Hello everyone! I am so excited to be collaborating with fellow blogger Amanda Gene! Amanda’s blog is a personal blog that covers her life experiences, particularly her experiences as a person with a disability. She also uses her platform to let other people with disabilities share their experiences too! I have mentioned on my blog and social media many times that I am a person with a disability, and Amanda asked me to do an interview for her blog to share my experience! I am so honored! You can click here to read the interview! Amanda’s blog and story is so inspiring, so be sure to checkout Amanda’s other blog posts as well! Thankyou for visiting and supporting my blog! Once again, happy holidays, and I will see you in the next post!
This week is Teacher Appreciation Week. I had many wonderful teachers who had a huge role in shaping who I am today. However, if I had to pick one teacher who made the biggest impact in my life, I would have to pick my first grade teacher. Let’s call her Miss. Z.
When I was a child I had a terrible attention span. That’s the case for most children, but my attention span was short even for a child. I was easily distracted by anything. Instead of listening to my teacher, I would play with whatever might be in my hands, or I would turn my attention to what’s going on outside if I happened to be near a window. Sometimes it would be so bad that I would be daydreaming the whole class time and forget to write down the homework. My mother would get furious whenever that happened! Both my parents and teacher started to worry about me. Miss. Z started working on ways to help me, such as giving me extra attention. She also collaborated with my parents. For instance, she would have my parents sit in class with me. My parents also tried to do their part by helping me at home. Miss. Z suggested timing me while I did my homework, which is exactly what my parents did. Miss. Z recognized that I needed a lot of help, but she didn’t lower her expectations for me. She didn’t ignore my struggles, and believed that with help I could be just as successful as my peers.
All of the intervention helped. My attention span is still not great, but it has improved tremendously since elementary school. I am very grateful for Miss. Z. Here in the U.S., a teacher’s job is not easy, especially if the teacher is working in a public school. Many classrooms in public schools have classes with around 30 students. It is not easy to pay attention to that many children. Also, the work load can be very heavy. On top of planning lessons the teacher has to grade the classroom assignments, homework assignments, projects, and tests of around 30 students. The teaching profession also doesn’t receive as much respect as some other professions. These are some of the few reasons many teachers here in America often leave the profession behind after a short while. In fact, statistics show that around 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years, and around 52 percent of current American public school teachers have 10 or less years of teaching experience.
However, teaching is a very significant profession. Pretty much every other profession starts with a teacher. Whatever profession a person is in he or she needed to learn how to do his or her job, and the person who taught him or her was a teacher. Also, a teacher’s job is not just to teach. In the case of children, the teacher is like a second parent, and spends the most time with his or her students outside of the parents. It is the teacher’s job to pay close attention to the students and notice anything out of the ordinary. A child may be going through abuse at home, or might have a disability (the latter was the case for me), and it is part of a teacher’s job to catch these possibilities. If a child is struggling at home or is struggling with a disability, the child will also struggle to learn.
Despite all the hardships that come along with the teaching profession, my teacher Miss. Z still managed to notice my struggles, and give me the attention I needed to overcome them. I appreciate her and teachers like her who genuinely care about their students and take their jobs seriously. To all teachers here in the U.S. and around the world, Happy Teacher’s Appreciation Week!
“We hire Shaun and we give hope to…people with limitations that those limitations are not what they think they are, that they do have a shot!”
Dr. Aaron Glassman The Good Doctor Episode 1 Season 1
I’m a little late to joining the bandwagon as the show is already in its second season, but I started watching a show called The Good Doctor. For those who don’t know, the show is about a man named Shaun Murphy who is a surgeon. He also happens to be a man with autism. I’ve been really enjoying the show so far, and was inspired to tell me story about my own experiences as a person with a disability.
There is one word to covers the two reactions people with disabilities generally receive: doubt. There is either doubt in the person’s capabilities, or there is doubt that the person has a disability at all. In the show The Good Doctor, Shaun Murphy fits into the first category. His memory, visual spatial skills, and analytical skills are far above average. He is an asset to the hospital he is working in. However, many of his coworkers can’t see past his very apparent disability. I, on the other hand, fit into the latter category. My disability is invisible, and I often find myself having to prove that I actually am a person with a disability.
From the time I was a small girl, it was apparent to everyone in my inner circle that I was a little different from my peers. Spend enough time me, and one would definitely be able to see my deficits, but only if that person is paying close attention.
“You don’t seem like a person with a disability to me”, a friend once told me.
Little did she know that it’s that same sentiment that often makes it difficult for me to get the help I need. The specific kind of disability I have is learning disability. There are different kinds of learning disabilities, and most of them are language based. That means people with those types of learning disabilities have trouble with spoken or written communication. The most well known language based learning disability is dyslexia. Communication is not a problem for me though. In fact, I’ve been told that I express myself very well, especially through writing.
For me, the problem lies in processing. Many activities that might take other people minutes to complete can take hours for me, however, this would not be easy to notice through mere minutes of conversation with me.
“I wish I had your brain.”, a classmate from college once told me. She did not understand that it was not a superior intellect that made me successful during my time in college. It was my work ethic and perseverance that made me successful. Like any other person, I work extremely hard for what I want, and in some cases I have to put in even more effort than the average person.
For Shaun Murphy from The Good Doctor, his disability is front and center for those who meet him, and masks his capabilities. They don’t take the time to understand him and realize that his disability is only one part of who he is. That is a reality for many people with disability. In my case, people don’t take the time to understand that some disabilities are invisible, and you never know what someone might be going through. My take away from the show The Good Doctor and my experiences is that we might all have our different stories to tell, but there is one thing that connects us: the desire to be understood.
Life with Charli 