After reading chapter one, I feel much more educated about the proper way to refer with people who have a disability. I feel like the most important pieces of advice to remember from this chapter are that every individual is unique, and their disabilities can be just as unique as they are. Another important piece of advice is to always use people first language and the active voice instead of the passive voice.
I think that our community as a whole has come a long way since the early days of disabilities and the middle ages, where people were outcasted or experimented on simply because they were different. I think that it is very important that we progressed since those times, institutionalizing less people with disabilities and allowing them more of an equal opportunity to show their excpetionalities rather than hide them. I feel like IDEA is allowing more families to get the support their children need to be able to attend general education classrooms (if the necessary IEP calls for it), and is allowing for students to feel more "normal" being placed in general education classrooms, regardless of the negative aspects some may see from inclusion and mainstreaming.
One thing that sort of bothered me from this chapter was the fact that they called integration or mainstraming "normalization" in the past. I feel as though just because a student is already in a general education classroom, they are not necessarily normal. Everyone at some point or another has struggled in their education, and just because they are supposidely on track with their peers, it does not mean they are normal. There may be some children in special education settings that are normal based on the qualifications of grades, but have some behavioral problems keeping them from being in general ed. Just because a student is in a general education classroom, it does not mean they are normal and that any other student not placed in general ed is not normal.
I have had an experience like this while working at a day care this past summer. I worked with children who ranged in age from 1 year to 13 years of age, 3 of which were children with Autism. Two of these 3 students were siblings, a year apart, who could not be any more different. Brendan, a six year old with autism was very well behaved and very intelligent. Brendan could tell you all about trains and how they worked, about the sports he loved to watch, and about what he did at home with his daddy. His nine year old sister, Jess was the complete opposite. Although very polite, she would throw intense temper tantrums if she did not get her way. There were times where she would literally throw herself on the ground and scream to the point of vomiting to prove how badly she wanted something. The third child with autism was Jason, a nine year old who was very energetic and always happy. He never threw screaming fits like Jess and barely talked, so he never told stories or explained processes like Brendan did. However, Jason was a very violent child. He threw toys and chairs, bit all the time, and would spill everything just to get a rise from the teachers. His behavior was awful, but he was a very intelligent little boy who loved to sort things by color, shape, and size. He knew when he did something wrong and loved being prepared for the schedule of the day. He always knew what was coming next. These three kids taught me so much about how different a diagnosed disability could be in different cases. This was my prime example of a real life situation from this chapter, reminding me that no two cases of a disability is the same and it is so important not to generalize students based on their disabilities.
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