Toward Ending Ableism in Education

    For this week’s assigned reading, we read “Toward Ending Ableism in Education” by Thomas Hehir. In this essay, Hehir describes how in order to decrease the stigma that comes with disabilities in education, it needs to be addressed. It cannot be glossed over or ignored, but needs to be faced head on. To do this, Hehir gives the following advice: make disabilities a part of diversity plans, encourage students with disabilities to use tools that are the most effective for them and their needs, focus on results rather than where students with disabilities are placed in the classroom, and promoting high standards rather than high stakes (in other words, pushing students but if they fail, not pushing it as the “end all be all”). One point that Hehir brought up that I found interesting was how schools should focus on results rather than placement of students, meaning that schools should see the benefits in integrating students with disabilities with able-bodied students. Personally, I agree with this point. I feel that students with disabilities should be integrated into the classroom because not only do students with disabilities benefit socially, but able-bodied students also benefit. In my own personal experiences, being integrated in classrooms that have both able-bodied students and students with disabilities in it because as a future educator, it has helped me not only work with different types of students, but see different “warning signs” of possible learning and intellectual disabilities, as well as different accommodations that I can use in my own classroom. Despite the benefits of integrated classrooms and the pursual of IDEA, I don’t think that this is a big push in schools. Looking back on my own educational experiences, students with disabilities have always been outcasted in the classroom. For students with learning disabilities, they were always pulled out of the classroom to go to another class for “resource”. For students with apparent disabilities or intellectual disabilities, they were put in a separate classroom, which was in a forgotten and secluded hallway in the school. Although there was a “push” for integrated classrooms, no one ACTUALLY pushes for integration. If anything, there is a push for separation, which only deepens the disability stigma. Without changing this mindset and actually pairing our “intentions” with actions, there will always be a divide between students, which is a disadvantage to them both.