Community Experience

I attended a panel for ability awareness. The purpose of this event was to provide more information about those who have disabilities. There were a few people there with disabilities that have prevented them from being able to walk so they use wheelchairs and there were others who were parents or roommates of someone with a disability. This is going to sound so terrible but I have always had this little fear of people with disabilities. I think it is mostly just because I don't know how to talk to them, always fearing that I will say something that is offensive.
Many situations, when talking to a person with a disability, people make very awkward because they don't know how to respond or what to say. Those on the panel said that they would refer to themselves as cripples to relieve some of the awkwardness in a conversation. For the most part they want people to ask and they want to tell people about their disability. The more people know about it the better this world would be. But still out of respect there is certain ways that you should phrase your questions and certain language that you should use when talking to people with disabilities. Instead of asking "what's wrong with you?" ask them to tell you about themselves. Perspective really changes when you take the chance to get to know someone for who they really are.
One question asked to the panel was, How do you think the world would change if all stigmas against those with disabilities were gone? The response was that there are stigmas because people don't understand. Which is a big thing that we talked about in class.  The reason all of these different problems with different kinds of people arise is because we as a whole just aren't educated enough. We don't know what people actually go through. We get these ideas in our head and then just shy away from even addressing them.
When encountering people with disabilities we ignore the fact that there is even anything different with them and go around the whole conversation about their disability. We pretend the disability doesn't even exist. But it does. It makes up who that person is. Most of the time we don't even want to take the time to learn and to really truly get to know a person.
Another thing that we talked a little bit about in class is the expectations that we have for our students and I found it really interesting that the idea of expectations was brought up in the panel discussion. People live up to the expectation that others set for them. One of the people on the panel is a teacher and said she would put in her classroom along the back the saying, "Nobody rises to low expectations." Those with disabilities do not/should not be coddled. They are not children. Just because some of their physical abilities are limited does not mean that they are incapable of greatness and are not smart.
It bothers me that people still don't know how to act around those with disabilities. I am one of those people. It bothers me that even when I walked into the room there was all the sudden this sense of uncertainty. I always get that way around people who a physically disabled. I think that I instantly think that they are not going to be able to communicate with me the same way that someone who did not have a physical disability would. It's almost like I think that they are also mentally disabled and have already put them in the category of needed extra help academically. I always associate my being uncomfortable with the fact that I didn't grow up around people who were physically disabled, none of my family was and none of my friends were. But that is not a good excuse. The problem is that I am not educated enough in the subject and have not taken the time to be. I think that's where the problem lies, people feel well I've never come in contact with a situation where I would have daily interaction with a person with a physical disability so I don't need to know how to treat them.
So the biggest things I learned and what we have been talking about this whole time in class is that we need to set high expectations for each and everyone of our students and we need to be educated in the background of our students. We need to know about the different disabilities, religions, socioeconomic status, culture, language, etc. Being aware of the culture of your students will help us as teachers to better connect with our students. We will have a better idea of what our students need to learn and how they learn.