Best Buddies is a club that seeks to promote inclusivity for neurodivergent students, club president Gehna Saini said. Instead of making it a conscious effort, we want to promote inclusivity naturally, she said.
The club is not directly tied to the Community-Based Instruction (CBI) department, but receives a lot of help from the teachers there, Saini said.
“We build a really good bond with the students from the special education department,” Saini said. “I think everyone is just so willing to help in the CBI department, and it’s quite easy to just get involved with their activities and help out and create new ones.”
Vice president Ritika Parkar says that she has experience working with special education students from an internship. In the internship, Parkar learned how teachers taught special education while helping out as a volunteer, she said.
“I didn’t know about this club till I joined,” Parkar said. “I learned (about the club) from Gehna, and I thought this was a really great opportunity to promote inclusivity.”
Best Buddies has previously done pumpkin decorating, Christmas tree decorating, and banner decorating as arts and crafts projects, Saini said. The club plans on doing friendship bracelets as a future activity, she said.
“It’s (friendship bracelets) been something that we wanted to do since the start of the year,” Saini said. “I think this year we’re trying to go back to talking of and planning events like the superhero dance coming up (…). I think the friendship bracelets are something I really want to do before the end of the year.”
CBI students are not forced to participate in club activities, especially if they just prefer to not interact, Saini said. Best Buddies attempts to create activities that welcome everyone; luckily most CBI students are eager to participate, she said. Best Buddies is also in charge of rally dances that include CBI students, she added.
“Practices were usually during lunch for the buddies, and then for everyone outside of CBI who wanted to perform, we would record a video and send them the routine so they can practice it (the dance routine),” Saini said.
For the winter rally dance, it was fun lip-syncing and dancing, club member Zaydrien Reed said.
“I felt nervous, but it was an opportunity for me,” Reed said. “I think I killed it, and I think we made everybody happy.”