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Students Speak Out About Their Disabilities

An excited crowd packed into the Harwood Union High School, Wednesday night, for the premiere of Speak Out for Understanding, a student made documentary about people with disabilities.

The movie started when Harwood's speech pathologist had a group of students sit down to talk about the challenges they face.

"Lo and behold we all have challenges. Students with disabilities, students without," said Maureen Charron-Shea.

The students wanted to get that message out to more people, so they set out to make the documentary. In it they explore better known disabilities like Down syndrome, and ones less obvious, like learning disabilities.

"Time is an issue-- like reading really slowly, spelling, that type of thing, but on the other side I do really well in school, but it's a lot of compensation so people don't really see me as having a learning disability," said Harwood Junior Emma Wade of her learning disability.

The important thing says Wade, is standing up for yourself. She has had to do that by asking for more time on tests and explaining to her peers and teachers why that's her right.

"To some point it's like, 'Oh you have extra time on things what's that?' But you know when I talk to them it's fine," she said of educating her peers. "But it takes that, it takes that awareness, it takes the initiative."

Not all of the students involved in making the movie have disabilities so even the process of making it was educational.

"It shed a lot of light on everything," said Harwood Junior Trevor Cook. "Like I didn't know a lot of things about dyslexia and Down syndrome and other diseases like that and I learned a lot about them."

Just participating in the project has taught many of the students how to talk with others about their disability and Charron-Shea says it has greatly improved their confidence.

Students plan to screen the movie for students at other schools, including elementary and middle schools. They've also been invited to show it at several conferences.

Bianca Slota - WCAX News