Once my friend Henry was accused of wearing wireless headphones by a substitute so she said for him to hand them over so he took them off and handed them to her. Then later on she asked him a question and he didn’t respond so she said it louder and he still didn’t respond. She asked why he was not responding and he said “I can’t understand you ma'am, you took my hearing aids.”
HOLY SHIT
one time we had a sub that was handing back papers and called my name. I asked if someone could grab it for me and she started mocking me for not even standing up. taunting me asking why I was not walking up to the front to get the paper myself.
my classmates went dead silent and after the sub’s laughter ended someone informed her that the wheelchair parked nearby belonged to me
My sister once had her insulin pump ripped off of her because her exam proctor (a sub) thought it was some cheating device. He soon figured out that it was, in fact, not, when the port on her side (the place the needle goes in) started bleeding through her shirt. Her pump started beeping frantically, because that’s what it does, and it was general chaos until my sister ripped what’s basically her pancreas out of his hands, told her friend “Let the next proctor know I’ll need extra time,” and walked out of the room towards the nurse.
Literally schools are shit with disabilities. In elementary school I was having a high blood sugar reaction(cold sweats to rapid passing in and out of consciousness, vomiting and finally leading to a massive seizure before you die) and I KNEW I had to go to the nurse cuz I was getting worse. Kept telling my teach I needed to go and he kept saying no till finally I felt myself about to throw up and I’m screaming LET ME GO (i was a little kid to me i couldnt do anything in an institution without an adults say so or id basically go to hell) and the bitch said SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE LESSON where I proceeded to projectile vomit all over my desk and he jut kept going on with the lesson. Finally I just booked it out of the room but I was too far gone to even REMEMBER where the nurses office was let alone where the hell I was that my class literally just left and helped me to the nurses office. I immediately went to the hospital and officially died for 5 minutes before I was revived. I could have stayed dead all because some fuck twad thought his lesson was more important than a students life
After Columbine, a local school installed metal detectors and made everyone walk through them and put their bags on a table for a teacher to search.
A few days into the school year, a teacher ripped a boy’s insulin pump off him because she thought it was a weapon, despite he and his sister insisting it was an insulin pump and he needed it to live.
I don’t know how many of you are still in school but I have some valuable knowledge that might actually help with this problem! In the United States there’s this thing called a 504 Plan that you can get which basically gives you legal protection from disability/chronic illness discrimination in public schools.
Students can qualify for 504 plans if they have physical or mental impairments that affect or limit any of their abilities to: walk, breathe, eat, or sleep; communicate, see, hear, or speak; read, concentrate, think, or learn; stand, bend, lift, or work
Examples of accommodations in 504 plans include: preferential seating, extended time on tests and assignments, reduced homework or classwork, verbal, visual, or technology aids, modified textbooks or audio-video materials, behavior management support, adjusted class schedules or grading, verbal testing, excused lateness, absence, or missed classwork
I’m a type one diabetic and my school nurse would do stuff like keep all my meds in a locked cabinet, not let me take my insulin or test my blood sugar unless she was watching me, and lie to my mother about me inducing low blood sugars in order to get out of class. She wouldn’t even let me keep glucagon (emergency sugar injection) on my person in case I passed out from low blood sugar.
So one day I casually mentioned all this to my endocrinologist and she was really mad. She was really angry at the school nurse for mistreating me like that and informed me of this thing called a 504 plan. A 504 plan protects students with disabilities and chronic illnesses from discrimination by outlining exactly what a student needs to meet their special needs. For me, this meant I had to be able to keep ahold of my own meds in case of emergency and keep track of my own glucose levels, that I would never be marked late for a class if I was busy treating a low, and I could pause the clock on a standardized test to check my blood sugar and treat it. If you have a disability and you’re still attending public school, PLEASE read up on 504 plans because they saved me so much grief when I was still in school. It might help you too. Here’s some more information about 504 plans:
https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/special-services/504-plan/understanding-504-plans
http://m.kidshealth.org/en/parents/504-plans.html?WT.ac=
Passing this along. I would not have made it this far without my disability documentation in school.
