'Change agents': Volunteer work with kids with special needs fuels Rowan's Student Council for Exceptional Children
December 03, 2009
Nine-year-old Matt Marcussen has a smiling subject in SCEC President Melissa Stoffers during a recent Parents Night Out event.
"We have 30-some students come to every meeting. That's remarkable," says Cone, co-adviser of the council, a student-led organization dedicated to working with children and teens with special needs...and their families.
"Over the past couple of years, the council has gone from a group that was almost defunct into one that's unbelievably active."
That's an understatement. Led by an exceptionally committed--and highly organized--core of executive board members, all of whom are College of Education majors, the group is the student component of the Council for Exceptional Children, an "international community of educators who are the voice and vision of special and gifted education," according to its web site.
To be a member of the SCEC, Rowan students must commit to attending at least two meetings, participating in two service projects, and contributing their time to a fundraiser. In reality, however, most in the group do much, much more.
Once a month, SCEC members volunteer at Parents Night Out at Trinity United Methodist Church of Mullica Hill. They work with children with disabilities, and their siblings, so that parents of the children can spend an evening away, enjoying dinner and networking with each other.
Also every month, council members coordinate parties for special needs teens, organizing almost every aspect of the evenings, which also are held on Saturdays at the church and in the community. Every Sunday at Trinity, group members volunteer to work with 11-year-old Ryan Ebling, a Mullica Hill resident with autism, so that his parents can spend an hour attending church services.
SCEC volunteer Lindsey Tedesco (right), a freshman, works with Ryan Ebling, 11, with some assistance from his sister, Taylor, 12. Additionally, the students organize special events--hay rides and pumpkin picking in the fall, a Pizza with Santa party for young children with Down Syndrome in the winter (Dec. 4), and a spring dance for teens with Down Syndrome (April 23).
In between, they can be found collecting batteries and diapers for students of Sewell's HollyDELL school, organizing volunteers to provide respite care for parents of children with special needs, and developing--and mining--available resources and contacts to help fund their many activities.
Their monthly meetings in the past have included guest talks by educators, therapists and by parents of children with special needs.
Certainly, their volunteer work is providing the students with hands-on training in working with children with special needs, supporting the theories and techniques they learn in their classes. But for most members, the SCEC's volunteer work is a labor of love--and an addictive one at that.
""The children we work with are the kindest, nicest people," says SCEC President Melissa Stoffers, a senior collaborative education major from Colonia, Middlesex County. "They are some of the most amazing people."
"Our foundation is service. We try to make connections in the community," says SCEC Vice President Caley Spahn, a senior collaborative education major from East Freehold, Monmouth County, who worked last year as a behavioral therapist for a 14-year-old non-verbal boy with autism.
"I saw what his family went through and I sat in on his Individual Educational Plan meeting," she continues. "I also realized that just because he can't speak doesn't mean he doesn't know what's going on. It was eye-opening for me."
Through their work with parents and families, the SCEC students are receiving an education that goes beyond the classroom, says Leigh Botner, a contracting officer in Rowan's Office of Sponsored Programs and herself the mother of a teen with special needs. Botner helped the SCEC establish both Parents Night Out and the teen events.
"They're very hands-on with the children. You can tell they want to be with them. They're very into it," says Botner.
"I particularly like them with the teens. The teens need peers that they can model. They're just wonderful in that way," continues Botner, who also was a guest speaker at an SCEC meeting.
"The students wanted me to talk about what it's like, from a parent's perspective, to have a special needs child," she adds. "I reinforced to them, ‘You need to understand that we parents have to fight to get what our children need.' That they're meeting the parents, in settings away from schools, is extremely valuable."
Two SCEC students and senior collaborative education majors, Jen Campagnola, of Kendall Park, Middlesex County, and Lauren Stevens, of Jackson, Ocean County, went to the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore last spring to learn more about how to care for Ryan Ebling. Ryan's parents, Debbie and Joe Ebling, invited them.
"They were trained by the trainers at Kennedy Krieger," says Debbie Ebling, who regularly attends Parents Night Out events. "You feel a little bit more relieved when there are students watching your children who have experience.
"They really work with Ryan to play with toys and do different things with him. They're going to be great teachers."
Cone agrees.
"These are students who are not afraid of risk. They're not afraid to go out of their comfort zones," says Cone. "The whole group is about diving in and doing the work.
"They've learned that there are really no limits for any person regardless of their abilities or disabilities," she adds. "And, through their volunteer work, they start to embody that. They learn to say, ‘I'm going to make this activity work for this child.'
"At every meeting, they take the time to talk about the joys in their volunteer work. They're really change agents in many ways."
