Don't Limit Me!

In one short moment, my thinking was changed. In class this, we learned about a few different impairments such as traumatic brain injury, orthopedic, and cognitive impairments. As we went through our lessons, my table of classmates and I discussed different ways to help children with these types of disabilities within our future classrooms. How would we help, assist, and accommodate them if they were in our classroom? We came up with several ideas such as providing an aid to assist them, giving them tools such as a "talking stick", or writing simple yet detailed step by step instructions on the board/paper that they could refer to throughout the class time. Of course all of these accommodations are good and often needed, but it never struck me that we as teachers, could be enabling these children. Of course this is a case by case basis, but how often do we do everything for people that we "think" cannot do it on their own or with little assistance. I have a friend who is blind and when I first met her, I did a lot to help her. I remember wondering how she can get by when I am not right there helping her at every moment... Then it hit me. She is much more capable than I had realized, and also very independent. I was not helping her in a way, I was enabling her. Why do we do this? I think ultimately we want to help. We want them to feel comfortable and are afraid to push them outside this comfort zone. As teachers, we should always remember to use LRE. We need to take these children into our classrooms and hold them to very high standards(for them). We must not limit any student! It was a wake up call for me as I watched this video in class of a girl that has down syndrome girl speaking on this matter titled, "Don't Limit Me."