaches. When I think that people have begun to be more aware of what can be done with our type of child. Let's talk about attitudes and have attitudes really change the attitudes of people toward And because people in our society have really changed over the years are still a sort of a hostility or let's say an unspoken discrimination against handicapped people. I think that our attitude changing. Well I think it's individualized and individualism and anything else I think that. Perhaps this generation which began this love business and began looking at the inside of people rather than the outside of people and you don't want to look at that person.

I think there is more understanding. There has been before I think about we have a long way to go a long way to go in attitudes toward and middle aged people through and also acceptance of acceptance and you feel that way. Yes that is I was getting a little bit better than the gradual not a lot of it from all of you that you're saying a lot of homework to be done in that area Ed. That is a look at it. Let's talk about location work and job work and hiring and I understand that you have some programs and maybe we could talk about some of the programs. How do you take a typical student out and take them out try to put him on a job. We work in conjunction with. We have a project called Project by the school. And we work in conjunction with Easter Seals for testing against a potential with goodwill industry and actually just one of our kids in high school does a great deal of herself placement

for different sections of industry. Some of them work in the library. Some of them work in county office in the district office. Don't you have a program where you actually take the students out put them in a job or other work. And they have a regular work experience environment in which they have developed and some of them have gotten permanent jobs. So it it's still a problem for a long way from for the exam. But we're working at it and we're getting there and with a vocational rehab coming in to help out that makes our job one thing I like that one of the things about the chains that begin to take place when the students are there for quite a while you see a dramatic personality change begin to evolve in the students. Maybe perhaps being shy or inhibit that's when you let our kids into a situation where they're with their peer group and they're not competing with a typical town all the time. They have a chance to blossom to one to be mean little kids.

Just because your child isn't a nice necessarily so they have a chance to be a bad child which is not always allowed at home. Yes but I was kind of go through the emotions that are typical children go through but I think doctor psychologist I thought put put it very nicely. What do you think my children have a right not to be able to reach the door handle. Meaning that of a typical child doesn't always reach the door to open the door for them and have a chance to face them too often with our handicapped children everybody is doing to do things for them. So we're there going experience here which is is for them normal town events. Rap being making a big thing out of it because other kids are falling on their faces. What would happen to these the kind of students you have there what would happen to them 20 years 30 years 40 years ago 50 years ago what how did society deal with these children then when they were they had programs like this where they couldn't make it and when they put into a back room somewhere special as to veterans

and kept at home of course on Lago people lived in the country more in the rural areas and they were coming home things that these kids could do at home that urban society can't get over and so that you lived out of the tent to get the good work on the farm very nicely. It didn't have to compete with getting on and off of us and doing all the things that have to do. What are one of the biggest things you'd like to see accomplished in this area the work you're doing. You must have frustrations you must have been saying boy if you didn't do this or do that what are some of the biggest areas for improvement that you see. Well versed in our early identification of them is a problem. Second of all identification of youngsters in minority group a problem they're still not coming to the forefront. This father doesn't care but I'm going to read you have the feeling right now. There are many youngsters who want to be in some one of the programs that are not in it. I do. I definitely have and I have one thing because in the last year we have kept up a great number of Mexican-American youngsters and they have been school before where they've been.

I see also with the black about some of the black community. I have one black student in my school. I don't know how many blacks you have a plan and I'm not at all. Right. There are more than that black students also and I never listen to them. I would say yes and he was telling us just earlier a 17 year old that had never been to school and was just brought in this year who had the mental capacity to assimilate going and I think they have they have potential and they need to have a chance. Part of the problem even in our own neighborhood is that people go by the school and they think we are not a public school that we're a private institution of some sort they think that there's a charge for all of this. And there isn't. I mean all they have to do is to contact Orange County Orange County Medical Orange County School District and special education districts in there especially from directors on their own.

Anyone or anything of course will direct them to some kind of a program every child has a right to everything to get found out and I just adore it disserve me if I have it. We're sitting here thinking there. Here's the program to be offered to them. It doesn't cost anything to the parents and their children who are being denied this for ignorance for lack of interest or lack of being informed lack of investment a language problem I think we had a media special get we had with one of your students best come down and have a joint as I want her best. Best re 7 year old from Austin and been to school for two years. Hello Beth. Remember I asked you to come up there do you think you can come up. Or would you come up in a red carpet and sit in my lap. Did you see the pictures in there and your school. I do like them. Good Come on up best the best has come to you from Boston.

I think that we were talking about Carl Harvey. You wouldn't like KNOW WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT HOW DO YOU LIKE IT. You like would you like going through the playground. What do you do what the what the most fun thing you do all day alone. I. Play and draw you like drawing too. What's your favorite thing you like to draw. Something like that lowers. How is how is the best of the students here. The best is just seven. You're learning right. You don't need some reading and you like to learn the alphabet. An open courtroom program which I like to ask questions about Ring of Intel and what can you tell me something to learn in

your reading. If you like doing better don't you want done when you go out in the playground to play the fun out there in the playground. What do you play out there. Play ball with bikes too. One of the one of the things I'm interested in hearing about is that I asked law to touch on a little earlier about the personality change and dealing with life because that's a big part of it not how they deal. Walking up there the harder they deal in a real cold outside world you feel and you make a lot of headway that we are very definitely this is one of the things that stress not just how good they got because they're you know not anything when you go to a very big part of our gathering of important hearing that and how to buy something to cause that sort of mettle of his daughter. Typical people instead of the typical how to parent. It was much

fuss. I want to ask you about parents. How would you what kind of advice would you give to parents who have a child like this and don't know bother their breath. They are trying to deal with it without advice would you have. Well I guess I would suggest that if they have any suspicion at all that contact they aren't done in medical department or their own doctor or someone and try to get some. Diagnosis and find out what steps they should get. Sometimes educators say that the parents get in the way that might get in there. How do you feel that. You want them you want them around. There are a number working parents are to your thinking. Now it's a total tool and and do you feel a big part of your job is teaching the parents then. Oh yes very definitely itself not to be overprepared. Most parents respond to the yes most are going to move on very well I think

what the biggest thing you like to say to somebody who might have a problem like this with you. Well I'm with Milton get the diagnosis early get things started early or involve the whole family the whole team and making sure this child has a proper chance. The early treatment very important so much that you don't go out and recruit an open you try to get the word I think I would concur your crippled children services from the county director one of reform programs. And we have a hundred patients that are not even a part of our school that come in on an earlier basis from the time they're well some of the nine months we've had it been three months or was it three or nine. About up but now it's on the news. Thank you all for helping to fill a very human story to the people and the parents can contact the local school to find out where the nearest such handicaps or for your children.

This is 50 publicly for the program on Channel 15. I'm Jim Cooper thanks for being with us. For further information regarding schools for the orthopedic Lee handicapped in your area call the Carl Harvey school if you live in Santa Ana at 5 5 8 5 7 1 7. The Lord Boston power school if you live in Anaheim at 8 2 8 8 3 6 1 in followers and it's the Woodcrest special school at 5 2 5 3 5 1 4 or Troy High School at 8 7 9 7 8 8 0. School For those of you in Fountain Valley at 9 6 2 8 8 2 8. Or contact the director of special education in your school district. Tonight on the bus with you has transported you into the Orange County world of local government will. Return next week for another journey to the people places and events in the Orange County of us.