By J.R. LABBE

Smiles. Everywhere. On the special education students working on math problems that involved making change. On the typically developing students who patiently guided them to solutions.

On Riverside Middle School Principal Daniel Scroggins, who was watching a gamble pay off. On Joel Maxwell, director of the Special Olympics of Texas program for the Greater Fort Worth area, who pitched the concept of the Meet in the Middle program to Scroggins last semester.

Success makes people happy.

Meet in the Middle, which promotes inclusion between typically developing middle school students and students with intellectual disabilities, was launched last year at 50 Texas schools, including Riverside and McLean middle schools in Fort Worth and Barnett Junior High in Arlington.

Meet in the Middle, is funded through an Education Department grant that is managed by the Special Olympics Project UNIFY program. It was expanded this school year in North Texas to include campuses in the Little Elm and Weatherford school districts.

If Project UNIFY’s goal is to encourage youth to be agents of change — fostering acceptance, respect, dignity and inclusion for all people — Riverside is proof that it’s working.

"Before the program, I used to be scared of them," Kimberly Garcia, 14, said as she nodded at the students working on their math problems. "But it was because I didn’t know them. They are regular people, just like the rest of us."

Monica Lopez, 13, agreed with Garcia, who participated in the program last semester and encouraged Lopez to sign up this fall.

"Students want to judge them because they don’t know them," Lopez said. "If other students are mean or insulting, I try to make them understand." And part of that understanding comes in the words used to describe the students with intellectual disabilities.

In 2004, Special Olympics removed "mental retardation" from its terminology in response to a request from athletes who deeply felt the negative connotations associated with the term retardation.

Riverside students in the MIM program picked up the banner to erase the "R" word last spring, and on March 31 they held a campuswide campaign to ask their fellow students to promise not to use it anymore. More than 645 students signed the pledge.

Scroggins and Maxwell credit teacher Kim Pratt with building Meet in the Middle into a program that draws students who’ve moved on to high school back to Riverside.

"Special Olympics gave her a basic program kit," Maxwell said. "She’s too modest to say this, but she ran with it."

Pratt, who is in her fourth year as a full-time special education teacher, added activities beyond the classroom that give her students fun, real-world experience. A pizza party, a movie night, even a walk to the local Jack in the Box restaurant gives her special ed students a way to bond with their MIM counterparts — and vice versa.

"At first, I saw students who were so different," said Claudia Berumen, a 14-year-old freshman at Carter-Riverside High School who participated last year. "I thought they would need so much help. But they are as normal as we are."

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STAR-TELEGRAM/J.R. LABBE

Eighth-grader Monica Lopez helps seventh-grader Nathaniel Whitehead make change. Both students are in Riverside Middle School’s Meet in the Middle program. STAR-TELEGRAM/J.R. LABBE

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Carter-Riverside freshman Jesus Alvarez, 14, admitted that he used to ignore the special education

students when he’d see them around. Not anymore.

"After I got into the program, I learned something from interacting with them," Alvarez said. "They are just like our cousins and our friends. They are family."

Pratt did her best to deflect accolades for Riverside’s success.

"The program works because the students spend time together in the classroom. They know each other," she said. "Joel was so helpful in getting us started and Mr. Scroggins let us do whatever we wanted."

Scroggins is building a reputation as the Fort Worth principal who will try anything new if it will help his kids. In 2005, he said yes to a pilot program begun by the Rotary Club of Fort Worth that introduces eighth-graders to service learning.

The STARS program — Service Through Active Rotarians and Students — received national honors and a $10,000 check in 2006 from the American Association of School Administrators.

That year, one of Riverside’s intellectually disabled students was a finalist in the STARS "What 'Service Above Self’ means to me" essay contest.

"I don’t want to isolate any of our kids," Scroggins said. "Every special-needs child attends at least one regular class. And they do great, in art, band, choir. Every child should have the same opportunities."

Pratt asked her MIM students from last semester to write essays describing what they learned from the project.

"The day I signed up . . . I thought that I wouldn’t care for any of these kids as friends," wrote Connie Huaman. "The day right after that I started to think a lot. . . . Who am I going to work with? Will I be alone?

"Slowly I started thinking completely the opposite. . . . I don’t care whether or not I’m alone, and now I feel that these boys don’t get the respect and the kindness they deserve. These kids have really made me open my eyes toward how they get treated by other people at this school. They are just like us!"

Insert smile here.

Jill "J.R." Labbe is editorial director of the Star-Telegram . 817-390-7599

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