Working With a Special Need Child Impacted My Life by Taylor

Working With a Special Need Child Impacted My Life by Taylor - December 2013 Scholarship Essay

When I was a freshman in high school, I was in the leadership class as a class representative. About half way into the year, we were given the opportunity to be a lunch buddy for a peer in the special education class. I have always been fascinated with people with a special need, so I decided to tell my teacher that I was interested in being a lunch buddy. I was paired with a girl named Katera. The disability she was is so rare it has a string of numbers that no one can remember. All I know is that parts of her brain are not connected; making it so she cannot speak normally or function as a person without this disability could. Every other week, on Wednesday I would go into the special education classroom and help her blend her lunch and then help her eat it. I had to make sure she didn't get too much food on her spoon and watch her eat her yams to be sure that she did not eat more than one at once or choke.

The lunch buddy program started about half way through first semester and lasted up until a few weeks before school ended in June. Each week I was more and more excited to go and eat lunch with Katera. I had become fascinated with how she functioned and how her daily life was. I was constantly asking her aid questions. After a few months of working with Katera I decided I wanted to learn more about other special needs and I wanted to work with other kids with a disability. So, over the summer I volunteered at my dad’s work, a day camp through Vancouver-Clark parks and Recreation. I begged to shadow one of the inclusion mentors; luckily I was able to follow a few different people who aided two different types of special disability. One was a girl who has cerebral palsy and a boy who has autism. I soaked up information from internet searches and countless conversations with inclusion mentors. The following school years, my sophomore and junior years, I was not in the leadership class but was specifically asked to work with Katera again. I was allowed a little bit more freedom, considering my past experience with her. I no longer had to have an aid with me while I helped her eat. I continued to learn more about special disabilities and continuously looked for more ways to work with kids with special needs.

Toward the end of my junior year of high school I was thinking about what I wanted to do as a career. I came to the decision that I wanted to be a special education teacher. All of the hours I spent working with kids with a disability grew on my heart and made me love being there. I have always believed that someone should do something they love to do as a career. I have a passion for working with special needs kids. As a result of my career choice, as a senior, I decided to use one of my free periods at school to be a Teacher’s Assistant in the special education room. I am again working with Katera but I am now surrounded by seven other kids with a range of disabilities. Every day I am excited to go to fourth period to further gather experience to help me in my future career.

I owe my leadership teacher, Mrs. Allais, so much for being the one to give me my first opportunity to work with special needs students. Thanks to her and her extracurricular opportunity, I was able to find something that I am passionate about and was able to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. The lunch buddy program impacted my life in a huge, positive way. I could not be more thankful for the impact that special needs kids has made on my life, and my heart.