Edutopia - September 2007 - (Page 58) H ea r t & S o u l “Sometimes, students get stuck in their teenage world, where everything’s a crisis,” she says. “I’ve been able to get across to students that the world is bigger than their problems. My message is that life is full of challenges, but if you’re willing to try to overcome them, you can find the resources within yourself.” Gary LeGates hopes his presence in the classroom has helped dispel stereotypes about people with disabilities. LeGates, who is blind, struggled to find his first teaching job in the late 1970s. He was hired, finally, when another instructor went on maternity leave. “People were afraid to hire a blind person. I think they were afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle the classroom situation,” says LeGates, who retired last spring after teaching Latin and French for thirty years at Westminster Senior High School, in Westminster, Maryland. Though it wasn’t always easy, LeGates found ways to work around his disability. Early in his tenure, he learned “People were afraid to hire a blind person. I think they were afraid I would not be able to handle the classroom.” No Barriers: Disability didn’t stop Tricia Downing from getting back into competitive cycling and back to helping teens. Denise Kersten Wills is a freelance writer in Washington, DC. www.edutopia.org/disabled-teachers 58 EDUTOPIA SEPTEMBER 2007 TIM MANTOANI students were cheating in his class. He discussed the situation with the principal and thereafter relied on hall monitors and community volunteers to watch students during tests. Another time, a student wrote, “I have some marijuana” on the board in LeGates’s classroom. “Half the class went to the office and reported him,” LeGates says. “They thought that was unfair, because there’s no way I could see it.” LeGates often surprised students with his classroommanagement skills, says John Seaman, Westminster’s principal. Seaman’s own son took Latin classes with LeGates in the 1990s and initially wondered how a blind teacher would be able to control a room full of teenagers. “Within two days, Gary had learned each student’s name and voice,” the principal says, “and if a student responded, he knew exactly who was speaking to him.” Seaman reports that he and his son, now in his early thirties, still occasionally talk about the example LeGates set—of hard work, perseverance, and scholarship. “I’m convinced that our students have gained an understanding that having an obvious handicap does not preclude someone from being a professional and an intellectual,” he says. “We will miss him as an influence.” Unfortunately, though, LeGates says, schools seem no more open to blind teachers now than when he started his career. “People have contacted me about the possibility of getting teaching jobs,” he says, “and it sounds like they’re facing the same kind of thing I was facing.” Discipline hasn’t gotten any easier, he adds, and the amount of paperwork required of teachers has grown. No organization tracks the number of K–12 educators with disabilities, and few resources are available for those who hope to enter the teaching field. Clayton E. Keller, coauthor of Enhancing Diversity: Educators with Disabilities, says districts should be actively recruiting disabled teachers. “One of the things that gets talked about a lot in nondisability diversity is, ‘Are there images of people like me? Are there people like me in positions of responsibility?’” Keller says. “If kids with disabilities don’t see people with disabilities in positions of responsibility, will they think they’ll ever be able to do those things?” Wendy Shugol, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair and a service dog, says she, too, has encountered prospective employers who couldn’t see past her disability. She uses those experiences to help prepare her special education students at Falls Church High School, in Fairfax County, Virginia, for life after high school. “I’m tougher on them than the nondisabled teachers, because I know what skills they need to be able to cope in the real world,” she says. “The other teachers will let them slide when they don’t do their homework, but the boss isn’t going to give you six extra days if the deadline is today.” Shugol says she pushes other teachers to let disabled students decide whether to try something, rather than deciding for them. “I find my nondisabled counterparts making judgments about students based on what the kids look like,” she says. Years ago, she successfully lobbied for the physical disabilities department to offer more demanding courses such as algebra and physics, and for the school to offer late busing for her students so they could stay for extra help or participate in clubs. “I talked about retirement last year, and there was an uproar among the kids, who said, ‘If you retire, there will be nobody to speak for us,’” Shugol says. “I really don’t stop to think about my disability very much. I’ve never looked at myself as a role model for my students. But a number of them have said they knew if I could do it, they could do it.” e HEARING IS BELIEVING Listen to Gary LeGates discuss his experience teaching without sight. http://www.edutopia.org/disabled-teachers
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