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Saturday afternoon Kiki Ransom's mother braided her daughter's thick hair into a twist hanging down her back before the 17-year-old Middletown High School student clasped a silver necklace with a bejeweled "K" around her neck.

Kiki wore her favorite dress, one that cascades to the floor in shades of orange and red that remind her of the sunset.

"It's my color," she said with a smile.

On Friday afternoon, Jessie Gregory, another MHS student, had his dark black locks shorn into a mohawk that matched the black shirt and tie he wore under his blue suit Saturday, May 10.

When asked to describe the students they work with, the leaders of the school's Young Life Capernaum group kept coming back to the same phrases.

"She's a typical high school girl."

"He's just your average high school guy."

Capernaum, a non-denominational Christian outreach program for students with disabilities, began four years ago at MHS. As education has moved toward more inclusive atmospheres for all students, groups like Capernaum aim to extend that inclusion to social aspects of high school life, said Rachel Nusbaum, a former Capernaum leader who now works as a nurse in a multiple-disabilities classroom.

Throughout the year, the Capernaum leaders — volunteers in their late teens to mid-20s — take the students they work with to football games, concerts and on other trips. Some of the students participate in the traditional Young Life program.

Among those other outings, prom is the big night.

"Their disabilities shouldn't hold them back," said Lindsay Brinegar, a Capernaum group leader studying special education in college. "They should be able to have a lot of the same opportunities as their peers.

"They're labeled as different but at the heart of it, they're really not."

In 2007, four Capernaum students attended the prom; this year, eight went with two group leaders, Brinegar and Tim Carlson.

"The leaders try to make it as similar for them as possible to a typical prom night," said Nusbaum.

The students met for dinner at the home of Cindi and Tim Nusbaum, Rachel's parents, Saturday evening, before going out to the front lawn for photos, boutonnieres and corsages, donated by Sue Kelzer, one of Rachel's co-workers at Centerville High School. A limousine picked the students up at Nusbaum's home,

"That's just an exciting part and tradition that some of the typical kids don't get to do," said Brinegar. "We just try to fill the typical patter of what a prom night looks like."

During dinner, the students joked with one another, trading an inside joke about hair on fire, a favorite prank of one of the students, Michael Lester, and were entertained by another student, Josh Ingram, whom the leaders described as a great story-teller.

Many of the students live in the moment, not looking forward to future events as others might, said Nusbaum.

"It's really important to make it special for them that day because it's the one day they get to think about it and look forward to it and be excited about it," she said.

Through donations from the Nusbaum family, Mike and Curry Winters, Carl and Millie Hollon and Craig and Melanie Moon — as well as Wolfe Radiator Works, the youth group at Breiel Boulevard First Church of God and the Oaks Community Church — the Capernaum leaders raised enough money for the limousine.

"I like the limo," said student Chris Brown, 19. "That's my favorite part."

Efforts like the prom outing are a great way to include all students, said Stephanie Jamison, a former Young Life leader and Edgewood High School special education teacher, whose husband is the pastor at The Oaks.

"We try so hard to include the students in the classroom," she said. "This is something where they can be included because they know how to have fun."

Principal Dennis Newell and the MHS staff have been supportive of Capernaum's work with students with disabilities and especially the prom outing, allowing the students, who go to the dance for about two hours, to attend free, said Nusbaum.

"The teachers were excited to see them there and so were the other students," said Brinegar. "They all came up and said hi and they danced with them."

Nusbaum said that she thinks the typically developing students enjoy being with the Capernaum students because they are so accepting.

"I feel like our world is so complicated and so judgmental and so just negative all the time," she said. "These kids are loving and non-judgmental and their worlds are joyful and simple."

In fact, sometimes it's those kids who are the best teachers.

"I feel like a lot of us go into this experience to make a difference in their lives," Nusbaum said. "And it almost always ends up being the opposite."

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2805 or mgildow@coxohio.com.

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