Many, if not most, general education students will have interactions with a person with a disability at some time during their lives; they may become the parent of a special needs child; have a family member, neighbor, or co-worker with special needs; or at the very least, come in contact with people with disabilities in the community. This article describes a course of study, developed in partnership with general and special education teachers, that addresses understandings of the needs of people with disabilities through the use of integrated language arts curriculum. The article chronicles the yearlong journey of a class of 5th-graders who learned about people with special needs through literacy instruction and interaction with the early childhood special education students on their urban campus. The authors hope that general education teachers will use this format to develop similar courses of study in their own classrooms.