Message delivery provides new educational opportunity

Emily Chadwick, Staff Writer
April 16, 2014

Sophomore Matt Connor enters the classroom with student’s staring as he walks in and he happily delivers a letter to the teacher, gives them a high five and leaves. This task helps students like Connor and sophomore Jake Sackman that have disabilities. This daily activity helps improve their educational skills.
“We go down to Mrs. Johnson’s desk and pick up the letters to be delivered, and then my students organize the messages by the wings, then they organize them by rooms and then one person goes to the classroom and delivers them to the teacher,” Baker said.
Students like Connor and Sackman help the office with day to day activities office officials do not get the chance to do, like delivering notes to students who do not have time to stop in the office to pick the note up. Connor and Sackman enjoy walking from class to class.
“My favorite part of delivering messages is giving high fives,” Connor said.
Students with disabilities do not have the same mental capability as an average student. They have to work harder than the average student to do daily activities in life. Delivering messages helps students like Connor and Sackman with confidence and building communication skills.
“I am working on saying please and thank you,” Sackman said
Not only do the students build confidence, they learn important skills like being able to match number and letters. Also, they learn how to act in certain social environment. They have to be able to tell the social environment of the classroom weather they have to walk in quietly because students are taking a test, or if they can talk a little bit when students are taking notes or doing an activity.
“We’re not supposed to disturb your class. Our job is to be quiet and nicely hand the message to the teacher,” Baker said. “We have to appropriately handing the message to the teacher. We don’t give teachers hugs, we only give one high five instead of ten high fives.”
While this chore helps the office it has shown to help students like Connor and Sackman even more. Through building different educational skills students are able to be more confident in what they are doing.
“The messages really help the office and it is benefitting us too. We are so lucky they thought of us to do this job,” Baker said.