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We commonly get EdPara's who are in college to become special ed teachers. They love to throw the terms around like "sped kid", "he's sped", "she's sped". They must think it makes them sound smart or something and I am quick to correct them.
I usually describe what person first language is and why it's important to use. Like I said in the post I say, "imagine being addressed by a trait that you don't like about yourself and go out of your way to hide to compensate for". When you start imagining people being called things like "dumb Jake" "fat Eric" "birthmark Bobby" "judgemental Jan" it hits home and becomes a little more personally important.
It's impossible to bring this up without offending a person at least a little. I feel that it's one of those things that has to be said though.
I am a person with dyslexia and in middle school in the early 90's going into the resource classroom was hard enough. I already felt isolated and that everyone was watching and wondering why I would go into this mysterious classroom which very few students went into. Being called "sped kid" or openly called dyslexic would have been humiliating to the point that I may have quit school completely.
Imagine if we did this to any other minority group in schools. After all people with disabilities are the largest minority group in the country. If we were putting them into groups and referring to them as the "hispanic kids", "black kids", "trans kids" there would be riots in the streets.
I guess I just want to remind everyone to spread person first language. There's a lot of work that still needs to be done.
This is not a problem where I work. Everyone is pretty inclusive and supportive. We are a school that has a lot of full inclusion classrooms.