NHS Course Partners Students To Share ‘Tools For Living’

By Eliza Hallabeck

 While some students in Newtown High School teacher Jill Gonski’s Tools for Living Course on January 21 said their favorite part of the class was learning how to cook, others said their favorite part of the class was being able to help people.

“Previously, this was a self-contained class for students with special needs to work on activities of daily living,” Ms Gonski said, “but the State of Connecticut brought this law, the P.J. case, where students who are intellectually disabled need to be included with regular students 80 percent or more of the time. This was one way we could do that.”

Students with special needs still get what they need, she said, but now have a chance to be included with the regular education students.

“And the regular education students are learning right along with them,” said Ms Gonski. “They are mentoring, they are learning about disabilities, and they are learning how to do some teaching. It has been nice.”

One unit in the course covered cooking. Mentors were given a model to follow and they created a step process for the mentored students to learn how to cook a specific food, like pizza. Another topic covered by the course was safety. Each mentor created a PowerPoint presentation on a safety topic. The mentors also created their own games, like a matching game or a bingo game, to teach the mentored different concepts associated with banking.

While the special needs students are learning activities of daily living, Ms Gonski said, the mentors are supporting the curriculum.

“When I first started the class I wasn’t really quite sure what I wanted to do, because I will be graduating soon,” said NHS senior Jenn Callery. After being in the Tools for Living class, Jenn now says she wants to become a special education teacher. “Now that I get to see how nice it is to connect to other students and really be able to talk to them and help them through it, I decided I want to be a special education teacher when I am older.”

Jenn was working with freshman Cassi Sims on Thursday, and was helping Cassi to draw boxes.

“Ms Gonski should be sainted,” Jenn said. “She is the nicest teacher. She is so patient, and she does as much as she can for everyone.”

Every student should have to take the course, Jenn said.

“It teaches tolerance, and people do not use such harsh words, which I think is nice,” Jenn said. The course is open to all age groups.

Sophomores Sean Nuelle and Alec Ravana worked with freshman Jamie Bucur during the course.

“I just like being able to help,” said Sean. “I just get a lot of satisfaction from being able to help and teach.”

While Sean said he took the course because he was interested in helping people with disabilities, he said his favorite part of the course so far has “just been getting to know the kids. They are just so cool, great and accepting.”

Jamie said her favorite part of the course was making mini-pizzas. Early in the course Sean said one thing that was interesting to learn was how to communicate, which involves holding eye contact.

“You shouldn’t really label people because they are different,” said Alec, while explaining what he has learned from the Tools for Living course so far. “You should just get to know someone.”