Recognizing Disability Awareness Month 2025
By Mika Katznelson, Gwyneth Lee, and Natalie Pecci, Staff Writers
Blueprint Photos by Mika Katznelson, Gwyneth Lee, and Natalie Pecci
Door decorations
Door decorations appear at different times throughout the year with the purpose of highlighting important figures during their respective national awareness months. For the month of March, Leadership students collaborated with teachers so that many classroom doors featured people who have lived with a disability.
Room 314 and 107
Rooms 314 and 107 depict Stephen Hawking. Hawking lived with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Despite the difficulties that came with ALS, Hawking used a wheelchair, computer-generated voice synthesizer, and other assistive technologies to pursue his scientific career. He worked on black holes, Hawking radiation, and the Big Bang Theory, along with writing multiple books on complex scientific concepts.
Wellness Center
The door on the wellness office contains information on Robert Hensel. He grew up with a birth defect known as Spina Bifida. This defect affects the function of the legs and causes one's kidneys to deteriorate. He did not let that hold him back and managed to become a Guinness World Record holder for the longest non-stop wheelie in a wheelchair for a total of 6.178 miles. He did so to raise money for new ramps throughout his community. Hensel is also an international poet and writer.
Room 409
Sir Isaac Newton is spotlighted on Señor Shaw’s door. Newton is claimed to have epilepsy, a stutter, and some sort of mental illness such as depression, bipolar disorder, or Asperger’s Syndrome. However, he was never formally diagnosed. His greatest achievements were formulating the laws of motion and universal gravitation, inventing calculus, and making contributions to optics and the understanding of light.
Library
Hellen Keller is showcased on the door of the Library. Keller was both deaf and blind and would go on to become an author, activist, and lecturer, thanks to the help of Anne Sullivan who taught her to read and write in Braille and how to communicate with sign language. Keller would go on to become the first deaf and blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree and would go on to advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.
Glass Hallway
The far hallway contains several laminated papers taped on the wall, each featuring different celebrities or well-known people who are neurodiverse. They include Walt Disney, William Howlett, Salma Hayek, Richard Branson, Maggie Aderin-Pocock, and Jamie Oliver, all of whom are dyslexic. Other types of neurodiversity include ADHD represented by several famous faces such as Ryan Gosling, Will.I.am, Justin Bieber, Simone Biles, Emma Watson, and Channing Tatum. These were put up in honor of Neurodiversity Celebration Week, which ran from March 17 to 23 this year.
Counseling Office
The door on the counseling office highlights Louis Braille and the braille system, which was named after him. Braille was blind and invented a more efficient way to represent print letters and numbers tactually. Braille got his idea from Charles Barbier, a retired artillery officer in Napoleon’s army who created a note-taking system of embossed dots to represent sounds because most of the soldiers were illiterate. Many people with blindness still use the braille system today.
Disability Awareness Month Kahoot
Leadership hosted a Kahoot event during lunch on March 25 to continue raising awareness about disabilities throughout this month. The event began with a presentation about certain disabilities, and what they are, and they also presented on various famous people who live with disabilities. After that, the attending students played a Kahoot with questions based on information from the presentation. The top three placed students won prizes such as candy and a cake.
Autism awareness + Unified Basketball
Students wore blue on March 10 in support of Autism awareness. The Autism Speaks campaign “Light It Up Blue” inspired this, and is usually celebrated on April 2. Many students also showed their support by watching the Unified Basketball game in the big gym during lunch.
Crazy Sock Day
On March 21, students showed up to school with fun, crazy, or mismatched socks to raise awareness for Down Syndrome. This is a global event as that day is World Down Syndrome Day. March 21 is Down Syndrome Day because people with Down Syndrome have three pairs of 21 chromosomes.
