Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 8, 1993 TAG: 9305080372
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"There are so many messages about acceptance, about change. And there's a truth to it. My experience, with children from second grade to high school, is that they quit moving when that show goes on. They're so entranced by it and by its honesty that they feel as though it's communicating very directly to them."
Enough members of the Motion Pictuire Academy shared her enthusiasm for "Educating Peter" that on March 29 Wurzburg found herself onstage accepting the coveted statuette.
Her husband, Grady Watts, who edited the film, was in the audience, and their two daughters, 8 and 11, were watching across town with friends.
Last week Wurzburg was due back in Blacksburg for another tribute, a special dinner for the children she filmed, their parents and local dignitaries.
"Educating Peter" is a documentary short subject, one of those small films that win awards, but that hardly anyone gets to see. It was made by Wurzburg's company, State of the Art Inc., in Washington.
"Educating Peter" is the story of a Down syndrome child, Peter Gwazdauskas, from his first days in the third grade in Blacksburg to the end of the school year. But Wurzburg is quick to say that the story is not so much about Peter as it is about "inclusion," the process of putting a disabled child directly into a classroom in his own neighborhood with children his own age.
It is a move beyond "mainstreaming," where such children are educated in separate classrooms, sometimes in nearby schools, sometimes in schools where they must be taken by bus.
During the year that Wurzburg filmed, Peter learned a great deal about getting along with people. He moved from kicking his classmates at the beginning of the year to honoring his favorites with bear hugs on the last day of school. His classmates in turn went from wariness to helping restrain him on occasion and eventually cheering him on as he progressed.
"A lot of the behaviors you saw in the show really are on the back burner now," said Wurzburg. This year he is in fourth grade with some of the same youngsters.
"Families talked to me about how the conversations at the dinner table were different this year," said Wurzburg, "talking about really substantial issues, about having someone who's different, about accepting someone who's different. That's the thing that I find so appealing."
Peter's teacher, Martha Ann Stallings, also learned a lot, including when to ask for help. So that Peter did not dominate her classroom, she asked for a full-time assistant to be with Peter and a specialist who worked both with him and his teachers, Wurzburg said.
"The show," she said, "is a tribute to good teaching."
by CNB