By Kyle Roberts
It started for Kate Pullin as most wonderful things do with a gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit in her prayer time.
In talking with her, she’ll tell you she knew all the way back in her sophomore year at Ruston High that her heart was attuned to kids with special needs.
“As a student, we interacted with special needs students, but only in short moments,” Pullin said. “But I also recognized that I really didn’t know these kids — I wanted to get to know them more.”
Now graduated, Pullin served as last year’s student council president for Ruston High School, where she and the student council were instrumental in starting Bearcat Buddies: a program that intentionally creates a community with special needs students that are in the self-contained classrooms, commonly called special ed students.
Starting last year, the program paired volunteer students who either had been on student council or the leadership council for the football team with students from the self-contained classrooms. The groups would meet on Mondays or Fridays every single week, starting with simple things like eating lunch together, helping with school work, or selling football tickets together.
“It just opened my eyes to the joy these students brought to others,” Pullin said. “Selling tickets gave them opportunities to be around others on Bearcat Fridays in the boulevard. It was such a fun time and really, really special.”
Since the program started, it has flourished at Ruston High School and been a wild success. And it should be noted that everyone interviewed made it clear this was never a “pity” or “feeling sorry” project. Bearcat Buddies is all about community and encouraging confidence in students who may not have had as much interaction with the rest of the school population previously.
Put simply, it’s students and administrators who are passionate about inclusivity, regardless of ability.
“One of the biggest things for us is that we didn’t want it to feel like you had to schedule formal time or give conversation starters — we just wanted to get together and form friendships,” Pullin said. “It was about talking back and forth — getting to know each other. Sometimes, we’d play games or dance, but most of the time, it was just conversations. That was really special.”
Bearcat Buddies was Pullin’s initiative as last year’s student council president. During the early stages, Ruston High School Principal Dan Gressett helped Pullin formulate a plan for the program, citing his desire to make the school as inclusive as possible.
“When we talk about our special education students, we’re talking about the ones in our self-contained classrooms,” said Gressett about those four classrooms at RHS. “These students’ exceptionalities range from mild to very moderate. They are pretty much in these rooms most of the day.
“There was no program prior quite like this one, though. It’s turned into an opportunity to bridge the gap and have all of our students spend more time together.”
Sara Moore serves as the special education site coordinator at Ruston High and was in the early meetings with Pullin and then-Vice President Chad Hamlin, along with a host of others. Moore’s role was to help match the personalities of the special education students with the student volunteers. She said she immediately saw change in the school when the program launched.
“This might be unbelievable, but there was a shift within the entire student body almost immediately when we started talking about (launching the program),” Moore said. “Some of the self-contained students wanted to start going to eat lunch in the boulevard with their peers. And then I would see some of the buddies down in the self-contained area when they weren’t even assigned to be there — they were just helping out. They all interacted really well.”
Ruston High English teacher Stephanie Treadway serves as the student council co-sponsor and Bearcat Buddy sponsor. She, like Moore, has seen the impact on the student body.
“Bearcat Buddies is a labor of love,” Treadway said. “It’s brought tears to my eyes on multiple occasions. I’ve witnessed non-verbal students who have not really had an opportunity to connect with other students at our school form meaning friendships. I’ve just never seen anything like that. It’s such a great experience for special education students — and for the Bearcat Buddies — that we learn and grow from each other.”
Pullin also spoke about how meaningful it was for the school to hold a pep rally for the Ruston High students that were participating in the Special Olympics (Choudrant High does something similar — it has a school-wide sendoff for their participating students).
“It was a full-circle moment for me,” Pullin said. “These are our friends, and we’re cheering them on. It’s the same way they cheer on the football team or other sports where we compete.”
Senior Bearcat offensive-lineman Sam Nations was in the inaugural Bearcat Buddies group and cited some family members with special needs as motivation to be in the program.
“These kids are just like me,” Nations said. “They want to have friends. They want to laugh with us. They want to hang out with us. They want to be normal Ruston High students, and they absolutely should be included in the student body.”
Perhaps the most memorable moment for the Bearcat Buddies program came on graduation night this past year: now-senior cornerback Aidan Anding walked with his graduating-buddy to receive his diploma. In fact, Anding was the only student that his buddy trusted to be with him that night to walk across the stage at graduation.
“I loved getting to do that with him, because he and I had spent a lot of time together over the year,” Anding said. “For me to have an opportunity to enjoy his moment with him on stage was a big blessing to me and my family. And like (Nations) said earlier, these kids are really no different from us. There just may be some things they don’t have the ability to do, but they’re smart, kind, respectful — they’re regular human beings that have some disabilities that do not define them.”
Pullin will now be heading to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville but her lasting legacy will be taken up by Trenton Richard, Ruston’s new student council president. Richard also spoke about family members motivating him to continue the program, and he hopes to add more to the Bearcat Buddies.
“This program is so important,” Richard said. “We want to continue moving it forward. We hope we can take some more field trips this year. I understand the importance of just ‘being there.’ Sometimes, it can be overwhelming in big group settings, so having that one-on-one time connection is so good. We want to keep building friendships, because we know how important that is.”
Though the program has only been in place for one full year, Special Education Transition Coordinator Kim White believes the impact on everyone in the Bearcat Buddies program will be long-lasting.
“It’s going to be far-reaching for our special education population,” White said. “(This program) is going to help these students assimilate into other areas of the community more easily because they’ll be comfortable in that capacity as a result of this program.
“As far as our regular education students, this experience will be invaluable to them because they’ll learn that people of all different ability levels have something to contribute. This might make you more accepting of someone and will help you work better with that person.
“On both sides of the table, the experience from this is just going to continue to grow, and everyone will benefit more and more from it.”
Hearing from so many involved, it’s clear that initial nudging of the Holy Spirit in Pullin will undoubtedly lead to generational change in both the school and community overall, as so many have worked hard to make Bearcat Buddies successful last year, this year, and hopefully into the future.
Nations may have perfectly summarized all the participants over-riding thoughts and feelings about this amazing program.
“It’s important because we’re not only changing their lives,” Nations said. “They’re changing ours. If you don’t take an opportunity like this, you’re missing out.”
