Middle Gate Club Hosts Annual Differences Day

By Eliza Hallabeck

Members of Middle Gate Elementary School RRD Club, which focuses on projects connected to responsibility, respect, diversity, and more, were ready on Friday, May 6, in the school’s gymnasium for the club’s annual Differences Day.

Each year the club oversees stations to teach their fellow students what it is like to have various disabilities. This year students, with club advisors Kendal Deakin and Claire DeSisto, held stations that explained what having a visual impairment, a physical impairment, and a hearing impairment may feel like.

“Okay everyone,” said fourth grader Kristina Goeree, who with the help of fourth grader Stephanie Cobb taught other students sign language, “we are going to learn how to sign the alphabet.”

Stephanie and Kristina walked student groups through each letter in the alphabet after handing out sheets of paper for the students to follow along with the motions.

At other stations in the school’s gymnasium, students used a white cane to walk their way blindfolded through cones, used a wheelchair to navigate through other cones, and used a mirror and a maze to understand learning differences.