"You can't do it for him. No, no, no, no. He has to do it. You tell him what he needs to do but he has to do it himself," coached a teacher.

Each grade at Allisonville Elementary School is learning about a disability this week. Blindness is not something the sighted first graders knew much about before this experience.

"It was hard because we didn't know where we was going and one time I was bumping into the chair," said Brittany Potts, first grader.

"They walk out of here understanding that those children that they may be sitting next to are all just the same as they are," said Pat Wyman.

Wyman asked her school to try a curriculum called "Everybody Counts." Mrs. Wyman's daughter Catherine was born with spina bifida.

Catherine's classmates understand her disability, but Catherine gets curious stares and questions away from school. She takes it in stride. "They sometimes ask me why do I have crutches?" she said. Catherine says she just explains that she needs them to help her walk.

Second graders are learning about hearing impairments. Students and teachers from the Indiana School for the Deaf show how they speak with sign language, how they utilize interpreters and even how they use special telephones.

The students are also learning about disabilities that aren't as obvious like learning disabilities. "When we have a program and then we get to talk about it and they get to talk about it, I think it helps us a lot understand and probably be more helpful for some of the students," said Pam Hilt, teacher.

Everybody Counts is a curriculum that Allisonville Elementary bought for about $100. It essentially is a binder full of lesson plans and suggested activities for teaching about five disabilities: vision and hearing impairments, learning disabilities, motor impairments which can result in children using wheelchairs for example and developmental disabilities such as Downs syndrome and autism.

By Leslie Olsen
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4411185&nav=0Ra7