HIGH POINT, N.C. — People come in all shapes, sizes and abilities. One teacher and mom is making it her mission to show that, no matter what obstacles you face, the challenge is never too tall.
Kelli Brentnell is a mom of two boys, Walt and Charlie, who love to go to the playground. Wrangling more than one child at the park can be a struggle for any parent, and for Brentnell, she doesn’t let being born with one arm get in her way.
“I have to sometimes think about alternate ways to keep them and me and everybody else safe, but it’s never a question of whether I can or can’t do something, it’s how I’m going to make it happen,” Brentnell said.
Brentnell said her parents did not know she would be born without an arm and didn’t treat her any differently, pushing her toward success every day.
“You never know what somebody’s story is, and it’s really cliche, but it’s really important to never judge a book by its cover,” Brentnell said.
She teaches her boys these critical lessons of life, but she also spreads this message in her classroom as an adaptive curriculum teacher at a Title I school.
Brentnell has been a teacher for over 20 years, teaching adaptive curriculum every year. She currently is teaching grades 6 through 8.
“We have a great population of students with disabilities and typically developing students. And our school and our teachers, they embrace the differences, and they embrace everything that we have and all of our abilities,” Brentnell said.
Her students have varying disabilities, but she doesn’t let that stop them from learning, like any other student — studying subjects such as time, money, culture and government.
“It gives me the opportunity to open the world to them because so often we don’t get second chances. And for me, being able to teach them about the real world, being able to teach them about things that other middle school kids are learning is really important to me, and I want them to have that exposure,” Brentnell said.
Teaching is a tough job as it is, but when some parents meet Brentnell, she said they question her ability to care for their child.
“I’ve had my fair share of parents who thought there was no way I could handle their kids’ behavior or no way I could handle their kids’ physical needs. And I like to prove them wrong. I’m all in that business, and I like to help the kids, help them prove their parents wrong as well,” Brentnell said.
She added some students have been able to do certain tasks and behaviors in the classroom they may not exhibit at home.
“Nobody ever let me use my arm or my difference as an excuse. And so I would never let anyone else use that as well. And sometimes we as parents, because I know with my own kids, we struggle to see what our kids are capable of at different milestones and at different ages. Sometimes we need that push from someone else to say, ‘Hey, your kid can do this, or we can’t do this,’” Brentnell said.
She said she holds all her kids to the same standards, and the little thing that matters to her is giving everyone a chance to shine.
“It’s all someone’s voice, and we have to give everybody a voice and give them a chance,” Brentnell said.
Throughout the years, she has been able to touch kids’ lives, helping them show they can do anything they put their minds to, even coming back to visit years later.
“Just last week I had a student come back that I had had 15 years ago, and she’s gone off and doing amazing things and she happens to have a prosthetic leg. And so we talked about prosthetics and talked about how life works and what we can do and how we can make a bigger impact and how we can approach things,” Brentnell said.
Her goal isn’t just to impact the lives of her students, it’s reaching the public, bringing them into her classroom and letting them see what her kids can do.
“But if I can make the difference in 400 other kids and have them go into the community and not be scared to approach someone who’s in a wheelchair and not be scared to approach somebody who has an assistive technology device and have a conversation, then I have made a bigger impact and that’s what I’m here to do. I want people to see us all as humans first and as people first, and that we all access the world differently,” Brentnell said.