by: Ivan Habib, Hayley Strahs, and Chloe Wilson

Website Manager, Editor-in-Chief, and Culture Editor

While LGHS offers extensive support to students with disabilities, other students don’t often extend the same effort. Uses of the r-slur and phrases like “that’s so SPED” and “Study Skills behavior” are rampant among the student body. The first step to making LGHS a safe space is to cease the use of derogatory and harmful language. However, not all integration efforts are created equal; students must ensure they treat their classmates with dignity as opposed to alienating them through excessive attention. LGHS students should make an intentional effort to avoid patronizing other students and promote integration of students in the Special Education program within the LGHS community.

Some students enrolled in the Study Skills course at LGHS have noticed an increase in offensive language when students in Study Skills or students who have learning disabilities are not nearby. Although these students may not be present to hear the offensive language, treating students with dignity even when they are not around helps build a trusting, caring community at LGHS. Junior Ruby Currie described how students treat Study Skills enrollees differently: “I think that teachers do not treat students any differently, but with peers, there is a stereotype surrounding people in Study Skills.” Currie added: “I don’t think students realize how using offensive phrases can affect students because oftentimes Study Skills is not an optional class for students, it is a necessity for their learning.” The jokes, Currie claimed, are usually said when students in study skills are not around, as there would be more consequences if they were to say the jokes to them directly. It is imperative to recognize the impact of words, and the spread of hate across campus can negatively impact many students’ learning experiences or their ability to ask for help. 

Senior Sage Cobb participates in hybrid schooling, taking two classes online and two in person. Three of their four courses are APs. Cobb reflected, “People don’t always expect me to be a good student or be able to do AP classes, but I do.” Kids and adults often underestimate people with disabilities, treating them as if they were younger with less maturity and less intelligence. While people don’t frequently infantilize Cobb in high school, they are no stranger to coddling remarks: “It’s kind of awkward, especially coming from other students. It’s like, ‘I’m in your grade, I’m your age, just treat me like I am.’” To students outside of the special education program, Cobb implored, “Treat us like normal people because that’s what we are. We are normal people, we just have needs that are a little bit different from what a person who’s not in special education might need, and that’s how we should be seeing people in special education.”

This infantilization is not always conscious but can instead stem from our mental preconceptions of others’ abilities as less than our own. LGHS teacher Kimberly Burlinson has been teaching for over 29 years. This year, she is teaching both Strategic Learning and Biology. In the environment of the science lab, Burlinson sees firsthand how a fear of a lower grade leads students to sideline their peers with disabilities. She noted, “I’ll hear kids say things like, ‘Well, I don’t want them to mess up our lab, so I’m just not going to let them do it.’” She stressed the need not to fear failure and instead to treat an experience as an “opportunity to be like, I could help this person become better at doing things just by being kind and by letting them try.” Fostering the sense of connection with people of differing experiences requires a level of intentionality that people often overlook. Burlinson explained, “We automatically step to judgment, but if we could pause and be like, ‘Oh, that kid is probably having a really hard time right now. I wonder if I could just remind them that they can help make their path a little bit easier.’” We must make the conscious effort to understand the reasons they act differently and be thoughtful with that in mind. Burlinson shared a poignant story of one of her prior students with Tourette’s syndrome who presented to her class “about what it means to have Tourette’s. … [He explained] that ‘my tics just meant I am learning because I’m not trying to control my tics’. After that, the students, instead of thinking he was weird or different or othering him, were like ‘Oh, I totally get it.’” It is necessary to realize that by approaching someone with curiosity rather than aversion, the LGHS community can move past superficial interactions and towards genuine understanding.

We must stop viewing our differences — whether physical or mental  — as for condescendence or exclusion, but instead as an opportunity to learn from other perspectives. By moving beyond derogatory and stereotypical labels and rather, taking a moment of pause, we can turn LGHS into a truly inclusive environment. We must stop looking down on peers with differing abilities, and, as Cobb put it, “treat us like normal people because that’s what we are.”