What is the project about?
I began my project by identifying this problem in society, and working towards to fix it. In doing so, I learned a lot about this issue and the struggles special needs students face.
Project Idea Process
Identifying the Problem
I think the way this issue initially spoke out to me was through my experience at public school my entire life. I’ve barely had any interaction with special needs children my age, at the most a couple of awkward hellos and questions. What I did tend to notice, however, is how some other kids who interacted more treated them. Some kids would purposefully ignore them or go out on their way to avoid them. Others would talk down to them as if they were young children, in a very condescending and harmful tone. Others were quite frankly, “traditionally” bullied. Although not too much of this happened at my school specifically, I’ve seen it in several shows and movies, and heard about it from others at public schools. It just really got me thinking and researching about the lives of special needs students. I realized how differently they were treated by peers, for things they couldn't control, and for the first time really acknowledged. It. I think I also really just acknowledged my ignorance when it came to this topic, as i have also been a part of perpetrating harmful stigmas. I have not tried to speak to special needs kids, or have spoken very little to them, mostly because i wasn't sure how necessarily to speak to them. It occurred to me that there were probably a lot of people out there who just didn’t have the knowledge and awareness of the struggles that special needs kids go through and how to interact with them. This inspired me to look further into this issue and come up with a way to communicate and amplify their struggles and voices to general ed kids, and educate general ed kids on how to properly treat an individual with special needs.
Solution Process
The first step I took was to take a deeper dive in researching, to really understand the complexities of this issue itself. I then went ahead and did some general research in possible solutions to these issues, trying to find something that would lead me to a course of action that could actually help. In the end, I settled on the idea that if more people just understood this and knew about all of this, the treatment from them might be different.
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I then started thinking of ways to communicate this information, and started thinking of how these types of info was communicated in my middle school. I remembered our assemblies and PSA's--which was an effective way to communicate information to the entire school. I reached out to my old middle school's principal to get a second thought on this idea-of possibly having a sort of assembly in several middle schools to spread awareness and understanding about the struggles special needs kids go through, and how to treat these students instead of alienating them. After approval, I decided on this idea and continued to flesh out a couple of the details.
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I then went ahead and started looking at elementary schools as well, seeing as this is where the ignorant/unfair treatment begins. Once realizing that an assembly probably wouldn't work for them, I began looking at other ideas on how to educate and help special needs kids at such a young age. I talked to several people and did some of my own research online to figure out how best to go about this.
Final Project Proposal
After the entire initial brainstorming process, I settled on a couple different ideas. I wanted to interview and talk to several people- Special ed experts, special needs children, general ed children, special needs children's parents, etc. and collect data from them of how situations were right now, what their specific perspective was, and figure out how and what exactly I could do to spread awareness and combat this issue. I wanted to also do a lot of research on my own to see the specific behaviors and actions that could be changed to help improve special need students' lives. I then wanted to create some sort of infographic or presentation and publish it online. My end goal was to go to several middle schools and present this information to the school, in order to educate students about special needs kids, their specific struggles, and how general ed students could change their behavior and use of ignorant but harmful terms.
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I also wanted to focus on elementary schools, as the dynamics are severely different, and this is where most kids develop fundamental social and educational skills. After research and interviews, I've found that mixed learning/interaction truly benefits both parties extensively.I want to push schools to incorporate special ed students into more general ed classes when they can, and to encourage and foster interaction between them both instead of separating both groups completely. I want to implement more times for these interactions, whether they be just simple socially focused ones, or more educationally focused ones, in order to foster new friendships and to hopefully prevent barriers from forming between both groups before they get older.