This Says it All

Need I say more?  It seems to me as if the past couple weeks had a whole month rolled into them--never mind.  I'm just grousing a little.  Who knows, perhaps I will shovel myself out and begin posting regularly in the next couple days.

There are days when being a teacher at a giant school and being a deacon at a humongous parish have a lot in common.  The two combined are often more than many people would care to accept.  It's not that I would ever want to stop serving in either capacity.  Both are what I consider to be a directive given from on high. 

Actually, I think something interesting is that I get a sense of anonymity, both at the parish and the school.  I can take my child to religious education, myself dressed in jeans, t-shirt and sunglasses and often no one knows me!  My religious education name badge just says "Dan Wright."  There's no "Deacon" in front of it.  When I show up on Monday nights to teach religious education for cognitively disabled kids I'm just Mr. Wright, or Dan.

"Mr. Wright," the voice on the phone in my room says, "please come get your child--he's being disruptive."

I get the same sense of anonymity walking through the halls at the school--I'm new there so many people don't know me, excluding some of the folks in my wing, and two or three who are from my parish.

What I'm trying to get at tonight--beyond rambling--has to do with disability.  I find myself being acutely aware of situations where I feel anonymous, but what about having a sense or feeling of invisibility?  I have to admit that as an able-bodied and able-minded (mostly) person I have rarely felt invisible--low key, yes, but rarely not seen by others.

Something I notice about disability in our society is that people would often rather look the other way.  It comes from when we were kids ourselves and our mothers taught us that it was not polite to stare at people who were "crippled" or "mentally retarded."  We carry it right into our adult lives and find ourselves preferring not to see people with disabilities.  We are blind often to a world that demands to be addressed and recognized--and certainly included in everything.

Funny enough, looking out from underneath my snowstorm of paperwork (forget answering emails), I notice quite a bit.  Maybe it's because I'm a parent too, and there's just something about getting that call from my own child's school--or even the parish--that gets to me. "Mr. Wright, your child is being disruptive" translates into "Mr. Wright, your child is becoming visible."

Part of the reason my wife and I decided to start a program at the parish for the religious education of children with cognitive disabilities was because it wasn't being offered anywhere else--the other part of the reason had to do with our own child.  However, beyond simply providing a class at the church for kids with disabilities, we wanted to get the kids into the regular classrooms.  We wanted other people to see them--to see these kids as just kids.  Yet it will always be a fight, or so it seems.  However, if we lose the fight, or if our program fails because we just weren't willing to go to the trouble, it's more than just an ugly black eye in the end.  What we do for the one's who get the least consideration in this life reveals our true attitude about the whole.  It reveals the depth of the Holy in us.

It's more than a bit disappointing to get a call from the parish and hear that several RE teachers had problems with kids being a little bit too...out of the ordinary, less than normal, or maybe just too visible.  "The teachers are just volunteers after all," I am told, "and they don't have any special training."  Still, I've got to wonder...what special training is necessary to be patient and maybe tolerant of a kid that gets up and walks around or perhaps sings a song to himself or herself?  If it is truly a matter of disruption, I've found that a stern "sit down," or "please be quiet" will do the trick most of the time.  However, it's a little hard to address someone you can't see.

There are a lot of days as a public school special education teacher when I feel like special training only counts for ten minutes of the day.  The rest of it is being open and tolerant, and the reason why I consider what I do at the public school to be part of my ministry as a deacon is because it requires the acceptance of my students--and every single thing about them--as being made in the same image of God that everyone else is.

Now, one final question, and this one really is a test that counts: who is it really that we are rejecting when we send away or refuse to see these little ones?

Comments

[Gabrielle]

dd, it must be very disheartening to receive phonecalls like that. I'm wondering, though, if part of the problem with the "volunteers" is that they have their own inner fears of losing control of the situation, or of the class as a whole. With the RE, they've probably been told that they have to cover a certain amount of material in x-number of weeks, and maybe they feel insecure about it to start with. Your ability to see the connection (and live it) between your role as a teacher and your ministry as a deacon is a blessing to both your students and your parishioners, because it frees you up to respond spontaneously to peoples' needs rather than putting curriculum or parish duties first.

[JustMe]

As a RE "teacher" for years, I'll tell you, it would be Pandemonium City to mainstream any very different children in a one- to three-hour RE class in which the students are wont to do anything but pay attention to the material at hand. I've taught or worked with 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 10th grade students. Only the 10th graders would be able to not be distracted or not try to join anyone wandering or singing.

Perhaps it is different in Texas, or perhaps your shoulders are sufficiently (threateningly) wider than mine, but I substituted in a 7th grade class, and when telling them stories of demoniacs being healed by Christ, someone's darling interrupted to shout, "Lady, you watch too much television!" which made the classroom roar.. From there, while I went to the right side of the room to make sure everyone could hear, Darling snuck over to the left to hide in a portable podium thing that was hollowed out, and the room went bananas --all but one girl. I said, "Jesus, I could use a demoniac-healing gift right about now," but only the girl heard me.

My husband and I, before we were married, tutored a 24-year old who was trying to nail a couple of college courses.. but he'd never been in a school prior to this! His cerebral palsy had been deemed too challenging/disrupting. He was not able to do much of anything for himself, and his eye muscles didn't cooperate so he could only read by overhead projector--until we read aloud to him each night. That non-schooling was far more extreme injustice than it was of wisdom, of course -- somewhere along the way, someone at school administration level should've gotten him into the school scene.

Until we tutored him, I too, had always looked away--thinking it polite to do so! but after a few weeks of working with him at his bedside or at tableside, watching everything he had to conquer just to laugh, just to sip through his straw, to eat, to speak on the phone, etc., and then, our taking him to plays and concerts and restaurants, etc., well, he was just Kev, just like us, only a little different. But it does take folks a while to understand that.

I don't mean to disagree with you whatsoever.. just wanted to give you another view of it all.

[Catholic]

Great Catholic Website!