Somewhere deep inside Makari Thompson’s head he’s a superstar.

He might be a singer. Or maybe he’s a famous speaker, a comedian perhaps.

Regardless, his words demand a microphone.

It doesn’t have to be a real one, a Magic Marker or a spoon handle will work.

The teachers in Makari’s 3-year-old special education class don’t remember how they discovered the boy’s inner stardom. They just know the microphone gets him to talk.

Paige Iseminger’s class is the first real stage for all 10 of her students.

For some, it’s the first time their disabilities have really been recognized and handled properly. For others, it’s a chance to be challenged, pushed — and a chance to shine.

Life at the end of the West Primary School hall is a little different.

Things happen on their own time. Open doors can mean lost children. And hearts frequently melt upon entry.

All the preschool students at West are precious; it’s an enrollment requirement. But Mrs. Paige’s class is premium preciousness.

Her group is the “severe and profound” disability class.

Three have been diagnosed with autism. Two more likely have the disorder. Two students have cerebral palsy, one is a hydrocephalus baby who’s had multiple brain surgeries and two children are considered developmentally delayed.

None of those nasty labels stop the children though; they do what everyone else does.

Tuesday, that meant riding the big bus and going Christmas caroling around town.

Wednesday, it meant sitting on the rug, singing the days of the week song, counting and naming colors — the same routine happening all over the school.

But watch, and it’s different.

Carson and Chanecia sit with a small container of dry cereal during rug time. It helps the autistic children sit still, Iseminger said.

Kyron and Colton would rather not sit, so they do a lot of jumping up and climbing.

And, for the most part, no one answers the teacher’s questions. They just stare.

“The hardest thing is when you go over something and you are teaching and teaching and teaching and they just sit there and look at you,” Iseminger said. “It is like teaching a blank wall sometimes.

“But when they get it, your heart melts.”

Those superstar moments do come.

For Makari, who is developmentally delayed, it happened when his brain connected with Mrs. Paige’s motions for the five senses. Now, on command and without the microphone, Makari can touch his nose, eyes, ears, mouth and hands and tell you what each one does.

For many of the others, the lessons are less academic.

Carson had to learn to sit. Iseminger and her two teacher assistants started in the cafeteria for lunch. Then they required sitting at breakfast too. Now, he’ll sit and color in the classroom.

For Kyron and Kieana the achievement was potty training. For several others, it’s accepting that it’s OK to eat food with utensils or off plates.

“It’s just the little things you don’t think you have to teach them,” Iseminger said. “Like going in the lunch line and balancing your tray.”

These lessons are the most important, and the stage Iseminger is setting will be reinforced for years to come.

At Natchez High School special education teacher Tommie Jones has students with similar disabilities, only 12 years later.

“Once they come to me, most of them do have good foundations,” Jones said. “What I’m going to do when I get them is start training them for after school.”

Jones’ No. 1 goal is to help her students have a life after high school. She works with several organizations, parents and community businesses to find jobs for many of her students. For the others, she prepares them for life at home.

“We find out what their strength is and start working in those areas,” she said. “We work on social skills and how to behave.”

Jones doesn’t spend much time on multiplication and grammar. She’s more apt to teach students to fold clothes or use a filing cabinet.

Without classes like the one at West Primary though, Jones’ job could be almost impossible, she said.

“Early intervention is so important,” she said. “The ones that took advantage of early intervention are so much more advanced that the ones that didn’t.”

Iseminger knows that fact too, and even sees varying degrees of it in her class.

“The earlier they start getting help the better off they will be,” she said. “Seeing what some of the kids need and are not being able to get is hard.”

Some children in Iseminger’s class have parents struggling to accept the truth, she said. Others just come from bad home situations.

NHS student Sadie Saunders is one of the high school’s superstars. And her mother Ellen Saunders believes accepting the truth and pushing for more paid off.

Sadie, 21, has downs syndrome. Sadie’s family is working with Jones to find a clerical job for her.

Ellen Saunders traces the success back to special rehabilitation in Jackson that Sadie started before she was a year old.

Iseminger pushes parents of her students to find rehab wherever they can. She’s even gone so far as to make appointments at local offices and arrange for transportation.

It’s not difficult to care about the children in Iseminger’s class.

But Iseminger feels a special connection.

All through her own school years she made As, but struggled. Learning was more difficult than it should have been, and her mother often had to orally read assignments to her.

In 10th-grade she was diagnosed with a learning disability and attention deficit disorder.

“I wanted to help the children that were going through the same thing I went through my whole life,” she said.

Now, she’s taught special education students from preschool to 12th-grade and worked at a facility for the emotionally disturbed.

She started off with a love for high school-aged children with learning disabilities, but gradually fell in love with children diagnosed with severe and profound disabilities.

On Tuesday’s caroling trip, the severe and profound class was the last one ready. On the stairs at the Natchez Senior Citizens Center, other children flew by while Mrs. Paige’s children had to be helped, slowly. On stage at Braden, the class sat while everyone else stood.

They aren’t the same.

But they went caroling. They smiled on stage. They crossed the street and climbed the stairs. They wore their hand-crafted Christmas shirts.

They aren’t the same; they are superstars.