July 5, 2016
Great News For Children With Special Needs
(Provided by CalPac, Tuesday, July 05, 2016)
While substitute teaching last year for a “severely handicapped” pupils’ classroom I discovered news that made my mouth ache. My aching cheek and lip muscles stemmed from the smile caused by campus legislation enacted by the students at the school, the school in which I was teaching disabled youth.
The campus a whole decided that belittling exceptional learners by labeling such people was demeaning, and in such it was a blatant form of bullying. The old adage of referring to exceptional learners possessed with an intelligence quotient of more than one and one-half standard deviations below the mean as a “retarded” would no longer be tolerated.
It was now taboo to refer to such learners with the dreaded “R” word. It could be punishable by suspension. Children were now championing other children and it was one of the most beautiful things that I had witnessed in my twenty-plus years of educating exceptional learners.
Equality reared its head in a beautiful way. Not only the children streaming from the self-contained could see the beauty and Inclusion Classrooms, but also beauty existed upon the faces throughout the community as a whole. This campus “Walked in Beauty”.
This campus-wide beauty was soon to be witnessed in the social arenas also. Children were taking pride in including all children in the various circles. I worked as the water polo and swim coach on this campus also, and the female water polo players, as well as the guys took pride in the fact that their coach recruited exceptional learners to be a part of the water polo and swim team squads.
The teams were the rage of the campus for their inclusive policies. Their parents championed children from other districts as they inquired about how to get their children intra-district transfers so that they too could feel the sameness that the children upon our pool deck enjoyed.
Although virtually no children were granted such transfers (Districts feared losing ADA), change could be seen elsewhere as those who wished to come to our pool deck were now swimming and throwing shots at their home schools’ water polo goalies due to the fact that the ability to participate with like aged and ability peers is a fundamental right to be enjoyed by all who frequent our schools.
We all must act in ways to make everyone feel that they matter. We cannot close doors on anyone, and it was phenomenal that children took the lead to ensure that their peers felt sameness. We should all learn this lesson from our inclusive youth. Not to be rhetorical, but shouldn’t each of us hold doors open for others?
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