Interpersonal Skills Class by Alyssa

Interpersonal Skills Class by Alyssa - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

If I could trade places with any teacher, I would have to say that I would choose to teach the IPS class at my high school. IPS, or Interpersonal Skills class, is a class in which approximately 30 high school seniors are chosen to work with approximately 30 mentally and physically disabled people for 1 hour of the school day for the entire academic calendar. There are several reasons I would choose this class.
1. I know that I want to continue my degree in Social Work but I'm wondering how I would do as a teacher. Working with disabled people is something I want desperately to do, I'm just not convinced in the capacity that I want to work with them. If I could teach IPS for awhile, I would know if teaching is something I want to do forever. Right now I don't think that it is, but I could be wrong and this would be a great way to figure it out.
2. I was a mentor my senior year in high school and though I graduated, most of the mentees didn't. They are allowed to stay in the program until they "age out" around 22 years old. I would love to be back in that classroom and work with each of them til their graduation. The only problem with that being that new students join each year as some age out and I'm sure I would become attached to these students as well.
3. The activities we did and projects we accomplished in IPS are some of my happiest memories from high school. We did the Polar Plunge, we worked side by the side the disabled students at a restaurant for a day, we taught them social rules and norms of dating and had a mock date evening so they could practice (I think some of us mentors needed practice in good dating and social skills as well!), we adopted a homeless family for Christmas, and so many other things that I can't explain here and now. If I could be a part of helping new seniors have these same wonderful experiences I did, I would love it!
4. One activity must get a paragraph all to itself as this is the first thing I ever learned about this class and the one thing that made me actively pursue one of the coveted spots as a mentor. The activity the students work on all year long is called "America's Got Special Talent". It's a talent show where some of the acts are done by mentors, some by mentors and mentees together, some by mentees only, and the end skit is performed by the entire class. Just writing about this performance makes me tear up. Seeing how hard everyone worked on their skits and the wonderful ideas people came up with for the talent show was amazing. Everyone had something to contribute and we wanted to convey that message to everyone. There are people that thought mentally or physically challenged students wouldn't be able to put on an entire show like that and it is great to prove those people wrong. But more importantly, it was wonderful to see so many people buy tickets to the show to come and support the entire IPS class. The disabled students thrive on the attention and the positive vibe throughout the auditorium and it made me really proud of how accepting and encouraging the audience was, even when there were a few stumbles and slips through the course of the show. To see the mentees faces as people clapped for them or asked for an encore made me see how far everyone, disabled or not, has come.

We've come a long way but there is more to accomplish, more lessons to learn and to teach, more memories to be made, more people (able bodied and disabled) to help and encourage, and I can think of no better way to spend my time advancing all these ideas.