NJ high school honors classmate with Down syndrome as prom queen

From The Times of Trenton, N.J. In the pictures, clockwise from top: Kristen Shenowski, who was crowned prom queen at Northern Burlington's prom on June 5, looks at herself in the mirror after being crowned prom queen; Kristen dances the "king and dance" with the junior prom king Derek Antonucci; and Kristen with her good friend Kaitlyn Pagnotta.

When Kristen Shenowski started kindergarten nearly 14 years ago, she had no trouble making friends.

It didn't seem to matter that she was the only child with Down syndrome in a class of typical children.

Over the years, her bond with fellow students in the Mansfield Township School District only grew. When Kristen couldn't board the bus for an elementary-school field trip because the harness she needed was missing, a heartbroken friend refused to go without her. This past school year, classmates who knew that Kristen dreamed of riding on the homecoming float made sure she was on board for the parade.

"Kristen has this energy, and she's always happy. Who wouldn't want to spend time with her?" said Gabby Arenge, who, like Kristen, just finished her junior year at Northern Burlington County Regional High School in Columbus. "She's taught us so much -- how to respect, how to love, and how to open your heart to everyone, no matter what. She's always got a smile or a hug, and I can't picture my life without her."

Kristen's classmates found the ultimate way to express that sentiment when they chose her as their prom queen last month.

It wasn't something the students talked about in advance, Arenge said. They all just sat down with their paper ballots and voted from their hearts.

"I didn't have much hope, and I expected typical popular people to win," said Arenge, 17, a top vote-getter herself. "It made me feel proud that people saw past everything else and saw that she deserved it."

For Kristen, of Columbus, a petite 19-year-old with stylish glasses and a long, blond ponytail, the honor generated a lot of excitement -- applause when her nomination was announced over the school loudspeaker, visits to dress shops and a hair salon, and countless dances with boys at the junior-senior prom in June.

"I loved it," Kristen said of the accolades from her friends, adding that her dance with prom king Derek Antonucci was "nice."

For her parents, Yvonne and Richard Shenowski, the moment was beyond what they could have imagined when they mainstreamed Kristen at the school now known as John Hydock Elementary -- hoping, at first, that she would simply learn to stand in line with the other children.

"It was unbelievable -- words can't describe it," Yvonne said. "It was one of those moments that you cherish forever, but it's not something you would imagine when you have a baby with Down syndrome."

"I cried for two weeks straight" after hearing the news of Kristen's election, the mother added. "My husband took the DVD of the prom to work and had a lot of grown men crying, too."

Yvonne and Richard, who were then already the parents of a 9-year-old son, were surprised and terrified when Kristen was born with Down syndrome.

"We didn't know what to expect," Yvonne recalled. "We were very frightened of the future and what it would mean for our family and for her."

Initially, it meant open-heart surgery for Kristen at age 2½ and the diagnosis of a cervical instability between her skull and first vertebrae that would make it dangerous for her to try activities such as sports.

It also meant Kristen's involvement in an early intervention program and then a preschool for children with disabilities, followed by a difficult decision for her parents about how to educate their little girl next. They decided that including her in regular classes would be the best way to improve her speech, teach her appropriate behaviors and help her make friends.

Attending with the aide who still accompanies her to class -- Elise Szeker -- Kristen repeated both kindergarten and first grade, but has since stayed with her peers as they've moved from grade to grade. Today, she loves to read, is motivated to learn and retains information from lectures she hears in class, even when most of the information is too complicated for her to understand, her mother said.

And she's a social butterfly, getting together with her girlfriends for lunches, movies, board games and, of course, talk about boys; calling friends on her cell phone; memorizing her yearbook so she can greet all her classmates by name; volunteering as a floor sweeper and towel folder at a local beauty shop; and participating in bowling with a Special Olympics team and a boy she knows from school who is also disabled.

Her peers have gone out of their way to accommodate Kristen, her mother said, including her in social outings and even building a special seat into a rocket on the homecoming float last fall so she could get on board without harming her spine. At the prom, Kristen told her mom, "a very nice boy" cut her green beans when she had trouble doing it herself.

"When people see Kristen, immediately they smile and give her a high-five or a hug -- you can't walk down the hall with her without that," said friend Kate Pagnotta, 17. "She has such youthfulness, an innocence -- she's completely pure and genuine. Everyone who knows Kristen has been influenced by her in one way or another. Some people just have that kind of personality."

But the credit for Kristen's success, Yvonne said, also goes to the "good human beings" in Kristen's classes, their kind and accepting parents and the "unusually supportive staff in the elementary school where this foundation was laid" -- including first-grade teacher Ceil Masella, who has become a close family friend.

"If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes more than a village to raise a child with special needs," Yvonne said, "and we've had that."

Perhaps most crucial to that effort has been Kristen's inclusion in regular classes, said Kelly Reising, school counselor at Northern Burlington County Regional High School. Putting Kristen and her classmates together, she said, turned out to be good for all of them.

"I do find that students involved with kids like Kristen develop a greater sense of empathy for other people," Reising said. "It's a life lesson you can't get out of a textbook."

Yvonne hopes that lesson will last well into the future.

When Kristen moves into post-high school life and looks for volunteer and part-time work, Yvonne guesses she'll be aided along the way by her friends, who will go on to own businesses, become professional caregivers and pass legislation to help people with disabilities.

But perhaps even more fervently, Yvonne hopes that knowing Kristen will make adult life easier for some of her friends.

"If my husband and I had been allowed the opportunity to be educated with someone who had Down syndrome, Kristen's diagnosis would not have been near as traumatic for us, because we would have been able to see a bright future for the baby," Yvonne said. "Some day, one of her peers may be the parent of a child with a disability, and it may be easier on them because they've seen her, grown with her and known her."

For now, though, Yvonne is putting aside worries about the future to enjoy the moment.

"This is what storybooks, what movies, are made of," she said. "We're lucky as parents to have been given the gift -- and little did we know what a gift we were given -- and so we treasure every minute of it."