Home » Education & Career » Special Needs Issues » Students Leading Students: Good For Everyone

Students Leading Students: Good For Everyone

© Keenan Wellar

A new program known as Students Leading Students will help secondary school students "to learn about disability, about how students (with intellectual disabilities) can be educated in regular classes, and how it's a better way to educate them," says Patty Gillis, chair of the Coalition for Inclusive Education.

The Coalition is a provincial organization consisting of ten members: the Ontario Association for Community Living, the Canadian Association for Community Living, Integration Action Group, Family Alliance of Ontario, People First, Early Childhood Resource Teacher Network of Ontario, Youth Involvement Ontario, the Down Syndrome Association of Ontario, and Brampton-Caledon and Lakehead Associations for Community Living. The Coalition has obtained It Takes a Village funding to implement 'Students Leading Students,' a means by which secondary school students will lead their peers in understanding and accepting students who have intellectual disabilities.

Patty says that the Coalition learned from another project it was involved with, Building Inclusive Schools, that it is the youth themselves that make the most impact in a school setting. "In the Building Inclusive Schools project, we learned that the impact was felt most when stories were told by self-advocates and students," she says. "Students really embrace these ideas."

The project, in partnership with York University's faculty of education, is taking place in six boards of education located in Ottawa, London and Toronto, both public and catholic, the one in Ottawa being the French catholic board. Teens from the various schools will be brought onto a team including a student who has a disability, a teacher advisor and an adult mentor who is a self-advocate. This team then will arrange to take a message of acceptance and understanding to classes within their own schools and as well as other schools.

Patty explains that the project is not entirely up to speed yet, but before long the project's coordinator, Sofia Karambatsos-Bibis, a York doctoral student in the faculty of education, will be visiting each school with mentor, Patrick Worth, to get the ball rolling. By the end of January, Patty says the project should be looking at the things that have worked and those that haven't. "The students will then go back to their schools to train others," she says.

The copyright of the article Students Leading Students: Good For Everyone in Special Needs Issues is owned by . Permission to republish Students Leading Students: Good For Everyone in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.