Sensitivity training panel teaches tolerance at HALB

Three Kulanu Academy students joined two teenage shadow students from Kulanu’s Sunday Program to teach sensitivity to 120 girls at the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach’s elementary school.

The three Kulanu students have different disabilities — one has Down syndrome, one is a high functioning autism student, and one has attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities; one of the shadows is from SKA and the other is from HAFTR.

The students listened raptly as the Kulanu panelists — Jonah Goldstein, Shaya Martin and Mashi Nockenofsky — discussed what it is like to have a disability and how they feel lonely when other children do not socialize with them. The student with autism said that she considers her disability a gift. She explained that Hashem made her differently and all she asks is that people treat her with tolerance and the same as everyone else. She made no apologies for her disability, said the event’s organizer, Jonathan Cooper, LCSW, Kulanu’s Director of Inclusion and Community Services. “That’s the way it should be.”

The panel’s presentation, with shadows Nicole Odinsky and Shira Fagan participating, “brought the house down,” Cooper said. “Everyone got a big ovation. The kids went up to the Kulanu kids. It made them very approachable.”

One shadow witnessed an example of the intolerance of people as they interact with the disabled — a regular student “high fiving” a Kulanu student and then wiping his hand on the shadow as if wiping off dirt. “If you want to say ‘hi’ don’t be mean about it,” she said. “There is no joke about this, they can’t help what they have.”

“That’s why we need this program,” stressed Cooper. “Despite Kulanu being here for 13 years, there is still a certain amount of prejudice and misunderstanding with the special needs population. Kids need to be more sensitive. These children have invisible disabilities and the assumption is that they should be acting like everybody else. Kids fill in the blanks with prejudicial statements and negative feelings when they don’t understand the behaviors of somebody.”