Benefield: Santa Rosa’s Common Ground Society hits milestone, one student at a time

Larkin O’Leary has an extensive skill set.

She’s a former teacher, she’s a mother, she’s an entrepreneur, she’s the founder of a flourishing nonprofit.

But she freely admits there are things she can’t do.

However she’s also quick to point out that just because there are things she can’t do, or might struggle with, it does not diminish the gifts she does have.

“You don’t want me doing heart surgery on you, believe me. There are doctors to do that,” she told a classroom of sixth graders last week. “We are all different. Just because someone has a disability doesn’t mean they don’t have something cool to learn from.”

That is the message, one of the many messages really, that she and fellow presenter for Common Ground Society, Sahmina McGregor, gave to hundreds of students at Binkley Elementary Charter School in Santa Rosa Monday.

Common Ground Society started, and remains, a support group for families with kids who have disabilities. But it has rapidly grown into an award-winning program that provides presentations, talks and training sessions for school kids, for education groups and for businesses with a focus on inclusion, acceptance and community.

They have spoken to the Sonoma County Office of Education, to Kaiser Permanente, California Special Education Local Plan leaders and private businesses.

But their focus is on school-age kids. They largely present in Sonoma County, but have given talks in Napa County, in the wider Bay Area and in Southern California.

And on Monday, Common Ground Society marked a milestone ― 50,000 people reached by programs that began in 2018.

“In every presentation, we have a challenge: Be the one,” said O’Leary, whose 9-year-old son James was born with Down syndrome. “Be the one to be kind, be the one to be caring, be the one to stand up and say something when someone is being mistreated. Even if no one else is, be the one.”

Kids, and all of us, have more in common with each other than you might think, she said.

Common Ground Society’s presentations are crafted to give students concrete ways to find similarities with fellow students, rather than getting hung up on perceived differences.

And that can be as simple as saying “Hi.”

Over and over again Monday, O’Leary and McGregor urged kids who feel curious about why a classmate uses a wheelchair, or perhaps doesn’t speak perfectly clearly, or who struggles to hear, to just say hello.

“Just say hi and follow their lead,” O’Leary said, teaching kids how to use American Sign Language to communicate as well.

“My big tag line in all of this, in sharing the story of our lives, is that connection is the key to inclusion,” O’Leary said.

Last week, in a series of presentations to Binkley students from transitional kindergarten through sixth grade, the duo from Common Ground talked about differences but also a lot about commonalities ― the long list of things and traits and ways that people are similar.

They talked about the different ways kids at a playground are able to play tag, but it’s still tag. They talked about the different ways kids on a playground communicate with each other, but they still communicate. They talked about, almost without exception, kids wanting to be seen, to be included.

“Introduce yourself, ask questions, find similarities,” O’Leary said. “We all want to feel like we matter.”

After two school assemblies, O’Leary and McGregor visited fourth, fifth and sixth grade classrooms, mostly to give students a smaller environment to ask questions, to probe the curiosity that was talked about in the assembly.

In this format, there are no inquiries that are off limits. Just so long as, in O’Leary’s words, the questions come from a kind heart, anything goes.

“We create a safe space,” she said. “People can ask anything they have ever wondered.”

No laughing, but perhaps more crucially, no scolding.

“We have had kids use the R-word before,” McGregor said. “We rephrase it for them. We don’t point fingers. This is how we learn.”

On Monday, questions ranged from a slew of inquiries about the assistance dog O’Leary’s son James uses, to “Can you tell if someone is a little person before they are born?” and “Is there something where you are born bald and you stay bald your whole life,” to “Is it bad to ask someone what their disability is?”

But through the years, presenters have gotten questions like “What is the hardest part about parenting a child with disabilities?” and “Were you disappointed when you found out?” and “Does your kid feel bad?”

“I didn’t have any experience with disabilities before having Emma,” McGregor said of her 7-year-old daughter.

Emma was diagnosed with an extremely rare syndrome that affects brain development and causes low muscle tone.

McGregor, in presentations and in life, takes the role of teaching seriously. We can learn from every interaction, she said.

“I don’t get offended,” she said, recalling a time a woman used the word “retarded” to describe Emma.

“You take a breath. It’s totally fine. This is how we learn,” she said. “Had I jumped down her throat she would never have asked a question again, so I said, ‘That is an outdated term for what she has.’”

One version of Common Ground Society’s lineup of presentations has an exercise in which students are introduced to a new kid, without seeing the person.

The new kid lists a series of things they think are important to know about them: They like soccer, they hate tomatoes, they have freckles, they don’t run fast, they have a dog.

Presenters ask for kids to chime in when they have something in common with the new kid. They all do.

Then they meet face to face.

“It’s very shocking to the kids,” O’Leary said. “Noel has MS, has a wheelchair, has a (tracheostomy) tube. The kids are so stunned that they have so much in common that they never would have figured out.”

Binkley principal Harmony Harvell has had Common Ground Society on campus to address the entire student body multiple times. Every iteration of their evolving program has been made here.

Harvell’s own kids go to Binkley. One is neurodiverse, one is not. The message coming from Common Ground Society strikes a personal chord with her, both as an educator and as a mom.

“With Common Ground we get to talk openly about all the diversity that is on our campus, maybe seen or unseen,” she said. “It’s not about fitting in, but about actually standing out and our uniqueness and our differences.”

She recalled a time when a kindergartner who is neurodiverse struggled with the rule of the slide on the playground ― climbing up was not allowed, but sliding down was OK.

But one day, the kid got it. And the other kids got it along with him.

“All the kindergartners started shouting his name and chanting and giving him a round of applause because they knew it was really hard for him and they knew it was a first for him,” she said. “We didn’t tell kids to do that, they just did it.”

Harvell credits programs like Common Ground Society’s with not only inviting questions and conversations but making them happen ― helping kids and adults feel comfortable in their curiosity but also understand what it means to be inclusive.

“Common Ground helps us have those conversations with kids, like ‘Hey, this is why it’s different, this is why it’s OK and this is how we are going to help our friend be part of Binkley.”

At the conclusion of Monday’s presentation, Binkley kindergartner Kennedy Crowder said she learned a lot of important stuff.

“I learned to make friends,” she said. “You just go over there and say ‘Hi …’ What they do, you do and you follow their lead.’”

Kindness and inclusion. Simple as that.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.