- Legacy Boutique helps students with disabilities learn skills they can apply to life.
- The Boutique is grant-funded with help from the school district in Wakulla County.
- Watch the video above to hear how it's helping neighbors in the community.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Making crafts like this in school is not only fun, it’s also setting students here up for success in the future. I’m Kenzie Krueger at the Legacy Boutique where this experience is helping students with disabilities learn skills they can apply to life.
“It gives me the opportunity to do what I can to give back and to watch them.” Heartwarming is what Kimberly Dutton describes her 34 years of teaching. Some of those years were spent teaching students and her son in a program called Legacy Boutique.
Kimberly Dutton: “Actually, my son is an adult with a disability so he’s part of the classroom and able to be a part with him and through the years with my son, I’ve met some of the other students.”
She says it reminded her that helping students succeed is why she became a teacher to begin with.
“It just seems like it came full circle for me and my career in education.”
The Legacy Boutique is a program with Wakulla County Schools, helping students with disabilities learn independent living and work related skills through hands on experience.
They build and create art and other items that they sell to neighbors in the community.
Joanne Hernandez: “From seeing a button on, or learning to paint something at their house to decorate it and we have several of them that get jobs from skulls they’ve learned here.”
Joanne Hernandez teaches with Mrs. Dutton and also has a child with a disability.
“I never wanted to treat her like she had one so I always treated her like our other two children and nothing was ever off the table that’s what’s so great about this program.”
At Legacy Boutique their goal is to help students reach their full potential.
Which is what Hernandez’s daughter Isabel is excited about.
“I love it.”
Other students Jennifer Hatton says she looks forward to going there. “We’re like a family and it’s absolutely awesome the crafts are fun and you learn something different everyday.”
Dutton says it’s rewarding to see students complete the program and get jobs or take the skills with them. “Just to see them grow and where they were when they first came and where they are when they leave us.”
The Legacy Boutique is grant funded with help from the district. They have regular pop up boutiques. To help with their mission just go to their Facebook page Legacy Boutique.
