AMESBURY — Cashman Elementary School walls were recently adorned with student-designed fish as a way of promoting inclusion and acceptance during Autism Awareness Month.
“It’s good because we were doing this to raise awareness for autism day and it was just something really fun to do to help raise the awareness,” fifth-grade student Radley DiLorenzo said.
April is recognized as National Autism Acceptance Month.
Inspired by her daughter Eliza Froncki, a freshman at Amesbury High School who has autism, CES paraprofessional Pia Froncki said she asked students to create uniquely designed fish to be hung throughout the school throughout the month. The goal, she said, was to show that while students are all unique, they are still part of the same loving community.
To get the initiative off and running, she set up a bulletin board near the school cafeteria and designed a big rainbow fish with her daughter to go on the bulletin board beneath the phrase, “We all are different, but we swim together at CES.”
From there, they began hanging the different fish made by students. They worked for hours getting them up on the walls starting Wednesday to coincide with National Autism Awareness and Acceptance Day.
“We’ll eventually cover the whole school,” Pia Froncki said, while showing off how the majority of the building has already been covered.
For hours on Wednesday, students helped her place the fish on the walls. Among them was fifth-grader Ben Smolki, who spoke about why he wanted to get involved.
“I think there should be a day that we can all accept different people’s differences,” he said.
Fellow fifth-grader Lia De La Cruz described the fish she crafted.
“I designed a fish with a lot of colors and stripes, with hearts for autism awareness with hearts of blue and red,” she said.
Fifth-grade teacher Amy Amico said she was “thrilled” with how the school was promoting autism awareness and acceptance, noting that the day before they celebrated Autism Awareness and Acceptance Day.
“The students were able to share their connections to that, and I actually had quite a few students who had connections to people in their lives with autism really, and talked about how they could welcome them into conversations,” Amico said.
She said the fish around the school are a great representation of that message of inclusion.
“A perfect visual reminder,” Amico said.
Eliza Froncki, who plays JV football at AHS, said her mom’s initiative meant a lot to her.
“It means a lot to me. It means she wants to show that autism is not a disability, it’s a superpower,” she said.
Matt Petry covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News of Newburyport. Email him at: mpetry@northofboston.com.