Educating Peter Documentary Summary

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“Educating Peter” is a documentary that depicts the story of a little boy name Peter Gwazdauskas, a child with Down Syndrome, who from the start of his educational experience up to the 3rd grade attended classes with children who were like himself. However, at the completion of his second-grade year, a Federal law was passed that required children with disabilities be educated in regular classes with normal children. The documentary covers the first year of Peter’s experience in a regular classroom. The first half of the documentary shows how Peter struggled to adjust to being in a new environment. It also showed how the teacher and other students struggled to cope with Peter and his unpredictable behavior. Peter had a difficult time expressing himself, following direction, and staying on task. This caused Peter to have frequent verbally and physically violent outburst in the class. …show more content…

The second half of the documentary shows how the teacher and students helped Peter to make a major turnaround. The teacher knew that they could not have a successful year if theirs and Peter’s behavior continued. The teacher sat down with the students and had a peer review about what the issues were and what could be done to fix the issues. They realized that when they gave attention to Peter’s negative behavior it would cause him to continue and even become more intense with it. Once they came up with some resourceful and positive solutions to the issues they were put into play. It took some time but Peter began to understand and comply. Peter began to make major progress in his behavior and education development for the better. At the end of the school year, Peter was given the award for most

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