On Inclusion Day, the Best Buddies and Special Olympics Clubs held events like offering a shirt order for shirts that say “choose to include,” having students sign a banner with the phrase as well as having students sign a form of how they promote inclusion for a bracelet.
Kate Morris, senior, is the President of Best Buddies, a club that connects students with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and helped out with Inclusion Day on Wednesday, March 6.
“Inclusion Day is important because it’s making sure that everyone feels seen no matter what their abilities are and make sure that we’re all one school,” Morris said.
Morris joined Best Buddies because her older brother has Down Syndrome and was involved in Best Buddies.
“I think we’ve done a lot of a better job [of spreading inclusion],” Morris said. “If you see students from the special-ed classes you can say hello, give them a fist bump, make them feel like they are a part of the school community.”
Chloe Gilbert, junior, is the state coordinator for Best Buddies. She has monthly meetings with her buddy, Hassan Khan, and with the coordinator from the organization “Spread the Word Inclusion” to come up with new ideas on how to make MHS a more welcoming environment.
“Our goal was to integrate and include general education students with our special education students. Inclusion is cool, and it’s fun to be a part of this experience,” Gilbert said.
As a part of the World Inclusion Day festivities, Best Buddies sold t-shirts. Gilbert helped in organizing designing and selling these to promote inclusion. She hopes that next year Best Buddies can target a larger audience to sell and publicize their mission.
“Since a lot of our students are on social media, building up a social media platform can be a good way to reach people in this generation. People are going to see that more than banners in the school,” Gilbert said.
Felicia Durst, PE teacher, is the sponsor of Special Olympics and helped to create the Inclusion Day activities.
Durst is trying to promote inclusion as much as possible through Special Olympics and Best Buddies so MHS can become a National Banner Unified Champion School.
Durst said she would like to see more efforts with inclusion in the future such as creating a Buddies table at lunch. Buddies currently has mentor classes for theater, art, PE and foods. There is a possibility for mentors in music and driver’s ed classes.
“Inclusion is important because everyone deserves to be treated equally,” Durst said. “Some of the ways we’ve done it already in the school are fantastic with our buddies classes.”
