Disabilities And Society

3 Pages 730 Words

Final Response

Throughout my life, I have not been the most comfortable around people with disabilities. I have always had a sort of fear of these people, probably mostly because I didn’t know or understand anything about them. My “individual comfort level” around people with disabilities was not very high going into this semester, and I can’t say that is extremely high now. However, I do feel far more secure in interacting with people with disabilities after completing the Disability and Society course.
When I was in elementary school I was exposed to many children with disabilities my school had a special program for children with disabilities. Though these children were always around, I had somewhat of a fear for them because I didn’t understand the way the acted, and only real interaction I had with them was watching them, because they were segregated from the “normies”, or when one of them would run away from their teacher and mix in with the rest of the kids at the school. We never learned anything about the children with disabilities, so I had no idea why they acted the way they did and I had an uneasiness about them. My high school also had a program for people with disabilities, but again they were separated and I was never taught anything about their disorders. My early experiences with people with disabilities sort of set the way I thought about these people until I went through Disability and Society.
In our class, we had many guest speakers, videos and class discussions that helped me increase my “individual comfort level” around people with disabilities. The most recent speaker we had, and the one that affected me the most was Sean Stephenson. Sean really helped my comfort level regarding people with disabilities because of the way he spoke to us. Though he is a little different than us in appearance, Sean is very intelligent and has accomplished a lot in spite of his hardships. Sea...