Post #9

The topic of this week's classes dealt a lot with disabilities, as could be seen in Eli Clare's writings and the episode of Glee that focused on Artie and his hardships. People often don't know how to treat someone with a disability, whether to treat them no differently than a non-disabled person, or treat them in accommodation to their needs. Despite being determined not to treat someone differently, we often find that we alter something in our mannerisms when dealing with a person with a disability. This may not be done intentionally, but it can still be considered as giving a person special treatment when all they want is to be treated the way everyone else is treated. In the episode of Glee we watched, Artie wanted to be treated the way everyone else was. He didn't want people to see is disability as a hindrance. After trying to live their lives in wheelchairs, Artie's friends soon realized what kind of struggles Artie had to go through on a daily basis and they admired how capable he was in preforming tasks that they themselves couldn't. Another example from this episode was Becky's wish to be a cheerleader. Becky, like Sue's older sister had Downs Syndrome. After allowing her on the team, Sue pushed Becky as hard as she would any of her other cheerleaders. Upon seeing this, Mr. Shuester questioned whether Sue was being to harsh and she said that all Becky wanted was to be treated like everyone else. Although its not exactly right to treat those with disabilities differently, it is sometimes required to take their handicaps into perspective, but there are still ways in which to do this without treating the person differently. Chelsa Wlodarczyk, post #9