Johanna Lasak
Final Essay
6/3/10
Before taking Sped 330 People with Disabilities: Social Discrimination and Oppression; The Social, Political, and Cultural Realities of Living as a Person with a Disability, I thought I understood what my sister must feel like as a person living with a disability. However in reality I will never truly understand because I am a person who is nondisabled. This class showed me that it is not the disabilities that people have that make them disabled, but how society views disabilities. Society looks at what a person cannot do and not at what a person can do. In my personal experience with disabilities I was taught to treat my sister just like anyone else. Even though my sister has Down syndrome she is still a person and foremost she is still my sister. We fight just like any other siblings. Before this class I would think about her future and think about everything she will not get a chance to do that her big sisters did. I now try to think about what she will do. I think about what jobs she might have and how one day she will live on her own. She may need help in different ways but she will be independent. This is an example of how society views people who have disabilities. I truly love my sister and want what is best for her and just like the rest of society I saw the “can nots” instead of the “cans.”
My major is Elementary Education, as I move toward recognizing and respecting the beliefs and practices of others the education filed will benefit. These benefits will come in a multitude of ways one of them is just the desire I have to understand those who have disabilities and to help them show people that they can do what they put their mind to. I want to be a teacher who enables children to do their best. I want to be a teacher who looks at the child for who they are and what they can do and not what they cannot do. My chosen field will benefit because I will be a teacher who knows that she will never truly understand what a person with a disability has to go through in life but I will be a teacher who is aware that I cannot understand. This will cause me to strive to put the person first always and never the disability.
________________End of message________________
This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies).
Enquiries about list administration should be sent to [log in to unmask]
Archives and tools are located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can VIEW, POST, JOIN and LEAVE the list by logging in to this web page.
|