Leamon+Reading+8

My Lit Circles Group is Reading The Short Bus. For this meeting, we read chapters 1-5.

Reading the first part of this story really made me think about the education system. Since I am going to be an educator, I am glad that I am able to realize these things so maybe I can help change it. Back in my high school, I had not one special needs student in any of my classes. I was talking early with my friends about this. All of the children with any-kind of special needs had all their classes on the third floor. This kept them segregated from the rest of the school. Thinking about it now, I don't think there were any special needs students in my lunch or any of my other activities. I think this is a wrong way to go about this. I know that many schools are trying to integrate special needs students into "regular" classes. I found a lot of things in this story to be shocking especially the part about them strapping the kid to the seat to help him keep still. This is so wrong. I think the best thing about his story is he is learning that instead of trying to be normal that he should have been himself. This says so much about society and how so many people are trying to be normal and trying to be what everyone else wants them to bed. People are never really accepting of themselves and they always want to be well liked and they think they need to change in order to do so. Also, it says a lot about what it means to be educated because all his life people are telling him that he is stupid just because he isn't a good reader. I think that people need to think about what is best for the child and asking them, "what is wrong with you" is just not okay.