Exceptional Help
Students from Southridge High's exceptional students program visit places like Monkey Jungle each week to get job experience.
by Elizabeth Caram
ecaram@herald.com
"Monkeys let out high-pitched squeals and swing from branch to branch when students from Southridge High visit their Jungle each Thursday.
It sounds like a good time, but they are not there to monkey around -- they all have work to do."
Each of the eight students who work at Monkey Jungle on Thursday has a mental handicap. Their IQs range from 20 to 60. A few have Down syndrome.
They are accompanied by teacher Norris Joyner, who watches as they tackle their chores.
They aren't glamorous jobs, either. Some go into a miniature kitchen and get to work chopping monkey food: pineapples, cantaloupe, grapes, apples and watermelon -- a diet that would make even Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer proud.
And some of the primates are on diets.
King, the 35-year-old resident gorilla, weighs about 450 pounds. His caretakers want to keep it that way, because male gorillas in captivity have a tendency to become a tad portly -- hence, the fruit and vegetable diet.
While some kids chop up the fruit that will help keep monkeys slim, others hit the grass with buckets full of soapy water and brushes.
Their job: get the, uh, stuff, off the monkey carriers employees use when they have to take the animals from one place to another.
Some scrub and others dry. Others choose to simply watch, or ''chill'' as they like to call it.
The ''chillers'' are ''taking the day off.'' At least that's what Joyner says about Alejandro Arencibia and Alfred Jones, both known for choosing to watch most of the times.
While those two watch, Matthew Turner keeps busy by scrubbing shelves -- even while he is chatting away and showing off his Usher-like dance moves.
It is difficult for most adults to be around people like Matthew, who has Down syndrome, but not for Joyner.
''Don't feel sorry for them. They're the happiest people on earth,'' he said with a broad smile.
"God blessed them with something else.''
Joyner, who teaches 39 students along with Frank Christ and Tobe Marmorstein, is not the only teacher supervising a Thursday work site.
Christ takes a group of students to Bee Heaven, a farm that grows organic vegetables (and uses their own bees for pollination). Here, kids do farm work. They pull weeds and plant seeds.
Christ credits his fellow teachers with doing an excellent job, explaining that each one of the three play different roles in the classroom.
'Mr. J. nails the kids when they misbehave and just tells it like it is. Then Ms. M. will come in and nurture the student, saying, `it's OK.' I'm the reinforcement,'' Christ chuckles.
But at each location Thursdays, the three teachers are on their own.
They do just fine, especially when people like Sian Evans are around to help. Evans, the managing director at the DuMond Conservancy at Monkey Jungle, developed the partnership with Southridge.
''The kids really enrich our lives,'' Evans said. ``I can't emphasize that enough.''
Evans said everyone benefits.
''The kids love it, we need the help and enjoy having them with us and even the monkeys are happier when the kids are around,'' Evans said in her office, walls plastered with primate posters.
Not everyone can work with monkeys, though.
Marmorstein's kids work at The Palace, an assisted-living community in Homestead.
With responsibilities like setti
ng the dining-room tables and helping with laundry, the Palace kids learn important skills that can help them get a job at a place like McDonald's, which is exactly where Tequiesh
Cooper wants to work someday.
Back at the Jungle, Michelle Fonseca hand fed Miss Fuzzy, an owl monkey that had a baby just one week ago.
Michelle was the first one in the class to try hand feeding. Usually the kids place food bowls in the monkey cages.While the kids' jobs are not what could be called ''normal,'' a Garfield poster in their classroom offers a comforting thought: ``Normal is overrated.''
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