Please respect us even you're our former teacher...

Patience, understanding, open-mindedness and responsibilities are the criteria to be a teacher and helper in the schools, centers and workshops for people with disabilities. Their main tasks are helping people with disabilities to grow, improve, gain knowledge and get opportunities. They also have to show us how to fight for our self esteem and freedom in the public. Toilets, car park, lifts, and other disabled friendly are built to ease us to go around. Thanks for my good teachers who taught me before. I still remember the teacher who taught me English, the physio therapist, speech therapist and few of my class teachers. They were strict but they were understanding and brilliant.

There are also teachers who don’t understand people with disabilities, what a shame. One of them, Madam C is still working at one of the workshops in Penang, Malaysia. She was the Occupational Therapist in my former school and I was afraid of her. I used to miss my break-time just because I couldn’t put on my shirt by myself. What a punishment! I just used to think that was for my own good if I was able to put on the shirt by myself. She was strict but she might be helping me to improve. No, she just wanted to show that she was stronger, obeying her is a must.

It was an outing for people with disabilities organized by my former school. For few reasons, I didn’t take part in the outing but I still went for the Chinese Movie “Dragon Squad”. As usual, Kent wanted Roger to join us for the movie and I told Kent that Roger was at the basement karaoke! A call was made to Roger and ask if he wanted to join us. After 15 minutes, Roger appeared in front of us, I also saw a familiar face walking to our direction. Without a greeting, she threw her voice to us “I passed Roger to you both. None of my business if anything happens. Call the ambulance if you like” I was so angry when her words being heard from my ears. Her words were not responsible and impolite. I also can say she doesn’t know how to respect herself and other people. I was quite disappointed at that moment. Doubts and questions rose from my mind, “Is she afraid of being blamed?” and “Doesn't she know what is she saying?”.

First of all, those words “I passed Roger to you both. None of my business if anything happens. Call the ambulance if you like” also may lead more misunderstanding to the people who want get to know us. Public people may think that they have to be responsible when go out or talk with people with disabilities. This may scares them off!

Second, a teacher who has been teaching and working with people with disabilities also doesn’t understand what we need, how about the public people? How could the public people understand us, people with disabilities? Third, Roger is old enough to decide what he wants and where he wants to go. He knows what he is doing. He would never blame anyone if anything happens to himself.

Finally, teachers of my former school used to say that we need to be independent and make the public people help us to gain understanding.

Please respect our needs even you have been teaching or helping people with disabilities for years. We need freedom, to be respected and friends.