Video: Starkville Students Learn Acceptance While Building Friendships

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STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) — Students at Henderson Elementary in Starkville are making new friends.

The Circle of Friends Group is bringing some outstanding students together to learn more about being a friend to kids with special needs, learning lessons about diversity and acceptance.

These students are learning about autism this month, they give up their normal lunch time once a month to become leaders in helping those who need a friend.

“Talk about the disabilities of some kids, and how it doesn’t make them different from us,” says Connor Rogers.
“How you can make kids with autism, feel better about themselves and how to be nice with them. If you’re nice to them, they can seem like they have friends. Sometimes, if you’re not nice to them, they feel like they don’t have any friends, ” says Brayden Green.

Brayden Green and Connor Rogers are part of Circle of Friends, and in a short time, what they’ve learned about kids with special needs is making an impact.

” One kid, he comes, he comes to my class everyday, he’s always talking to me and another student. He’s memorized our names and memorized a lot of stuff about us.” ” and how does that make you feel? ” It makes me feel like he’s not much different from I am,” says Green.
“It’s a great feeling to where you can help a child that isn’t as skillful as you are, and you can help them be, like so people won’t judge them,” says Rogers.

That level of understanding is becoming a trend.

“It’s kind of the new cool to hang out with those kids, cause a lot of kids try and sit with them at lunch,” says Green.

and what they learn each month is a lesson that will take them far past elementary school.

“That you shouldn’t judge a person by what they do or how they look or basically anything,” says Rogers.

The teachers leading the program hope they can expand it to other schools in the district.