Best buddies: Organization fosters relationships between students with disabilities, their peers

Elena Rasmussen and Jorge ('Andy”) Pietri have been friends since middle school.

They go bowling, see movies, run track together, take goofy selfies, get into tickle fights, go to basketball games wearing coconut bras, typical teenage pasttimes.

Pietri has Down syndrome, butthat doesn'taffect their relationship.

'They hang out outside of school and do things that typical teenagers would do,” said Stephanie Klein, special education teacher at Prairie High School. 'That's the cool part about it, it's just a typical high school relationship.”

'Andy is very shy ... he doesn't have a lot of friends, But he has a really strong connection to Elena,” said Pietri's mother, Wilma Kell. 'He feels relaxed, like he can be himself ... he knows with her, he can be Andy. When he sees her, his eyes light up and big smile crosses his face.”

Rasmussen, who grew up with a brother with Aspergers, knows what it can be like for high school students with disabilities.

'(My brother) had a really tough time in high school ... just because of how different he was,” Rasmussen said. ”I didn't want other people to go through that.”

'Elena is very sensitive and caring toward others,” said Holly Rasmussen, Elena's mother. 'She'll hang out and talk to people that are being made fun of ... she tries not to be judgmental.”

That sensitivity made Rasmussen an ideal leader for Prairie High School's Best Buddies program, an international organization dedicated to developing one-on-one relationships between students with disabilities and their peers.

'Elena ... she's not a typical teenage girl,” said Klein. 'She gets it. She sees there's more to life than the things that matter to most teenage girls.”

Elena is a great example of a Best Buddy should be - a leader that goes out of her way to include all students, regardless of their different, Klein says.

'She's good at showing compassion and standing up for those who need somebody to stand up for them and she's just a great friend to Andy. It goes way beyond what you could require someone to do through a program,” Klein says.

Prairie High launched Best Buddies in 2010 with the goal of spreading inclusivity throughout the school.

'We don't care if somebody uses a switch to talk, if somebody is in a wheelchair, if somebody hits people when they get angry ... it's our job to be a friend to everybody,” Klein says. 'Best Buddies gives (students) the opportunity to see that there are all kinds of people out there and we can't just give somebody a label and stick to it. We have to see the person beyond the label.”

Before the Best Buddies program came to Prairie, students with significant disabilities 'were just kind of ignored,” she says.

'They had their own classroom, their own lunch table ... they lived in their own world,” she said. 'It's not that kids before were mean, they just didn't really know or care ... They want to do good, they just need a way to do it. They need someone to point them in the right direction and give them the opportunity.”

Now, Klein says, students go out of their way to say 'Hi” or eat lunch with students with disabilities. She credits Rasmussen and Pietri's friendship with this change.

'It's been an inspiration to other kids,” she says. 'They see what they have and it reminds them to get out of their comfort zone a little bit.”

Now when Andy walks down the hallway, he's greeted by his classmates and treated like any of his other peers.

'I think people are realizing he's a pretty awesome kid,” Rasmussen said. 'He wants to have fun just like us.”

Still, she says, sometimes people are judgmental - they just 'don't know how to act.”

'Sometimes I get really mad,” she said. 'A lot of people use the ‘R-word' (retarded as slang). My boyfriend said it one time ... and I said ‘if you ever say that again I will break up with you on the spot.' I'm really serious about it.”

She wants to make clear to her peers that 'retarded is not a synonym for stupid.”

'If you're using retarded as a synonym for stupid, you're referring to people like Andy as stupid,” she said. 'People with special needs are some of the smartest people you'll ever meet ... they just don't get a chance to show it.”

This year, Rasmussen encouraged her peers to vote Pietri into the homecoming court. She wanted to show them that just because he has Down syndrome doesn't mean he's not capable of what other students are - and it worked. Not only was Pietri voted into the court, he was crowned Homecoming king.

'When they announced he won at the football game, everybody was cheering ... I'm not going to lie, I started crying,” Rasmussen said.

'It was something that I never thought we were going to have the opportunity to experience,” says Pietri's mother, Wilma. 'I can never thank her enough.”

This year, both Rasmussen and Pietri will graduate from high school. Rasmussen will go to the University of Northern Iowa to study special education, while Pietri will stay in Cedar Rapids to attend Prairiewood Transition Center at Kirkwood.

'When I think of next year ... it makes me really sad,” she said. 'It's going to be completely different and it's going to make it a little harder with him not seeing me because I literally see him every day.”

She worries the change will be hard on him, but knows it will be hard on her too.

'Children with special needs ... they need to have consistency. Certainty that there's something that never changes. I think that's Elena for Andy, since they've been together since middle school,” Kell says. 'The hardest thing will be trying to explain to him that she's not around not because she doesn't like him anymore, but because she went to another school. It worries me a little bit that he's not going to be able to put those things into words, but I know he's going to miss her.”