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When is a disability issue not a disability issue?
This week, I spoke to several classes of college students training to be special educators. A common
thread within the classes was a concern about the social interactions between students with disabilities
and those without. As we spoke about these concerns, it reminded me of the importance of asking our
title question: when is a disability issue not a disability issue?
One student is support staff for a pre-adolescent with Asperger's syndrome. His question to me, as a
parent, was, "Would you want to know if your child was having some inappropriate interactions
with people at school?" When asked to explain what was happening,
he told me this student used to eat lunch by himself, but
lately was sitting at a table full of girls. He and the girls
were talking, but it seemed to the support staff that the
girls might be teasing the student with Asperger's, and he
didn't realize it. When asked to clarify further, he explained
that the student with the disability was not doing anything
wrong; he was simply concerned that he might be becoming the
object of teasing. The support staff wondered if this was
something the parents needed to be told, if he needed to talk
to the student he supported about this, and so on.
Here is the place where it is good to stop and ask the question: when is a disability issue not a
disability issue? Simply because a student with a disability is involved in this situation does not
make it a disability issue. The student with the disability is not doing anything "wrong", he just
happens to be there. It is the girls sitting with him at lunch that may be behaving badly. Or, it
may just be the typical behavior of kids who haven't yet figured out how to interact with the opposite
sex. In either case, the fact that the boy involved has a disability is irrelevant to this situation.
If the girls are, in fact, over the top in their behavior, then THEY, not the student with the
disability, need to be talked to and THEIR parents possibly contacted.
Another concern the students mentioned was that they were not sure if inclusion was a good idea,
because the regular students might be mean to the students with disabilities. Again, a good place
to ask the question: when is a disability issue not a disability issue? If a student in a school is
being mean to others he sees as less powerful or different than himself, he is being a bully, plain
and simple. The answer to bullying is not to remove the likely victims from the setting, but to address
the bullying!
Many of these students seemed to feel that they, as a special education teacher, would not have
power to address this problem from any other perspective than talking to their own special education
students. But bullying is not a special education problem. The way to address bullying is to make no
distinction between bullying a special ed student and bullying any other student.
As an example, in gym class, one of my sons (who happens to have physical disabilities) was the brunt
of a dodge ball attack. The bully was looking around the room for an easy target, saw my son, and threw
a close range ball at his face. The fact that my son has a disability label really doesn't matter at
all. The other student was being a bully: looking for another child he considered less powerful than
himself and throwing the ball at an off limits part of his body—the face. School staff did what
they would have done if any other child were hit in the face: swift and immediate discipline. As with
any other form of bullying, bullying that involves a student with a disability needs be treated with a
zero tolerance policy by everyone in the school, from administrators to support staff.
The simple fact that students with disabilities are included in the regular classroom does not
cause bullying, any more than having students of different races in a classroom causes racial
tension. What causes both of these problems is attitudes that students have toward people who they
see as different than themselves, and the fact that they see these differences as "bad" or "undesirable".
One thing that we can do to help change these attitudes is to change the idea that students with
disabilities are "very different from their peers" in a bad way. Sure, everyone notices when a student
uses crutches, a cane or a wheelchair, or has a different skin color. But we can make those differences
less "bad" by talking about them, or taking turns trying out the special equipment or simulating a
disability themselves.
Learning about a disability lends itself well to a science classroom. The hands-on nature of a science
lab allows students to go hands-on with disability issues and equipment. Students can be asked to make
observations during a lab without one of their senses (vision or hearing). As part of a unit on inclined
planes, students can study wheelchairs and ramps, to see what happens with ramps of different angles.
They can study the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements for ramps, and determine if they
feel these are safe. They can measure the angle on ramps around their school. If a wheelchair can be
borrowed, students can clock the speed of the chair as it travels down various ramps around the school
during a unit on speed.
The more students without disabilities begin to connect with and understand the world of people with
disabilities, the less they will have attitudes of misunderstanding, fear and prejudice.
ABOUT THIS COLUMN
SERCH is excited to bring you a new monthly column that focuses on children with disabilities and the
math/science curriculum. Children are all different; children with disabilities may have learning
differences that require a re-thinking of the usual methods of teaching science and math. But children
with disabilities can grow up to get higher education and hold jobs in science in science and math fields.
This column is dedicated to the proposition that success in science and math is possible, and is dedicated to
making that success possible by helping parents and school staff learn about the many ways to achieve learning
for students with disabilities.
This column is written by Robin Hurd, who is a mother of 4 boys, ages 13, 11 and 8 year old twins. The
combination of disabilities at her house includes non-verbal physical impairments, sensory issues, Autistic
spectrum disorder, Tourettes syndrome, auditory processing disorder, anxiety disorder as well as talented and
gifted. In spite of this list, Robin, David and the boys enjoy life and learning to the fullest! Robin serves
as parent support liaison for the AAC Institute, a non-profit organization supporting people who communicate
using alternatives to speech. She writes a monthly column for parents at the AAC Institute, moderates a
parents' on-line group, and is available for support to individual parents. If you would like to contact
Robin about this column, you may e-mail her at
parents@aacinstitute.org.
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