Wayne State University's College of Education (COE) is reaching out to persons with disabilities through a curriculum designed to provide life skills education through simulation.

In collaboration with the Jewish Friendship Circle, Margaret Posch, Ph.D., COE associate professor, has written a simulation curriculum specifically geared to the Ferber Kaufman Life Town at the Meer Family Center in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. The building is a state-of-the-art 20,000+ square-foot facility, which includes a miniature village, called Life Village, where children with special needs can practice important life skills through role play.

The curriculum, titled "Simucations for Life," was developed to appeal to schools and community agencies interested in developing transition skills in persons with disabilities.

"As we developed the 'Simucations for Life' curriculum, our goal was to offer a hands-on and engaging venue that reached out to a diverse group of young people and others with special needs," Posch said. "In order to serve the greatest number of youth possible, we selected a team approach in designing the curriculum while including teacher and parent involvement as Village module docents, technical assistants and program evaluators," Posch added.

The 5,000-square-foot Village has 12 real-life simulated learning modules including a park with a towering tree that reaches through two levels of the building; a pedestrian safety program with working traffic lights; a bank where children will interact with a teller; a library and medical offices. Other amenities include a pet shop, drug store, beauty salon, laundromat workshop and a theater, all designed to teach special needs children about the basics of independence in our society. Many of the modules have corporate sponsors.

Friendship Circle, established in 1994 to provide assistance to the families of children with special needs and individuals and families struggling with addiction, isolation and other crises, will provide volunteers to staff Life Village. Volunteers will wear costumes and act as vendors interacting with those using the simucation curriculum and Life Village. The purpose of building the facility was to offer over 1,000 Friendship Circle volunteers a venue for their services to persons with special needs.

Life Town and the "Simucations for Life" curriculum teach youth to communicate written and orally while learning to respect the opinion of others. They learn to strategize together and offer and accept praise and criticism with dignity - skills, according to Posch, that are all transferable to real world settings in the home, school and community.

Wayne State's College of Education Dean Paula Wood believes the collaborative project offers a two-fold benefit by providing much needed services to persons with disabilities and curriculum trainings to the volunteers at Life Town. "We are implementing a program at Life Town that introduces life skills education to persons with disabilities while establishing a curriculum model for school districts, community agencies, businesses and employment training centers," Wood said.

An invitation-only grand opening ceremony of the Ferber Kaufman Life Town will be held on Tuesday, April 5, at the West Bloomfield facility located at 6890 West Maple Rd. For information about the center call (248) 788-7878 or visit their Web site at www.friendshipcircle.org.

To schedule a visit to Life Town or learn more about Wayne State's College of Education's curriculum program, contact Margaret Posch at (313) 577-2136 or email: m.posch@wayne.edu.

Wayne State University is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 12 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.