“Donate to The Crisis Center” and “Say This, Not That” flyers have likely caught your attention, as they’re in every hallway at Manhattan High School. These posters were created by various members’ Interpersonal Skills.
“All of the home football games during the regular season, we collected donations for the crisis center so all of the money that we received during that time goes to our local crisis center,” IPS teacher Haleigh Jung said. “We have had a partnership with the crisis center for like the last ten-fifteen years.” Jung said.
“Our goal with IPS is to make MHS an inclusive environment and to just kinda spread awareness about inclusion [to] make people aware about disabilities and it’s not a scary thing and so just celebrating inclusion and sharing that with our MHS community is our main goal,” Jung said. “[IPS] is a fun inclusive environment where we get to know each other and learn how to be leaders in our school community and in our greater Manhattan community.”
“[IPS] really brings out the genuine side of everybody, and I mean you make new friends, you get to do things just with new people that you don’t see every day and it’s just a super fun atmosphere.” Said senior Kamryn Gillispie.
“IPS helps MHS because it helps everybody to be more inclusive and to help everybody kinda understand how everybody is different,” said senior Burke Belanger. “IPS is just a really fun class just for people to kinda get to know each other more and people should know that it’s just [a] really good experience for everybody that has the chance to get to do it.” Belanger said.
“I’ve seen people that I was friends within the past [join IPS] and they just really enjoyed it I’ve always been looking forward to this like even since I was in middle school, I knew it was a thing, so it was like something I wanted to be a part of,” Gillispie said. “I think it’s definitely something that brings a lot of joy to my favorite classes that I’ve ever taken at this school, so I really encourage people to join.” Gillispie said.
IPS, completely student run, plans on presenting the talent show for the school right around spring break and the unified sport event after spring break. “We’re a Kansas champion unified school for Special Olympics so we’ll have a unified event like the last couple years,” Jung said. “Our students just kind of decide what they would like to do for the school as things come up but those are the two events we have planned so far.” Jung said.
