Fall 2012 Teacher Cadets: How it Feels to Have a Learning Disability

Today started off like any other day with SSR then our daily "pot notes". I really love doing those every morning because it makes me feel good to write someone a compliment. After we did our normal morning routine, we watched clips from a video called F.A.T City which explained how it feels to be a child that is learning disabled. In the first video clip the instructor explained how when a child without a disability is asked a question starts processing an answer, but a learning disabled child has to process the parts of the question first before even responding. The second video clip was about having a reading disorder, they showed images of sentences from a story where the letters were jumbled up, turned upside down, and the spacing was off. It was really hard to read and made me understand how hard it truly is for them to really read it. The third clip was a picture of a cow, but you couldn't tell what it was until the instructor told everyone what it was, it was to show us how perception differs in people.The last clip we watched was from Mean Girls where they were talking about how the cafeteria was divided up by cliques. After the video clips were done Mrs. Sutusky had a surprise activity for us. She put labels on our heads (we weren't allowed to see our own) with things like, "treat me like a child", "I'm deaf", and "value my ideas". We then had to talk to each other and treat each other by what was on the other person's head without telling them. Mine said "ignore me", it made me feel bad when everyone walked away and wouldn't talk to me. The idea of this lesson was effective it literally put us in the shoes of those kids we all know, and showed us how they live their lives everyday.