Edutopia - September 2007 - (Page 56) Hea rt & Soul The Advantage of Disadvantage Disabled teachers bring a unique perspective to the classroom. By Denise Kersten Wills ike most new teachers, Amanda Trei had trouble sleeping the night before her first day in the classroom. On top of the usual new-job jitters—Would she be a good teacher? Would the kids like her? Would she find a friend among her new colleagues?—Trei had an additional worry. She wondered how the special education students at Schwegler Elementary School, in Lawrence, Kansas, would react to her wheelchair. Trei was fourteen years old in 1992 when she suffered severe injuries in a car accident. All of her ribs were shattered, her liver was severed, a rotator cuff was torn, and her back was broken, leaving her lower body paralyzed. She spent a full year in the hospital before finishing high school and enrolling in college. Trei had planned to become a nurse. After the accident, she decided to go into education because she felt a kinship with students who have learning disabilities and physical handicaps. “I live being different every day,” she says. “In what other job could I make an impact on kids who live what I live?” On her first day—five years ago—Trei’s students noticed her wheelchair and were curious. “A student asked me why I needed a car to get around—my wheelchair car,” she says with a laugh. “After they asked me about it, we went on with our business and it was cool.” Trei, who now teaches at Riverview Elementary School, in Shawnee, Kansas, says she has discovered that her disability can be an advantage in working with special education students. “I have a one-up on anybody who can walk, because I can see what my students need, and I can see the struggles they’re L “I have a one-up on anybody who can walk, because I know the struggles my special ed students are going to face.” going to face,” she says, “Somebody who isn’t disabled—they can read about it, they can watch it, but if they never live through it, they never really know.” Most of Trei’s students require modifications to their classroom work. Some need extra time on tests, others might need to hear, rather than read, their textbooks. “I think when they see me do things differently, they feel OK about that,” Trei says. “Because I’m accepted in my school, I think they feel like they’re accepted, too.” She turns questions about her disability into lessons on finding alternate ways to do things. She might demonstrate to students how she gets in and out of her wheelchair, or take them to her car to show them the hand controls she uses to drive. The idea that there’s always more than one way to reach a goal is also integral to what Tricia Downing teaches, regardless of her students’ abilities. Downing, a competitive cyclist, had been the internship coordinator for Denver’s CEC Middle College, a magnet high school, for just two weeks in 2000 before she was hit by a car during a training ride. Though she was paralyzed from the chest down, she went back to work and resumed her life as a competitive athlete, becoming the first paraplegic woman to complete an Iron Man–distance triathlon. 56 EDUTOPIA SEPTEMBER 2007
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