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Disability Awareness Event

  • May 1, 2024
  • Posted by: Caitlin McCallum
  • Category: Wow Story
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St. Paul’s Livonia has been busy this year.  With our new principal Josh Roth, I have found that our services and growing our program is quickly becoming reality including our very first Disability Awareness Day for students and evening session for parents.

We had a fantastic turn out with 17 families and many with more than one parent that joined for the presentation.

We had older students volunteer to read with our younger students in a separate room for the first half hour.  They read one of two books centered around disability awareness and education. Neurodiversity and Everybody Belongs.  They were able to decorate a bookmark that also showed acceptance of all differences and then after our parent presentation, families rejoined their children in the gym to read the book together as families (you will see lots of these pictures, this was my favorite part)!

We also sponsored a book swap for families to exchange books they were ready to pass on to another family.

Our parents were given a story from one of our school readers that discussed a boy named Ty and how he helped a friend to be included in baseball activities by creating a device that helped him throw the ball.  They were given discussion questions to help their children think about how they could help someone who is not the same to feel loved and included.

Lastly, we gave each family a sunflower petal to write a PETAL PLEDGE and they discussed as a family what they could pledge to do in their own lives to help others feel loved and valued and included no matter what their differences are.

This morning, during our weekly buddy activity, all students in the school watched age appropriate videos detailing or showing what a disability is or feels like and they also made pledge petals.  I will be creating grade level sunflowers (which you’ll see in the photos) with their pledges on them to display throughout the school.

We will be doing follow up events in the coming year to help support parents and create closer partnerships with families that may need extra support, services or information because they are impacted by disabilities in some way.

The other amazing part of this, was I did leave my LSEM business cards out and was approached by a family who wanted information about a regular donation that they would like to allocate potentially to LSEM.

I have also had parents pass on my email to other parents in need of help regarding their child with disabilities and how to obtain services in their private school.  I did give them some information about the general process, but also pointed them to contact one of our LSEM supported schools in their area.

I believe the partnership growth here was something amazing to share and there are big opportunities that God has given me to share, and I am thankful for that.

~written by Nicole Scaglione, LSEM Teacher at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Livonia, MI