Pioneer High School Outreach Teaches Empathy
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Wed, 11/02/2016 - 10:43am
An active partnership with the Eagle Valley Children’s Home in North Carson City is helping the student leadership class at Pioneer High School learn about the challenges of living with disabilities. In fact, a recent visit motivated these local teens to get more involved to better understand the trials and difficulties people with severe disabilities go through on a daily basis.
“I have always wanted to help children with disabilities,” explained sophomore Jade Skenandore. “I have always felt bad for complaining about my life when others have bigger challenges and problems.”
EVCH is an organization dedicated to housing and educating children with severe developmental disabilities. They opened their doors for the leadership class students after PHS Special Education teacher Tanya Watts challenged the leadership students to get personally involved, to interact with the EVCH children to help foster a greater sense of empathy and community involvement.
PHS students first took a tour of the facility and met with many of the resident children. The touring teens were apprehensive and fearful at first, not at all confident of what to say or do during the visit. However, they rebounded quickly and were pleasantly surprised to see that, though the EVCH residents needed assistance with many routine functions, the students were much more resilient than they thought. They also were completely charmed by the EVCH students’ expressive personalities.
“I want people to know that they feel just as much as everyone,” Jade asserted. “Also, that they want to be treated normal, not like they were weird or fragile.” Sophomore Savannah Lavey agreed. “The kids at EVCH have great personalities, and the people who work there are amazing.”
After the visit, PHS students got busy deciding how to reach out and connect again with EVCH. From that discussion, PHS students planned an event to host their new friends on their own high school campus. Judging from the faces of the visiting EVCH children a few weeks later, their efforts were a HUGE success, reflecting an afternoon of joy and fun with a combination of games that included human bowling, musical dots, hula hoop ball, a pumpkin scavenger hunt, and a refreshing treat of homemade milkshakes.
In the end, the partnership and visiting events – both at EVCH and the PHS campus – had a profound impact on the Pioneer leadership students. For not only did the teens learn a great deal about themselves and how they view others living with disabilities, some even are considering internship or employment opportunities in the field! This experience also established that more could be done to help raise awareness of the difficulties of people with disabilities experience, and the PHS students plan to create more opportunities to shed light on the issue.
“A person with disabilities has to go through many challenges every day,” Savannah observed. “Their life is not easy, but they still pull through with a smile.”
“It is important for people to understand that challenges the people at EVCH go through every day because people take so much for granted and think that their lives are so hard. But these people go through so much. I want people to know that people with disabilities have many troubles and challenges that they have to go through each day and people should be thankful that they do not have to go through those same challenges.”
- Carson City
- Afternoon
- Awareness
- Bad
- bowling
- carson
- children
- City
- class
- community
- Community,
- day
- eagle
- Employment
- event
- events
- Experience
- friends
- fun
- functions
- games
- help
- Helping
- home
- Housing
- kids
- Kids!
- Leadership
- learn
- life
- local
- Musical
- new
- News
- Organization
- Outreach
- people with disabilities
- PHS
- Pioneer
- Pioneer High School
- pumpkin
- school
- severe
- smile
- students
- Teacher
- Teens
- tour
- Education
- high school
