I decided early on to devote my life to helping people with disabilities be recognized by who they are, not by how they appear. Education opens unexpected doors and I decided that I would use this pathway to my advantage. I enrolled in college, planning to become an instructor. Perhaps I could help by educating them, one class at a time. I quickly came to learn of the advancement in adaptive technology.
Technology was meeting the needs of individuals with disabilities like never before. Obstacles were being removed so that an individual’s talent could finally be expressed despite their disability. I decided that an ideal way to alter society’s view was through educating the individuals with the disability, themselves. My major is educational technology. My goal is to be a vehicle through which persons with disabilities can come to know the wonders that technology has to offer them.
In society, the group with the greatest amount of status, has the most power and people strive to be identified with that group. Within the walls of where I work, the very same people who do not want us to put students in what society considers a negative class of people are guilty of participating in the same behavior with their own professional hierarchy. At our campus, anyone who is anyone is either a classified staff member, or a faculty member.
However, between those two groups, faculty is where you really want to be. I was never aware of the severity of this separation until I became fulltime. It was then that I moved up the ranks from part time to full time and all of the sudden received respect from people who never noticed me before. But I was only classified staff, not faculty! I now know, no matter how much status you think your group has, there is always a group who has more status than yours.
