Updated: 5 Reasons Why IEPs Are Important (but without the stupid numbering thing)
We hide ourselves because society is quick to throw rocks at anything they don't understand. Quick to try and put the Other outside the wall. This is a defence on the part of people who don't get you, and everyone has mechanisms, but you know what? You are not responsible for their defences. You need to worry about your own. Let those defences work for you, not against you.
Don't try to do everything at once. You will quickly discover that you can't.
My World History teacher noticed, in what should have been my senior year of high school, that I was not taking notes but copying a black-and-white photo out of the textbook. Other than the graphite being too shiny in the darkened areas due to #2 pencil, it looked pretty good. She took me aside and told me that I could hand in cartoons related to the text if I preferred drawing to writing papers. She misunderstood my disinterest in note-taking (obviously I enjoy writing words) but I'd like to posthumously thank her for trying to provide a student-focused education. The older I get, the more I appreciate people who try to meet me on my half of the communication playing field.
People who study such things are finding that "learning disabilities" are sometimes inherited thought patterns which were ingrained when a person's ancestors were hunter/gatherers, or whatever they were. For generations, anyone who doesn't fit the norm is labeled inefficient, wrong, disabled, broken. If your ancestors were nomads, it sucks to be you.
Can you imagine a society made up entirely of people diagnosed with Autism? I want to go there. I want to let them teach me their ways.
It is okay to sit down and think carefully before acting. If it takes you longer than other people to thoroughly sort out a thing, then do what YOU do. You might be a field-sensitive learner, or field-independent. Doing your thing someone else's way is going to be ineffective and make them believe they were right about you. They weren't right about you, because they didn't think you through all the way before making a judg(e)ment.
Further Reading:
Native American Students Study Learning Preferences
Get started on understanding this field of study and think about how it can be expanded.
College of Menominee Nation
Many props to Jasmine Neosh, a bright person younger than me who has consistently taught me things over the years.
And There Was Light
Rob Coapman chronicles his journey through and out of his history of trauma, hoping to leave some kernels that will help you find your way through yours.
My favorite psychologist while I studied for my Counseling degree was R. D. Laing, a man whose theories included treating everyone as an individual, not administering drugs or use severe treatments, but in just interacting, observing and learning from people who handled life's problems very different than the norm. Seeing people labeled as "mentally ill" more as functionally different. I often wondered how much he really cared about his patients. My thought is that he loved living in the middle of the creativity living among them afforded him. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/rd-laing-was-the-countercultures-favourite-psychiatrist-a-dangerous-renegade-or-a-true-visionary-a6755021.html
ReplyDeleteBTW, they didn't avoid what are now considered the "illicit" drugs. He used to keep LSD in the refrigerator in his mental health home.
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