Season for Sharing: Joseph Maley Foundation teaches kids about disabilities

The puppet show story goes like this: When 11-year-old Brenda learns that Ellen Jane has Down syndrome, she doesn't want her taking care of her dog at the vet.

Brenda quickly learns that she's wrong.

More than 100 third-graders were also learning alongside Brenda as they watched in silence in the audience at Washington Woods Elementary School.

"She learned that even if you have Down syndrome, you can still do things that people without Down syndrome can do," said Nora Paul-Blanc, a third-grader who watched the show that Joseph Maley Foundation put together.

That's the goal.

The foundation began more than a decade ago to help students understand people who live with disabilities and support them. The Indianapolis-based nonprofit offers programs about celebrating diversity — learning about people with different disabilities, mental health issues, gender identities and families — to school districts across Central Indiana.

These programs include a summer sports camp, racing events, puppet shows and speaker series. People often make wrong assumptions about people with disabilities, said Erica Christie, the director of education at the foundation.

And often, people don't look past the disabilities to see the people who have different interests, talents and skills.

"We talk a lot about how people with disabilities are often just as smart and capable," Christie said.

"A disability is just one part of you and people with disabilities are fully human, just like all of us," she said. "They can have interests and families and friendships and hold jobs and have kids."

The organization expanded to include mental health programming around 2016, after a string of teenage suicides. The students working with the foundation said they needed to help students cope with mental illnesses, stress and trauma.

"Nobody's talking at our schools about suicide," she remembers students telling her. "No one's teaching us how to take care of our mental health." So, the foundation began teaching elementary students how to talk and work through their feelings, including breathing exercises that lower stress.

These problems got worse during a pandemic where young people were isolated in quarantine, some with only a television as their babysitter.

"We're teaching kids strategies when you're feeling anxious, what can you do? When your thoughts are spiraling, how can you get them back in control," she said.

And in the last year, the foundation expanded to include programming about celebrating people of all gender identities and from different types of families.

Since the organization began in 2008, its program served some 275,000 students. Last year, the organization worked with some 45,000 students in 75 schools.

The students gathered around the stage had dozens of questions: What is a disability? Is it dangerous? Is it contagious? Where does it come from? Do all people have disabilities? Are you born with a disability? Can dogs have disabilities? Can all animals have disabilities?

And the students are eager to learn.