Special Ed kids are cool →[More:] My wife came home from school as pumped up as she has in quite a while. Today was Field Day. The high school where she teaches doesn't really have Field Day (that's pretty much for the younger grades), but they did it any way.

When she restarted National Honor Society at the school a couple years ago, they discussed a service mission within the school and the brightest kids in school decided to adopt the LINC kids. The LINC kids are the special needs kids.

So today NHS combined with the Fire Training Academy (the special interest school within the school) and they put on a Field Day. They did all kinds of outdoor activities with the LINC kids, including stuff like kickball. For the kids in wheelchairs, one of the NHS kids would kick the ball for them, then push the wheelchair around the bases.

Some of the NHS kids are on the volleyball team, so they taught volleyball- how to properly hit the ball and stuff- to the LINC kids using plastic beach balls.

When it was time to break for lunch, each LINC kid had an NHS or Fire Academy kid to eat lunch with.

The event was sponsored by local community leaders (including free t-shirts printed up for the occasion), and even the mayor showed up for a while.

Meanwhile, the principal was at meetings at the school district offices. During a break, someone asked what's going on at her school, since she was getting constant messages on her cell phone. The administration was beyond "green with envy" and teetered on flat-out jealousy.

The downtown special ed staff called the school and demanded to know why they weren't consulted, but the assistant principal over special ed assured them that all the activities were approved by the principal and district office permission wasn't required (he'd already checked the relevant policies).

The academic people in the district office were shocked that the kids got a whole day off from school and DEMANDED what academic purpose it served. Our principal had it all documented and had it with her.

Meanwhile the principals from the well-to-do westside schools were jealous because they know that their status-conscious bright students wouldn't dare associate with the LINC kids at their schools, even for a day.

There are days when my wife feels so fatigued from teaching at a school in an impoverished neighborhood, but then there are days like this, where she sees what big hearts kids with so very little can have. And it makes it all worth it.

The coupe de grace is that their standardized test scores came in and they made bigger gains than any other school in the district; in her own department (history and social studies), nearly every student passed the first try.