The more partners, the better

WASILLA — Have you heard about the Partner’s Club at Wasilla High School yet? If you haven’t had a chance, then stop by Barb Morris’s class and sign up to become a partner. Partner’s Club is an interesting and life-learning program. It’s where you build connections with special education students and make them feel welcome. In Partner’s Club, we do many fun activities such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, bowling and the Special Education Dance.

During Christmas, each regular student is assigned to a special education student to go with on a shopping trip to the 5th Avenue Mall in downtown of Anchorage. We help special education students shop for their families. During the holidays, everyone is so excited and happy to go shopping, especially the special education students because they don’t really have the chance to go out as much.

Valentine’s Day is also a very special occasion. Every special education student gets to bake their own pizza with their partner from scratch. They can make any kind of pizza they want and with lots of toppings. Some of the delicious toppings available are olives, pepperoni, sausage and pineapple. The coolest and the best thing is we get to eat it!

Every year the Partner’s Club travels to North Bowl. There are competitions between schools. In fact, this year, we won the 2013 Bowling State Championship! We wouldn’t have won if it weren’t for our amazing special education students, partners and staff members who were cooperative and spiritually supportive.

According to Morris, who is one of the staff members in the Partner’s Club, “It was amazing seeing everyone excited. The whole point wasn’t just for the prize, but to also see fairness in the students, to see them participating and helping one another out. It was remarkably awesome to see the kids facial expressions after hearing that we had won. Watching them experience the feeling of winning and happiness was amazing! It was nice to see the fact that other schools support for other schools, everyone was just enjoying the fun.”

Another person who had attended the State Champ Bowl was a Partner member named Logan Christianson.

“It was fun to hang out with the special education students and to participate with them,” he said. “I was surprised that we had won the state championship. After so many years of playing we have finally won the first place, it was unexpected. Everyone was full of joy and laughter.”

Each year, the Partner’s Club holds a Special Education Dance especially for our special education students. Each special education student, along with their families and partners, are invited. Everyone looks and dresses beautifully at this event. There is music and dinner served for everyone. The best thing is we all get to dance!

Partner’s Club is an amazingly unexplainable program that can teach you so much. You build so many connections and learn how to express yourself with the students. I feel incredibly blessed that I was able to be a part of this club. Sadly, this is my last year to be with them. I will certainly miss those beautiful faces and these wonderful special occasions. Also, those activities we do during advisory every Tuesdays. Just so you know, it’s never too late to join the Partner’s Club; it’s always a welcoming place. The more partner’s the better.

Samantha Vue is a senior Journalism student at Wasilla High School.