¶ … disabilities as 'deficits.' Even though I did not harbor prejudices against the disabled or regard people who had disabilities as 'inferior,' I viewed disabilities as challenges that had to be overcome. This class has helped me see persons with disabilities as people with particular conditions or differences, not as people defined by a singular characteristic. Everyone has personal deficits and strengths, but needing 'talking books' to read a book does not make a blind or dyslexic person defined by their condition any more than someone who needs glasses to see the same text. Defining persons with disabilities as people 'with' specific conditions, such as saying that Johnny is a child 'with ADHD' rather than a 'hyperactive kid,' much as you would say someone is 'a person who wears glasses' rather than a 'glasses-wearing friend' has been helpful in changing my mindset.
Before I took this course, I also had a very concrete sense of what constituted a disability: I tended to accept the labels created by society that were imposed upon children. Over the course of the semester, I began to question those labels. I have come to see...
Every student will have individual learning preferences and strengths. We all have a slightly different array of multiple intelligences. Learning how to address and honor differences while still creating a cohesive classroom environment is the challenge of every teacher: students with official disabilities are not necessarily unique in requiring additional consideration and support to flourish.
I also had a tendency to question some of the diagnoses of some children with learning disorders and wondered if many learning disabilities were over-diagnosed. The unit upon ADHD has helped me understand that children with the condition have genuine learning differences that are biologically-encoded and make it more difficult for them to focus on one task at a time. Similarly, even if a child is high-functioning and might not have been diagnosed with autism in previous decades, this does not negate the fact that he can benefit from additional learning support and assistance. During the course, I began to question some of my attitudes and wonder if I was too quick to…
