Similarities Between An Exceptional Student Support System

The role of instructors is to reach, inspire and uplift their students academically and personally. Consequently, it is imperative that an exceptional student support system which could include family, teachers, and therapies comprehend the differences and similarities between a disability and a handicap. Like the famous saying goes “it takes a village to raise a child”, likewise it takes a village to educate a child. An exceptional student may have a variety of disability and/or handicaps; which could range from physical to intellectual. It is vital to comprehend that every exceptional student is unique, therefore, their needs will be distinctive as well.
First of all, there is a distinguishing difference between a disability and a handicap.

For example, Ann is a student that has a disability that affect her fine motor skills. She is able to write with a large pencil, but not a traditional skinny pencil. During a test she doesn’t receive a larger pencil and is forced to struggle with the traditional skinny pencil. Consequently, Ann would be described as having a handicap because of her inability to write without the larger pencil. Also, she is being needlessly handicapped because of a lack of accommodation on the instructors’ part. After all, an exceptional student receiving the appropriate accommodation is vital to their ability to triumph in life. In contrast, a handicap doesn’t have to be accompanied with a disability. For instance, being deaf is a disability in communicating, however, learning sign language give a deaf person a way to communicate with other people that knows sign language. If someone that can hear but did not know sign language was at an event where most people know sign language, they would be at a disadvantage. This person would be limited in how they could communicate, thus having a handicap in that situation. By the same token, a male supervisor passes up a qualified woman for a promotion that requires more traveling because, he believes women should spend more time with their families. In this scenario, a handicap was imposed on a woman because she differs from the supervisor in gender. Her prospects were limited because he imposed his bias on her. To summarize, in these three hypostatical scenarios, each person was affected by a handicap in a different