Below is the second part of the essay and observations by David Kuriniec, who is a young adult with a disability who attends a 4 year University.
Look at the Big Picture
Teachers tend to get flustered with change or difference. For all the
talk about celebrating diversity, some teachers are awfully unkind
when they have a student with a disability in their classes but be
patient. While many of them certainly have had some exposure to
students with special needs either in college or previously in their
careers, each disability presents a different challenge based on the
amount of help needed. That is why students must take into account
their limitations and be completely cognizant on a continual basis of
everything developing around them. And this holds in the social realm
as well. This advice will come in handy as students get together with
their friends and participate in ritual events such as Homecoming and
Prom. In fact, to start preparing for those events now, students
should sit down and write out a list of the areas in which they are
limited; although they may be struggling to accept the facts, if these
are thought about and written out, again, the process of inclusion is
smoother because the students can tell their friends when they need
help and how to help them. I went to Turnabout in my sophomore year,
and that advice was the best I received from my Mother. I talked with
my date and worked out a deal prior to the event so that I did not need
to go through a whole explanation in front of the sixteen people who
were along with us. Aside from a small conflict regarding
transportation, the evening was very pleasant and went off without a
hitch.
There Really is No Such Thing as a Failure
I believe strongly that the there is no failure unless the student has
not given his or her absolute best effort. This really reinforces the
entire point of this essay. Even when expectations, either those that
we place on ourselves or those placed on us by others, are not met in
full, success is unquestioned, because something of value, large or
small, has still been produced, and it may even be useful at a later
date. For instance, I wrote a PowerPoint presentation entitled
Successability: Providing Motivation. I had hoped to deliver it to the
Council for Exceptional Children, but it was not accepted for
presentation. Nevertheless, later I was asked to deliver the talk to
the Louisiana State Board of Education at its Pre-Kindergarten
Conference. It was very well received.
Personal Goal Setting Is Critical
Setting personal goals is an important part of inclusion; it is a
self-propelling machine. By setting goals, students again help their
own inclusive processes along, because they develop points of reference
and a sense of dedication, determination and drive that is easily
visible to their instructors. This helps the teachers better their
teaching methods to fit the interests of each particular student.
Moreover, students will get along better with their peers if they have
a sense of direction and are acting on their passions; peers will be unable to shake the determination of the student.
Mutual Effort is Needed to Make it Work
The process of inclusion requires input from both the teacher and
student Inclusion can not be done well without the engaged involvement
of both parties. An appropriate education requires addressing academic
and emotional/social concerns. The success of the inclusive process is
dependent upon how the teachers and students react to their individual
situations. If a student gets an assignment and immediately decides he
or she does not want to do it and that becomes known to the other
members of the class, the student will be looked upon as incapable and
different, thereby diminishing his standing with his peers in class.
On the flip side, if a teacher gets a student in the class and does not
know what to do with him or her because of the limitations, that
teacher cannot just give up or avoid the situation, even though that
may be the easiest course of action to take. The instructor has a
responsibility to put forth 100% in ensuring that the student can
benefit from being in an inclusive setting. This piece has endeavored
to illustrate that inclusion is not an act or an event, it is a
continual process.
In my view there is an inverse relationship between restrictiveness and
effort; the more effort the student and teacher put forth, the less
restrictive the environment, and vice versa. What is paramount here is
that the student in part possesses the power to engineer an excellent
inclusive educational experience and should wield it accordingly.
Conclusion
The best advice I can give to a student with a disability in an
inclusive setting that is trying to survive high school comes from
edited lyrics to a song in a musical Newsies. It goes like this:
- Open the gates and seize the day
- Don’t be afraid and don’t delay
- Nothing can break [you]
- No one can [defame you]
- Give [your best effort today]
- Arise and seize the day.
Some of the wisdom I have gleaned can be summarized as follows:
- Sometimes, the things that we take to be our biggest failures ultimately turn out to be our biggest successes;.
-
Error evaluation is a vital part of the inclusive process because it
serves as an internal instructor to the student, helping him or her to
become a better student by learning from their mistakes; it also serves
to reinforce positive attitudes;
- Find a focus and set goals now so that students (and parents) have a detailed understanding of the fundamental tools necessary for survival of high school, they can begin to plan;
- Students should find the areas in which they are gifted to determine their focus.
As a closing thought, let me turn your attention to the epigraph at the
top of the essay [part 1 above], Robert Frost’s famous words Students should picture
themselves in the poem. What I have laid out here is the road less
traveled; the road in which students and teachers are equals; the road
in which students take a more active role in engineering an inclusive
experience that is rewarding and enlightening; the road in which the
student, through conscious or unconscious action, gains priceless
skills that he or she will carry throughout the remainder of natural
life; this is the road that will make all the difference; this is the
road to success.