I Know Something You Don't Know. . .

Not to brag, but I have an IQ that is above average. I would brag about it but people get sick of the whole "I'm smarter than you" song after a while. In addition, there's always somebody whose IQ is larger. Rather than trying to compete with smarter people or find ways to make myself look smarter, I've decided to forgo all of that based off of a recent revelation of mine. . .


Your IQ doesn't mean jack.


Despite what a number on a test might say about me, there are several things that might make you think twice about labelling me "Gifted." To name a few, I can't blow a bubble with bubble-gum, I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was almost 10 years old, and it wasn't until way after my teenage years that I figured out teasing and making fun of pretty girls is not the best way to get them to like you. The bottom line is, a person's value or aptitude cannot be measured solely by a test score. There is so much more involved. Intelligence, in my opinion, is infinite. It all depends on the acts of the individual.


Case in point: Forrest Gump. Here's a man who intellectually had everything going against him intellectually, but who did amazing things. Yes, it's fictional, but that's beside the point. The human being is capable of so much more than what we think it should be. Teachers should approach students the same way. The potential is infinite; it's just a question of what their starting point is.


Now as teachers, we should already have come to the realization that (see previous blog posting) God has a sense of humor and thus created people with differences. These differences come in many forms, some of them quite severe. There are many who have trouble with tasks most people consider mundane or effortless. Much of the time it is through no fault of their own. Most people like to focus their attention on the question 'Why?" but they should be asking themselves "What can be done?" As a teacher, it will be my responsibility to ask the later and help these individuals succeed.


I don't anticipate it being easy. In fact, I have a confession to make. Most of my life I've been wary or nervous around people with mental or physically deformities. So wary that there have been times when I've attempted to completely avoid a situation where I knew people with handicaps of some kind would be present. I don't know exactly why. Sometimes I was self-conscious of the fact that I was staring, sometimes I felt guilty being a person without a disability. I thought I'd say or do something that would come off as me rubbing in the fact that I'm more whole than they are. Most of the time I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do in their presence.


Obviously, nothing in that previous paragraph helps the situation much. Thankfully, I have been able to get over the wariness for the most part. I find that understanding the difficulties a certain person might have helps, because then i know in a small way what they are going through. Secondly, I try to get to know the individual and treat them like a person rather than a case. One of my favorite scenes that depicts this is from the movie "Patch Adams" where a patient is being looked at by a bunch of medical students as a case, rather than an individual. Patch is the only person who seems to show any concern about the patient as a person.


That's what I believe the trick is: Knowing what the disability is and what it may mean as far as what the individual needs or will experience, balanced out with the treating them equally.