Blog 7-Hehir

 For the article Eliminating Ableism in Education I am going to reflect on it and connect it to my personal experience. 

As a kid I always struggled with school and none of my teachers noticed until I was in eighth grade. One of my favorite teachers I had as a kid was in eighth grade and she helped me a lot. She ended up having me do some tests to see where I was compared to the other students in my grade and they were lower than other students. So that is when my individualized learning plan (ILP) came into place. So we had a meeting with a group of teachers me and my parents. They asked me what would help me and I didn't really know what would help me at the time. So they listed off some things that they thought would help me. I was able to get extra time on assignments, I would be moved into a quiet area for my testing, I would be able to ask the teacher a question about the assignment or test, and another resource I had was being able to had questions or directions repeated or worded in a different way. When I would leave the classroom for this kind of help with my schoolwork I always felt that my friends would judge me or when I went to the yearly meetings and a teacher would come get me from class I would feel embarrassed and now looking back I wish I was more confident because I know see that everyone learns differently and needs different things to succeed. Going through my classes from maybe third grade to 8th grade I knew that was struggling and I wish I could have brought myself to get help but I never did. 

"Educators have long recognized the phenomenon of children who seem intellectually able but experience marked difficulty learning to read" (Heir 12). Children can seem intellectually able but sometimes they have trouble with reading and comprehension and that can even effect them in all areas of classes. Dyslexia is also known when kids show to be intellectually able.  In my experience I never got diagnosed with dyslexia even though I had reading and comprehension struggles. It was a common thing to have in 2001. I definitely think that people need to normalize learning disabilities. Learning disabilities are a common things and teachers need to make sure the students know that.