Expectations in Common: Advocacy

I have been an advocate in the disability field at the family, grass roots, school, district, state and national levels for more than 25 years.

As an Exceptional Educator, a parent of 3 children with IEP's and a sister with intellectual disabilities, I have both professional and personal experience. I have worked with families and/or children with autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, Cowden syndrome, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, Autism, intellectual, learning, and emotional disabilities and deafness.

My family advocacy primarily centers around educational issues; consulting on and writing IEPs, attending meetings with parents while providing direction, options, and clarification, conducting observations and providing input on differentiated instruction, use of access points to the general education curriculum, and strategies for collaboration and understanding.

Expectations in Common

Expectations are something we all have in common, whether we have a diagnosed disability or not.The expectations that others have for us may give us the incentive to "Be All That We Can Be" or strip us of any efforts toward achievement.

Expectations or lack of them often greatly impacts the direction of someone's life and can mean the difference between success or failure. How powerful it is when someone believes in me. And how devastating when someone, especially in authority tells me, or shows me by their actions that I am not worth their time. Expectations for ourselves is something we all have in common. It is the hope that is part of our humanity.

My son and his friend, both 8th graders really struggle with reading and math. Right now their expectations of their own success are pretty tentative. They are afraid to expect it. It is my husband's and my responsibility to show our son and his friend, that we 'expect' them to succeed. At what, we may not know yet. But expectation of accomplishment is something we all have in common. The challenge of course is finding what a person excels at.

As Parents, Teachers, Neighbors, Business Leaders, our instinct when meeting someone is to first expect competence. Except when our misconceptions about disability get in the way. We see the disability instead of the person and forget to expect ability at all. We forget that what we have in common with every individual with or without a disability is the hope, the expectation of happiness and success.

One precious treasure each of us shares is our expectation to succeed at something we are good at. And it is in our failing and yet still expecting to succeed, that we begin to sift through experiences until we find our strengths and gifts. We all have expectations for success and happiness in our lives. We have that in common, those with and those without disabilities.

Well, Welcome to my blog. I hope to reach others; families, self advocates, teachers, administrator, businesses, employers,public servants, and students and peers of children who have disabilities. that's a pretty big group, I know. As the saying goes... "It takes a village to raise a child."

I want to encourage families and teachers that children with disabilities CAN succeed if expectations are held high, in the regular classroom accessing the general education curriculum. Notice I didn't say INCLUSION? It's not a bad word, there is just a lot of confusion surrounding it.

Is there one model that works for everyone. Absolutely not. Every school has different resources, every child has different needs. The trick is identifying the supports and services needed by a child and matching them to the resources, knowledge, and staff in the child's school and district.

Expectations in Common

Experience

Advocacy

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