Cornerstones of success for students with disabilities

Good morning Kay,

Nice to hear from you. It's tricky waters in the disability in education field these days. I teach a course at the University of Connecticut medical school called Public Health Issues of Disability and one of the main themes of the course is that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". One of the interesting trends these days is to get away from "disability labels" which is laudable in itself however it has some pretty interesting unintended consequences. There are rumblings in this country that school districts are interested in this movement not from an inclusion standpoint but from an economics/let's save some money/reduce the rolls of special education standpoint. Of course the whole notion of disabilty is really secondary when compared to the fundamental flaws of an education structure that is designed as Ivan Illich writes to produce a certain guaranteed amount of failure. I have always thought that we do mainstreaming in a backwards fashion. We should be mainstreaming "typical" kids into special ed as a better model (although not always in practice!) of education.

One of the things that I stress to my staff, and that I stress to secondary educators when I do talks about getting kids with challenges to learning ready for college is that there are three cornerstones to success in life, understood after 30 years of observing the differences between the kids with disabilities who "make" it and those who don't.

1. Emotional Self-regulation skills particularly differentiating finely between things like supportive and encouraging "stage fright" and debilitating anxiety, justified pride in legitimate accomplishment and false pride in outcomes not necessarily related to input.

2. Positive and balanced self-regard (not of the "you can be anything you want to be" variety that really addresses more the anxiety needs of the parents and professionals than the needs of the students) that is based on a strong awareness of strengths and weaknesses, a strong sense of self-worth and ability to contribute to a community.

3. An internal sense of drive or "personal mission statement" that transcends occupational limitiations and boundaries (i.e. not "I want to be a teacher" but "I want to make a positive difference in the lives of future generations as my legacy to the universe")


For each of these three areas I also firmly believe that an integral approach is not just important but necessary to success. You cannot start a diet to improve your physical health without a vision/spirit, and an emotional connection, and a cognitively congruent thinking process, etc.
In the same way you cannot begin to overcome the difficulty of living with a disability without having an understanding of how that disability has had an impact in all areas of your being and life.

Looking forward to further conversations.

Peter Love, MPH, PhD
Director Learning Resource Center
Mitchell College
New London, CT
USA