As the longtime principal of the William S. Baer School, Zulema Sockwell Moore is determined to ensure that her students have access to the same opportunities as students at more affluent, well-funded schools. The Baltimore Public School serves 180 of the city’s most medically fragile children from ages three to 21, who live with a broad range of disabilities.
In 2020, the school received a $25,000 Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation Quality of Life grant to purchase and distribute new technology solutions. The funding enabled the school to implement Project Core, a new approach to using pictures and symbols to help children living with paralysis communicate through eye-gaze boards and other technology.
“Principal Sockwell Moore places significant emphasis on empowering children to express themselves and exercise their capacity to communicate at their individual level,” says Rimlinger. “The grant enabled us to serve more kids and create an environment that challenges students to reach educational and therapeutic success.”
In the past, teachers used passive communication to help students identify an object. For example, a teacher might point to a picture of a sandwich or apple to represent “lunch.” With Project Core, teachers use visual representations for verbs instead of nouns.
“Prior communications didn’t give the student any choices or opportunity to give input into their day,” says Rimlinger. “Now, instead of naming objects, Project Core allows children to identify feelings, describe their needs and actively participate in their daily routine. By teaching children to communicate their feelings, needs and desires, children can actively communicate.”
“Before receiving the grant, we had limited access to the technology, and our students who used it would need to share,” says Rimlinger. “Now, all the kids who need these resources to communicate have direct access to it on their desks and wheelchairs.”
To date, the Baer School teachers have been able to serve 50 children with paralysis and may serve an additional 50 over the lifespan of the equipment. The equipment has impacted roughly 300 caregivers, nurses, educational assistants and teachers as well. The grant also came at a crucial time, right before the pandemic forced students to continue learning from home.
“Being able to bring Project Core directly into students' homes at the exact time the tools were unable to be shared in a classroom allowed more children to continue working when most were in danger of backsliding,” says Rimlinger. “The creativity of our teachers in offering all kinds of options for students and parents continues to astound us. Because of this grant, our kids continued learning, and it fostered relationships with parents and families to an unprecedented degree.”