Special Needs Schooling

In “Citizenship in School:Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome “, written by Christopher Kliewer one of the main ideas towards the middle of the assigned chapter was about how the mainstream society view students with special needs versus the reality of the situation.  A student by the name of Lee is used as an example.  Lee was a student who had Trisomy 21 in a class of 24 “normal” students and 2 other special needs students.  Lee’s teacher said that if a guest were to walk in the room and were informed of the social needs students present, the guest would not be able to pick out the special needs students aside from physical characteristics.  This example helped show that behind the outside appearance of a person or a student everyone’s intellectual capacity is similar.  “Lee is, in a sense, in a way he is branded.  People see him.  They see down syndrome.  They see mental challenge, retardation, whatever you want to call it.  Thats what they see, but they wouldn't be seeing him.  Do you know what i mean?  Because Lee is Lee, and anybody who knows Lee knows, and this includes all the kids, they know he’s gifted- in how he solves problems,cares about others, reads, loves math.” said Lee’s second grade teacher.  Another main theme is  the reconceptualizing of how society views down syndrome.  This is important due to the fact that as showed in the earlier quote that once someone hears of someones title that isn't “normal” such as gay,of a certain race, or in this case of capability they immediately assume that person fits all the stereotypes that they know.  This is just simply not the case as special needs students are just as capable and interested in learning if not more than the average student.  From my personal experience I find that most of the time special needs children want to learn more than the average students do and get more involved in school.  Ive even seen special needs kids who are brighter at the time then their classmates in turn making them more of a target and it even seems to make others want to degrade special needs students.  There was one teacher who once told me that they called their special needs students unique learners as opposed to special needs as then students just needed the unique and personalized curriculum to learn instead of the schools curriculum in which every student is expected to learn the same.
     Image result for special needs student equality


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-JcBFAuLc-0bXVmZVR4ODI0RHc/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzLNrk6d8WMNzipSieLlf5L-KQxXhSTl/view


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