With over 1800 students at Kennedy Highschool, it can be hard to feel included or respected. Kinder Kennedy and Best Buddies put together Kennedy’s Inclusion Week to bring students together, attempting to counteract this problem. 

Mary Gibney is an inspiration for all. She helped put together the Best Buddies club at Kennedy, a national organization that creates fun activities and different ways for special needs students to communicate and interact with others.

Best Buddies, as well as the Kinder Kennedy group, helped organize this project. Throughout the week, the clubs have had students sign cougar paw prints during passing time, had the special Olympic athletes signing and giving away posters, and much more.

Inclusion Week encourages people to respect everyone, no matter what, and to include each other in activities such as sports, or other school-wide activities.

“It’s a week for us to… bring awareness to people with disabilities, and how we are choosing to include that we are all better together,” Gibney said. “I guess this week is a way to do a bunch of different [things] in our building, to bring awareness to the importance of inclusion.”

Gibney enjoys watching the students interact with one another and seeing the special Olympic athletes participate with the other students.

“I like the involvement. I think of all the students and participating and doing the cougar paws, and signing the banner,” Gibney said, “Today, I think it was really cool to see the number of people who came up and got posters from the special Olympic athletes.”