Kaelyn Goodman dreamed of being an angel princess for Halloween. But she had a problem she already knew all too well at 9 years old: her wheelchair.
Kaelyn lives in Florida and has congenital myasthenic syndrome, a rare genetic disease that affects the nerves and muscles. Her wheelchair gives her independence when her muscles get tired, but this time she worried it would get in the way of her costume. Then 25 eighth-grade students at her school, now known as “Kaelyn’s Angels”, took on the challenge as a project for their STEM class.
They didn’t guess what she would want. They invited her into their classroom, listened to her ideas, and asked her about her favorite colors. Kaelyn skipped her own recess to sit with them and design and make decisions. Some things didn’t work and had to be redone, and several learned to sew without even knowing how to thread a needle.
On October 10, at her school’s Trunk-or-Treat event, the wheelchair had become an angel throne with wings. “I felt like a real princess”, Kaelyn told PEOPLE magazine. Her parents sum it up this way: they turned something usually seen as medical equipment into something beautiful.