De Smet Jesuit High School to launch inclusive education program in the fall

St. Louis–area parents Brian and Barrett Hadican wanted their children educated together at Catholic parish schools. As their son Aiden Hadican, an eighth grader at Incarnate Word Parish School who has Down Syndrome, neared middle school graduation, the Hadicans reached out to De Smet Jesuit High School, Brian’s alma mater. At the time, the all-boys school, located in Creve Coeur, didn’t offer classes for students with disabilities, but, Brian says, “they were very receptive from the first conversation.” Barrett remembers that in one of their meetings, the school said: “We want Aiden to be here, but we want him to be really engaged with his peers. Let’s figure out how he can be involved in things, so he’s not just a number at De Smet.” Now, Aiden is excited to join De Smet next fall as part of its inaugural Inclusive Education Program.

Although the Archdiocese of St. Louis offers separate schools for elementary students with disabilities, early intervention centers, learning centers, and a center for autism, De Smet is the first Catholic high school in St. Louis to offer an inclusive program for children with intellectual disabilities. The new program will have two parts: the Peer Mentor Model and a dedicated classroom for students with intellectual disabilities. In the Peer Mentor Model, the disabled students will be taking fine arts, theology, physical education/health, and social studies with their fellow classmates. There will be 14 or 15 peer mentors, who will act as a point person for the disabled student. Peer mentors will help students take notes and condense them into an easy-to-understand format, says Sarah Patton, De Smet’s director of inclusive education. “[The peer mentors] will make sure that things stay organized and help the inclusion student with their homework notebook and communicate between the classroom teacher and parents,” she says. 

In their dedicated classroom, the inclusive students will take their core classes—math, English, science, and study skills/life skills—with Patton for all four years. The study skills/life skills class will help cultivate the tools—like organization, keeping to a schedule, and advocating for themselves—that the disabled students need to live independently. When the students are juniors and seniors, Patton will teach them job skills such as appropriate behavior at job sites and interview tools. Patton hopes they will have the opportunity to practice down the road by working at the bookstore at De Smet or running a coffee shop at the snack bar in Emerson Lobby. 

Fr. Ronny O’Dwyer, president of De Smet, credits the idea for the program to Kevin Poelker, the school’s principal. In 2017, Poelker saw that One Classroom, a nonprofit foundation that has helped Catholic schools create inclusive education for students in the St. Louis Archdiocese, was gaining traction at the local parishes.

“I had commented that I thought One Classroom would fit De Smet and be a wonderful thing if at some point we could be a part of it,” Poelker remembers. After De Smet’s student newspaper, The Mirror, published an article about the idea, people began voicing their interest in starting an inclusive learning environment at De Smet. But it wasn’t until O’Dwyer’s tenure began in 2022 that Poelker pursued the idea. The new president was supportive.

“For us, it’s a very clear instantiation of our mission,” O’Dwyer says. “What does it look like to be a Catholic Jesuit school today? It looks like a culture of inclusion where everyone has a seat at the table and that this is not an elitist experience.”