Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Sydrome

I believe strongly that we should all be treated equally. We are all humans and all share important roles in this society. That it is important to form concepts that can help students that suffer from disabilities, in this case Down syndrome. We must show the importance of respect and value since it’s something that everybody deserves without any hesitation.

“It’s not like they come here to be labeled, or believe the label. We’re all here—kids, teachers, and parents, whoever— it’s about all of us working together, playing together, being together, and that’s what learning is. Don’t tell me these kids are being set up to fail.” (Page, 75)

This quote stood out to me stood out to me because it’s a great way to make your classroom an opportunistic environment for all. It really caught my attention how this teacher involved all of her students. As a teacher a teacher it is very important to understand that everybody has an equal opportunity at education. That the students not as intelligent as the others just because they have a mental disability; or labeled as incompetent. It is not fair to teach them differently or exclude them from the rest. We all have things in common, were humans, that in order to become a better society we must work together, play together, stick together, and learn as a unit. That people with disabilities should be set up for success just as any other person. The author makes some references to a community; I believe that in some kind of way she was trying to get across that we must not treat mental disabled students as a different community but as a part of our society. We as a society must realize that in some kind of way we are labeled, for example; when I was in elementary school I was labeled as Deprived/Disadvantaged and At Risk. This label stuck with me all throughout elementary because I was not just being labeled for my education but as well as my life.

I want to break this label down because if it was not for this reading I would have never realized the true significance of labeling:

• Deprived: lacking the necessities of life; so this meant this meant that I did not have the enough things to succeed in school. This is messed up and wrong in so many ways because who were they to judge me on my life. I have a mother, food, and a roof over my head. I was not lacking the necessities of life because they had not been taught to me yet. Plus how did they know what the necessity of life is? Everybody has different way of being successful, so categorizing me just because my mother was not around to help me was simply wrong.

• Disadvantaged: poor, underprivileged, impoverished, deprived; handicapped, impaired, disabled. I was considered disadvantaged because I didn’t have everything the other kids had. I simply was not understood and properly taught. It was not my fault they stuck me in an all English classroom; of course I wasn’t the best. I was the best in my first language which was Spanish which seems to me to be an advantage, not a disadvantage.

• At Risk: I was at risk because I could not read, spell or understand anything. I stayed back in first grade because I could not read, then they let me pass because I had already had stayed back. So they put me that label because I did not have the proper tools that were supposed to be taught to me. It makes no sense, so I got placed in resource which helped me out a lot because it broke everything down in both language making that connection was all I needed. The label came off after I got out of Elementary school.

“Schools have traditionally taken a narrow position when defining and judging student intellect. If you came into my VIPs classroom and were told there was a retarded child in the class, a child with special needs, I don’t think you would pick them out.” (Page, 79 & 83)

I altered this quote because I have a unique way of explaining this quote and relating it to what I have been doing every Monday. As everybody knows I work in an inclusion classroom which brings everybody together in one classroom. I have one student who is mental challenged his name is Luis, he is a very smart kid, he does all of his work, and understands his material. He does not need to be told twice what to do, you give him the work and he will do the rest. The only key component is making sure that he understand that your there to help him and encourage him if anything comes up. He is the type of kid that is first to sound the words and read the words correctly. I also have a kid named Harris who is one of the brightest kids in the classroom. This kid can read at a third grade level, he sometimes gets bored of the work because it too easy. I just heard this today, this kid is labeled as a kid with disability just because he does not like to talk, and he is very shy and just liked to keep to himself. This took me by shock because it makes no sense he is ahead of the whole class but is labeled just because he is not outspoken as the rest. The problem in this case is that if he would be loud, off the wall, and fidgety he most likely be categorized as having ADHD, and put on Ritalin to calm him. So basically there is no win with this situation. I cannot believe that schools are judging kids to these standards because they simply make no sense and seem to put kids down no matter if they’re smart, mentally challenged or not.

“That’s what learning is. It’s taking risks and seeing stuff in new ways. From the top of slide (on the playground). Or, like, in a book that you just opened up. Those kinds of ways. Maybe you don’t read the book exactly like the author wrote it, but you’re making sense of it—like Isaac. Dancing to it, and then the next day, maybe your dance changes.”

I picked this quote because it best describes this class. Professor Bogad has taken risks and has seen a new way of teaching that enables us to learn. This class is not just your ordinary class we learn differently, it not just about exams, test, presentations, blogs, and class participation that counts, Overall it’s the relationship that we make with all of these readings, how we can relate to them in a good way or in a bad way. We learn something new every single class because we can teach each other, the discussion and blogs help us understand the true meaning of the reading. It helps the relationship between all of us, it’s like we are a little family and we help each other when the times get rough. We all have a different way of learning and this class has helped us show sides of us that we did not think we had in us. Sometimes it’s okay if do things the correct way and do things backwards in order to understand and get the most out of it. WE ARE ALL EQUAL AND WE ALL SHOULD BE TREATED THE SAME NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE!!