Park Lane Public School is known as a congregated school site that services students with complex, intellectual, and developmental needs. Our students communicate non-conventionally through assisted communication devices, sign language, eye gaze, and/or pictures and symbols. Each student has so much to offer our learning community and so many lessons can be learned from them in the way of resiliency, perspective, joy, and belonging. Recently, Park Lane partnered with students from Allenby Public School. Allenby is a typical school with typically-developing students. The partnership has yielded great rewards for staff and students alike.

This year, both schools are going one step further and partnering with Makers Making Change for an exciting opportunity to co-create adaptive devices via the design process. Students will be led by Makers Making Change staff through the cycle of identifying a need, generating an idea, designing a possible device, building a prototype, and finally, printing it from a 3-D printer!

This experience will not only help students develop key skills in problem-solving and in the field of STEM, it will also demonstrate to students the power they each possess as agents of positive social change.