Children of God

Children who have special needs hold a large portion of my heart. I have a passion for working with and helping people with special needs, which is why I hold a very high opinion of special education and the students involved therein.

                The main reason that I began to have a passion for working with people with special needs and majoring in special education in college is because of one of my younger brothers. Karsten has a brain tumor or an apendamoma to be exact, in the back portion of his head. Dealing with this brain tumor since he was six months old and having a total of 49 sugeries in the 13 years of his life so far has brought him physical and mental struggles which qualify him for the special education programs in his schools. He had to relearn to eat, walk and talk due to the effects of the brain tumor. Our family has had great experiences with the special education classrooms that he has been involved in thus far, but I know that this  is not always the case. I have seen areas where improvement is necessary.

In my old high school, students with special needs weren’t very well incorporated into the school. To me, they seemed to be stuck back in the corner of the high school where people would only see them if you had a class or lunch with them. There was rarely any general education student to students with special needs interaction. There needs to be more of this.

People who have special needs aren’t scary. I once found a quote in a book called Coping with Students with Special Needs that said something along the lines of, “We all have special needs. Some are just more obvious than others.” This is exactly right. I believe that people who have special needs are very important, special spirits to our Heavenly Father, and they need to be treated with the same respect, if not more, than people who don’t have as great of needs as they do.

Over the summer I had the wonderful opportunity to work at a developmental center for adults and children with special needs. The entire purpose of the summer program that I worked in was to incorporate these people into their community. This was done by going to different places for lunch, visiting stores, parks, animal shops, farms and more. This incorporation needs to be implemented more into our schools. I am a personal witness that students with special needs who are incorporated into their school systems aren’t just benefitted themselves, but the people around them are benefitted as well.