Our Trip to the Galilee (or Inclusion Vindicated) part two

Near the second river we waded along, we reached the Kinneret (sea of Galilee). On seeing it, and being told that THIS is the Kinneret, Ricki nodded in recognition (the Kinneret being one of those few landmarks on the map that Ricki was expected to be able to label). She gazed and added with wonder: “Gosh, its BIG!” She hurried to point it out and “share” her discovery with her classmates. We quickly reached Tiberius. There I took some pictures of Ricki along the shore.
The nicest part of the trip was the boat ride we took for an hour on the sea. It was a big boat, and the girls sang and danced. And Ricki was a part of the crowd, amongst everyone, included in the entire goings on.
As I watched, a happy bystander (I wanted Ricki to be with her friends WITHOUT me tagging along). my mind flashed back several years. At that time Ricki had been in first grade, at a different school. At the end of the school year, we received a disk with short videos of different highlights of the school year. I was horrified when I noticed that in all of the shots taken during the class trip, and even most of the in-class shots, Ricki was with her aide… and ONLY the aide. She was separate from the other girls, and “included” only in the fact that she sat in the same classroom. Yes, the girls would wave to her on the street, but never, in all of her three years there, did a classmate phone her. This school (which at the time was the ONLY school willing to accept her) was the school whose principal repeatedly told me that I was crazy to “include” Ricki. Eventually, I could see that they were not willing to learn to do things differently, and indeed I would be “crazy” to leave her there. I managed to transfer her after third grade to this different school. Here the studies are harder (this school jumped her up to her age level; in the previous one she had been two years behind her age group), but the girls accepted her… truly accepted her. In this school trip she was no leper.

I wish the principal of the first school could have seen her on that trip.

Our Trip to the Galilee (or Inclusion Vindicated) part one

Our trip to the north was lovely, especially for Ricki. The only bad part was the constant refrain of “Oh Gee, Rickismom, you’re amazing” from the teachers. I guess that they never expected someone of my proportions to go wading down streams (because most of them DIDN’T).
My first big pleasure from the trip was that when I pulled out a map of northern Israel to show Ricki where we were, she not only didn’t protest, she was interested. She is studying northern Israel right now in school, and I was sure that showing her on the map at points along the way would make the map more “alive” during geography studies. And then she even ASKED me for the map a various times throughout the trip.
The first stop was at “Nachal Kibutzim”, a small river one can go wading in. The bottom was straight, and the water was waist high. Since Ricki can float, and was with friends, I felt OK with her going in without me, especially as I would have her in constant eyesight. I was going to try and not go in the water, simply to avoid the hassle of finding a modest place to change later (bus drivers being known for not allowing soaking wet persons aboard). However, there was a busload of 7th graders from a different school making the same trip as we were. On entering the water, Ricki GRABBED the arm of the girl next to her, who happened to be from the second school. She was nice, and didn’t protest. HOWEVER, she had never seen Ricki in her life, and really looked as if she didn’t know what had hit her. (ie. She stood there, frozen in place.) So I went in, unlatched Ricki from the 7th grader, and got Ricki to loosen up. She quickly joined a bunch of classmates. I exited the water (hoping to dry out before reboarding). Then Ricki’s classmates really took over, even taking her on a “slide” to a lower pool.
The second stop was even more exciting. It was another river one walks along, but here the riverbed was full of irregular, slippery stones. When Ricki and I were in Colorado last year, we hiked along many mountain trails with stones like these. Ricki did not appreciate them (to put it mildly), but she did learn to navigate fairly well between the rocks. However, there we could see the stones; here we couldn’t. I will be honest and say that I did not enjoy this part of the trip, and was afraid that I would twist my ankle. By midway Ricki was only half coping, after some muddy water had splashed into her eyes, and had a runny nose as well. Then I slipped and fell. Nothing happened (except to my pride as a “hiker”), but Ricki became truly hysterical. So we exited a bit early. But within 5 minutes, Ricki’s friends had coaxed her back into the water, and they continued with her until the end of the water trail. (I had again opted out, deciding that I had had enough of stones I can’t see.)

A Long-Ago Trip to the Galilee

Sometime soon Ricki’s class at school will be having their big yearly trip, this time to the Galilee area. Ricki’s aid can’t go, so I will have to fill in for her. Thinking about this today reminded me about a trip I took some 30 years ago. Our “seminary” school had a trip to the Galilee. One of my classmates, “Chaya”, was blind. When we got out of the busses, the “guide” looked at Chaya and started mumbling something about Chaya not being able to go; it might be dangerous. After asking a few questions, I realized that his fear was misplaced (he was seeing “blind”, not “Chaya”). I took responsibility for her. I had read a fair amount about blindness, and knew how to guide and describe things to someone with visual impairment. And, indeed we had absolutely no problems. In fact, the only one in our class who DIDN’T wet her feet crossing a certain pool by rock “stepping stones” was Chaya. The class united in insuring that. I am glad that we had “Chaya”, not “blind” as a classmate.