Disability

This activity is to accompany the Teaching Tolerance article “Story Corner: An Unlikely Friendship.”

This is the final lesson in the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series. Preceding lessons explored a variety of social justice issues through the lens of photographers and their pictures. This activity will offer students several different options for showcasing their understanding.

Photographs may tell a story or make a statement about a greater concept or ideal. Sometimes photographers use the subjects in a photo to convey a message. This lesson is part of the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series.

In this lesson, students will analyze photographs that show people with different abilities and of different ages to explore assumptions about ability, age and activism. This is part of the Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice series.

Whitman yearned to shout from the roof. His barbaric yawp. Me too. For right now I am sitting on the grass, my back resting against a fence, wanting to yawp from atop the Gateway Arch. Everyone, Listen. I know you’re all excited about the Cardinals-Cubs series starting at Busch in a few hours, but run over to Tilles Park and see Bryan because he’s up at bat. Right now. 

In this lesson, students learn about the principles of universal design, analyze examples of it, and develop their own product, communication or environment in accordance with its principles.

In this lesson, students will explore the ways people with a critical health condition or disease might feel, as well as various ways they can support and show compassion toward those who are living with an illness.

Today, I got a laptop. Not for me. For Aeesha.

Let me flash back to about six weeks ago. A team meeting took place around a table in the science classroom, completing the annual discussion about Aeesha’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).  

In eighth grade, Aeesha still struggles with basic mathematics, with written expression skills and with decoding text. In many ways, she is an elementary school student trapped in a middle school student’s adolescent body. 

Rosa Marcellino didn’t like being labeled “mentally retarded,” so she decided to let important people know.

This is a busy week at most schools, with teachers and students returning from the holidays. But before everyone gets focused on what lies ahead, let’s revisit 2010. This list highlights five issues that had a profound effect on diversity and diversity education last year. This is not an exhaustive list. Feel free to add stories of your own.

In this lesson, students will first learn about disabilities. Then they will learn tips for communicating respectfully with people with disabilities.

During the school year, I try to empower my students to make their own decisions and form their own opinions. I begin with a unit I call, “Question Authority.” Students investigate all kinds of authorities, including government, media, and history. It’s a powerful unit that leaves kids shocked (“Food labels can say fat-free even if there’s fat in the food?”), disappointed (“Those models in the magazine are all Photoshopped?”), and angry (“We imprisoned people just because of their ethnic heritage?”). They learn to develop a critical lens with which to question the reality they once blindly accepted.

It is not easy for my students in suburban St. Louis to connect with the characters in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The novel is packed with gruff men. Middle aged, mostly friendless, they are all struggling to eke out an income on a ranch somewhere in California.

The one glimmer of hope in Steinbeck’s classic emerges through the relationship between two men—George and Lennie. They are not relatives. Yet in a society where individualism is paramount, George does far more than merely put up with Lennie. He cares for this mentally challenged man, blankets him with a protective shield. Other characters turn from, threaten, and even belittle Lennie. Most are astounded by George’s choice to attend to someone who seems like such a burden.

On the rare occasion that I spend time with people who are not educators, it’s inevitable that someone will drop the word “retarded.” The “R-word” has been used colloquially for decades to describe and degrade anyone or anything out of the ordinary, inferior, or somehow slow. I can still hear the snickers from my own classmates back in 10th-grade health class when we read the words “fire retardant” in our textbook.

It’s not that hard to stick out in middle school. The unspoken code of social conduct is unyielding and inflexible. Anything outside of those narrow parameters is weird, and weird makes kids uncomfortable.

I do not bark. I do not swing open my mouth and chomp my teeth six times while telling a story. The n-word does not dart suddenly from my mouth. And derogatory comments about gays and lesbians? They do not spew from me.

My mere presence in a movie theater or a restaurant or a subway does not arouse anger or disgust from others.

But then, I am not Marc Elliot.

This lesson helps children identify their own strengths and struggles. Students will work on ways to bring all their strengths together to build a classroom community.

Everyone is worried—rightfully—about what seems to be a cross-country epidemic of bullying. The problem may be nationwide, but the solution has been left to the 14,000 school districts and the 50 states. Because we all know that bullying in Oregon is a lot different from bullying in Georgia, right?

A new third-grader arrives at your school. He is blind. He is autistic. He is developmentally delayed.

How does your school deal with the special needs of this child?

In these lessons, students will work toward understanding what it means to have a learning disability. The goal is make them aware of prejudice and discrimination aimed at those with learning disabilities.

In third grade, Julia Horsman’s entire science project consisted of being herded outside with the other kids with disabilities and rolling soda cans down a ramp, some empty, some full, to see which would travel farther and faster.

Core samples are fascinating columns of rock and mineral cut from deep below the earth's surface with a drill. They are marbled with shades of color. This activity helps students to identify their own core values, much like core samples.

Students with learning disabilities create a documentary film to share their wisdom.

Jackie Brown prided herself on teaching her students about disabilities. But could she confront her own feelings about her mother and polio?

This lesson will guide students through their human right to education and help them evaluate how well the world is doing when it comes to providing a free, equal, quality education to our youth.

On a daily basis, we encounter disturbing, startling, discomforting, angering, humorous, ironic, sarcastic, irreverent, uplifting and insightful words and images related to social justice.

As a veteran teacher of English, literature and history, I have employed many different lessons to encourage my students to seek understanding of other cultures.

Social justice lesson