Students with Special Needs

“Pray for students with special needs who aren’t receiving the support & aids they’re accustomed to as they continue their education.”  April 22nd, Dominique Gilliard

I doubt it can be overstated: disability rights are human rights. Special needs students are sacred. In the 2017-2018 school year, 7 million students ages 3 thru 21 held special needs status in the United States. Each of these young ones is beloved of God. None of their needs disappeared when schools closed. For many families and caregivers, special needs have multiplied. Learn more in this article from Erica Green for the New York TImes.

Education is Liberation. It’s been said so often we don’t who said it first. Frederick Douglass, Paulo Freire, my mom. Whoever gave us this message, the point is clear and it bears repeating. It is not possible to be free unless we learn to transfer knowledge to and with power. 

Beyond being a go-to quotable, the phrase must be taken as communal. Unless we equip learners to study in supportive safety, we are withholding their fundamental right to be fully free - to be themselves. They are worthy of all the time, creativity and innovation it takes to insure their health and education. The more we learn this, the freer we will truly be. Let’s pray together.

O Lord, hear the prayers of your people. This season has brought grief and lament in addition to the weights of chaos and fogged up futures. We never held more than each day in our hands, but now O God it feels so faithless and presumptuous to even make plans. What are we to do? What shall we say to these things? Is God truly for us? In this season, even the air is against us. 

Jesus, ever Living Lord, are you asleep in this storm?  We need a God who is near, we need you, O God who has our names written on your hands. Since you have told us you cannot forget us, like a mother whose own body nourishes her child, we are bold enough to come to you this morning and plead with you - and complain to you - because we need to be remembered. 

Lord, today we cry out for the young ones who are vulnerable to ableism and systemic neglect. We tremble for the health and education of students with special needs. Your precious children of all ages who were shaped by your hand, then called sacred and good, they need justice, Lord. They need considerations that many people in leadership are unable or unwilling to provide. 

We lift up the students who need tactile-centered environments, those learners for whom tablet and headphones are not enough. Students whose occupational therapy and physical therapy are integral to their readiness for receiving instruction and participating in their own liberation through education - these are your children in need of your presence and power, O God, today. 

Holy Spirit, empower these learners and encourage their guardians. Give them energy and boldness to continue to advocate for their loved ones and neighbors with special needs. Let their questions and demands be delivered to listening leaders, administrators and educators who value students as sacred lives who are worth all the time it takes. 

Transform the minds at work in support of the Education Secretary’s schemes. Defrost their hearts and show them a vision of your value for students with special needs. Dismantle their disempowering policies. 

Our rulers lack imagination and empathy. They are unable to strategize without centering greed over need. Their greatest strength is apathy. As the federal government designs - again - to withhold crucial care from students, we call on you Lord, the only King before whom we bow. We need you to meet our needs, to hold back the inhumane policies that are being plotted against your children. 

Be a help to special educators who are hurting for their students and sacrificing their time and money to extend care in ways they should not bear alone.

Lord, be near to the adult learners with special needs. Send your Spirit to students whose activity centers and job programs are closing. Give them peace in the midst of so much change. Ease their emotions and calm their bodies. Soothe the anxieties that creep up as the predictability they need is quickly turning into the unknown.

Encourage the guardians who depend on structured schedules, special education, regular in home visits and para-professionals. Comfort the loved ones who are quarantined away from their special needs students, who are unable to visit with them or unable to tend to them. Strengthen them with the remembrance that they can get through this. Show them how to show greater love and give them rest on their weary days.

Cover the disabled who are ailing or hospitalized with your tender care. Be an advocate, bear witness of their worth. Send your Spirit to testify to their nurses and doctors. Make their care and treatment just.

And protect, O God, protect, the special needs students in jail, in houseless or emergency shelter situations. Protect those who are vulnerable to abuse, trapped with abusers that their education activities once allowed them to escape. Jesus be a warrior for those who feel no fight left in them. Fill the so-called powerless with your Spirit of fortitude. Speak life and remind us that in you there is power at hand.

Lord, hear the prayers of your people. Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 82

Watch: Corto Ian, short film https://youtu.be/6dLEO8mwYWQ 

Music: Mighty Long Way, Joe Pace // Hard Times, Mavis Staples 

Artwork: Hope for Africa, Agbeniga Mayowa // 2, South African Art Collective // African Culture Fund

Prayer Requests: https://forms.gle/n8SXo2TbySX3T2iE6

COVID-19 Prayer Calendar by Dominique Gilliard