Ms. McManus's approach to blindness and disabilities as whole was very intriguing to me. I appreciated the way she always looked at the people she worked with as people first and set difficult, but attainable goals for them. I think her approach exposes a lot of the misconceptions society has about disabilities, myself included. We often place handicaps on children who are not intrinsically limited, leading to limitations based solely on our expectations. Her thoughts and words reminded me of our discussion of person-first language, in addition to societal implications of having a disability. When she was speaking, it was very difficult to tell that she was talking about someone who has a diagnosed disability, given her belief in that person and the potential she knew that the person has.
I though the same thing! You don't see this kind of attitude towards these students anymore, so when there are teachers like her who are willing to perceive her students the way she does it very much appreciated. I also felt the same way when you said you could not tell when she was talking about her students with disabilities.
I completely agree. I also thought back to our discussion on first-person language. This video really made me think about how I often automatically think someone is handicapped and can not perform a daily task that we may do. I really loved hearing her viewpoint and what she expects out of her students, and how she hopes society will stop putting people with disabilities in a box of "can't do".
Yes!!! I completely agree. I think it is so important that as a whole, we do not let students' disabilities influence our expectations for them in and out of the classroom. This reminds me of the study we discussed in class where one teacher was told that her students were the students that were dubbed "slow learners" and at the end of the year, all of her students performed poorly. However, another teacher was given a class that did have a few students that had been deemed "slow learners," but she was told that they were the students that were "fast learners." Because of her expectations and faith in these students' ability to learn and succeed, they met the standards and expectations set for them and ended up being at the top of the class by the end of they year. It is truly shocking how big of a difference a teacher's belief in a child can make on the student's performance.