Small-town teacher shares life-changing lesson with students


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ESCALANTE, Garfield County — A class assignment unlike any you'll find in a textbook has made a huge difference at Escalante Elementary School.

As a third-grade teacher at the school, Beth Christensen wants to make sure her students experience as much as possible to make them better adults one day.

"They can make the world a better place one person at a time," Christensen said.

But when she saw how one student treated a classmate earlier this year, she realized she needed to teach them more.

"So many of them were scared at first. They were apprehensive. They didn't know what it would be like," Christensen said.

That's because there aren't any other students at the Garfield County school like Carston Byrd. He has cerebal palsy, which means he is fine mentally — he understands everything that's going on — it's just his body doesn't respond well to what his brain tells it to do.

"I loved him from the moment I (saw) him. I didn't care. I didn't want God to take him from me. I wanted him to be mine for the rest of my life," said Callie Byrd, Carston's mom.

"I didn't want him to be made fun of or treated differently at all," she said.

That's something no parent wants for their child. But with Carston, things are always going to be different no matter how much extra help he gets in school.

So, when Christensen saw one of her students ignore Carston one day, she thought why not have her students be Carston for a day? Then they'll see what it's like.

"It was a big turning point right there," Callie Byrd said.

Christensen called her experiment the "Walk a Mile in My Shoes" project. Students, on a voluntary basis, spent an entire school day in a wheelchair. They weren't allowed to walk, talk or write without help. They stuck to the rules even outside during recess, and during lunch a teacher had to feed them.

"I learned being in a wheelchair was hard, because my legs got tired and I wanted to get out and play," said Mac Porter, a student who participated in the experiment.

"It was really hard to not talk," classmate Rayce Jenkins said.

"They came away realizing (Carston's) life isn't easy and that he does amazing things," Christensen said.

All of sudden, Carston became the most popular kid in third grade — even during recess.

"It's just made him feel like: 'I have friends. I have friends who will kick the ball to me now and push me in a wheelchair and do wheelies,'" Callie Byrd said.

In fact, walking a mile in Carston's shoes made such an impact on the students, they decided to write a letter to their principal requesting a playground walkway for Carston to use.

"One little boy in my class summed it up really well," Christensen said. "He said at first he was scared and didn't know how to act, and he said 'that was my head.' And he said, 'Now when I look at Carston, I look at him with my heart.'"

All this because a teacher wanted her students to learn something you can't learn from a textbook.

"I think they learned they can make a difference," Christensen said.

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