Inclusive

In preparing for student teaching next semester, I am completing my final Education requirements-- Teaching Students in Inclusive Middle and High School Classrooms and Approaches to Teaching the Humanities. I am excited to be on the final stretch to completing my degree as an Education student, but I'm realizing how much there still is to learn, especially when it comes to Special Education. In reading the first texts and watching the first videos for my Inclusive course, I realized how much I don't know!

My education (K-12) as a student, didn't teach me anything about disabilities. In becoming a college student, I realized how much I didn't learn and how much was left out of my education growing up, which is one of the main reasons why I decided to be a History teacher. I want to make sure the stories of women and minority groups are told, which has been a major part of my developing pedagogy. Ironically enough, I didn't think to include disabled people as a minority group until I read "The Definition of Disability" by Deborah Kaplan and "We are not Aliens" by Priya Lalvani. Both of these articles have begun to shape my perspective on disabilities in concepts like, disabilities are socially constructed, social discrimination on the disabled is caused by the built environment rather than the actual disability, and the importance of teaching the history of the disabilities rights movement and discussing with ALL students what disabilities are.  Many students and teachers have expectations of what disabilities are without real understanding, like I did. But, after familiarizing myself with various videos showing the experience of those with disabilities, my expectations were proven wrong. For example, I watched the Youtube video "Born this Way," which showed adults with Down Syndrome living independently, which corrected a misconception that I had. I look forward to continue to confront stereotypes I may have throughout this Inclusive course.