| Subject: Re: Opinions and experiences required for project. |
Author:
Keith
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Date Posted: 19:42:15 11/14/10 Sun
In reply to:
Linda
's message, "Opinions and experiences required for project." on 03:05:23 10/14/10 Thu
Were to begin? Equality in schools, there is none. It is all about preventing the student from getting the help they truly need, making it look good on paper, and limiting their rights as much as possable with the exception of one token accomidation which is extended testing. That is so they can say they at least did something for the student, and the bare minimum is all that is required of them. That is the schools interpretation, when in fact the laws actually state the school is required to make accomidations that are the least discrimatory to a students disability. The law also gives many examples to how this can be done.
Labelling. Some schools have used that as an argument to talk parents into getting the accomidations the student need. I have heard this on occasions. You dont want to "label" your child. Though there is some truth to the argument, because the school do not give the proper "appropriate and nessacary" accomidations, many if not most people in the school system view students with learning disabilitys as lazy and stuped. The teachers that dont may see that the student actually know the subject after failing a test, by pulling them aside on the students way out and asking the student several questions which the student is quickly and easly able to answer correctly. Even though the student was able to demostrate appropriate knowledge of the exam when asked such question, the teacher reverts back to tradition and marks the test score in the books anyways. I have seen many times even good teachers who have no negative feelings tward a student with disabilities try to see what is wrong with the student and how their disability affects them. In doing so, the teacher projects a Self Proposised Destany on the student, and actually misses many correct answers the student had given on a test due to the teachers perception and hightend since to look for such mistakes.
School experance, I have my BS in science, with two extra years of college after that which I did not compleat the program. I was droped from the program by the department head, even though I never failed a class. All in all it took me 7 years to finish my AA in English, and another 6 years for compleat my BS, then another two years trying to earn another degree because I have been unable to find work with my education. Totaling approxamatly 15 years of college.
I believe I was diagnosed at the age of 12. I was in middle school at the time. That was when I was getting psychological help with my disability through my parents insurance. Though I also recall in elementry they hand me going through a psudo class full of nonsence busy work.
Whole heartely I feel the educational system failed me. It was not due to some accadental crack either but was whole heartedly intencual all the way. The reason I believe this is because I have read the disability laws, seen what year they were passed, and the years I had been in public school and secondary education. Every single aspect of the law was denied to me. To top that statment even further, my mother was a teacher the whole time, worked in the same school district, and was even a teacher of mine through all of highschool and she was compleatly unawair of my rights the whole time. Meaning the school prevented the knowlege of educators to take the proper steps to insure the students were not being discriminated against.
I was never disalugioned. School had always been a struggle for me. I had always felt as long as I keep chipping away at my education, I will make it at some point. I had learned to always give my best effort and over the years knew it would take me longer to compleat college. In my wildest dreams I would have never imagioned it would have been as difficult as it was, or took at long as it did. I figured a few more years more than the norm to finish college. I went in very busness like, as to this was my job, my lively hood, the lottery to improving the quality of my life and my love ones. While I was chipping away at school, fighting for every single point I could due to never knowing if I would even pass any test I was required to take. There was a point were as much as I tried not to look at the horror of the situation, that it was chipping away at my life as well, not just my life in years, but also my health.
You see much like everyone else, what we can not do well, we just try harder. While trying harder, if we need to try longer, such as studying for each test, which I did every single night as if there as final exam the next day, I did what anyone else would do, sacurfice my sleep. I started to get sick very frequently, you know the cold and/or flu comes around and a lot of students catch it while in college. Students are stress, lack of sleep due to some pending exam or something, but unlike them I would tend to be sick all semester, a vast majority of semesters, all winter break, and many times most if not all summer. The stress did not just affect me the first semester, but because I had not fully recovered from the first semester, even worse the second semester. I would take me months to recover each time. It was getting to a point were I would spend 11-12 months out of the year with the flu. This comming from the person who was the picture of health. You would look at me and there was no question I was extreamly athletic.
I gave up the hopes of trying for any schollarship for college because there was no question the strugle of keeping my grades up in college would be far too great for me. There was no doubt whatever schollarship I had tried for, I would soon lose due to my grades. When I did go to college that proved more true than anyone could had realize. As I went through college my health just got worse and worse. Grinding away at me. Getting less and less sleep as a means of accomidationg myself.
This is acutally the cliff notes of the cliff notes to what I had been through. As a person who most of my family teach, and myself had worked as a subsitute teacher has seen with students I have taught, and what I have heard from my family memebers. Blatant derogatory statments from some faimly members to me about their beliefs on my disability, as well as from several teachers, and school administrators of mine.
Over the years I had finally been able to obtain and read all the laws on my rights, and had tried to fight for my rights. The problem is when you go to people who have all the power over you and they see you as nothing more than an incoveiance, you really dont have much say or power of the situation.
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