WEST POINT — Last fall, then 4-year-old Nora Molina stood atop a slide in West Point and looked down.
The slide had always made Nora nervous. She had never ridden it to the bottom. But that day at recess, peer pressure got to her and she took the plunge. Nora suffers from an undiagnosed developmental disorder and for her and her family going down the slide was a milestone win.
“She had to go or get down, and she did it,” her mother, Erin Molina, said. “They got it on video and it was the greatest thing. I think that was the point when, it was like, ‘Oh, my god.'”
The moment was one of many that the Molina family enjoyed last school year, when Nora attended a Pre-K classroom hosted at the Catherine Bryan School and taught by educators through Mississippi State University’s T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability. The organizations teamed up with the idea of letting developmentally challenged students from T.K. Martin interact with typically developing students at Catherine Bryan School throughout the day at lunch and recess.
The strategy worked well for Nora and her five classmates from throughout the Golden Triangle and as far away as Houston, Mississippi, who were T.K. Martin students.
Molina and other parents want to do it again next year. This time, the plan is to have five developmentally challenged Pre-K students in the same class as seven typically developing children. The classroom is available at Catherine Bryan to host the class and a teacher’s salary has been secured through the Mississippi Department of Education.
But parents need more money to make it happen. To run the class, they need to raise $50,000 to pay a teaching assistant and a graduate assistant who will teach and conduct research.
To help raise funds, Molina began sending out 75 letters to friends and neighbors in West Point, where she lives. Molina’s employer of 12 years, Mossy Oak, matched the first $5,000 raised.
Fundraising was taken to the web in the form of a GoFundMe.com page that has raised $5,475 from 47 people. Molina said she has raised about $17,000. The group also has applied for a grant that they will hear back on July 29, just over a week before school starts.
Molina said Nora and four of her classmates from last year could benefit from another year in the nurturing environment, a Pre-K Plus year. All the students have early summer birthdays, making them young 5-year-olds who would typically have to enter kindergarten in the public school system.
“So, the thought was, if we could have them one more year in this environment, they would be fully ready for kindergarten,” Molina said. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Inclusion leads to success
Janie Cirlot-New, director of the T.K. Martin Center, said she was first contacted about placing a class in the Catherine Bryan School a little over a year ago.
“They just really offered us space over there, and it’s a wonderful little school,” Cirlot-New said.
Catherine Bryan was initially built as a school for special needs students, but has evolved into a conventional preschool, too. The Pre-K class Molina’s daughter and five others took last year was a reintroduction into special education at the school. Cirlot-New said research supports integrating special needs students with typically developing children and it has paid off for both. Cirlot-New said T.K. Martin has involved typically developing children in their classes in the past because they know the impact it can have.
“It’s just really invaluable for our students,” she said. “It was great from a social standpoint, and all developmental aspects–motor skills showed improvements.”
Those improvements were impossible for parents to ignore last year.
“The first 9-week progress report came out, and the numbers were such that their teacher from the previous year thought the new teacher had not calculated correctly, because they had jumped so far beyond what anyone had thought possible,” Molina said. “So, we fully attribute that to the fact that they were with all these other kids.”
Meredith Weeks, whose son Ethan was also in the class and wants to be part of the proposed Pre-K Plus course, said she was hesitant about having him with typically developing children. Her fears were gone quickly.
“He was able to flourish in his speech because he was around other children who were speaking correctly,” Weeks said. “They taught him normal behavior.
“You’re scared they are going to get in and not meet those goals, but they thrive in that setting… it pulls them to a higher level.”
The biggest problem for the Weeks family was adjusting their goals for Ethan, who turned five Tuesday, because he was achieving his so quickly. Over the course of the year Weeks said her son, who suffers from Down syndrome, began to speak in longer sentences and have more confidence. Now, when she takes him to the grocery store in West Point children approach and greet Ethan as a peer.
She said getting another year in the inclusion setting of Catherine Bryan for Ethan would mean “everything” to their family.
To donate, visit gofundme.com/uz5w2tag
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