MISSOULA — Volunteers in Special Olympics are paramount to the success of the games.
In Missoula, Shelby Cassell knows this well, as a special education teacher at Sentinel, who has been actively involved in this space for eight years.
But it wasn't always the original plan when Cassell made the trek from the small Hi-Line town of Hingham to the University of Montana as a student.
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"I started out in exercise science, ended up working with a young man with a disability doing physical therapy treatments with him and decided that that was definitely my path," Cassell said.
What has transpired has been a career of teaching special education first at Big Sky and then Sentinel high schools.
She coaches the high school Special Olympics team, and also is the Unified Champions Schools liaison at Sentinel, which promotes acceptance and inclusion among the general student body.
A full plate to say the least.
"Without Special Olympics, they wouldn't get to do any of these things," Cassell said. "They wouldn't get to learn about sports in competition and being a teammate and being a a good citizen and a member of the community and giving back to all that, and giving my athletes that opportunity to keep doing those things keeps me coming back."
Every year Sentinel hosts a respect assembly that brings those students into a fun basketball game with their peers. This year, that event was on May 1 in front of the whole school.
Shelby's impact with her students, goes a long way for their growth.
"It's excellent," Sentinel senior Grace Grutsch said about being taught by Shelby. "To spend time with her."
Shelby has also integrated other Sentinel students into helping out as unified partners, who are able to be friends of a similar age and peer group for her students.
"I think making the new friendships because It hasn't just brought me closer to the athletes, but it's also made new friendships with other peer tutors," Sentinel freshman Mckenna Straub said. "I've gone to basketball and Winter Olympics and you kind of see a lot of the same people, and like they recognize me and I've made friendships through that, and it's just really exciting for me to make new friends in that sort of way."
"Probably watching these kids grow because when you come in, they have this one goal that they need to succeed," fellow Sentinel freshman Brooklynn Tarran said. "And then by the end, they have not only succeeded this goal, but 10 others. So watching them start from ground one to ground 10 is such a cool thing to watch. And it's really amazing."
Cassell's vision has created positive change, and her impact has been deep.
"We can do what everybody else does, it might look a little different how we do it. It might take a different amount of time, but we can access everything that everybody else accesses," Cassell said. "So showing the school and the community what we can do and how we can do it with them."
And the hope is that all students continue to grow and take these skills with them after high school.
"It's so special. It's so important," Cassell said. "Just building that understanding of this is something that's normalized. This is something we just do. This is how we are good citizens. And this is how we give back to our community and establishing that young so that it's just as normal and it's not different."
