Community
Every individual can find a place in our greater community and has something to offer regardless of what challenges he or she may face each day. Here you will find ideas about how to accommodate social events and create meaningful relationships.
Community Accommodations
A Planning Guide for Making Temporary Events Accessible to People With Disabilities - This page contains a detailed outline of how to make an event accessible for all needs. It gives tons of information about each step of the event planning process.
Strategies for Successfully Including People with Disabilities in Health Department Programs, Plans, and Services - This website outlines considerations for creating a community program that is fully inclusive. It has checklists and rubrics to help consider possible needs and ways to make everything accessible for those populations.
Peer Interactions
Promoting Positive Social Interactions in an Inclusion Setting for Students with Learning Disabilities - From the National Association of Special Education Teachers, this document reviews things the classroom teacher can do to encourage an inclusive environment, teach social skills, and encourage peer interactions.
How to Teach Children to Include Classmates With Disabilities - This website outlines ways that students can interact appropriately with a person with a disability, how parents can teach their kids to be inclusive, and how teachers can help foster relationships and acceptance.
Matching Programs
Best Buddies - An organization that matches typically developing students with peers with disabilities and fosters meaningful relationships. We currently have a chapter of Best Buddies at Westlake High School.
Special Olympics - Eanes ISD proudly takes part in Special Olympics. This provides special education students the opportunity to participate in sporting events for Tennis, Basketball, Track, and Bowling. Participants often have a buddy/coach working with them who may be a teacher or an older student.
Peer Partners (formally known as Kids Helping Kids) - This elective gives students an opportunity to support students with disabilities in a variety of settings. Students taking this class will have a chance to be a peer buddy and to model appropriate social behavior. It is an opportunity to build valuable lasting friendships.
P.E. Pals - This P.E. class includes a variety of individual, team and lifetime sports. Recreational class games such as hoop house, capture the flag and prison ball are played. This elective gives students the opportunity to support cognitively disabled students in a small specialized PE class. PE credit is awarded if not in Athletics or PE.
Peer Assistant Classes (Westlake High School) - This course is designed to promote an inclusive educational environment for special education students. Participants in this course will receive initial training in confidentiality, cueing, prompting, and positive reinforcement through coaching sessions and direct instruction with the classroom teacher. Peer Assistants provide assistance to a special education teacher in their classroom setting or community setting by modeling appropriate learning behaviors, assisting with hands-on learning, and participating in activities that promote inclusion. The goal of the class is to create a relationship among age-appropriate peers of differing abilities, both socially and academically.
Students
No Place For Hate - No Place For Hate is a student run organization through the Anti-Defamation League that several Eanes ISD campus' take part in. The student NPFH Ambassadors are tasked with organizing and carrying out 3 projects per year that champion diversity and acceptance of all students regardless of differences.