Two Worlds

My blog posts are several days behind the experiences I want to relate, but time keeps escaping me and I'm trying to cling to the moments I wanted to write about, but if I don't sit down and do it... I will just forget them.

Last week I went to a special needs classroom for a couple of hours. Melinda is the head teacher and she also happens to be my mentor here, so I was excited about getting to see her world... to see her loving and teaching and interacting with these children. One of my classes this semester is "Intellectual Disability"and one of my assignments is to have a community placement. I'd never been in a special needs classroom before and wasn't sure what to expect. Most of my experience interacting with people who have intellectual disabilities has been in orphanages in Colombia. I knew her classroom wasn't going to feel like an institution, so I didn't even know what to expect.

And what I found was something far more beautiful than I could have imagined.

None of Melinda's children could walk without support, and most were confined to a wheelchair. None could speak, and several were deaf or blind or both. They had severe special needs. But that's not what caught me off guard. The disabilities these kids had were quite similar to the disabilities found in the orphanages back in Colombia. I wasn't uncomfortable being in a classroom with these beautiful children.

But what caught me off guard, what constantly made a lump well up in my throat was the dignity that was granted to these children blew me away. The personalized attention, the love, the affection, the patience... I was overwhelmed. These children had so much support. They had contraptions to strengthen their muscles and skeletal structure. They had centers that would stimulate their sight and hearing. They had personalized blocks with symbols they could touch to help them communicate. As best they could, Melinda and her student teacher and the students' nurses carried out a routine and interacted with the children, providing them with individualized attention .

I smiled and my heart swelled as I watched Melinda love her students. They were so responsive to her voice and her touch. Many giggled and turned their heads to face her when they heard her comforting voice. Though these kids couldn't talk, they certainly conversed and communicated with Melinda.

I couldn't help comparing the life of these children with the lives of the children filling the orphanages in Colombia (see this post). A streak of anger flew through my heart... why did these children still have the right to education? Of course, my question was so backwards. Of course they should have the right. The better question was why didn't the kids in the orphanages back home not have this life? Why were they confined to an existence of laying on overcrowded mattresses, trapped inside the sounds of their own moans?

But I couldn't stand there, overcome by the beauty of this classroom and get bitter because I knew children who weren't this blessed. That perspective was sickening. It was disgusting and it was wrong. As I prayed for these children and let my prayers raise up on behalf of the children in Colombia, I was able to fully enjoy and cherish my time in Melinda's classroom.

And that's exactly what I did.

I loved it. I cherished it.