Lunch may be a time to socialize and take a break from classes for some. However, isolated from the rest of the student body, many students sit by themselves with no one to talk to at lunch.
Jenna Cataldi and Matthew Milazzo, Special Education teachers started the Lunch Buddies program to stop this isolation. All athletic teams volunteer to sit and eat lunch with special education kids throughout second semester.

“There’s a big difference between being accepting of people and including them.” Milazzo said. “There is that next step, for example, how you start to form the bonds a little bit at a time, so they have the life long friendships. They have those opportunities to meet the person that they might go to the game and see and be able to have that relationship built.”

The program allows Life Skills students, who have a variety of mental and physical disabilities to push those differences aside and to have lunch like any other regular high school kid. Teams such as softball, football, and girls’ soccer have athletes that regularly volunteer every week to sit and eat lunch with the Life Skills students.

“Before this program, I would see them in the hall and “You have to be nice to them” was my mental mindset, but I would never really talk to them,” Grace Kinsey, sophomore basketball player said.

Kinsey is one of the many athletes that volunteer to sit with the students during lunch. True friendships are seen when an athlete simply sits down to eat lunch with another Life Skills student, according to Milazzo. “You can just tell how genuine the students are who volunteer for this program and how they want to be here for the kids with special needs,” Cataldi said. “It has been really wonderful and I am so impressed with the staff and the students especially, on how they have just been really accepting the students and made the transition for these kids so smooth here.”

Even though Milazzo believes that students are generally accepting of their peers, he thinks that Lunch Buddies can help take friendships and relationships to the next level. Milazzo also believes that Lunch Buddies provides a memorable experience for both the students and athletes.

“I think it’s really important to get to know all different types of students at Lake Zurich High School, not just the people that I sit with every single day,” Kinsey said. “I would’ve never gotten this experience without the Lunch Buddies Program. I wouldn’t even know half of their names. Its nice to reach out a little more. After getting to know them a little bit better, at the beginning of the day, Logan will come up and I’ll get to talk to him for a little bit, just getting to know them as people and not just as the “special needs kid.”