Last week, I drove down to Ridgley, MD with 9 other Saint A’s students to volunteer during out Spring Break. Our trip was going to the “Benedictine School for Exceptional Learners,” a special education boarding school. The school welcomed with open arms any student in need of any type of special education. There were students with learning disabilities, mental illness, physical disabilities, behavioral issues, and more. The ages were just as broad too. The school offered its services to students as old as 22 and as young as I think 4. It was truly a place with an open and generous heart.
As volunteers, each of the 10 of us got placed in a classroom and then also placed in a dorm. I was in the “Voc 1” classroom. The classroom was made up of 6 students ranging in physical age from 14 to 18 and mental age of kindergarten to middle school. The students were all very different and had very specific and individual needs. A few students were almost completely non-verbal, although they could say a few words here and there.
My dorm assignment was the Benet Center made up of Patrick Hall and Anselm Hall. The Center housed about 22 guys ages 16-22. The needs and issues in the Center were just as diverse if not more diverse than those in the classroom. There were some very high functioning students but also many low functioning non-verbal students and everything in between.
In the classroom I acted as a teacher’s aide of sorts. I would help individual students with certain assignments and I facilitated a lesson on Saint Anselm College as well as one on Dr. Seuss. The students were amazing. There was Bradley, Kheli, Nicodemus, Robert, Newton and the only girl Courtney. At first I was very nervous about being in the classroom and I was intimidated by some of the disabilities of the students. But after being in the classroom for only a few hours, all of the nerves, anxieties, fears, and hesitations were gone. I felt completely comfortable in the classroom, and I realized early on that teacher was meant to be my profession.
As the week went on I learned more and more about the school and its history. It was founded in 1959 by the Benedictine Sisters as a place to teach children with special needs. As the school grew, more and more was asked of it. Now in 2010, the school offers education for children ages 4-22, it offers speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, counseling, life skills, group homes for after graduation, and a program called ITC which I think means Industrial Training Center. At ITC, students would be given jobs to do where they can make some money. The jobs included a variety of different tasks but one of the ones that stood out to me was that the students would be the ones that put the toys in those plastic bubble capsules that go into the $0.25 or $0.50 machines that you find in supermarkets.
The group homes were another great program set up by the school. After some time in the school, the Sisters (who are the directors of the school) realized that there is no place for the students after they graduate. Graduation is when they can no longer attend the school because state law says the state only has to pay for education up to the age of 21, and 22 in some states. So the nuns started the Group Home program. Currently there are 27 group homes in the Maryland and Delaware area for former students of the Benedictine School.
Sister Jeanette, the executive director of the school, is a small wisp of a woman with a personality greater than that of 5 people. She recently had to have eye surgery and actually had her left eye removed. So she wears a giant patch over her eye. She bombs through the hallways of the school on her power scooter nicknamed “The Red Baron”, mind you with one working eye. You would be standing in the hallway and all of a sudden a flash of light from the headlights followed by the flapping of a big Irish flag in the wind the scooter created would whip past you in the blink of an eye. All you said is “See you later Sister.” Sister Jeanette told us the story of when the school purchased their most recent Group Home at an auction. The home is called “The Manor” since it is the largest of the 27 homes with 7 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, a 3-car garage, and attached apartment. She said she was the first person to place a bid, and no one dared to out bid here because they didn’t want to go against a nun. She ends the story by saying, “and that’s how we got the Manor at an amazingly price.” Jokes aside, Sister Jeanette had one of the biggest hearts of anyone in that school, and that school had a lot of big hearts. It’s evident after talking to her for at least 30 seconds how much she loves the school and more so loves all of the students that ever walked through its halls.
The dedication, commitment, zeal, and effort by the teachers and teachers’ assistants were obvious and enormous. However, the group that had even more of all of those qualities was the Residential Staff. The residential staff worked from about 3 in the afternoon and for some until 8 o’clock the following morning. They would look after, help, and be with all of the students after class had ended. Some nights the students just hung around in their dorms watching movies or playing games, but other nights the whole school would come together for school-wide activities.
One night there we played “Crazy Games,” an activity set up by one of the leaders of the Residential Staff. Most of the time Crazy Games was played it was a competition between the students and the staff. This week it was a competition between the students and us college kids. There was a potato sack race, a three legged race, a basketball shooting contest, a scooter/obstacle course race, a blanket-pull race, and it ended with a tug-of-war. It was a lot of fun and completely out of most of our comfort zones but it was a light-hearted, energetic, refreshing experience.
Another night they had “Benedictine’s Got Talent” a program that has been going on for about the past 8 weeks where one student every week gets eliminated from the competition. This week was the final four hoping to make it to next week’s finale. Two of the students had pretty good voices and did well; the two other students did amazingly well and definitely stole the spotlight. One boy sang, “I’m Sorry I Can’t Be Perfect” by Simple Plan (I think that’s the title) which brought tears to a lot of the girls in my group’s eyes because of the message of the song coming from a child with special needs.
On Friday night, like they do every Friday night, the school put on a social with karaoke, dancing, and ice cream. It was great to see all of the kids really enjoying their time and relaxing after a week of school.
After the whole experience had ended, everyone in the group had gained from the week. For me personally, I gained an understanding of what it means to be completely and utterly genuine and joyful in everything you do from the kids. I also learned to take my time, enjoy the little things, and not rush through life. Our Campus Minister said it best when we got back to school after the 8.5 hour road trip. “The students who return from to Maryland after SBA are the ones who can best articulate what it means to be human.”
One particular moment of the week continues to stand out in my head as a pivotal and memorable experience for me. One day my classroom and another classroom (Voc 2) came together to do a group speech therapy slash phonics type lesson. The students one after another read out loud a story about Dr. Seuss and a program called “Read Across America.” I was paired with Courtney to help her with the activity. Courtney was an 18 year old girl with Down’s Syndrome, a mental age of about a kindergartener, and was almost completely non-verbal. When it was Courtney’s turn to read, the teacher turned to her and said, “Now Courtney it’s your turn, and don’t you like it when your helper reads the words out loud for you to repeat when you read pages,” obviously hinting towards me that that is what I should be doing. So together Courtney and I read the page and passed the next page off to a different student. All throughout the reading, Courtney was hardly paying attention, looking around the room, and constantly shaking her hands signaling she wanted to play drums. I tried my hardest to keep her attention on the page and on the story but I didn’t think it was happening. At the end of the story, there was a set of questions the students had to answer. It was 10 multiple choice questions about the story. So together Courtney and I read each question and surprisingly Courtney got 9 of them right in a row. The final question was a little tricky. It asked basically what story was mentioned in the reading? The Cat in the Hat, Alice In Wonderland, or the Wizard of Oz. You would think it would be an easy question; however the class had gone on a field trip that morning to a local school to watch a rehearsal performance of their spring play The Wizard of Oz. I was nervous when I saw this question since I knew that Courtney would get confused about the answer. So with some guidance and subtle hints Courtney eventually got the question right: The Cat in the Hat. The teacher then came around and announced, “Now so far, everyone in the class has got 100% on the activity, if everyone gets 100% you’ll all get [whatever the prize was], now let’s see how Courtney did. Courtney, how did you do?” “She got 100%,” I told the teacher. Immediately the teacher looks at me with a stern look, “Seriously? Did she do all of this herself or did you give her answers?” “She did all of it herself,” I said forgetting to mention the final question. “Really? Wow. Congratulations Courtney. Everyone, Courtney got 100% too,” she stresses the final part as she looked at the other teachers in the room; the look on their faces was surprise and genuine awe. “Courtney got 100%,” they asked in amazement, “Yep, all on her own,” the teacher responded. You could tell the teacher were in their heads, “what the hell? Seriously!?” One of the teachers turned and asked, “Courtney, you got 100%? Are you trying to impress Mr. Tim?” in her grunt you could hear Courtney respond, “uh-huh.”
It was a moment that really stood for me because it showed that she really was paying attention and that she was trying to show me that she could get the questions right. It showed that she valued my being there was reason enough to strive for 100% and that I had made at least the smallest bit difference for her. It was humbling but uplifting at the same time.
