Petitioning HCSD Superintendent, Administration and Board Hillsborough County School District: Allow Henry to go to Wilson Middle School 200 yards from his home. →
So, hey, this kid is a friend of mine, and he’s being barred from attending his local public school due to his disabilities. The school is requiring that he prove that he can independently climb the stairs to the entrance before they’ll grant him admission—which, yes, is flagrantly illegal.
Henry’s been homeschooled for the past several years, because his district is only willing to place him in a segregated program at a different school, where he will receive an inferior and inappropriate education.
Henry is really amazing, and incredibly smart, and he wants to go to his local school. Not being able to move his body rapidly isn’t an acceptable, or legal, reason to deny him his legal right to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.
So, if you have a second, could you sign his petition?
Signal boost! Please sign!
I want all these young people to be getting a higher education, and I don’t want them loaded up with tens of thousands of dollars of debt just to get an education. That’s how we make America great.
Of course, that means all of you all have got to hit the books. I’m just saying. Don’t cheer and then you didn’t do your homework.
Because that’s part of the bargain, that’s part of the bargain—America says we will give you opportunity, but you’ve got to earn your success.
You’re competing against young people in Beijing and Bangalore. They’re not hanging out. They’re not playing video games. They’re not watching “Real Housewives.” I’m just saying. It’s a two-way street. You’ve got to earn success.
That wasn’t in my prepared remarks. But I’m just saying.
President Obama today, keeping it real (via barackobama)
I LOVE YOU OBAMA PLEASE TAKE AWAY ALL MY STUDENT LOAN DEBTS SO I CAN GO TO GRAD SCHOOL AND GET A MASTERS IN DISABILITY STUDIES LIKE I’VE BEEN DREAMING ABOUT SINCE I WAS SIXTEEN :D
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
As noted by Johnson (2003), noninclusive education will likely meet the same fate of all segregated programs, “because it was not seen as for ‘us’ but for ‘them,’ it was resented. Any money put into it was seen as taking from us” . If we are to make “them” (i.e., people of disabilities) the “us” (people without disabilities), then certainly ableism needs to be specifically addressed in the schools along with disability rights and disability culture. Hehir (2002) has noted that:
From an ableist perspective, the devaluation of disability results in societal attitudes
that uncritically assert that it is better for a child to walk than to roll, speak than
sign, read print than Braille, spell independently than use a spell-check, and hang
out with nondisabled kids as opposed to other disabled kids, etc. (p. 4)
A poem about IEPs
I do not like these IEPs I do not like them, Jeeze Louise! We test, we check, We plan, we meet, But nothing ever seems complete. Would you, could you like the form? I do not like the form I see, Not page 1, not 2 not 3 another change, A brand new box, I think we all Have lost our rocks, Could we all meet here or there? We cannot all fit any where. Not in a room, Not in a hall, there seems to be no space at all. Could you, could you meet again? I cannot meet again next week. No Lunch, no prop, Please hear me speak. No, not at dusk. No, not at dawn. At 4 P.M., I should be gone. Could your hear while all speak out? Would you write the words they spout? I could not hear, I would not write, This does not need to be a fight. Sign here, date there, Mark this, check that, Beware the students ad-vo-cat(e) You do not like them, So you say Try again! Try again! And you may If you will let me be, I will try again, You will see Say! I almost like these IEPs I think I’ll write 6,003 And I will practice day and night until they say You got it right
*applause*
![chronicillnesscat:
[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “Severe back pain, hard to stand for long periods of time. Have to choose between agony and a filthy floor”]
This happens to me every Chemistry lab, without fail. You’d think it wouldn’t kill them to put at least one stool in there.
Oh, do not even talk to me about labs….I stood in agony for so many years in those labs, and then my mom finally talked to the teacher and they got a stool…..and then OTHER KIDS WOULD SIT ON MY STOOL and I’d feel stupid for asking them to get off. Not to mention the general motor skill hell that is science labs….](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw7s1kuOhe1qi36g3o1_400.jpg)
[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “Severe back pain, hard to stand for long periods of time. Have to choose between agony and a filthy floor”]
This happens to me every Chemistry lab, without fail. You’d think it wouldn’t kill them to put at least one stool in there.
Oh, do not even talk to me about labs….I stood in agony for so many years in those labs, and then my mom finally talked to the teacher and they got a stool…..and then OTHER KIDS WOULD SIT ON MY STOOL and I’d feel stupid for asking them to get off. Not to mention the general motor skill hell that is science labs….
Why Abuse of Disabled Students Needs to Stop (and it needs to stop RIGHT. NOW.)
There has been a disturbing flurry of incidents breaking out lately about school staff abusing disabled students. The latest one involves an autistic student being PUT INSIDE A DUFFEL BAG with the drawstring pulled tight OUT IN THE HALLWAY. With gym balls. Like he was no better than a piece of gym equipment.
You know what the most disturbing, terrifying part of all these abuse cases is? It’s not that they’re happening in the first place, although that’s certainly disturbing enough. It’s that these acts are passed off as being okay. When this mother came to pick up her son and found him in a duffel bag, an aide was “standing by”. The school told her it was a form of therapy. And they “told her it was not the first time they had put him in the bag”.
Just casually - “and oh yeah, we put your son in a bag where he could’ve suffocated for THERAPY”.
This is by far not the first case like this, and I shudder to think of how many more abuses are committed under the guise of therapy around the world. Committed in the name of rehabilitation, in the name of making us magically stop being different and making us normal. Does the world really hate us, fear us and our differentness that much, that kids’ emotional and physical well-being would be sacrificed in the name of normality? The answer seems to be yes.
There seems to be this prevailing attitude that disabled students - and especially those who receive segregated services like segregated transportation, therapy, etc. - are some sort of subspecies that are exempt from deserving respect. Therefore school staff and others that work with the students can screw them over however the hell they want. They’re just bodies, vegetables. They don’t need to know if they’re going to have the same aide or bus driver from day to day. They don’t need to get to school on time. They don’t need or deserve to be in class, because after all, it’s not like they’re actually learning anything. They don’t need or deserve to have an aide who does their job, without abusing the student or making the student feel like a burden. And these students certainly don’t deserve an apology when someone wrongs them. I’ve seen this attitude in practice myself countless times, and it can lead to incompetence, neglect, and outright emotional and physical abuse.
Unless we stop this ableist attitude in its tracks, unless we embrace the radical notion that people with disabilities are - *gasp* - people, human beings, just as worthy of equality and respect as anyone else, this awful abuse is going to continue. It’s going to continue, because society makes us believe that if you’re not perfect, you’re not anything. You’re nothing. And since you’re nothing, people can do whatever the hell they want to you and get away with it. How many more kids have to be traumatized, how many more kids have to be hurt, how many more kids have to die before this becomes unacceptable? Before no one gets away with these acts, or better yet, does them at all. Before the world is as outraged as we as activists, advocates, disabled people are. Before parents can send their children to school - all their children to school - and know that each and every one of them is being treated with equality, dignity and respect. Before no child is afraid of going to school. I hope, for my sake, for the sakes of all the disabled children who came before me and all who will come after, that that day is within our reach.
Click here to sign the Change.org petition demanding the end of abuse of disabled students in schools, created in response to the duffel bag incident.
One teachers approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.
“My ponytail,” she cried.
“Can I see?” I asked.
She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.
“How’s that?” I asked.
She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.
‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’
AWESOMEEEEE!!!!
This is my buddy Stas, she needs help finishing grad school. She’s part of a dream team of girls I went to camp and grew up with. We’re all just you’re average ladies making our way through life, we just happen to have disabilities. Please pass this on & donate if possible!!! ♥
Please donate and help Anastasia, we’ve never met in person but she’s a great person and someone I’ve always looked up to.
Ideas for Supporting Disabled Students in School →
I went to a segregated school that did 3 and 4 to some extent, but ableism just reared its ugly head among the students anyway :|
Still, lovely list (with the small caveat that people can’t learn “social skills” because they don’t exist; they’d be learning various cues, and, in the case of nondisabled students, How Not to be an Asshole 101).
