Wheelchair painting teaches students lesson in inclusion

At Park Elementary School in Munhall, second-grade students worked this week with classmate Jahnelle McCorkle, who uses a wheelchair, to create a canvas with decoupage and painting done with wheelchair wheels.

A golden sun glows in the center of the painting with a sky blue background, and grass grows from the edges of the artwork toward the sun. The students carefully appliqued colorful ladybugs to the blue sky.

Kim Resh of the charity Mikayla’s Voice led the activity, and her daughters Mikayla, 21, and Lauren, 18, attended. Mikayla Resh also uses a wheelchair.

Nicole Zilli, an inclusion consultant with The Arc of Pennsylvania, invited Mrs. Resh to lead the painting project.

The purpose of the painting projects conducted by Mrs. Resh is to teach inclusion of children with specail needs in addition to friendship and kindness, she said.

Last fall, the consultant from Mikayla’s Voice did inclusion assemblies in every building of the Steel Valley School District, Mrs. Zilli said.

In an email, Mrs. Zilli said Steel Valley has taken steps this year to improve access for students with special needs and increase acceptance of students with special needs.

She wrote that the district has provided staff training and parent training, created a disability awareness calendar and conducted disability awareness activities this school year.

The district provided the training after the Steel Valley teachers’ union filed a grievance early last year objecting to a 10-year-old student using the teachers’ bathroom on the first floor at Park Elementary. The child has pulmonary hypertension and chronic lung disease and had trouble climbing stairs to restrooms on an upper floor.

The union dropped the grievance after superintendent Ed Wehrer and the school board denied it in separate actions.

After that, the district hired an architect and is proceeding to install two handicapped-accessible restrooms in the annex at Park Elementary. When work is finished, all Steel Valley buildings will have handicappedaccessible bathrooms.

At Park Elementary on Monday, Mrs. Resh said, the second-graders took turns working in groups. Some worked on decoupaging the painting, some brainstormed on a name for the canvas, and some learned how to use a wheelchair in the hall to get an understanding of the challenges a disabled child might face, she said.

They also learned to use the wheelchairs so they could paint with them.

After the children completed the activity Tuesday, Mrs. Resh asked them what they had learned.

“Everybody’s different and they learn in different ways,” second-grader Garrett Cherpak said.

“We’re learning to include everyone and we’re learning to be friends with everyone,” second-grader Eva Ganzy said.