The Discovery Trails Program engages blind teens in a lived-experience of pioneering along westward Trails. We organize historically accurate adventuring, camping and creative arts to facilitate teens' personal growth and to enhance their capacity for community service to schools and civic groups.

The Big Idea
Blind students often acquire much of their information about the world through what others tell them, not through direct experience. Blind adults often lead sedentary lives because as youths they had very limited opportunity to be engaged in cultural activities and to be physically engaged in the outdoor environment. The general public rarely sees persons with disabilities engaged in outdoor activities and this is especially true with low incidence disabilities such as blindness. This contributes to employment situations in which the public cannot see blind adults as able, contributing partners in the work place.

In 1998, a “wagon” of four teens and four adults struck out to explore 1000 miles of theOregon Trail. That the students were blind or visually impaired seemed incidental to the adventure. By 2003 however, it was clear that the Discovery Trail Project camping trips were leading to something very substantial in the world of blind persons and for the wider world as well. With major funding volunteered by the National Park Service, 30 modern pioneers trekked 5,000 miles in three weeks from Kansas City to Oregon and back by minivan, canoe, wagon, horseback and on foot. The “wagon train” met with artists, ranchers, historians, American Indians, and hundreds of fellow travelers and small town residents, learning much and leaving the public with a new appreciation of the capabilities of persons with disabilities.

Returning home, the pioneering teens used generous funding from VSAarts of Washington, D.C. to engage the general public in creating a large mural about the Lewis and Clark Trail. Through the winter months, they planned and carried out arts-based teaching programs in local classrooms. A professional documentary about their journey was aired on Kansas City public television and at Lewis and Clark events from Missouri to Washington State.

The Discovery Trails Program is no longer just about traveling pioneer trails. Supporting curriculum has been developed through the National Endowment for the Humanities and VSAarts. Trail teens annually create a history-through-the-arts program which they take to elementary schools and civic groups throughout the year, demonstrating to themselves and to the public that they are competent contributors to their communities. The teens' contributions are recognized and funded as community service by the National Corporation for Volunteerism through Kansas Learn and Serve.

Superintendents of National Parks from Kansas to Oregon have received valuable input from the teens on accessibility. Trails organizations across the western states have participated with the teens in exploring pioneering history and celebrating it in song and dance. A second professional documentary received wide public attention through Kansas City public television and a third documentary is in the works.

Each year the public reach of the Discovery Trails Program expands as new opportunities arise for teens who participate in the program to share their adventures with local communities and beyond. The 2006 Trail teens created life-sized sculptures of themselves as pioneers for an exhibition in Salt Lake City at a national convention of families and professionals serving blind youth. In 2007 the Trail participants will organize and present an evening of pioneer entertainment for a similar convention in Omaha, Nebraska. Through the arts, the teens are able to introduce an ever widening audience to the pioneer West as a learning environment where youths with visual impairments discover both history and themselves.

The Superintendent of the Kansas State School for the Blind, William Daugherty, has this to say about the Discovery Trails Program: “The issue of accessibility for people with disabilities is on the upsurge after a lag when everyone thought the endgame was wheelchair ramps and Braille on elevators. The Discovery Trails Program has been all about inclusion and accessibility at levels that have rarely been approached-accessibility to the outdoors, to history through immersion, to the arts as a vehicle for reflection, expression and teaching, to full participation in the culture and to opportunities to offer service to the community.”

The Impact
The Discovery Trails Project has gained national attention from educators of students who are visually impaired, becoming a catalyst for schools for the blind to look at their unique cultural and geographical resources for ways to engage teenagers with disabilities in outdoor learning activities that stretch each student's concept of personal limitations. Youths travel with the Discovery Trails Project at a point in their lives where they and others question whether blind teens can successfully transition into adult responsibility and risk-taking. These physically, mentally, and socially challenging treks, followed by opportunities to explore their own creativity and to teach others, erase many of these doubts. An increasingly broad segment of the general public has been challenged to revise their ideas of ability and social benefit as they see teens with long white canes climbing mountains, expertly managing camp chores, improvising dramas about pioneer struggles, and engaging younger students in trail history.

The Future
In the coming years, we will continue expanding the Discovery Trails Program while developing an initiative to include regular classroom teachers as interns on the trail treks. Starting this summer, we will invite experienced teachers to join a trek along the Oregon Trail, and then in the fall to partner with the trail teens in designing and carrying out a curriculum for the teachers' classrooms.

Supporting this initiative, Eleanor Craig has begun production of a documentary reviewing the development and methods of the Discovery Trails program, illustrating for teachers of students of all abilities how students access learning through action.

The dates for the Discovery Trails Trek in 2007 are July 5 - 15, culminating with a presentation for the annual conference of the National Association for the Prevention of Visual Impairments. The teenagers will create a participitory pioneer experience for families who are attending the conference in Omaha, Nebraska. For further information about the Discovery Trails Program and to acquire DVD documentaries about the Program, contact Eleanor Craig at ecraig@accessiblearts.org or call 913-281-1133. To make a donation to Discovery Trails that will be matched 1:1 and see additional information, go to http://www.accessiblearts.org/newsletterSpring2007.html and http://www.campsforkids.org/Accessible_Arts'_Discovery_Trails_Program.aspx