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Laurie Ann Thompson

schools

More good news from Brooks Global and Emmanuel’s Dream

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Sev­er­al weeks ago I wrote about a school in North Car­oli­na, Brooks Glob­al Stud­ies, which had select­ed Emmanuel’s Dream as their all-school read and then had Emmanuel come vis­it them in per­son! (If you haven’t seen it yet, please go check out the video. It’s pret­ty amazing!)
Recent­ly, I came across this addi­tion­al piece of the sto­ry, which I had­n’t been aware of… In addi­tion to the shared read­ing expe­ri­ence and the inspi­ra­tional vis­it from Emmanuel, the Brooks Glob­al Stud­ies school com­mu­ni­ty took things one step fur­ther by orga­niz­ing a char­i­ty bike dri­ve and were able to col­lect 210 donat­ed bicy­cles! The bikes will be shipped to Ghana, refur­bished by a repair shop oper­at­ed by peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, and then put up for sale there.
What an inspir­ing, reward­ing event for every­one involved. Way to go, Brooks Glob­al Stud­ies! Click here to read the full arti­cle, and be sure to scroll through the pic­ture slideshow!

H. Scott Hoffmann/Greensboro News & Record

Emmanuel’s Dream as an all-school read

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Last year, Emmanuel’s Dream made its way to Cum­ber­land Road Ele­men­tary in Fish­ers, Indi­ana, as their all-school read, a book select­ed to be incor­po­rat­ed across the cur­ricu­lum in all grade lev­els. The school describes itself as “a school com­mit­ted to inclu­siv­i­ty and glob­al con­nect­ed­ness,” and they thought Emmanuel’s true sto­ry would be a good fit. Stu­dents and teach­ers read the book. I did vir­tu­al vis­its via Skype to answer the stu­dents’ ques­tions and hope­ful­ly deep­en the expe­ri­ence for them. And then every­thing came togeth­er in a serendip­i­tous but impact­ful event for the entire school com­mu­ni­ty! Here’s a pho­to from their event:

Emmanuel in front of a sign the children made
Yes, Emmanuel him­self showed up, mid-way through his ride across the U.S.!

For the whole arti­cle, click here.
More recent­ly, Brooks Glob­al Stud­ies in North Car­oli­na also chose Emmanuel’s Dream as their all-school read! Their mis­sion is to have their stud­ies lead stu­dents to “under­stand how their actions as indi­vid­u­als impact the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty of their class­room and the school, just as the actions of a sin­gle coun­try affects the world.” Again, stu­dents and teach­ers read the book, and I called in via Skype to answer ques­tions from stu­dents. And once again, stu­dents were in for an excit­ing sur­prise, when Emmanuel him­self arrived, this time all the way from Ghana! It was a spe­cial treat for me, too, since I had a chance to talk to him dur­ing one of the Skype sessions.
Here’s a video they made of the inspir­ing event:
I love see­ing how Emmanuel is con­nect­ing with kids and inspir­ing them to fol­low their dreams! Don’t you?

Celebrate Inclusive Schools Week!

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Schools across the coun­try are observ­ing Inclu­sive Schools Week this week. Accord­ing to the Inclu­sive Schools Net­work:

Inclu­sive Schools Week is an annu­al event spon­sored by the Inclu­sive Schools Net­work (ISN) and Stet­son & Asso­ciates, Inc., which is held each year dur­ing the first full week in Decem­ber. Since its incep­tion in 2001, Inclu­sive Schools Week has cel­e­brat­ed the progress that schools have made in pro­vid­ing a sup­port­ive and qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion to an increas­ing­ly diverse stu­dent pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing stu­dents who are mar­gin­al­ized due to dis­abil­i­ty, gen­der, socio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus, cul­tur­al her­itage, lan­guage pref­er­ence and oth­er fac­tors. The Week also pro­vides an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty for edu­ca­tors, stu­dents and par­ents to dis­cuss what else needs to be done in order to ensure that their schools con­tin­ue to improve their abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly edu­cate all children.
This year, the Inclu­sive Schools Week’s theme focus­es on the con­cept of being a hero. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly fit­ting because the def­i­n­i­tion of a hero, a per­son not­ed for coura­geous acts of nobil­i­ty of char­ac­ter, res­onates with all of the stu­dents, par­ents, teach­ers, prin­ci­pals and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers who take coura­geous steps for­ward each day to pro­mote accep­tance for all. The path toward more inclu­sive edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices has been chal­leng­ing, yet reward­ing. This year, we will focus on the steps along this jour­ney and con­sid­er the courage it requires.

Now that’s a mis­sion I can get behind, and I think my book Emmanuel’s Dream, about one of my per­son­al heroes, fits this theme per­fect­ly! Emmanuel is not only a per­son with a dis­abil­i­ty, but he’s ded­i­cat­ed his life to cre­at­ing an inclu­sive school for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties and with­out and his home coun­try of Ghana.
Inclu­sive Schools Net­work has more great ideas and resources for cel­e­brat­ing Inclu­sive Schools Week here.
And Savan­na Flakes has some oth­er great sug­ges­tions for all ages here on Multi­B­riefs: Exclusive.
 

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