This weeks article focuses on discrediting the ableism mindset when teaching students with disabilities. The ableism mindset believes that students’ with disabilities should focus on “curing” their disability rater than working with it. Rather than teaching a student strategies for coping with their learning disability a teacher following the abliesm mindset would focus on getting the student to overcome their disability. The article refutes this idea and gives many examples of prominent scholars with learning disabilities whom went on to have successful careers in education. The article concludes by providing alternative strategies to the ableism mindset. Early diagnosis and family involvement are crucial when dealing with students with disabilities. In addition, it is important to remember that students with learning disabilities’ are capable of producing quality work, so standards should be kept high with these students, and when possible integration into regular classes should be the goal.
Reading this article provoked strong emotions as my own mindset clash with the ableism train of thought. As a teacher I believe it is critical to teach to you students’ strengths. Coming from a sports background I see many parallels between coaching and teaching. A great coach works on his players’ weaknesses, but first and foremost he plays to his teams strengths. Spending all your instructional time focusing on the disability rather than the student seems like a coloscsal misuse of time. Furthermore, it can produce self-esteem issues for the child. Continually focusing on the disability itself can make the child feel as though there is something wrong with them. Teachers should utilize their students’ strengths, and for students with disabilities it is important to teach them strategies and mechanisms that allow them to succeed despite of their disability. It is pretty clear that the student’s disability isnt’ going away, so rather than trying to cure it working with it seems much more promising. When reading the article I couldn’t help think about the New York Jets new head coach Rex Ryan, who is an extremely successful football coach despite having dyslexia. Rather than trying to fix his problem Rex Ryan has learned ways to succeed despite of his condition, such as color-coding his play-calling sheet. This allows him quicker access to the plays he designed, which because of his dyslexia was at one time a very difficult challenge.
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