Special-ed singers spread joy with carols, red noses
It’s not easy keeping track of how many lords are leaping, but the special-education students of the Access program in San Francisco nailed it for the 10th year in a row.
Their annual holiday sing-along concert Monday seemed to make all of South of Market jingle like the things on onehorse open sleighs.
“I just feel more comfortable when I sing,” said Karina Duran, 20, one of the student performers. “It gives me confidence.”
Every year, the students put on red sweaters and red Rudolph noses and invite the community to join in, sing a few tunes and learn about the program that’s part of San Francisco Unified School District. It helps special-education students make their own way in the city in the years after high school.
Duran, when she’s not calling the calling birds and the French hens, takes tickets at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Other students work at public service jobs all over town.
“The program helps me get around,” Duran said. “It makes me feel independent. I learn how to ride the Muni. I’m 20 years old. You can’t ride a school bus forever.”
For this year’s concert, about 150 folks showed up to belt out the tunes, including school district Superintendent Vincent Matthews, who thumped expertly on a set of bongo drums, and Police Chief Bill Scott, who didn’t need the printed lyrics to know how many swans were swimming, and former state Sen. Mark Leno, who did.
The Access program, said Matthews, “gives students a lift up to help them do what they do well.”
Program director Heidi Seretan said her curriculum is independence, which is at least as important as anything else a kid picks up at school. She started the singalong when her program was based at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, but it quickly outgrew the school library. Now the program operates out of the The Arc center for disabled adults at 11th and Howard streets.
The song lineup — Frosty, Rudolph and the maids a-milking — never changes but the young people in the program do, going on to hold down jobs and apartments. “Anybody can conquer anything, disability or not,” said Joey Bechelli, 19, one of the sing-along emcees.
Bechelli, when he isn’t passing out red Rudolph noses, helps care for the police horses at their Golden Gate Park stable. It’s fun, he said, even sweeping out the stalls.
“Overcoming my fears, standing up for my rights, choosing where and when I go places,” he said. “That’s what you learn.”