Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

(Reflection) 

As I read the article it hit home more than others that we have read. Maybe it's because I worked with kids with disabilities or maybe it's because I've experienced what they have been through. I have always had to work harder than everyone else to get the same grades and to prove my worth.

As I read this at times I got mad at the ignorance of people or how they lump these kids together because they have the same disability. Just because they all have the same diagnosis does not mean it effects them in the same way.  Kliewer keeps talking about a teacher named Shayne who teaches special education and three of her kids have Down Syndrome. But what I love about her when I read what he writes about her is that she sees beyond the label and sees the child within. 

"It's not like they came here to be labeled, or to believe the label. We're all here--kids, teachers, parents, whoever--it's about all of us working together, playing together, being together, and that's what learning is. Don't tell me any of these kids are being set up to fail."

If you allow them to try, these kids can be amazingly smart.  They can do whatever they want in life.  Them may not look like you and me they may not even speak like we speak but that does not mean they're not human. Don't they have two eyes.  Don't they have two hands. Don't they have a heart. Don't they have a brain? On the inside they're just like us. They can think, they can learn, it may just be different than you. In the paper he talks about a little boy named Isaac who has Down Syndrome. He can't speak a conherent word, he just babbles but when you read to him she says he starts to dance and to act out the story.  He understand everything that going on it just in different way than us.

This is very long because I'm very passionate on this issue because I've also had people tell me you can't do it you're aiming to high just because I don't learn like them. My answer was always yes I can you don't know what your talking about and to prove them wrong which I did.

My name is Anne Marie Morreira and in third Grade I was diagnosed with a learning disability called: Nonverbal Learning  disability or NLD for short. The definition of NLD according to www.nlda.org is

"NLD is a neurological disorder which originates in the right hemisphere of the brain. Reception of nonverbal or performance-based information governed by this hemisphere is impaired in varying degrees, causing problems with visual-spatial, intuitive, organizational, evaluative, and holistic processing functions.
The syndrome of Nonverbal Learning Disorders (NLD) consists of specific assets and deficits.
The assets include:

• Early speech and vocabulary development
• Remarkable rote memory skills
• Attention to detail
• Early development of reading skills and excellent spelling skills
• Eloquent verbal ability
• Strong auditory retention

The three categories of deficits are:

• Motoric: lack of coordination, problems with balance and graphomotor skills
• Visual-spatial-organizational: lack of image, poor visual recall, faulty spatial perception, and difficulty with spatial relations
• Social: inability to comprehend nonverbal communication, difficulty adjusting to transitions and novel situations, and deficits in social judgment

People with NLD can be affected in varied levels of severity in each of the categories, so that each person with NLD presents a unique clinical, behavioral, and educational picture. People with NLD can be helped by many forms of therapy, but their world is filled with confusing sensory stimuli. For some, their physical endurance is challenged by generally low muscle tone. Some need support throughout life with cognitive and organizational skills, motor skill development, pragmatics and social skills.
Children with NLD have advanced verbal and auditory memory. Some are precocious readers with advanced vocabularies. Nevertheless, NLD is a problem of language. People with NLD have rote language skills but when it comes to functional daily use of language, they have difficulties with tone of voice, inference, written expression, facial expression, gestures, and other areas of pragmatic speech.
People with NLD have difficulty understanding patterns and lining up columns of numbers. Spoken instructions can be troublesome due to difficulty picturing consecutive directions and poor visual memory. NLD can also affect coordination, causing clumsiness, poor balance and a tendency to fall. Many people with NLD have poor safety judgment.
We are not sure what causes NLD, but we know that the earlier the intervention, the better the prognosis."
That the scientific definition and if you could not completely understand all that mumbo jumbo, let me break it down for you. Basically it means I learn by hearing that I'm not really  a visual person. If you gave me a text book and told me to learn all the info in it without any out loud teaching, I probably would look at you with a blank stare. Oh I have no doubt I could do it eventually. It just would take me a really really long time. Another major thing that over the years I have become better at doing is making eye contact.  You may notice sometimes I will be talking in class and I will look at the ceiling or just off in space. I'm not trying to be mean or rude I just have a hard time making eye contact. I could go on and on about all the little things I do and understand or don't understand that someone who is "Normal" would. But why should I. I can't change the fact I have a learning disability There  is no magic potion I can drink to make it go away. I have it and it's always going to be there. So what I do instead of dwelling on the fact that I have it is to find ways to make my life easier to live with it like learning to understand sarcasm or to tell the difference when someone joking or not. To learn how to read and project and understand body language and keeping eye contact with people. Now if I don't tell someone I have a learning disbilty they could never tell but that's because I've worked so hard on the things that could be considered flaws. I graduated high school with A's and B's and was in the Rhode Island Honor Society and now I am a second year college student going for Early Ed and special education. I live by the saying "Dont judge a book by it cover." the part I always add is judge it by it first hundred pages. Whether the child has a severe disability like Autism or Down Syndrome or a learning disability like mine we are all normal in our own way.
I learn by hearing, you learn by sight. Our differences is what makes us human and you can be sure as long as we walk on two feet and have a heart and a brain we're human. It our differences that make us special and allows us to have this diverse and beautiful world we like in. Get below the surface and get to know a person and you may realize that you have a best friend in someone despite how they look and act. If you take nothing else from this,just know we're all human in the end.

I found this video which interviews three kids who have down syndrome and other disabilities and how in college they are teaching them how to survive on their own and also be able to get an education and a degree they want.

In class I would like to talk about what are good ways of dealing with kids with disabiltes and how to treat them like everyone else and how not to talk down to them.  They are human too and should be treated like everyone else in school.