Grace Benish is a freshman with a passion for helping others, especially by providing more opportunities for disabled people. 

In Benish’s junior year of high school, she wanted to “provide more inclusion opportunities across campus” at her school, Rogers Heritage High, in Rogers, Arkansas.

To achieve this, Benish created the “Fans and Friends” program, a social inclusion club for general education students and special education students.

“Fans and friends” allows students to play games, attend school sporting events and interact with each other in ways that they would not have otherwise been able to. 

The program helps special education students be a part of the larger school community and develop social skills, as well as destigmatize special education students in the minds of general education students.

“Most of these students are self-contained, meaning that they spend their entire days in one classroom with only each other. There is a maximum of only ten students in these self-contained classrooms.” Benish said.

 “Can you imagine if, at the beginning of your K-12 career, you were placed in a classroom with only nine of your peers that you would spend the rest of your academic career with? This is detrimental to essential social skills.” 

Benish said that the program was difficult to get approved.

The head of the special education department told Benish that her program would only be approved if she was able to coordinate event participation, acquire parental consent, compile medical information of the students, generate funding and ensure no events were missed.

Although it took a year, “Fans and Friends” was eventually approved. 

Benish is a communication sciences and disorders major with a focus on occupational therapy. She hopes to use her degree to “make being different a little less difficult for people with disabilities, and provide resources and make a difference.” 

Benish is an interdisciplinary studies minor and a member of the Schedler Honors College.

She was recently added to the auto-accept program for UCA’s pre-occupational therapy program.

In the future, she plans to pursue a career as either a speech pathologist or an occupational therapist.

Benish said she could achieve her goal of aiding others by working in a pediatric clinic, where she would help people with speech and swallowing disorders or work with people on fine motor and daily skills, such as tying shoes and brushing hair.

Outside of her future work as a therapist or clinician, Benish plans to continue her work with advocacy and inclusion, inside and outside of public schools. 

Her current goal is to bring a program similar to “Fans and Friends” to Greenbrier public schools. Benish’s long-term goal is to make “Fans and Friends” a nationwide program that every public high school offers to its students.