Unmasking Special Ed

Up until I was in fourth grade, I thought I understood kids with mental problems and disabilities. I knew that they had their own way of learning things, that each of them was different, and that they ate lunch in a different part of the lunchroom than the rest of us. I figured that this was all there was to know, and our school seemed to separate them out from the rest of us; the “normal kids” and the “special ed kids”. It wasn’t until later that year that I realized how important they are, just like every other human being. 

Starting the year I was in fourth grade, my elementary school began an inclusion program, something that has been becoming increasingly popular in schools as of the past few years. The object is simple; you bring a student from the special education class into a “normal” classroom and give them a chance to interact with the other students, and to see what it’s like to be in your typical American grade school class. That year, we had a first-year teacher full of enthusiasm and great ideas, and she was more than happy to have our classroom host a student. So we welcomed Chris, and autistic boy with glasses and a love for old-fashioned cars.

At first, the rest of us weren’t exactly sure how to react to having a kid from the special ed program in our class. For the past three years, we had just glanced over them, assuming that they didn’t notice us. We knew that they had feelings and brains, but either we were too scared to stop and talk to them, or just didn’t have the time. It was like they were aliens from another planet, who we couldn’t really connect with.  Now, with one of these “aliens” sitting in the front of the same room as us, we began to realize that we had made a serious mistake all of those years.

Chris taught us so many things. After just a week, we were all waving to him when we saw him in the hallway, along with the other disabled kids that he was with. When we made collages about ourselves, he looked through magazine after magazine to find the perfect pictures of cars to use. “Which is your favorite?” I would ask, and he would point them all out to me, naming each one and why they were his favorite. His voice was hard to understand at times, but, by the end of the year, we knew exactly what he was talking about. And thanks to Chris, our class’s cookbook has one amazing no-bake cookie recipe, in print and on the second page.

About a year later, when I was in fifth grade, I was in a different school with different kids and a different atmosphere. Our elementary school had closed, so we consolidated with the other one in the area and created one big school. I hardly knew any of the kids in my class, and didn’t recognize any of the special education students. One day, when we were in the school library, the librarian had us all sit down so she could talk to us about a book that she had just bought. It was called Out of My Mind, she said, and went to explain the book to us in great detail. I sat there, mesmerized, throughout the entire thing. If I had thought I understood disabled kids before, then I was a genius now. I had to read that book.

Finally, a month later, I got it. Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper; a small, blue book with a goldfish jumping out of a bowl on the cover. I was instantly drawn into the world of ten-year-old Melody, who suffers from cerebral palsy and has to spend her whole life in a wheelchair. She can’t talk, walk, or have control over her body, but her mind is brimming with brilliant ideas and words. More than anything else, Melody wants to talk, to tell everybody how she feels and what she thinks, but is easily overlooked by the other kids in her school as a “retard. Once she enters fifth grade, her teacher lets her join an inclusion program, like the one in my school, so she can be in other classes and let her smarts pay off. When the opportunity comes up for her to try out for a trivia competition, Melody is as good as they come.  The only problem is that the other kids still have trouble accepting her. Told from the eyes of one remarkable girl, this book proved itself to be one of the most inspiring I’ve ever read, but it also triggered a thought of something else.

My classmate, who I’ve known since first grade, has two sisters. One of them is adopted and hyperactive, and the other is a lot like Melody; in a wheelchair, has trouble talking, nineteen years old and still in high school. I had met her several times, and while she’s great person, I was never really sure if she quite knew what was going on, or understood us. After reading this book, though, I realized that, like Melody, she could be a brilliant person, with so much to say, but locked up inside her own little world. Not too long ago, I read a piece that she wrote for her high school’s newspaper. It was just like something anybody would write; about how much she loves the beach and how she can see it from her house. It was then that I knew that she’s just like us, only her true self is masked my the problems she suffers through.

This is the thing with these kids. They are all people. They are all human beings, with feelings, lives, hopes, and dreams. But since they can’t always have control over what they can do, or say, or decide, they are what we make them out to be. We’re in charge of taking that mask off them and showing their inner selves. So that people can see who they are, not their disabilities.

Now that I’m in eighth grade, I know for a fact that I don’t fully understand kids with disabilities. There’s so much more that I need to unlock and uncover, but until then I know that I can be as friendly as possible. It’s like saying hello to that new girl on the first day of school. A smile can change somebody’s life.

So when I’m in the hallways and I see them, that’s what I do. I wave. And smile.