Saturday, November 19, 2016

Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome

Article by Kliewer
11/19/16
Quotes

For this weeks blog on Kliewer, I have chosen to do quotes. I had a tough time reading this piece and interpreting it but I tried to pick out the quotes that stood out to me.

1.) "Such acceptance is the aim when children with Down Syndrome join their nondisabled peers in classrooms, and many schools and individual teachers have entered into this effort, which seeks and finds community value in all children"(Kliewer 202).

I like this quote because I think it is so very important that children with Down Syndrome interact in classrooms with everyone else. There is nothing worse than isolating them from the world and keeping them in the same classroom everyday. That seems to me like it makes it much worse on them. At my high school, we had classes called "peer partners" (for spanish, music, art, and gym) where I got to go and work with a student with disabilities. Each student has a peer to guide them and it was the greatest class I have gotten to be a part of. I looked forward to it everyday and loved helping my student learn Spanish. They also look forward to it which I think makes their day even better. It is so important that children with disabilities do not get isolated into one single room all day. 

2.) " In classrooms that recognize all children as citizens, teachers and peers have rejected the image of community burden attached to Down syndrome. Rather the student is recognized as a participating member of the group"(Kliewer 208). 

Every child should be looked at the same way no matter how they learn in a classroom. It is important that children with Down syndrome be treated the same as everyone else because they are a human just like every other student or teacher in the room. There is no justification for treating a student with disabilities differently. If a student requires a small change to happen in the classroom, the do it, it won't hurt anyone but the student with a disability that you as a teacher are not treating them as a citizen and being accommodating. 

3.) "Community banishment of students with Down syndrome stems from their lack of behavioral and communicative conformity to school standards that form the parameters of intellectual normality"(Kliewer 212). 

Schools should not isolate students with Down syndrome because of how they learn. Schools need to accept the fact that not everyone learns the way that they want them to and expect them to. School standards need to accommodate students with disabilities and not push them away from all the other students just because they learn a different way. 

Points to discuss in class:
In order for students with Down syndrome to feel comfortable in the classroom, fellow students and teachers need to be accepting of them and look at them as a human being just like everyone else. I get frustrated when people show hatred or other rude feelings towards people with Down syndrome because they are no different than any of us. Communities and schools need to all come together and accept their students and peers. 




2 comments:

  1. You did really good job with the layout of this post. I like the quotes you used, very easy to follow

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  2. Really well done as always cassie, good choice of quotes

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