Starting high school can be a challenging experience for many. But at Hendersonville High School in Tennessee, a group of students went above and beyond to make one of their new classmates feel more comfortable. Since the first day of class, Sergio Peralta had been trying to hide his right hand, which never fully formed, in his sleeve. Some of his classmates reached out to the engineering department to collaborate on making the 15-year-old a working prosthetic hand.
“In the first days of school, I honestly felt like hiding my hand,” Peralta says. “Like nobody would ever find out.” His fellow classmates, however, were eager to help him out and approached Jeff Wilkins, the engineering teacher at the school, with an inspiring idea. Under his supervision, the students utilized online models of prosthetic hands that they could build using a 3D printer. “They ended up offering me, like, ‘We could build your prosthetic hand,’ and I never expected it,” he admits. “Like, never in a million years.”
With the new prosthetic fitted to his arm, Peralta was able to do things he could never attempt before, like even catching a baseball. One of the students who worked on the project, Leslie Jaramillo, said: “You’re supposed to be engineering, coming up with new ideas, solving issues. Just making things better than how they used to be.” Clearly, the project paid off in spades, as it demonstrated how technology and compassion can completely change someone’s life.
Near Nashville, Tennessee, a 15-year-old student named Sergio Peralta was surprised when his classmates created a prosthetic hand for him.
When 15-year-old Sergio Peralta started a new school, he tried to hide the fact that he was born with a hand that didn’t fully form. But when a teacher in the high school engineering program found out, a few students came up with a life-changing idea. pic.twitter.com/57YlSZA2TR
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 26, 2023
h/t: [Upworthy]
All images via CBS Evening News.
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