Everett High honors students plan special dance

Published 10:50 pm Thursday, March 19, 2009

Logan Smith, a lanky 15-year-old at Everett High School, likes to shoot baskets. Everett High senior Talex Diede considers herself a math person.

Talex, 18, will soon be looking for acceptance letters from East Coast universities. Logan, who is developmentally delayed, is in special-education classes.

Both teens are excited about Saturday night. They have big plans — the same plans.

“It’s our dance,” said Cynthia McIntyre, who teaches honors and advanced placement biology at Everett High School and advises the Torch Honor Society. “We’re not putting on a dance for kids with special needs, we’re putting on a dance for all of us.”

Torch Honor Society members have worked all school year planning and raising money for Saturday’s dressy dinner-dance in the school cafeteria. It’s not open to the entire student body, only to those in special education or the honor society.

It’s a first for Everett High. The dance project was introduced to the honor society by Andrea Hurley, a 2008 graduate of the school. It was an idea borrowed from proms held in Marysville for students with special needs.

“Marysville-Pilchuck High School gave us their ideas, and we tweaked it a little bit,” said Suzy Olsen, an Everett High senior and Torch Honor Society president. For her senior project, Suzy job-shadowed a special-education teacher.

Honor society students don’t often cross paths with students in special education, Talex said. “Combined, these two groups will really have a fun time,” she said.

The fun started last weekend, when girls got together at school to make sure each one had a pretty dress. Honor society members brought dresses they’d worn to other dances. The Assistance League of Everett donated more formals.

“We used a classroom in the science building and set up dressing rooms. It was a bit of a free-for-all,” Talex said. “The most rewarding part was to see their faces light up. For a lot of girls, this is the first time they’ve been able to wear a fancy dress.”

Saturday afternoon, girls will gather at school to make dress-up time fun. “We’ll do nails and hair, and just hang out,” Talex said.

Molly Smith, Logan’s mother, said her son is also thrilled by the prospect of dressing up. She stood back and let Logan do the choosing last week at Brides Outlet &Anthony’s Formal Wear. The Everett business is donating use of tuxedos for the night.

“He got to pick it all out. He did a really nice job,” Smith said of her son, who’ll make his appearance on the dance floor in a black tux with a silver vest and black bow tie.

Logan, she said, has several learning disabilities and is in special education for reading, writing and math. He’s in general education classes for P.E., Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and floriculture.

Smith said Logan might attend a regular dance, “but I’d be very nervous about it.”

“With this, he’ll go and have a great time,” she said.

Mary Ann Owens, Logan’s special-education teacher, will be a dinner-dance guest and chaperone, along with other teachers in her department. She’s been cheered by the reactions of her students as they look forward to the big night. “The girls are finding that they’re the stars this time. That’s a big thing for them,” she said. “The kids are fascinated that someone thought of us — just us.”

The teacher hopes bridges built between the groups will be strengthened so that honor students will someday serve as peer tutors for kids in special education.

Owens, 50, said that growing up in Chicago, she never saw students with special needs in public schools. “You didn’t know they existed,” she said. To Owens, seeing children of all academic abilities in school together is as important as racial integration.

“There’s a wide diversity of people out there,” she said. “This is something we all need.”

On Saturday, she’s planning to wear a black velvet dress.

“I’d love to do that for the kids,” Owens said. “And I want to see my kids dressed up, and having a great time.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.