My belief Statement

I believe that you need to be disability/color blind when looking at your students; who a student is is from what is in the inside.

My whole life I have grown up with a Mentally Challanged Uncle and have listened to what some people say about Students with disabilities. I take it to heart when people say “Don’t be retarded” or “You are so retarded”. Things like that aren’t cool. Another things that makes me upset is when people say distinguish “normal” people from mentally handicapped or anybody with a disability as “them” or “they”. We are all human beings and deserve to be treated with respect and equal.

All of my strong feelings about my uncle came when I had a house fire during my Junior year of high school. Our house was partially destroyed and took over half a year to build it back to norma. We went to live with my grandparents, on my mothers side, and across the street lived my great grandmother her son Jeff, my mentally challanged uncle. He would always come over to clean my grandparents house, especially to arrange the newspapers a certain way in a stand. In the beginning he was a pain in the ass. He would turn off the lights when i was trying to study, shut doors when i told him to keep them open, turn off the t.v. when i was watching it, and many more other things. As time went by though I began to sit and talk to him. He is very hard to understand when he talks everyone says, but I can clearly understand what he tries to say. We would talk about Elvis, wrestling, his mom, and other things and our bond became very strong. My grandmother and mom started to say I should go into teaching especially teaching students with disabilities and I really started to consider it. Then one day that year while i was still living at my grandparents, my great grandmother died. My uncle was so devastated by this and it was so painful to watch him have to go through that. For me seeing him upset just like any “normal” person would be if their mother died sold me on becoming a teacher and from this day forward.

 Everyone can achieve great things in life no matter their race, mental or physical disability, ethnicity, or whatever else the barrier may be. All people need is guidance and help. People cannot be judged on what they can achieve by a first glance, that is why I believe in being disability/color blind when teaching my students.