Andrea on “Being The Class Project”
September 11, 2006 by Do'C 
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Despite being extremely busy lately (I know, who isn’t if you have school-aged children?), I still manage to do quite a bit of reading - mostly blogs. There’s been a lot of great stuff out there the past week or two, and I won’t bore readers with a spill of the highlights. Anyone can find a wealth of great reading by visiting blogs featured on the Autism-Hub, and reading the past couple of posts at each site.
More to the point of having school-aged children, however, I want to point out one piece of writing that I considered excellent. Being a skeptic, I really enjoy pieces that provoke thought - whether they challenge me to consider new things that hadn’t previously been something familiar to me, or whether they challenge me to reconsider what I thought I knew from a fresh perspective or with new facts.
An essay “Being the Class Project: Reflections upon False Inclusion” by Andrea, over at the Andrea’s Buzzing About blog, is just such a thought-provoking piece - a more than worthy read.
It not only provides an insider take on being on the outside,
Unfortunately, caring for was not the same thing as caring about. If I complained to the teacher about being put into awkward situations from being pushed into playgroups where neither I nor the children wanted my presence, my concerns and discomfort were dismissed. “You should thank them for doing that for you,” the teacher told me, “They’re letting you play with them. You should appreciate that.” But when I played with them, I was made fun of for my inability to do things the right way. I could not understand why I should express thanks to others for the opportunity to be ridiculed.
It also offers introspection/reflection that’s clear.
Their attempts to normalize me repeatedly failed, and I bore the given responsibility for that failure. It was my fault that I had problems; I just needed to “try harder” to fit in and be a fully functioning member of the scholastic social scene. The hidden promise was that if I managed to overcome whatever obstacles were in my path, I would be accepted. However, the true obstacles I had to overcome were not intrinsic, but due to the others’ lack of acceptance of me as myself.
I may need to rethink/clarify some of my own parenting strategies. As suggested by a commenter following the essay, this article should be in wider circulation - a publication read by elementary school teachers and parents might be a good spot for this.
Please read “Being the Class Project: Reflections upon False Inclusion“.
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Comment by andrea — 11 September, 2006 @ 5:22 pm
Thank you for the kudos; it’s always reassuring to find that someone not only reads blogposts, but actually gets something useful from them!
I’m curious as to what sorts of things you are now re-evaluating regarding parenting strategies? Of course, I understand it may be hard to be able to list things straight out — sometimes ideas have to percolate down and burble around a while, and be compared to life as it happens.
One of the things I realised (in later years) is that friendship is not something that can be made to happen, any more than one can “make” a child fall asleep. All one can do is to provide favorable circumstances, and ongoing ones at that. We all have good days and getting-too-overwhelmed days, and building a friendship requires building a comfort zone and extending oneself, not once, but repeatedly. You can’t push a person into a friendship, but you can invite them gently, and without a heavy demand upon what is expected of them.
andrea
PS If you like skeptical writing, I have a piece on just that, which you may find entertaining: http://qw88nb88.wordpress.com/sunk-by-bunk-and-junk/
Comment by Do'C — 11 September, 2006 @ 7:37 pm
Hi Andrea,
The kudos are well-deserved. Your post has me thinking and my wife and I discussing something important. In general I try not to blog or comment about my children as direct subject material, but I did send you an e-mail pointing out just a few things your essay prompted me/us to think about and look at a little more closely and carefully.
Comment by TheProbe — 14 September, 2006 @ 1:46 pm
This reminded me of an incident last year. My younger son attends a specialized school for physically challenged kids. It is excellent. HOWEVER, it is not perfect. They do make mistakes.
We removed my son from our local schools because he was not being included. He loves sports (plays W/C basketball and road races to 20K) and is very social.
When he began the local high school he went to the athletic director and told him he wanted to be involved in any way possible. The AD said he would get back to him. Two weeks later he was still waiting.
I called the AD and left a dozen messages. Nothing. I confronted him at an event, and he was openly hostile to the idea that a kid in a W/C could do anything for his sports program. Considering that I am an excellent judge of character, I called him a bigoted moron and went to the superintendent. Got nowhere and decided to make the switch as my son was hating school by this time.
After three great years in the special school, they get a visit from a group of kids from our district. Their purpose was toperform community service. They had ignored and shunned him for a year, and now he was a community service project.
What I found incredible was the fact that I actually had to explain how disgusting this is to the special schools administration. My son understood it quite well.
(Now, I am bragging) This year, my son is on the student council. He has suggested that his schoolmates develop community service projects and have one at his old school. He want their varsity W/C basketball team to play the old school’s varsity basketball team…
I just love it.