By Kyle Roberts
For Kate Pullin, like most wonderful things, it began with a gentle nudge from the Holy Spirit during her time of prayer.
When you talk to her, she tells you that she already knew in her second year at Ruston High that her heart beats for children with special needs.
“As students, we interacted with students with special needs, but only for a short time,” Pullin said. “But I also realized that I didn’t really know these kids – I wanted to get to know them better.”
Pullin, now a graduate, served as student council president for the past year at Ruston High School, where she and the student council played a key role in establishing Bearcat Buddies: a program that specifically builds community with students with special needs who are educated in closed classrooms and are commonly referred to as special education students.
Since last year, the program has paired student volunteers who have served on either the student council or the football team’s leadership council with students from closed classes. The groups meet every week on Mondays or Fridays and start with simple things like eating lunch together, helping with homework or selling football tickets together.
“It just opened my eyes to the joy these students brought to others,” Pullin said. “The ticket sales gave them the opportunity to be among others on the Boulevard on Bearcat Fridays. It was such a fun time and really special.”
Since the program began at Ruston High School, it has been a huge success. And it’s worth noting that everyone interviewed made it clear that this was never a “pity” or “sorry” project. Bearcat Buddies is about community and building confidence in students who may not have had as much contact with the rest of the school population before.
In short, they are students and administrators who are passionate about inclusivity, regardless of their abilities.
“One of the most important things for us was that we didn’t want it to feel like you had to schedule formal time or provide conversation starters – we just wanted to get together and make friends,” Pullin said. “It was about talking back and forth – getting to know each other. Sometimes we played games or danced, but most of the time it was just conversation. That was really special.”
Bearcat Buddies was Pullin’s initiative as student council president last year. In the early stages, Ruston High School principal Dan Gressett helped Pullin develop a plan for the program, citing his desire to make the school as inclusive as possible.
“When we talk about our special education students, we mean those in our closed classrooms,” Gressett said of those four classrooms at RHS. “These students’ needs range from mild to very moderate. They spend the majority of their day in those classrooms.”
“However, there has never been a program like this before. It has proven to be an opportunity to bridge the gap and ensure that all of our students spend more time together.”
Sara Moore is the special education site coordinator at Ruston High and was involved in the initial meetings with Pullin and then-Vice President Chad Hamlin, among many others. Moore’s role was to help match the personalities of the special education students with the student volunteers. She said she immediately noticed a change in the school when the program started.
“This may be unbelievable, but there was a change almost immediately within the entire student body when we started talking about (introducing the program),” Moore said. “Some of the self-contained students wanted to start going to the Boulevard for lunch with their peers. And then I saw some of the buddies down in the self-contained area, even though they weren’t even assigned to do that – they were just helping out. They all interacted really well with each other.”
Stephanie Treadway, an English teacher at Ruston High, is a student council co-sponsor and Bearcat Buddy sponsor, and like Moore, she has witnessed the impact on the student body.
“Bearcat Buddies is a labor of love,” said Treadway. “It has brought tears to my eyes several times. I have seen students who cannot speak and have had no other opportunity to interact with other students in our school form real friendships. I have never seen anything like it. For special education students – and for the Bearcat Buddies – it is a great experience to learn from each other and grow.”
Pullin also talked about how much meaning it had for the school to host a pep rally for the Ruston High students participating in the Special Olympics (Choudrant High does something similar—it hosts a school-wide send-off of its participating students).
“It’s come full circle for me,” Pullin said. “These are our friends and we cheer for them. Just like they cheer for our football team or any other sport we compete in.”
Bearcat veteran offensive lineman Sam Nations was in the first Bearcat Buddies group and cited several family members with special needs as motivation for participating in the program.
“These kids are just like me,” Nations said. “They want to have friends. They want to laugh with us. They want to hang out with us. They want to be normal students at Ruston High and they absolutely should be included in the student body.”
Perhaps the most memorable moment for the Bearcat Buddies program came on graduation night last year: Cornerback Aidan Anding, now a senior, walked with his graduating buddy to receive his diploma. In fact, Anding was the only student his buddy trusted that night to walk across the stage with him at the graduation ceremony.
“I loved doing this with him because he and I have spent a lot of time together over the course of the year,” Anding said. “Having the opportunity to enjoy his moment on stage with him was a huge blessing to me and my family. And as (Nations) said, these kids are really no different than us. There may just be some things they can’t do, but they’re smart, kind, respectful — they’re normal people with some disabilities that don’t define them.”
Pullin will now attend the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, but her legacy will be carried on by Trenton Richard, the new president of Ruston’s student council. Richard also spoke about how family members motivated him to continue with the program, and he hopes to expand the Bearcat Buddies to include more members.
“This program is so important,” said Richard. “We want to keep it moving forward. We hope to do a few more field trips this year. I understand how important it is to just ‘be there.’ Sometimes it can be overwhelming in large groups, so it’s so good to have that personal connection. We want to keep building friendships because we know how important that is.”
Although the program has only been running for a year, Kim White, transition coordinator for special education, is confident that the impact of the Bearcat Buddies program on all participants will be lasting.
“It will have a profound impact on our special education students,” White said. “(This program) will help these students integrate more easily into other areas of the community because they will be more comfortable in that role through this program.”
“For our students in mainstream education, this experience is invaluable because they learn that people with different abilities can contribute. This may make them more accepting of others and better able to work with them.
“The experiences gained from this will continue to grow on both sides of the table and everyone will benefit more and more from it.”
It is clear from the feedback from so many involved that the initial push of the Holy Spirit in Pullin will undoubtedly result in a generational change both in the school and in the community at large, as so many have worked hard to help Bearcat Buddies succeed last year, this year, and hopefully in the future.
Nations may have perfectly summed up the prevailing thoughts and feelings of all participants about this amazing program.
“This is important because we are not only changing their lives,” Nations said. “They are changing ours. If you don’t take advantage of an opportunity like this, you are missing out.”