In our schools section this week, we took the time to get to know the students in the jobs transition class at Opelika High School, a great group of kids with special needs who go around to area businesses during their school day to learn job and life skills.
Community Market director Elsie Lott had this to say about working with these remarkable kids: “What makes them ‘special’ is not any handicap, but that they are so willing to do anything you ask them to do, and they do it with a smile. That’s special!”
We couldn’t agree more, Ms. Elsie.
For too many years, parents and families with children with special needs took great lengths to hide those children from public view. Life-threatening and seldom successful quick-fix surgeries and stays --- even life sentences --- at (mostly) poorly-run state mental institutions were the norm.
Now, two things have happened: first, parents and families have come to realize they shouldn’t be ashamed of their special needs children and, second, they are able to seek help and support to help them with their kids. Through the public schools and organizations like the Achievement Center, people of all ages with special needs are taught job and life skills, ways for them to maintain a way of living as free and independent as they can be.
Programs like the job transition program at the Opelika High School send students with special needs into local businesses to learn cooperative business skills in real-life environments, helping those students see the opportunities for work that could be available to them.
We’ve come a long way in our treatment of the special needs community, but we still have work to do.
There’s still hate alive in this world, hate fueled by the fear of difference.
We saw evidence of this with the senseless defacing and damaging of the Miracle Field. It takes a particular kind of low-life creep to vandalize a ballpark designed and used for special needs children.
Someone who would do that to the Miracle Field and to those kids — all we can do is pray for you. And we must confess: we have great difficulty in putting much sincerity into that prayer.
People fear what they do not understand, and some find themselves reluctant to approach people to learn more.
They’d rather mock and belittle what they don’t understand than get to know the person behind their scorn.
If they could get past their own ignorance, they will frequently discover special needs people develop special skills to compensate for their particular needs. Sometimes you wind up asking yourself just who has the special need.
“Our kids don’t ask for anything. Everybody is their friend,” Carolyn Vickerstaff, a special education teacher at Opelika High, said. “All they ask is for people to be their friends and love them.”
All they ask is for people to be their friends and love them.
Remember that the next time you may want to make fun of a handicapped individual.
Remember that the next time you find yourself afraid of a person with special needs.
And, for heaven’s sake, please remember that the next time you use the word “retard.” In fact, just don’t use that word. That word only brings hurt to people that the world is already too cruel to now.
They are the same as we are: people.
They may learn and process things differently from us, but, truth be told, we all learn and process in different ways. Don’t make them suffer for our ignorance and intolerance.
Some of them just might need a little extra help from time to time, and, as good neighbors and citizens, we should consider it, not a duty but a privilege to be of help.
Businesses, contact OHS and see if your business could be a host for some of these students, students who are hard workers who always have a smile on their face and ask only that people be their friends and love them.
City leaders, continue to sponsor and support organizations that help these individuals, including recreational opportunities like the Miracle Field. Every child deserves a place to play sports and participate in fun, wholesome activities.
And, for the rest of us, we must all continue to work toward understanding and acceptance of those around us.
Take time to get to know those who you may not know, or may be afraid of, and we promise you’ll make some lifelong friends who will never cease to amaze you. You may learn a lot about yourself along the way.
You might even get to be a better person.
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