What started as a small field day during the COVID years has become the highlight of the school year for hundreds of students across Perry County. Jennifer Dillman, a 20-year life skills teacher at West Perry School District, joins Duty Free Lunch to talk about PECO, a countywide celebration she built from scratch that gives students with disabilities a day filled with competition, community, and joy.
What started as a small field day during the COVID years has become the highlight of the school year for hundreds of students across Perry County. Jennifer Dillman, a 20-year life skills teacher at West Perry School District, joins Duty Free Lunch to talk about PECO, a countywide celebration she built from scratch that gives students with disabilities a day filled with competition, community, and joy.
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Voiceover:
Welcome to Duty Free Lunch, the official podcast of the Pennsylvania State Education Association. Join us as we unpack the issues that matter most to you. From cutting edge classroom strategies to thought-provoking policy discussions, if it impacts PSEA members, it's on the menu.
Rachael West:
Hello and welcome to Duty Free Lunch. I am not Aaron Chapin, your PSEA president. You might be expecting his voice. I am PSEA treasurer, Rachel West, and I am here today talking with a PSEA member who saw a need in her community and built something absolutely remarkable from the ground up and then kept building it. Jennifer Dillman is a life skills teacher at West Perry School District, where she has spent 20 years creating opportunities for students with disabilities to shine. What started as a small field day during the COVID years has grown into PECO Perry County, a countywide event that brings together four school districts, more than a hundred athletes, dozens of volunteers, community sponsors, food trucks, a magic show, and more. It's a remarkable event and it exists because one teacher decided to make it happen. Jennifer, welcome to Duty Free Lunch.
Jennifer Dillman:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Rachael West:
Thank you so much for being willing to come on and talk with us today. So we're just going to jump right into it. Can you talk to us about how PECO came to be? Tell us the background and how you got started and how it got to the place where it is now.
Jennifer Dillman:
Absolutely. So Special Olympics has always been something near and dear to my students' hearts, something they always looked forward to every single year. What made it difficult for us is we are a district that's very rural, further away from a lot of the events that were happening. So we would always be cut short. And then of course COVID came and then we couldn't go because of the large crowds, worrying about students and their health and their safety and those kinds of things. And the kids were just bummed, just let down. So I thought, okay, let's get back to this, but in a smaller atmosphere. And then what we did is we just did it with our life skills students and autism support students to start and they liked it.
It was just a small event, but it allowed them to do so much more than they were used to doing. So then after about three years, I believe I thought, "Oh, our PECO athletic events are these events where everybody's pretty competitive, but so many people show up." The community shows up, they're all there to cheer, they're all there to help each other. So I thought, "Why not do it for our students with disabilities? Why not create a PECO event?" So that's how it came to be and we got the districts involved and I reached out to the teachers and they were all in.
Rachael West:
All in. That's amazing. So you took this from just your local district and you made it a countywide event. So you have all four county school districts. Okay.
Jennifer Dillman:
That's correct.
Rachael West:
And so up to sometimes 120 athletes, 35 game and craft stations, track and field events, bocce, food trucks, a magic show, baby farm animals, and even fire trucks and ambulances. So you bring all of that into one place for an event. And it's a day long event?
Jennifer Dillman:
It is. It actually begins at nine just so school districts can have the time to get there. Elementary schools and the other districts, we're all running on different times. It's not uniform across the county. So the games begin at nine and we run things until about 2:00. So it is a pretty full day.
Rachael West:
So how do you organize that many things going on at once? Where do you get started with that?
Jennifer Dillman:
Well, when it was a small event, when it was just West Perry, it was rather simple. There were a few people that I knew that were willing to help and they knew some people that were willing to help. So we were able to organize it rather easily. Once I added the other districts, it became a lot more time actually, not a little more time, a lot more time invested in finding more volunteers and finding those people, those businesses that were willing to donate to sponsor, just people that would come in to help during that day.
And then what I did is I had a student leadership committee within my middle school, which they would come in. They were called Impact Partners and they would come into my classroom once a week just to work with some of my students. Sometimes we would play games for social skills. Sometimes they would do an extension activity with them based on a skill that we were working on at that moment. They always had these great ideas and I thought, wouldn't it be really cool if some of these regular ed students could take the leadership role and help get more involved in the PECO event? So then I created the executive committee, which I now have. It's made up of 12 students, eight through 12th grade and they do the legwork. They are the ones writing the letters to find sponsors, to find volunteers, sending out emails to our staff, to our administration. They're presenting at board meetings, they're presenting at Lions Club meetings. They're the ones at the ground building the event from the get go each year.
Rachael West:
So as you were just saying where your students are presenting and trying to get these connections, so it sounds like community support plays a huge role in this work and getting this event off the ground. So how did you begin to build those relationships and what has the community response been like and what has that meant to you and this event that you put on?
Jennifer Dillman:
Yeah. We couldn't do it without our community. And Perry County, everyone just comes together. Doesn't matter differences or what's going on at that time within the county, they just all are aboard and they all want to make this an event that is special to these kids. It's simply just reaching out and saying, "Hey, we're doing this or we're thinking this, how can you contribute?" We've had businesses that have been there from the get go and volunteers that have been there from the get go. And then each year they're spreading the word and more people are reaching out to me or to our exec committee members saying, "Hey, we'd like to help. How can we help? What can we do?" And we take all the help we can get the more, the merrier. The time, just the setup, the cleanup. The businesses and organizations, they bring information for the parents and the families. They bring giveaways for the students and the athletes. So there's just so much and everybody's so willing to give.
Rachael West:
I love finding ... Actually this week I had a chance to go to a community event in Indiana, Pennsylvania and they had a similar thing where they had different people. There were all kinds of different volunteers that showed up and it just creates such a different environment for our students and for the community to see the opportunities that you are providing for your students and for them to be part of it. I feel like it just always makes them feel a little bit more special, those moments and those events feel more special.
Jennifer Dillman:
It definitely does.
Rachael West:
This year I understand that there was a very special moment that you took a pause to celebrate and share memories of a student who has participated over the years but recently passed away. And I understand their parents were there. Can you tell us a little bit about what that little moment, what that was like and what you did and how that impacted the community?
Jennifer Dillman:
Yeah. I think all too often we look at our kids who have disabilities and yes, they do have disabilities, but often they're also battling health issues or illnesses that many people don't see. But they also need to remember that these students played an important role while they were students or athletes. They may only be with us like a short time, but their achievements, their goals, their progress ... I just felt it was important that we start honoring those students. Our other students talk about their memories they have with them and then it falls off the map. We don't talk about it for a while. So adding this this year as a way to honor that particular student and their family, that was just really, really special.
And I think next year we're going to get the students involved in that a little more. My exec committee is the one that presented it and shared a little bit about that student's life and his role as a student at West Perry. But I think some of the athletes that actually competed with him, against him or were just friends with him at school, I think they had a desire to maybe share some things too. So that will be a direction we go in the future.
Rachael West:
Oh, that's excellent. So you plan to try to find a way to continue to honor students and their families as you continue this event?
Jennifer Dillman:
Yes. And not just at West Perry, within the county as a whole. So it would be any of those four districts.
Rachael West:
Oh, that's spectacular. That's amazing. So this is something that's completely separate from the everyday classroom activity and things like that. And any educator who's had an opportunity to do any extracurricular club or anything like that, you get to see something very different with your students outside of the classroom than inside. So when you're standing back that day, I hope you have a moment to stand back and watch and it's not all hustle and bustle. When you have that time to just take a pause and look around, what do you see in your students those days as they're working in that event that you don't necessarily get to see every day in a classroom?
Jennifer Dillman:
The transfer of the skills learned in the classroom, that is key. We're teaching those functional skills, those social skills, the skills that those students need in order to be community members and successful community members as they grow into adults. Just seeing what they learn in the classroom and then applying it to a real life situation, using money at the concession stands for the food trucks, time management, making sure they're at their specific event or their specific station at a specific time, problem solving. Maybe there's something they don't like to touch at a specific station, but being able to share that. Social skills. And just seeing them make connections with students that they don't see every day. Regular ed students and other students with special needs, seeing them teach others too. New students, students who may have moved into the district, seeing them take on the role as a teacher and of course their passion.
I see passion from them every day, but it's a different passion. Passion just to do their best and be their best and it doesn't matter what happens. There's nobody judging them or it doesn't matter who they are, everyone's cheering. The volunteers are cheering, the partners are cheering, the exec committee's cheering, parents are cheering, families are cheering. So just seeing them just be themselves and wanting to do their best.
Rachael West:
I have participated in marching bands and musicals and things like that and you just get such a different opportunity to see the kids in such a different light and such a different role. And there's something that just gives you that moment of like, "Okay, this is the thing that can keep me going on the day where ..." Because not every day is sunshine and roses in education. And those are the days that you can see these kids doing things that you're like, "Okay, we're doing a good thing."
Jennifer Dillman:
They're getting it.
Rachael West:
They're getting it. So we've heard from other teachers from across Perry County that have said that this is their favorite event of the year and that they enjoy the Perry County event more than the actual other bigger Special Olympics events in the area. So what do you think is that spark that PECO has that the bigger events don't have?
Jennifer Dillman:
I think it's just the countywide family. The helpers, the volunteers, the partners, the businesses, they're all from within the county. So we not only see many of them that day, we see them throughout the year all around the community and those relationships are built a lot of them prior to the event. So the kids are coming into the event, the teachers are coming into the event, feeling comfortable with the people around them, knowing who they need to go to when they need help or who they can ask a question or understanding the campus layout, just having those things.
Also, they have mentioned having so much more to do. Going to the Special Olympics, our students usually get to participate in approximately three events, but at our PECO event, they can participate in all of them. So they can do running events, walking events, wheelchair events. They can do the throwing events, jumping events. And then there's all kinds of ... The 35 stations that have crafts that they get to make and take with them. Or we also do like whiffle ball and we do bocce ball, which are West Perry has a unified bocce team so it's a way of us putting it out there to get more kids involved. I hear Newport just recently added unified bocce to their roster this coming year, so that's exciting. More PECO districts are jumping on board with those unified sports, just giving them exposure to things that they typically don't have exposure to. We have football players running a football station and field hockey players running a field hockey station and just getting the kids to participate in any way that they can.
Rachael West:
So it sounds to me like this just has a much bigger opportunity for kids to maybe try out things they wouldn't have that opportunity to just test the water in some of those other events when they would go to a bigger event.
Jennifer Dillman:
Right. And there's also the exploration. Like for instance, with the fire truck and the ambulance being there and the dump truck and we had a tow truck this year. Those community workers are there and the students are exploring, but those community members are teaching them about their job, getting them interested in things that they may choose to do after school. And the same with our businesses and organizations. They're providing tools, they're sharing tools, helping them along the way as they continue to grow and think about what am I going to do after I graduate?
Rachael West:
Oh, that's amazing. So it's the Special Olympics, but it's also almost like a career day and a family fair. And so you just have so many different things going on. What an incredible event. So if somebody's listening to our podcast and they are hearing you talk about this and they want to create something like your PECO event in their own district or county, what advice would you give them? Where should they start? What are your thoughts for them?
Jennifer Dillman:
Yeah. Don't be overwhelmed. Everyone is capable of creating and building anything. I tell my students that all the time, you're capable of anything. I never want to hear I can't or I won't. And also just putting trust in the people around you, your friends, your family, your school staff and administration, the community people and businesses and allowing others to step up and help you lead. Being a team. Just allowing those people to inspire and share, provide that help, encourage. It's really not a me effort, it's a we effort. And I think that's why PECO has been so successful year after year and it continues to grow. I embrace every idea that a student brings to me or a community member or an administrator brings to me. We sit down, we figure out how can we make this happen? What can we do?
This is our fifth year and this is the first year that we were actually able to get a magician on board. I didn't realize how difficult it was to get a magician. But our community members pulled through John Westford was absolutely amazing. He had never presented in front of students with special needs, so it was new to him, but he's already talking about next year. It was just word of mouth and people talking to other people and sharing the experience, sharing what the event is that finally allowed us to add him. So I think just being open to a lot of things and a lot of conversation.
Rachael West:
I think something I just heard in your explanation there is every year it gets bigger. So it's not like the first year you came out of the gates with fire trucks and ambulances and petting zoos, that's not how it started. So remembering that you don't have to start where you're at five years in. It looks a little different that first year.
Jennifer Dillman:
Exactly.
Rachael West:
And maybe I think sometimes as educators, we want perfection right out of the gate and so we are sometimes a little afraid to get started because we don't know if we're going to be able to do it with perfection and it sounds to me like you're allowing that space for, "We'll just grow as we can."
Jennifer Dillman:
Exactly. And one of the most beneficial things that the executive committee and I started last year was at the end of the event as we send our thank yous, we also send out, "Tell us what was great. Tell us what needs some work or what can we add next year?" Those kinds of things. So that has been extremely helpful. And I felt like this year ran a lot smoother than years past because we had that feedback and we had that these things are great, but we need to tweak these things to make them great too. And I think we were able to do that and we're going to continue to keep tweaking those things. And I already have my idea for what we're adding next year so we already discussed it and talked about it so that's exciting.
Rachael West:
That's amazing. So I have one last question for you because we're almost out of time. So as you reflect over the last five years of your event, can you just maybe the first story, one of the most inspiring moments you've witnessed or just that aha, like this feels great moment that you remember from the last five years.
Jennifer Dillman:
I feel like those aha moments are every event, even as we're organizing and putting it together, but the day of the event it's just inspiring. It's inspiring to me, it's inspiring to the people around me, not only the students, but the volunteers, the community members, they just smile. They enjoy each other's company, seeing that transfer of all the things that we teach them within the classroom and seeing them doing it, performing it, getting excited about it, it just continues to make me want to strive for more and to continue building what we have to make it even more special for them.
Rachael West:
I can see on your face, even as you talk about it, that like almost pride of just it's such an amazing thing to watch happen once you see it all get put together. So I'm really happy that we got a chance to hear a little bit more about your event. Thank you so much for being here today to share this with us. It does actually bring us to the end of today's episode though. Our guest today has been Jennifer Dillman. Jennifer, thank you so much for everything that you do for your students, your colleagues and your community. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you here on the show and to hear so much about this amazing program. Thank you so much.
Jennifer Dillman:
Thank you.
Rachael West:
And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you have feedback or ideas for future episodes, please email us at podcast@psea.org. I'm Rachel West and you have been listening to Duty Free Lunch. Bye for now.
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