Creating Acceptance/Friendship for Children with Disabilities in a Classroom

Children can be very mean and cruel to those children who are different from them. Every person remembers a time in his/her life where another has made fun of them or picked on them because they were different. For children with disabilities it is an everyday constant fear; the fear of being picked on.

Teaching acceptance of all students is a big issue in today's world, especially since more and more students with all forms of abilities and disabilities are being included in all classrooms through inclusion. It is important for those students to feel included as part of the class and not feel as if they are outsiders looking in with consent fear of being labeled or put down day after day.

There are many ways a teacher can teach acceptance and build friendships between all students in his/her class. One way is to teach diversity in the classroom. Ask students where he or she is from, have them research their backgrounds and report them to the class. Are there similarities between the students? Differences? Another idea is that of teaching about all forms of disabilities. Have the students experience different forms of disabilities by blind folding them and having them walk around the school or wear ear plugs during one lesson or even have the students go around the school in a wheel chair for part of the day. Was it easy for them? What things were difficult to do?

How would that student feel if he/she had to go around like that forever? What things helped that student? How did the other students treat that student? By doing these activities it puts students in the shoes of a child with a disability.

Another idea is to celebrate diversity. Allow students to share personal stories. Do they have relatives with a form of a disability? Do they have anyone else close to them with a disability? How does that make them feel?

There are many other ways also to introduce your students to many different disabilities. As a teacher it is important for you to teach your students as much as you can about all forms of disabilities as your students might be encountering people with disabilities in the future.

It is also important for a teacher to be tolerant of all disabilities him/herself for if a teacher has harsh feelings about a person with a disability the students will pick that up and act of that intolerance. Also as a teacher one may have all types of students in a class. It is important for a teacher to see past the disability and see the student for whom he/she is and not just see the disability. If a teacher believes a student can not do something because of his/her disability the student will start believing that also.