What Can Schools Learn From a Fashion Show?
Written by: Christian Talbot, MSA President (posted Mon, May 19th, 2025 | 9:05 am)
Whatever this blog post’s title summons to mind for you, it is probably not the fashion show that I recently experienced at Pillar High School (NJ), a Middle States accredited school.
But this fashion show reminded me of what the best schools do.
Pillar exclusively serves students with significant special needs, often including a combination of physical and cognitive disabilities. And my daughter Julia happens to be a Pillar student. Julia was born with microcephaly. She does not talk, walk, eat with her mouth (she’s tube fed), or exercise meaningful control over her fine motor movements.
And she is also an incredible young person—just like her peers at Pillar.
At Pillar’s first ever fashion show, Julia and her schoolmates all had a chance to shine. In the gym, a massive arch of balloons framed a red carpet. Lights flashed, music thumped, and each student traversed the red carpet to the thunderous applause, cheers, and laughter of a packed room of parents, siblings, friends, and Pillar staff.
Sitting there, it occurred to me that Pillar was modeling two things that great schools do:
The Power of Joy. I have never—truly never—been to a school event that was so unabashedly joyful. The Pillar faculty, staff, aides, and therapists went all in to celebrate young people who often bring significant challenges. Each child was accompanied by a staff member on their red carpet trip, and the emcee shouted out the child and the staff member. The room cheered equally loudly for both. The staff joked with each other, they joked with the students, they joked with the parents. Scanning the room, I saw that each family member either wore an enormous grin or was wiping away tears of joy.
The Power of Belonging. Each student’s goal was to participate in the fashion show according to their abilities. To enable that participation, the Pillar staff discerned the distinctive needs and strengths of each student. For Julia, that meant using her AAC (augmented and alternative communication) device to pick out the clothes she wanted to wear. For other students, it was getting up out of their wheelchairs or gait trainers and walking the red carpet with assistance. Each Pillar student so clearly experiences belonging because the Pillar staff see the students for who they are, care for them as they are, and develop them into the young people they can become.
Your school may not be a special education needs school, so joy and belonging may look very different for you. That’s the beauty of schools—we all serve the same mission, but we find endlessly distinctive ways to bring that mission to life.
The end of the school year is often chaotic and exhausting. Some people refer to it as “the 100 Days of May.” I hope that you can find—and create—some joy and belonging to carry you and your learning community through the finish line.
