Eliminating Ableism in Education

 In this blog I will be talking about a couple quotes I found in the text 

1. "disability only becomes a tragedy for me when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives- job opportunities or barrier free buildings" 

I feel like this quote is saying that having a disability is not lacking something, but rather society is the one lacking ways in which people with differences can strive in. There is an ideology about what a healthy strong and independent person is and society only caters to them. When buildings don't have elevators or when certain work places do not admit someone simply because of their appearance, they are assuming that disabled people are not capable of doing things any other person could and they are diminishing the humanity of said disabled person.

2. "a pervasive system of discrimination and exclusion that oppresses people who have mental, emotional, and physical disabilities... Deeply rooted beliefs about health, productivity, beauty, and the value of human life, perpetuated by the public and private media, combine to create an environment that is often hostile to those whose physical mental, cognitive, and sensory abilities... fall out of the scope of what is currently defined as socially acceptable"

Going along with the theme of ideology, this quote accurately depicts the fact that human ideology is formed around a certain set of standards and views of what is seen as "good and healthy". There is an agenda that pushes these standards into society and it creates an "ideal" and "normal" picture of what one should look and act like, but that is not the case of reality. The truth is that there are hundreds of differences from person to person and it is impossible for everyone to fit into the perfect box society has made us believe is a thing. When is comes to disabled people, its not that they're not normal, the problem is that society has not accustomed to their normal, it has only wanted to stay in the comfort of what they already know.

Reflection: After reading this and putting more in perspective how excluded students with disabilities are even when the effort is to make them "included" has definetly changed my perspective on schools. From the outside looking in it seems like taking students outside of classrooms or giving them their own classes with a similar community is helpful and all good, but in reality it can be internally hurtful. Seperating students with disabilities within schools can make them feel indifferent, they're not dumb they know why they're being taken out of classes or why they're in separate classes all together, they start to believe that they're different is not normal, that it does not fit in the normal classroom. My goal is to create a classroom environment where that is not the case, I don't want students differences to be seen as deficits but rather as assets and even be celebrated in my classroom.