Friendship Club Honored at
Suffolk Breakfast
Friendship club members at Jack Abrams School and J. Taylor Finley Middle School were honored at the Suffolk County Inter-Faith Anti-Bias Task Force’s 9th Annual Spring Convocation and Award Breakfast held earlier this month.
The Huntington club was started in 2005 by school psychologist Dr. Mary DiBenedetto. The group was recognized for “outstanding programming” for its work promoting brotherhood and tolerance at both Jack Abrams School and Finley. Dr. DiBendetto called the award breakfast a “very special event.”
Among the individual honorees were Jack Abrams students Landary Rivas, Jennifer Canales, Sofia Suarez, Kristina Abt and Daniel Molliter and Finley students Stephanie Shea, Alanna Cribbin, Y’Majesty Allen, Christopher Glowacky, Jeavani Mendez, James Vicari, Tyler Marcelin, Daniel Costa, Matteo McNeil, Julianna Kimchy, Sal Martello, Hailey Treanor, Declan Byrne and Zach Burden.
“The group’s mission is to promote social skill development among students with developmental disabilities,” Finley Principal John Amato said. “General education students play games and talk with other students during their lunch periods. It has been a great success for all students involved. We are proud of our students.”
Finley’s Friendship club is led by school psychologist Nina DiGioa, speech language therapist Kate Carey and teacher aide Susanne Millner. The trio is proud of the breakfast honorees. “These students were chosen because to us, they stood out as exceptional mentors and peer models each week in Friendship Club,” Ms. Carey said.
The Finley club members were well-deserving of being publicly recognized at the annual breakfast, according to Ms. Carey. “We had many mentors throughout the year that were all chosen and recommended by teachers and staff because of their great leadership abilities and social skills,” she said. “These particular students, however, went above and beyond, gave up their lunches, showed up each week and really connected with some of our students that need mentors and role models to practice social skills. These students demonstrated natural ability to work with students that need to develop social skills through peer modeling. We are so proud of them! All of the students in Friendship club had a lot of fun playing games and working together.”
Many schools applied for the Suffolk award, but only four schools were recognized, including two from Huntington.
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