Special Ed. & language

Just read about how the language professionals in Special Ed. use serves to alienate parents from the process of collaboration in setting up an educational plan for their child. Professionals use this jargon to make this process, of identifying and planning for the needs of children who use Special Ed services, sound more objective, when this process is really rather subjective. Professionals need to lend credence to their ideas and so sometimes hide behind their language. Perhaps it is intentional to use language that is difficult for the lay person to understand, to sort of muddle things up, especially when they may be concerned that a parent will not want to hear that their child has a disability. This doesn't seem like a good strategy in the long run, even if it saves them from an uncomfortable confrontation in the short run. Understandably, parents don't want to think that their child could have a disability, or be in need of Special Education services (is Special Ed always capitalised?). It may seem like they're being told that their kid is stupid. Who wants to hear that? They might hear "learning disability"or "developmentally delayed" or any number of special terms that don't mean much to people who aren't involved in Special Ed., and either be totally confused, or think that the professional is just emphasising their child's condition.

I'm worried that when I start teaching, I will unwittingly use jargon or talk down to parents of my students. I want to be super careful to take into account cultural backgrounds, differing values, when I try to include parents in the decision making process. I don't want to be the professional up on a pedestal telling them what to do. Of course, I want my opinions and ideas to be valued, but I hope I can be humble enough to really listen to parents, and approachable enough that they will be willing to share with me, and not just see me as the authority figure. I am uncomfortable with the hierarchical system that I will be working under, that places me above the parent, which says that I have some sacred knowledge to impart. Yes, of course I will have knowledge beyond that of someone who hasn't been to school to do my job, but I have to believe that parents have more knowledge about their child than I have. They know the child's history, they spend more time with them in an environment that is (most likely) more comfortable for the child, where they feel more free to be themselves. This is a topic I will definitely have to revisit again and again, to be sure I am doing all I can to include parents in the decision making process, and to make sure I am trying my hardest to break down communication barriers.

Disability discrimination

After doing my first reading assignment for my first class, I was struck by the idea that disability discrimination is so prevalent in our society. Not that this idea had never occured to me, but it is so overlooked. I have my bachelors degree in Sociology, so of course I studied issues of racial and gender discrimination in practically all of my soc. classes, but rarely was disability even mentioned. I learned the myriad ways that I take my white privilege for granted, but I think that concept also applies to my ableness privilege. I don't notice how accessible the world is to me, because I haven't had to navigate through it with a disability. I don't pay attention to whether or not there are wheelchair ramps, or accessible parking at the establishments I frequent. These are just the most obvious examples I can think of, but there are surely more subtle examples of my just being unaware of the needs of others who are differently-abled than I. I can already tell that I will be confronting some of my own prejudices that I don't even know that I have against people with disabilities in my near future. Of course I would like to believe that I am always politically correct and have no biases, but I did not grow up in a cultural vaccuum, and I know I will need to reshape some of the ways I think about disability and those with disabilities.