I Care, We Care, and Teaching “Them” to Care

My son Charlie’s in a self-contained autism classroom located in the middle school in our suburban New Jersey town. His teacher has been wanting to set up opportunities for non-autistic students to spend time with Charlie’s class but all the middle school students at Charlie’s school are so tightly scheduled that it has not been easy. Just getting some time to talk about autism and disabilities to them is an operation in and of itself.

In Massachusetts, “I Care” (which stands for Introducing Children to Acceptance through Reading and Education) is a program that (quoting from a description on The Jamie Fund website) seeks to “help explain why some classmates might be different than others.” The program was started by the mother an autistic daughter, Kim Piro, and is described in the Norwich Bulletin.

When Jamie was in kindergarten, Piro, volunteering in Jamie’s class, noticed that the other kids didn’t know how to approach or interact with Jamie.

It was then that she had the idea, which was destined to grow into a large special-education awareness program, to read a book on autism to the class.

With the teacher’s permission and with Jamie removed from the class, Piro read a story about autism to the kindergartners. After reading the book, when asked if there were any questions, 24 little hands went up.

“They asked me everything about her,” Piro said at the time. “’Does she eat the same foods we do?’ They couldn’t believe that she rode a scooter and ate ice cream.”

“The next time I volunteered, I saw a big difference in the way they treated her. They had learned why she screamed, that she uses her voice differently. They accepted her. They couldn’t wait to tell me that they were doing things with her,” Piro said.

That experience was the beginning of what would become the I CARE — Introducing Children to Acceptance through Reading and Education — program, which Piro founded and which continues to grow.

The I-CARE program essentially mimics Piro’s original experience with Jamie’s kindergarten classmates. Volunteers go in and read books on a variety of special needs — not only autism but also Down syndrome, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, kids in wheelchairs, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and more.

Piro arranges for the books to be available in the elementary school libraries. She has formed discussion questions, which are stapled into the back of each book, to facilitate the experience. She has recruited dozens of mothers — of both special- and regular-education children — to head into the classrooms.

Piro also hopes to see I-CARE expanded to elementary schools in other towns in Massachusetts, including Maynard, Weston and Oxford.

In Texas, Emily has been blogging about the Circle of Friends program. Small steps to big things.