Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” 1916, lines 18-20
I am a young adult with a disability. I atttend a 4 year university and have an enoromous amount of experience to share regarding survival both in High School and in life. At six months old, I was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy ("CP"). The only limitations resulting from my CP are physical. Nevertheless, those limitations required the district to provide an aide whose tasks were to take notes and assist in any other essential daily functions. With the role of the aide came the immediate suspicion on the part of my peers that he or she was the one completing assignments and not me. I was, despite the aforementioned fact, the talk of the town; you see, I had a motorized scooter, and everyone’s day was made if he or she had a ride on its back at recess. But as junior high school came, cliques began to form; in other words, students realized that I was different and began leaving me out of activities and sometimes acted as if my existence was not a reality. That forced me to ask the painful question: “why me?” Suicide did cross my mind. But I hung on and found other pursuits, mainly intellectual in nature, to keep my mind stimulated and numb the emotional pain.
Things changed as I entered high school. In the first semester, because I had a love for baseball, (and still do—Let’s go White Sox!) I wanted to be a sports broadcaster; a position in that arena would allow me to travel the country and experience the game I love. But then, I sat at home one day and watched ESPN; on the screen, the anchor was detailing the Supreme Court’s holding in PGA Tour Inc v. Martin 532 U.S. 661 (2001). This case helped to spur my passion for advocacy and catapulted my life in a truly unexpected direction. It was after hearing about the case that I wrote Congressman Mark Kirk, who has since been a great ally and voice in Congress, supporting initiatives that help to make society more open and accessible to people with disabilities. But a full explanation of my activism is beyond the scope of this piece; what is important here is that socialization became even harder in high school, because students who I believed were my friends ostracized me because they thought that what I was doing was “gay.” I realized, after quite a bit of deep thought, that their ad hominem attacks were immature and that they did not truly comprehend the reasons for my actions or its positive impact on the community.
It was because of my struggles and challenges in high school that I began to consider at length the concept of inclusion. I had first considered inclusion in an article I had begun writing for a journalism class. In that class I had detailed the experiences and opinions relative to inclusion of two other students with disabilities and various teachers at school. Following the completion of the article, I sat down and thought about all the things teachers had done over the course of my entire educational career to ensure that I was truly included. As I examined the list, I realized that my inclusion was successful because I too had done everything discussed below. So, without further introduction, here is the list, supplemented with short anecdotes and/or supporting arguments. Students should:
