Finley Friendship Club Completes Enjoyable Year

John (Dante) LaPlaca is an eighth grade student at J. Taylor Finley Middle School. He’s been a peer mentor of the weekly social skills group, the Friendship Club for the past two years. The organization was started 19 years ago by school psychologist Dr. Mary DiBenedetto when she saw the benefit of students with special needs learning social skills from their peers in natural settings.

The club has been operational since its inception at what was then known as Huntington Intermediate School and has been co-led at Finley by speech language pathologist Kate Carey.

Mr. LaPlaca joined the Friendship Club as a seventh grader. It was immediately clear that he took the role of mentor seriously; attending each week and if he was unable to attend he always let Mrs. Carey or Dr. D know.

At the end of this school year, John approached Ms. Carey and Dr. D to inform them he had purchased “graduation cords” for all the eighth grade Friendship Club mentors. He asked whether he could give a short speech to them and hand out the cords.

“John was able to do exactly that during our Friendship Club annual field trip on June 9,” Dr. DiBenedetto said. “He wrote a beautiful speech reminding the members what a true ‘friend’ is. The color of the cord is yellow, which symbolizes friendship and reminds us that “we are all in this together;” that if anyone needs a friend, he was there for them and encouraging the members to keep their ‘helpful spirit during the next four years.’ It epitomizes the exact spirit of Friendship Club and we thank John for being the perfect example of what it means to be a friend.