Schooling Children with Down Syndrome

"It's not like we come here to be labeled, or to believe the label. We're all here-kids, teachers, parents, whoever-it's all about all of us working together, playing together, being together, and that's what learning is. Don't tell me any of these kids are being set up to fail." Every teacher that works with children, whether they have special needs, are English learning speakers, or come from any variety of class should step into a classroom with this exact attitude. Teaching is all about advocacy, we should be able to see a child who maybe has trouble with motor developments and look at it as an opportunity to teach them and help them to develop the skills in which they may need. Any teacher that gives up on a child who needs different tools in order to succeed is really not a teacher at all. Kliewer describes many ways in which we as teachers can do just the smallest of things for our children to help them succeed, no matter what their mental or physical cababilities are or are not.
I really enjoyed the way that Kliewer had the children put on a play from the book Where the Wild Things Are. She recognized Isaac as a more hands on, active learner, and instead of singling him out in the classroom, had the whole group of children put on a play about the story. "The first time I tried reading Where the Wild Things Are, which is his favorite book, he couldn't sit. He had to be up, dancing in the middle of the circle, acting it out. He just couldn't resist. He could not help himself. It got all of the kids going. We were all Wild Things and it just came alive!" This just made me excited to think that a teacher was able to take children for what they can sometimes be- a little wild. Instead of having them constantly sitting, listening, and quietly paying attention, this teacher was able to accept a small amount of caous as being a way to get all of these children excited about reading. I think we sometimes just expect children to be so focused and constantly sitting quietly listening. When we read we should be able to let children let their imaginations run. Kliewer saw Isaac for who he was as a learner, and instead of singling him out for it, let the other children get involved and see what it is like and be excited.
"Schools have traditionally taken a narrow position when defining and judging student intellect. The presene of a thoughtful mind has been linked to patterns of behavioral and communicative conformity associated with competence in logical-matheatic thinking and linguistic skills. Assessments of how well a student conforms to expectations (measurements through which students come to be defined as smart or lacking intellect) tend to focus teachers attention on the child's adeptness at responding to classroom-based math and language tasks. These evaluative instruments supposidly measure either a student's understanding of a transmitted knowledge base related to math and language, or the student's ability to discover the knowledge base through carefully contrived activities." This made me think of the Divergent Thinking clip we watched in class, and how he mentioned that from the beginning children are being labeled as "smart" or "unintelligent", all based on a certain curriculum that the school systems have set. These labels that are put on the children immediatly become recognized by the student and parents, and when these children discover they are smart or not, it directly impacts their learning habits. We cannot let these labels happen any more, why are children expected to all learn a certain way when everyone is so different in so many ways? Fair does not always mean equal, something that is helpful to one student, may vary from another one. We should see our children for the individuals that they are, and be able to incorporate it into the curriculum. The teacher in this article did this simply by having the children act out the story. We can do this for all different students in different environments. Teachers and parents need to stop expecting children to sit in a classroom like zombies, and get creative. We need to help them to recognize themselves as ALL being intelligent and capable of everything and anything at any age, it just may take a different approach and that is okay.