Journalist – Historian – Speaker
@LaurieBerkner we should talk someday about “special needs” vs “disabled.” 🙂 Though I admit most parents like the former. — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) February 14, 2017 My son’s love of music is known across the multi-verse, specifically Hamilton and the band Flogging Molly (though yesterday he chose and danced to Alan Jackson’s, “5:00 somewhere”). But …
A teacher in this video knocks a child with “special needs” over with her knee, because he was pausing at the door to the classroom and she wanted him to get inside. It was probably an accident, she just wanted to prod him along. When he gets up, she talks above his head to the …
There’s a new hashtag campaign around saying the word “disability.” It is initiated and led by my friend and writing companion Lawrence Carter-Long. I am wildly in favor. I am trying, in my writing this year, to write the sentence: “There are no special needs, only needs” as often as possible. We all have needs. …
A few days ago over on my Facebook page I shared the story of the school district that took away a blind child’s cane and replaced it with a “pool noodle.” The cane technically belongs to the school district, and when the bus attendant reported that he was waving it in the air and potentially …