A special prom

MOSES LAKE — If there is one thing all proms have in common, it's the 1978 song "YMCA."

It was a scene out of any high school prom: balloons, music, chaperones, and young men in tuxedos and young women in gorgeous dresses and tiaras moving their arms into the Y, M, C and A shapes as The Village People's most well known song blasted over the speakers. And that was exactly the point.

A prom specifically for special education students at Moses Lake, Warden, Ritzville and Ephrata high schools was held Friday night at the Youth Dynamics building in downtown Moses Lake to provide those students with a "prom experience" geared toward their needs.

"It's just kind of a smaller, more comfortable prom," said Kay Latham, a special education teacher at Moses Lake High School who helped organize the event, now in its eighth year. It's been a great success in the past, according to Latham, and if the smiles on the faces of those students who just couldn't get enough dancing in Friday was any indication, this year's Special Needs Prom was a hit too. "They love it, they'll talk about it for the next week," Latham said.

"It just feels good to finally dance," said student Capri Bacon, who is a senior this year at Ritzville High School.

Between 30 and 40 students turned out for the prom, the majority from MLHS. The students were also treated to a pizza break, with pizzas donated by Domino's.

"You can't ask for better support from the community," said Charles Adams, a paraeducator at MLHS.

Adams, like most of the chaperones, all teachers, aides and paraeducators who donned suits or dresses and joined their students on the dance floor, seemed to be enjoying himself nearly as much as the kids.

"I didn't go to my high school prom, so this is great for me," Adams said with a grin.

"It's their night," he said. "They're meeting more people and they're making new friendships. I think if they went to their regular prom, they'd feel out of place to a point. Here, they can open up and do whatever they want."

"A lot of our students didn't go to their prom," said Camille Nelson, a special education teacher at RHS. She and paraeducator Lynn Greenwalt brought five special education students with them to the event.

The Ritzville High prom was held at Fairchild Air Force Base, which posed some added obstacles for special needs students. The high security of the location meant the students need to have identification, which many of RHS's special education students do not have. Because they aren't involved in many ASB activities, they don't have ASB cards, and they don't drive, so they don't have driver's licenses.

Attending a high school prom can also be a spendy endeavor, but Friday night's event was only $2 for the students, a fee that will be donated to Youth Dynamics for the use of its handicapped accessible building.

But having the prom experience was important for the students, Nelson said.

"It's a pivotal point in school for them," she said.

Nelson and Greenwalt waited in a lounge area where students rested between stints on the dance floor. When the kids came for a sip of soda in between songs, Nelson and Greenwalt coaxed the students about what songs were playing and gave advice about who might be fun to dance with. All of the RHS students were on a mission assigned by their teachers to dance with students from other schools.

"To try to get them from dancing with each other, they have to dance with five people that aren't from Ritzville," Nelson said. "They haven't stopped dancing."

MLHS teacher Larry Dennis was also on hand to help create a true prom experience by taking photos in front of a backdrop arranged in one corner of the dance floor. Students gathered in small groups or posed individually for those classic prom shots.

Kris DeTrolio, an aide with the special education program at Warden High School, accompanied student Tad Wright Friday night.

"He loves to dance," she said. "He's having a great time."

DeTrolio mirrored many of the other educators' reflections about why it is so important for special education students to have their own prom, saying the regular high school prom is too big, and stressing how necessary it is for students like Wright to have the kind of social interaction the Special Needs Prom provides.

"It's humbling, we take so much for granted," she said.