Educating Peter
ACADEMY AWARD, Best Documentary Short Film   Peter Gwazdauska has Down Syndrome, and until this year he attended classes with children like himeslf. EDUCATING PETER is the story of Peter's first year in a regular classroom with normal children. The first week of classes in Mrs. Stallings' third grade class is probably the most harrowing in the lives of many of these children. However after many tribulations and a great deal of planning, Mts. Stallings, her students, and Peter grow to accept, trust and learn from each other."You think that you're teaching Peter things, but really Peter's teaching you things. We might be teaching him stuff like how to do things, but he's teaching us more how to think and how to react to other problems," said Jill Fox, a classmate of Peter's. This documentary is about the changes that take place over the course of the school year, as Peter, his classmates, and the teacher learn lessons that go far beyond their academic subjects.