Jarred Walker
In Motion Staff Writer
Every year, the Daytona State College Faculty Senate Disability Committee has events on all campuses to raise awareness on disabilities that some might face on a day-to-day basis.
This year, it all started with the Fall 2018 Lunch & Learn Series, designed for people to become aware of a variety of important topics. This semester, there are six events, each presented by a guest speaker for an hour while the audience feasts on its brown bag lunches. All talks are given twice, usually on different campuses.
In the first session, with guest speaker Laura Koschuk, a special education teacher from Deltona High School, attendees learned about supporting students with special needs based on her own experience as a hearing-impaired DSC student.
Also as part of the series, Karen Zielinski, an academic adviser at DSC, gave a workshop on helping students overcome test anxiety.
The final session will be about students on the autistic spectrum and techniques for them to achieve academic success. Jason Klazon, from the University of Central Florida’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, will be the speaker in appearances at 12:30 p.m. Nov. 14 on the Daytona Beach campus, Building 200, room 411. The second will be at the same time Nov. 15 at the Flagler/Palm Coast campus in Building 3, room 105.
On Oct. 17, DSC hosted its 29th annual Abilities Awareness Day on the Daytona Beach campus’ courtyard. It featured five clubs and many students/alumni all trying to raise awareness and partake in the festivities from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Rose Stuart, counselor for accessibility services, was the catalyst for setting the event up. “I love it,” she said. “All the vendors and students love it too. We’ve had about 500 people come out.”
A couple of clubs that turned out were the Student Respiratory Care Association and American Sign Language Club. Joe Esposito, a member of the SRCA, explained how they really wanted to show how preventable Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD is.
“It’s a breathing disability. We’re out here to show what effects smoking has on your lungs. We even have a fake healthy lung and a fake unhealthy lung to show the effects visually. It just raises awareness, brings it to light and explains maybe what some people might not know about it. This is our second year out here.”
Mary Thompson, adviser of the ASL club, explained how they were participating to show what deaf people can do and not want they can’t do.
“We’ve had a great turnout. We have many activities whether it be trivia or giving out earbuds, so you can see what it’s like to be hard of hearing. I think the event was a success. A lot of people were interested. I was surprised how much traffic we had,” she said.
Although it started to rain near the end, that didn’t stop the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind from playing their instruments and singing to cap off the event.