September 22, 2008 Teacher challenges stereotypes at an early age Play video

(Ally Donnelly, NECN) - A teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts is challenging stereotypes increasingly ingrained in our society. But rather than trying to teach old dogs new tricks, Maggie Doben is helping students learn about people with disabilities early, in the first grade. She has even made a film about it.

The lessons include book work -- where kids learn about different aspects of different disabilities, but their favorite part is when visitors come in.

Doben: "To actually have someone who comes who actually uses a wheelchair and sits before you and speaks to you about their life and how they use the wheelchair and what they can do, sort of makes that all sink in and makes it genuine."

The disabled visitors range from para and quadriplegics to amputees to blind people.

Maggie Doben: "I think the questions to me that are most interesting are the questions that as adults we often wonder but are too shy to ask. I think what's beautiful with kids at this age is that they have no filter. They ask what they're genuinely thinking and wondering and get their answers in a straightforward way."

Trottier -- the disabilities officer for Harvard University -- has experienced her fair share of cruelty. She tells the story of a group of men who whistled the tune "hi ho, hi ho" to her from Snow white and the Seven Dwarfs. "The bias and the meanness that people think is okay -- that they don't think that I have feelings. I don't know if it's -- little

Trottier says the give and take with children is far different.

Marie Trottier: "For them to ask everything -- from marriage to babies to driving to clothing and shoes -- and that we can literally sit there, stand there and talk to each other and explain the whole thing through is fascinating."

The curriculum is an intensive 8-week program, but Doben hopes through kids -- and their parents -- the effects will be far more sweeping. In the film she checks in with former students who are now in the 6th and 7th grade.

Doben: I was really struck by the amount that they remembered, by how they spoke about it so eloquently and how deeply it had impacted them.

Trottier talked with the parent of a student at a workshop -- where the child had become the teacher.

Trottier: "No, don't say the word midget, she's a little person -- you know, mom, c'mon don't embarrass me and it's one of those situations that's fantastic."

Doben: I really just see a transformation of understanding they quickly move from you have a disability to -- what are ways that we're the same?

For filmmaker Doben the story has come full circle....for teacher Doben..It's a job well done.

Student: "Before I met people with disabilities I was thinking, how will I communicate? Now, I'm thinking, oh, it's just another way to live."