Joelle Silva, right, shows fellow first grader Joshua Harris a stick she will put in her fairy house during a program about fairy tales. Watching are Erin Capuano, a teacher’s assistant, and student Jake Downey.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE Talia and Shania are best friends. They have regular play dates where they dress up as princesses, hold tea parties and go swimming.

If they had attended public school, chances are they never would have met, much less become buddies because Talia, who is 9 and has “global developmental delays,” would be spending most of her day in a self-contained classroom. She didn’t learn how to walk until she was 4 years old; she can’t dress herself and she is just beginning to speak. Shania, who is almost 9, is a typical third grader: silly one moment, all business the next.

But they attend The Grace School, a kindergarten through eighth grade school where students with special needs attend all their classes with regular education students like Shania.

Created three years ago, The Grace School is the latest offspring of Meeting Street School, which serves children with a wide range of special needs.

“We realized that we were just as guilty of segregating special-needs children as anyone else,” said Meeting Street president John Kelly. “Our families felt that their children were disconnected from their peers.”

No school in Rhode Island has gone as far to “mainstream” students with special needs as The Grace School. Each year, the school adds another inclusive classroom, with the goal of being fully integrated by 2015. So far, kindergarten through grade three classes include both types of students. Unlike most schools, where special-needs students are often taught separately, children at The Grace School are together for reading and math, art and music, recess and physical education.

The beauty of the inclusive classroom, Kelly said, is that children look beyond the wheelchair and see each other as children, not as the sum of their disabilities. If you ask a child to describe his or her best friend, they will say that the classmate is bossy or shy, funny or serious.

The Grace School teaches children to be tolerant, compassionate and respectful, qualities that will be immensely valuable when they enter the adult world, said head of school Karen Higbie.

Located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, the school also offers an affordable alternative to parents who consider the public schools to be unsafe, overcrowded and underfinanced.

Meanwhile, the child with special needs is learning that the universe doesn’t revolve around him or her. As the special-needs students sit in class and watch their regular education classmates, they discover, This is how I pay attention. This is how I answer a question. This is how I listen to my friends.

In Patrick Donahue’s second-grade classroom, Aaron Grant, 9, who has a form of autism called pervasive developmental disorder, sits in a small cluster of regular education children.

As Donahue peppers the class with questions about what they are reading, another teacher, Laura Soscia, works exclusively with Aaron, helping him sit quietly and stay focused. When Aaron fails to follow instructions, Soscia uses a rewards system to keep him on target. If he blows all five of his chances by the end of the school day, there is no Cartoon Network for Aaron that evening.

Aaron’s mother, Nancy Grant of East Providence, said The Grace School has unlocked the door to his considerable intelligence. The other day, Aaron brought home some complicated subtraction problems and he did the work.

“They don’t assume he can’t do it,” she said. “They don’t treat him like a disability and he knows it. He wants to be a regular kid and he knows he’s not. That caused a lot of hurt before. Now, his social skills are a lot better.”

“Maybe,” Grant said, “he can do something with his life.”

In another corner of Donahue’s classroom, Teri Croteau, a special education teacher, works with three children, two of them in wheelchairs, who have little or no language. One of them is Talia, a sometimes silly little girl who never stops smiling and is more than willing to please.

Last year, Talia couldn’t spell her name, count or identify colors. This year, her vocabulary has “gone through the roof,” Croteau said.

No one is more tickled by Talia’s transformation than her mother, Melanie Cluley of Warwick.

“She’s a different child,” Cluley said. “We see a huge difference in the language she has because she wants so badly to talk to her friends. She eats everything now. We’ve also seen big changes in her maturity level.”

A big part of Talia’s success is her friendship with Shania. When the girls were in first grade together, Talia came home with a note one day that said, “You are my best friend. Shania.”

Cluley burst into tears. “Shania is great with Talia,” Cluley said. “Talia can’t dress herself, so when they play dress up, Shania does it. They go to the movies together. We even had a tea party at my house recently. It’s amazing to see how motivating it is for Talia to do things with her peers. They want to do what the other kids are doing.”

Shania doesn’t see what the big deal is all about.

“We like hanging out together,’ she said. “Talia is like my big sister. She’s fun to play with. I help her dance.”

But what does the general education student get out of the inclusive classroom?

Small classes, for starters. Each class has an average of 15 students and every child, special needs or not, has a personal learning plan. Children also receive an exceptional degree of individual attention because there are two teachers — a regular education teacher and a special education one — in each class, along with teacher assistants.

And how many public schools have a full-time librarian, a full-time nurse and a full-time social worker, not to mention an arts studio and a small therapy pool that regular education students can use. Meeting Street also has a visiting artists program.

When Meeting Street relocated from East Providence to the city’s South Side in 2007, the school made a commitment to the neighborhood’s revitalization. Today, the classrooms reflect the neighborhood’s diversity: 65 percent of the school’s population is composed of minority students. And about two-thirds of the regular education students at The Grace School receive financial aid so they can manage the $8,100 tuition.

Meeting Street also offers an extended school day (from 7:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.), which is particularly appealing to parents who work. The school is also open during the summer, another plus for parents who would otherwise have to find daycare for their youngsters.

Shania’s mother, Alexandra Morales of Providence, said she was initially drawn to The Grace School by the smaller classes and individual attention, but what has kept her there is the way in which her daughter has blossomed emotionally and socially.

“Shania has learned to be more patient, more generous,” Morales said. “The other day, she said, ‘Mommie, when I grow up I want to be a special education teacher.’ ”

lborg@projo.com