A Survival Guide to High School for Students with (and Without) Disabilities By David A. Kuriniec [Part 2]

Below is the second part of the essay and observations by David Kuriniec, who is a young adult with a disability who attends a 4 year University.

Look at the Big Picture

Teachers tend to get flustered with change or difference.  For all the talk about celebrating diversity, some teachers are awfully unkind when  they have a  student with a disability in their classes but be patient.  While many of them certainly have had some exposure to students with special needs either in college or previously in their careers, each disability presents a different challenge based on the amount of help needed. That is why students must take into account their limitations and be completely cognizant on a continual basis of everything developing around them.  And this holds in the social realm as well.  This advice will come in handy as students get together with their friends and participate in ritual events such as Homecoming and Prom.  In fact, to start preparing for those events now, students should sit down and write out a list of the areas in which  they are limited; although they may be struggling to accept the facts, if these are thought about and written out, again,  the process of inclusion is smoother because the students can tell their friends when they need help and how to help them. I went to Turnabout in my sophomore year, and that advice was the best I received from my Mother.  I talked with my date and worked out a deal prior to the event so that I did not need to go through a whole explanation in front of the sixteen people who were along with us.  Aside from a small conflict regarding transportation, the evening was very pleasant and went off without a hitch.

There Really is No Such Thing as a Failure

I believe strongly that the there is no failure unless the student has not given his or her absolute best effort.  This really reinforces the entire point of this essay.  Even when expectations, either those that we place on ourselves or those placed on us by others, are not met in full,  success is unquestioned, because something of value, large or small, has still been produced, and it may even be useful at a later date. For instance,  I wrote a PowerPoint  presentation entitled Successability: Providing Motivation. I had hoped to deliver it to the Council for Exceptional Children, but it was not accepted for presentation.  Nevertheless, later I was asked to deliver the talk to the Louisiana State Board of Education at its Pre-Kindergarten Conference. It was very well received.

Personal Goal Setting Is Critical

Setting personal goals is an important part of inclusion; it is a self-propelling machine. By setting goals, students again help their own inclusive processes along, because they develop points of reference and a sense of dedication, determination and drive that is easily visible to their instructors.  This helps the teachers better their teaching methods to fit the interests of each particular student. Moreover, students will get along better with their peers if they have a sense of direction and are acting on their passions; peers will be unable to shake the determination of the student.

Mutual Effort is Needed to Make it Work

The process of inclusion requires input from both the teacher and student  Inclusion can not be done well without the engaged involvement of both parties. An appropriate education requires addressing academic and emotional/social concerns. The success of the inclusive process is dependent upon how the teachers and students react to their individual situations.  If a student gets an assignment and immediately decides he or she does not want to do it and that becomes known to the other members of the class, the student will be looked upon as incapable and different, thereby diminishing his standing with his peers in class. On the flip side, if a teacher gets a student in the class and does not know what to do with him or her because of the limitations, that teacher cannot just give up or avoid the situation, even though that may be the easiest course of action to take.  The instructor has a responsibility to put forth 100% in ensuring that the student can benefit from being in an inclusive setting. This piece has endeavored to illustrate that inclusion is not an act or an event, it is a continual process.

In my view there is an inverse relationship between restrictiveness and effort; the more effort  the student and teacher put forth, the less restrictive the environment, and vice versa.  What is paramount here is that the student in part possesses the power to engineer an excellent inclusive educational experience and should wield it accordingly.

Conclusion

The best advice I can give to a student with a disability in an inclusive setting that is trying to survive high school comes from edited lyrics to a song in a musical  Newsies.  It goes like this:

• Open the gates and seize the day

• Don't be afraid and don't delay

• Nothing can break [you]

• No one can [defame you]

• Give [your best effort today]

• Arise and seize the day.

Some of the wisdom I have gleaned can be summarized as follows:

• Sometimes, the things that we take to be our biggest failures ultimately turn out to be our biggest successes;.

• Error evaluation is a vital part of the inclusive process because it serves as an internal instructor to the student, helping him or her to become a better student by learning from their mistakes; it also serves to reinforce positive attitudes;

• Find a focus and set goals now so that students (and parents) have a detailed understanding of the fundamental tools necessary for survival of high school, they can begin to plan;

• Students should find the areas in which they are gifted to determine their focus.

As a closing thought, let me turn your attention to the epigraph at the top of the essay [part 1 above], Robert Frost’s famous words Students should picture themselves in the poem.  What I have laid out here is the road less traveled; the road in which students and teachers are equals; the road in which students take a more active role in engineering an inclusive experience that is rewarding and enlightening; the road in which the student, through conscious or unconscious action, gains priceless skills that he or she will carry throughout the remainder of natural life; this is the road that will make all the difference; this is the road to success.    

Comments

[abbey]

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