A post to a frustrated Mom

To a Mom of a student with autism who was frustrated by his diagnosticians seeing her son in different light then she, I wrote:

Please forgive me if I am presumptuous for I am indeed naive as a brand new teacher of students with disabilities That being said, I think that many "professionals" are missing the boat when they judge students in terms of the non disabled world and don't take the time or expend the effort to look at these people in the context of their own worlds. For example, I look at the incredible students I work with who are autistic. Some, are people about whom my predecessors (supposedly in the know) tell me things like: "Oh dear sweet John he is soooo low." Whilst I am thinking: "Who the heck are they talking about? John has incredible receptive skills, in addition John shows me he has that spark of intellect deep inside which I see when he reacts to new situations or tries to communicate his sensory overload or when he needs to make a connection with our non autistic world. Either they (those ones in the know) don't know or understand John like I do, or they are using the paradigm of the non disabled world to judge students with disabilities. Perhaps they are not spending enough time with John to make an accurate assessment. How dare they? Do I judge those in Spain using my mindset as an English speaking American? Of course not. I understand cultural and language differences need to be taken into consideration when interacting with Spanish people. It is time people with disabilities are given the same respect. So Mom, I am sorry the so called professionals have not seen what you know to be true. Hopefully you will look to some of us beginning our careers with students and people with disabilities as being more open and patient to see the people we judge as existing beyond the criteria of standardized tests. And. hopefully we will see the people we serve as existing beyond our paradigms rooted in the world of people living without disabilities. Hopefully we will start to see ourselves as a world at one, with peoples of different cultures and background.