The intro to the story in
The Kansas City Star:
Sylvia Joerke (pictured with her teacher, Shayla Mendy) stretches ballerina-like in the sun, alone on the playground blacktop.
The laughter of other children playing at Kansas City’s Banneker Elementary School sounds beyond her like the meadow songs of the birds she doesn’t see.
She is an 8-year-old girl with autism, born with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome, who says I am newsworthy — saying so in a penciled letter she mailed recently to The Star.
A gifted child, she knows that she was reading before the age of 2, long before the syndrome that affects her speech would let her speak a word.
Sometimes she fears “that others are better than me.”
She knows she is brilliant.
She’s aware she needs help calming her turbulent emotions.
She knows “I am one of a kind.”
What she probably doesn’t realize is that the Kansas City School District’s special education program has reached a critical juncture as it strives to fix itself for Sylvia and 2,400 other students with special education plans.
Corrective actions required by the state will play a role in the district’s quest for full accreditation. But more than that, dreams stand in the balance.
Shayla Mendy knows it. She is the teacher who Sylvia’s parents said became their anchor, the teacher who makes it all work.
Mendy stands in the grass, looking after the eight children from her special education class scattered amid other Banneker students at recess.
Behind her, Sylvia steps out of her solitary reverie. She turns her eyes to a group of jump-roping boys and girls as if awakening to them.
The district’s success, her teacher’s hopes, her parents’ dreams — all are measured by what happens in simple moments like this, when Sylvia and the other children meet.
She dances toward them on light feet.
The intro to the story in The Kansas City Star: