Friendsgiving Teaches Key Life Skills At Walt Whitman High School

SOUTH HUNTINGTON, NY — Walt Whitman High School’s Life Skills program celebrated its second annual Friendsgiving on Tuesday, bringing together more than two dozen students, teachers, and alumni for a festive meal—and a full day of hands-on learning.

The Life Skills program serves students ages 14 to 22 with individualized education programs for a range of disabilities, including autism, learning disabilities, hearing or vision impairment, Down syndrome, physical challenges, brain injury, and emotional disturbance. Students can remain in the program through age 22.

Special education teacher Melanie Marano launched the gathering last year as a way to reconnect program alumni with current students while creating a meaningful real-world learning experience.
“I was looking for an opportunity to reconnect my students who had exited the program with the students that are still here,” Marano said. “And it was a wonderful way to incorporate all the different functional life skills within one event.”

The Life Skills curriculum focuses on building independence and confidence through daily-living, social, and vocational training. Students practice shopping, cooking, reading recipes, managing household tasks, communicating with peers, and building workplace readiness.

Friendsgiving offered a chance to put all of those skills into action. Students helped plan the menu, prepare dishes, decorate, set up dining spaces, and serve the meal—all inside the program’s apartment-style classroom suite, which includes a full kitchen and dining area.

Marano said each class signed up for a dish using a shared spreadsheet.

“We started making cookies the week before, freezing a batch a day to bake before Friendsgiving,” she said. “Speech groups made cupcakes together. Classes made mashed potatoes, carrots, stuffing—every group took a piece of the preparation. Everything except the turkey was made right here in our kitchen.”

Life Skills students decorated the suite for the celebration, setting up two dining rooms with holiday movies and transforming a classroom into a dance floor where students could practice social skills and—most importantly—have fun.

The celebration welcomed 28 current Life Skills students, nine alumni, and the program’s teachers and teaching assistants. Marano said many students were most excited to reconnect with former classmates.

“This is an opportunity to socialize with friends they don’t always get to see outside of school,” she said. “Some of our students are in this program for as long as seven years. To exit and lose that daily connection—this brings it back.”

After hours of music, dancing, and sharing a meal together, each student left with a beaded Friendsgiving bracelet handmade by the Life Skills classes.

“Nothing makes it better than seeing how excited they were,” Marano said. “All of the effort, all of the time, all of the skills we worked on—it was all worth it.”