Empower

Empower

To be empowered or empower someone else. Every day people are empowered but by what? I took a long time to reflect and think back in all the seven years of teaching of what I have been empowered by or if I have empowered any of my students. Empowering my students I feel is something that should happen regularly since you are instilling new knowledge and information and technique into their lives. There is nothing better than having a student that just graduated come back and visit and explain how ahead they are in a class (art history) because of what I taught them. It makes me feel like I am doing what I am suppose to be doing as a teacher. However, the word empower and disability go very nicely together and my experience is exactly that, nice.

I had the privilege of being able to teach Painting I during a semester and I at that time I was introduced to a wonderful young man, named Andrew. I could be partial since that is my son’s name, but my student Andrew was born a dwarf. I thought it was kind of ironic since this was the first thought that I had and I didn’t even review the lists of films to watch for this assignment. In viewing “Don’t Look Down On Me,” John age 22 was born a dwarf as well. The documentary is about a day in the life of John and how he is viewed as a dwarf from the reality of this world. In the beginning he explains the different types of dwarfism because his mother was a doctor, this was very helpful and interesting. The film continues on with a camera strapped to him so we can see how others act towards him. I was embarrassed for those people; it was horrible the way they acted. The comments and picture taking was incredible. So I felt it was only appropriate to take something negative and turn it into a positive by how I was empowered by my student Andrew and how I empowered him.

When you get your class lists at the beginning of the year you first look at the IEP’s and the 504’s so you legally are aware of the situation and know what you as a teacher must do for accommodations and so on. That is exactly what I did, I noticed a student Andrew who had a lot of accommodations in his profile. So I made the arrangements and took it upon myself to meet with him after our first day of school privately and ask what I can do to help him in the class. He was astonished that I would talk to him about the accommodations, saying that no other teacher has ever done that for him. I made extra long paintbrushes for him, cut the bottom of the painting easel for him so it would be shorter. Made sure his painting supply locker was at eye level for him, put all the paints he would need on a cart located in the back of the room that only he had access to. I made sure that he sat in the front of the room so he would be able to see the demonstrations on the board, put the bathroom pass lower for him to reach. I felt that this is the least that I could do, however pulling him aside when no one was around and discussing this with him made him feel like the “lights” weren’t on him during class time. In the film, “Codes of Freaks” someone in the audience talked about how people with disabilities are labeled as an embarrassment, so that is exactly what I was trying to avoid for Andrew. He ended up having a wonderful semester with me and was very grateful for the extra measures that I went through to make him fit in perfectly. He went on to have me for painting II as well later on in the school year. It was a pleasure and a delight to have this experience happen to me, since he empowered me to be a better teacher especially with a student with a disability since I haven’t had a dwarf in my classroom prior to Andrew. His mother and father even contacted me about how much he enjoyed my class and what I did for him and how appreciative they were. Andrew actually went on to graduate and be operated on by Dr. Ben Carson and was in a couple of movies, including the movie Pixels.

This experience like I said was something new and challenging, but was embraced and allowed me empower a student. I never realized the extremes that people with disabilities had to go through in order to receive proper needs. In the film, “Section 504 Rehabilitation Act 1973,” it's amazing how much protest and craziness that those individuals had to go through. In today’s world we have what we have involving the 504 plan because of all those protestors. I just hope that no one has to go through those protests and fighting. I never realized the extreme from the past to what we have today.