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Special inspiration
By LOGAN NEILL BROOKSVILLE -- Eight-year-old Tiffany Marinoff and her best friend Stacy Laubensheimer, 9, knew a good deal when they saw it. The two J.D. Floyd Elementary students spotted the booth offering free cotton candy, and beelined for it. It didn't take long for both to get totally involved in the sticky purple confection. "I love this place," said Tiffany, giggling as she tossed a wad of cotton candy in her mouth. "Everybody's here and having fun. Nobody's going to want to go home." That, of course, was the whole idea behind the Very Special Arts festival, held recently at the Reilly Exceptional Education Center in Brooksville. For an entire morning it was just the place to let imagination and creativity run free for about 800 of Hernando County's special needs students. "It's an opportunity to let these kids appreciate their own abilities," said Liz Weber, director of the county's Exceptional Student Education facility, which has sponsored the annual event for the past six years. "Hopefully, it shows them they are more like all of us than they are unalike." The festival, which is tied to a national effort that seeks to foster self-expression and creativity in disabled children, attracted students from every school in the county. Nearly 300 volunteers helped to man about two dozen activity booths, where the children made self-styled arts and crafts projects such as pinwheels, bead necklaces and friendship pins. Others offered games and fun activities intended to make the event inclusive for children of all abilities. "Children shouldn't be made to feel they are limited by a disability," said Brooksville artist Pat Berry, a quadriplegic who paints oil portraits holding a brush with her teeth. She spent much of the morning demonstrating her talent to physically disabled children who watched in amazement as she painted. "I hope I can inspire them to do whatever they feel they can do," said Berry. "Many of them get to the point where they won't even try things because someone has told them they aren't able to. I just tell them not to listen to those people." Diane Dill, a West Hernando Middle teacher who works with trainable handicapped students, believes events such as Very Special Arts helps children by promoting creativity and self-expression not limited by formal classroom atmosphere. "A lot of the kids I work with are very artistic," Dill said. "But some just don't have the social skills to take mainstream art classes. The great thing about this is that it gives them an outlet to do their own thing." Participants reveled in the ability to express themselves artistically. At the exhibit where Hernando High junior Jessie Duval was volunteering, young children busied themselves building and decorating a cardboard box castle. "The kids are really precious," said Jessie, keeping watch over a first-grader smearing red tempura paint onto a wall. "It's messy and a little wild at times, but you get the feeling that it's the most fun thing they've ever done."
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From today's Hernando Times |
