Teacher's Magazine
October 1, 2006  

Enlightened Play

Stoking student empathy for people with disabilities is the goal of Call Me Capable, a board game created by educator Carol Leish based on her experiences growing up with speech and vision impairments. The game, available through Franklin Learning Systems, uses "Emotion," "Imagination," and "Experience" cards with open-ended, hypothetical questions to encourage students to put themselves into disabled peers' shoes. "Challenge" cards introduce factual information about disabilities. Queries such as, "If you go out to dinner with a friend who is blind, and the waiter asks you for your friend's order, what do you say?" push students to think beyond stereotypes. Two sets of age-appropriate question cards make the game relevant for students in grades 3 through 9.