inclusion: my introduction

[reflection paper written in response to a video about a student, Joselyn, with multiple disabilities, making friends and spending time with them. The reflection prompt question is...]

What [about the video] makes you aware of your own prejudices?

The video and the discussion that followed created a dramatic change in my thinking. I am embarrassed to admit that while watching the video, I could not stop thinking that Joselyn’s friends must be helping her due to their own mental “issues” of some kind. “She’s a dress-up doll for them,” I concluded harshly; “they just want to look or feel benevolent.” It was only during the small-group discussion afterward that my assumptions were really challenged and I saw that my judgments were absolutely, completely unsupported by the material in the video.

After this realization, I was stunned to retrace the way my mind had worked while watching the video. Every piece of information had been re-interpreted to fit with my pre-conceived notions about helping and being helped. For example, when Joselyn’s friends described how they redecorated her room, I thought that they must have "control issues"—why else would they just take over her room like that? The other students in my small-group discussion, however, pointed out that Joselyn seemed capable of somehow indicating what she liked and what she didn’t. They conjectured that her friends probably showed her different items so that she could choose which ones she wanted for her room. “We’re just not used to seeing relationships like this,” one of the women in my group pointed out.

This experience suddenly illuminated the intellectual understanding I had begun to form after reading the first few articles in the course reader. While reading, I had already become intrigued by the possibilities of inclusion as a way of individualizing the whole process of education—a way to create a genuine community instead of a hierarchy of “successes” and “failures.” But only after seeing my own bias did I begin to understand how true inclusion could transform society. A whole generation of children seeing themselves as equals? Is it possible?