PO Box 256 ·
Mansfield, MA 02048 www.thejamiefund.org
Mother
spreads SPED awareness through schools
STAFF
PHOTO BY ED HOPFMAN
THE MANSFIELD NEWS
Volunteers share
stories about autism and other special needs
By Deborah Knight Snyder
CORRESPONDENT
(Reprinted
courtesy of the Mansfield News)
One mother’s
idea to explain her daughter’s special needs to her
Kindergarten classmates has blossomed into an entire special
needs awareness program at the Mansfield Public Schools.
The I CARE
— Introducing Children to Acceptance through Reading and
Education — program is in its second year at the elementary
schools and the Roland Green preschool.
The program
was started by Kimberly Piro, a mother of three who worked as
a psychiatric social worker before becoming a full-time
mother. Piro has an autistic daughter, Jamie, who is now in
second grade.
When Jamie
was in kindergarten, Piro volunteered in her classroom on a
regular basis. While in the classroom, Piro noticed that the
other kids in the class didn’t seem to know how to interact
with Jamie.
"They weren’t cruel or mean. They
just didn’t approach her," Piro recalled. "I
thought it was sad that the kids seemed interested in her but
didn’t know what to do."
Piro asked the teacher if she could read a
book on autism to the class. She selected a story,
"Captain Tommy," about kids at a camp learning how
to interact with a little autistic boy.
On the day she read the book, Piro asked
that Jamie be removed from the classroom so she wouldn’t
feel uncomfortable being the subject of the discussion.
After reading the book, Piro asked if there
were any questions, and, she recalled, "twenty-four
little hands went up.
"They asked me everything about her.
Does she eat the same foods we do? They couldn’t believe
that she rode a scooter and ate ice cream.
"The next time I volunteered, I saw a
big difference in the way they treated her. They had learned
why she screamed, that she uses her voice differently. They
accepted her. They couldn’t wait to tell me that they were
doing things with her. I think it gave them permission to make
mistakes with her. They had been afraid to upset her,"
Piro said.
At the end of that school year, Piro shared
her story at a special education PAC meeting at which
Superintendent John Moretti was present. The other parents and
Moretti "jumped on the idea" of recreating the
situation in other classrooms. Piro met with Moretti several
times that summer and with the principals that fall.
The fall of 2003 was taken up with the
planning process, and the actual program got off the ground,
with Piro and 50 other volunteers visiting and reading to
every elementary school classroom, in January of 2004.
Piro did the research and found books on a
whole host of special needs, including autism, Down’s
syndrome, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, kids in wheelchairs,
and more. She is working on expanding the collection and is
currently researching books on attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD), blindness, and physical deformities.
In obtaining the books, Piro visits
hospitals, book stores, the Kennedy-Donovan early intervention
center, and other places. Doctors who work with Jamie have
recommended books as well.
The books are available in a special
teachers’ section at the school libraries. Piro, along with
a volunteer who had been a teacher, prepared an index card for
the back of each book with appropriate questions to stimulate
discussion with the class after the book is read.
Those have been invaluable to the
volunteers, who have reported that having the list of
questions makes the process easy. First the volunteer reads
the story to the class, then they go over the questions with
the class so the kids can get answers to their own questions.
The seed money to purchase the books came
from funds donated to the special education department by the
Gallagher family. Since that time, Piro’s neighbors held a
fund-raiser — named the Jamie Fund — and raised $8,000 in
just one year. That money, Piro said, has really freed her up
to buy books whenever she can.
Piro had 50 volunteers last year and has
about 50 this year, 30 of whom are returning volunteers. She
welcomes volunteers and never turns anyone away, she said.
This year’s I CARE reading started in the
classrooms earlier this month. The schedule is to finish all
the Robinson and Roland Green classrooms by February vacation,
and to visit the Jordan/Jackson classrooms after vacation and
into March.
Piro is hoping that, as I CARE progresses,
it can expand from a reading program to include other
awareness activities, perhaps role-playing, as well. She is
also mulling ways to introduce the I CARE program into the
middle and high schools. She said that perhaps Project
Teammate, a program at the high school in which regular
education students help special education students, may be a
place to start.
She said she is "open to ideas"
on how to proceed with the upper grades.
"We have to educate our kids on how to
treat the special ed kids. We need to help them
understand," she said.