The Florida Children's Academy in Orlando provides inclusion childcare for children ages 1-12. It was founded 20 years ago to serve the growing international community. The Academy believes all children deserve to learn and aims to help children grow through education and therapy services. The volunteer spent 15 hours over two weeks helping in classrooms, reading to children, and playing with them. The children came from diverse backgrounds and had various needs the Academy supported. The volunteer found the experience impactful and connected what they learned to their special education course.

1. Community
Connections
Tiffany Nikias
Fall 2011
EEX 2010
Tiffany_Nikias@knights.ucf.edu

2. Florida Children’s Academy
 The Florida Children’s Academy is located
in Downtown Orlando. It was founded 20
years ago to provide childcare services for
a growing international community. It has
evolved and is now providing inclusion
child care, both day and night, to children
between the ages of 1 and 12.

3. Florida Children’s Academy
 They believe that every child deserves the
opportunity to develop skills and establish a sense
of self that lays the foundation for life long
learning. Childcare services provided on-site are
staffed with professionals aiding children to grow,
develop, and improve their chances of leading
healthy, productive lives.
 Their team includes not only educators, but also
physical, speech, and occupational therapists,
and behavioral specialists. Inclusion child care
helps children with disabilities to be part of a
classroom that enhances their skills. Children with
special needs gain valuable learning experiences
and are challenged to exceed in their areas when
they are part of an early intervention learning
environment.

4. Engagement Activities
 I volunteered at the Florida Children’s Academy
for 15 hours. I did this in a period of two
weeks, usually 2-3 hours a day.
 I engaged with the students by helping out
around the classroom and interacting with them
at every opportunity. I read stories with the
children, had puppet shows, and played with
them on the playground. By the end of my
volunteer work, I had made friendly relationships
with many of the students.

5. Participant Demographics
 I worked with about 10 to 12 students a day. This is
how many children are enrolled at the Florida
Children’s Academy.
 The children range from ages 2 to 5, and one 7
year old.
 The children come from a variety of ethnic
backgrounds. There is White, African American,
Hispanic, Bosnian, and Caribbean, just to name a
few. Because of the diverse ethnic backgrounds,
students have all different linguistic heritages.
Many of them have accents that are sometimes
hard to understand.

6. Participant Demographics
 The students are very diverse when it comes to
their culture, as well as their exceptionalities. There
are some students that have autism, and others
that have undiagnosed autism. One child has
downs syndrome. The rest of the children that are
enrolled at the Florida Children’s Academy have
speech and/or occupational disabilities. They
receive services and therapy to help them.

7. Service in Action

8. Service in Action

9. Service in Action

10. Perceptions of Differences
 At first I was apprehensive about this assignment. I
knew I wanted to work with children with
disabilities, but I never have been exposed to the
actually hands-on experience of it. I have worked
with many students, but I hadn’t considered their
ADD or dyslexia a disability.
 I really enjoyed this assignment. I knew this was
going to have a positive impact on me the first
time I walked into my volunteer site and was
introduced to the kids. They were so welcoming
and sweet and at that moment I knew I was going
to enjoy my time there.

11. Perceptions of Differences
 The experience that impacted me the most was
seeing the students interact with one another.
Since this is an inclusion setting, not all the children
have a disability. If no one told me there were
disabled children in the room, I wouldn’t have
known. I loved seeing the children learn, work on
their skills, and grow everyday. They all were so
eager to make connections with people and
engage in conversation with me they made me
feel very welcomed.

12. Connections to Your Course
 I was completing this project for EEX 2010, Introduction To Special
Education. After completing this project, three topics I better
understand are cultural and linguistic diversity, learning disabilities,
and emotional or behavioral disorders.
 Thanks to my experiences at the Florida Children’s Academy, I
was exposed to students who were culturally and linguistically
diverse, were diagnosed with autism and downs syndrome, and
had speech/occupational disabilites. One specific lesson we
learned in class was about how to protect ourselves from a
student when he or she kicks, hits, strangles, or bites. Unfortunately,
this came in handy. One student came at me attempting to hit
me because I told him he needed to share. I was able to block
my face before it was hit.
 In the future I will no doubt be working with students that are
similar to the ones I interacted with during this project. This has
given me some background experience in how to handle these
students and the best ways to teach them. I want the best for my
students and I want them to be able to learn to their fullest
capacity.

13. Civic Engagement
 As a method of learning, I think service learning is
great. A student can only learn the material so much.
It’s what the student does with that material that really
matters. Service learning gives us an opportunity to get
the real life experience of what we are being taught. I
would encourage teachers and students to embrace
service learning. Not only does it let students use the
information that they learn but it helps the community
out as well by giving out volunteers.
 This experience motivated me to be more engaged in
the future. I really liked volunteering with the Florida
Children’s Academy and I plan to continue
volunteering with them even after this course is done.

14. Final Thoughts
 This was a great project and it really opened my
eyes. As a teacher, I am bound to come across
students with disabilities, whether I am an
exceptional ed. teacher or an elementary ed.
teacher. At this day in time, inclusion is happening
very fast and I will need to know how to work with
students with disabilities. This project has given me
the opportunity to work with students and get
some background experience for the future.