Friday, February 19, 2016

I don't work in special ed

I don't work in special ed.
I work in education, yes.
I work with disabled children yes.
But I don't work in special ed.

I don't "special teach", I teach.

These aren't "special children", they're children.

There is nothing special about what I do besides the fact that I am actually recognizing the humanity in people and working with them despite what everything around me tells me I'm supposed to do. And their shouldn't be anything special about that.

Because they aren't special others who need some label of differing.

They're people who need it acknowledged that they are disabled. And accommodations rather than methods teaching them to be a way they aren't. And people who will treat them as human rather than subhuman "special" beings.

So, I don't work in any sort of special education, any sort of education which will other their students by it's own name. That's not what I do.

I work with disabled children. I work in education. I work with autistic students.
And that difference in language matters.

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