Leadership Conference

The Leadership Conference is a three day conference where officer members of best buddies go to learn about how to be a president of the club and learn how to be a good leader in the club. There is also an option for students with disabilities to go to Leadership Conference.

 

There are classroom learning sessions. The participants got to pick what classes they were in before the classes. The participants will go to the selected classes on the first day and learn about leading the club, recruiting people, and fundraising. The second day the classes are broken up into states and taught selected materials for a portion of the day. The participants are taught about leading and how to set up their club’s events. The participants with disabilities go to special classes and are taught how to write speeches the first day. The second day is about how to deliver the speech they wrote and how to talk in front of people.

There is time to talk with people from all over the world about how they run their club and what works and what doesn’t work. They held what is called the World Café where people from all around the world got to talk to each other about their clubs and what they do.

The conference also has some extremely large parties every day including everyone. There is opening ceremonies where everyone gets to dance and the participants are introduced to the leaders when they first arrive. There is closing ceremonies at the end of it where all of the participants with disabilities got to give the speeches they worked on and again everyone danced. This is used to get everyone excited about the upcoming Best Buddies year and pumped up for the conference.
 
Both of the two nights there aren’t closing or opening ceremonies there are other options for bonding with the group members. The first night there is usually a pool party or karaoke party option. The second night there is an option for either a dance party or a movie.
 
There are also speakers that come in and talk to everybody at the conference. They come and talk to everyone to inspire them to be a great leader and get them excited about the conference. Some of the speakers came to show what people with disabilities can accomplish. Dr. Karen Gaffney and Lauren Potter were two of the speakers that showed they were able to accomplish a lot even with disabilities.

HandicapThis

HandicapThis is an excellent show. They are very funny and informative at the same time. I love how the two have such good chemistry together. Mike and Tim make it so easy to forget you are watching someone in a wheelchair with a developmental disability. They make it so funny and so descriptive that you focus more on what they are saying not what they looked like.

 

When Mike first began to talk I know a lot of people were having difficulty understanding him. A few minutes into the show Tim referred to Mike’s “accent”. Nobody knew what he was talking about at first. He was talking about Mike’s speech impediment because he has cerebral palsy and can not talk as clearly as someone without it. I like how he calls it an accent it makes him seem more normal. After listening to Mike talk for a few minutes it becomes gradually easier to understand him then after an hour you forget he is even talking any differently than anyone in the room.

 

My favorite part of the show is when Mike tells us about his high school life. He had to shout out that he knew the answer or something of that nature because he couldn’t raise his hand. Mike said most teachers got annoyed and told him to raise his hand like everyone else and wait to be called on. Well he is incapable of doing that and one teacher came up with a bright idea. He invented a switch to go on his wheelchair so when he knew the answer to  This shows that that teacher really cares about Mike, knew how smart he was and how much he could contribute to the rest of the class.

a question he could move his hand a tiny bit to hit the switch and a light would go off above his head.

One part of Mike and Tim’s story that stood out to me was when Tim ran from Disney World all the way to Chicago for Mike. This was so impressive to me that a person could care so much about another person to run such a long distance for them. In this case Tim ran to raise awareness about cerebral palsy. Tim ended up in multiple newspapers and on the news which got the word out to a lot of people. He did this in 2005 and in 2015 he plans to do another run from Disney World to Chicago. I hope this time the new social media will help generate more publicity of the run and more awareness.

Mike and Tim are a great team and have been working together for a long time now. The do many shows together for schools or anywhere that needs more education on how intellectual and developmental disabilities aren’t really that much of a challenge to overcome. Mike is a great role model and shows that just because someone looks like they have a disability doesn’t mean they can’t be one of the funniest or smartest people you have met.

Best Buddies

Best Buddies is an organization where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are paired up with peer to make one on one friendships in various ways and at various ages. This is a very unique organization where people get matched to another person with similar interests and depending on what program they are in they talk to and hang out with their match.

The programs are in middle schools, high schools, colleges and now after college even. The different programs are all similar in how much it impacts both of the people in the match. These friendships made in Best Buddies can be life long friendships that are some of the best friendships a person ever has.

The middle school and high school programs are very similar both match peers up that are in the schools one in a general education class the other in a special education class. They do activities together planned by the leaders in the school and sometimes outside of the activities planned by the school. The buddies have a lot of fun at these activities and the leaders try to plan the activities so that everyone has a good time. The matches are done so that people have very similar interest and can get a long very well and do many activities together.

College and after college buddy matches are different because they are not in school together anymore so they can not go to the planned activities and see each other in the hallway. After high school they need to make time to go see their buddy and make time to go talk to them. They also get to have more of a real friendship because they get to communicate with them more freely, have a better bond because they get to actually decide what to do with them and they get to go out in the community more to do the activities to get the buddy even more friends.

There is another type of match called E-Buddies where they email back and forth. This way people do not have to live in the same area to be friends and if they do not have a Best Buddies program at their school they will still be able to make new friends.

Deaf Culture

I just recently watched a movie on deaf culture and some of the things that are considered normal in the deaf community are very different compared to mine. The deaf community is considered its own little community within the hearing world. They consider themselves different, have their own language and community events. They are a very close knit community and I feel like hearing people can learn a lot from how deaf people interact and treat one another.

The video my class watched talked about how the people in the deaf community tend to share a lot of information with each other in order to benefit the others in the community. They share why they were late, very personal information such as marital status, new diets, recent procedures they had done, and anything that would benefit the others in any way shape or form. Generally most deaf people also prefer to get very detailed directions to new places. Using GPS is probably not the easiest if you cannot hear where it is telling you to turn. In contrast most hearing people never give out detailed driving directions or receive them because they would just use MapQuest or GPS.

They hold deaf events in the deaf community all the time in order to keep in touch with one another. I think this is very cool because you don’t see many hearing communities coming together to hold events or to try to stay connected to one another. I like how they all come together and wish more hearing communities did that.

I learned that if they don’t answer the door it is okay to just walk right into someone’s house if the door is unlocked and they know you. Other options are looking in the window or if the door is locked leaving them a note or texting them to let them know you are there. The whole class thought that was a bit rude and strange as would most hearing people. But in the deaf community it is generally accepted. Michael even said his girlfriend, who is deaf, does that when he doesn’t answer the door right away or doesn’t hear it out of habit. Our teacher explained this is because they want to do anything to see the person they are trying to see and don’t want to miss them or think they just didn’t show up. I think it is kind of thoughtful but I don’t know if I want anyone just walking into my house.

The video also showed a polite way to interrupt a conversation as just walking quickly through the middle of it without even signing excuse me. This was something the whole class was surprised about. We thought this was extremely rude and was definitely not accepted in hearing culture. Our teacher explained that, “It would take much longer to sign excuse me and make sure everyone saw it and would create much more of a distraction than quickly walking through and getting on with life.” After she said that it made more sense it really isn’t that big of a deal. It seems like hearing people tend to get worked up over little things in comparison.

Deaf culture can be very different from hearing culture. Before going to any deaf events a person should learn about deaf culture so they are not doing something someone would consider rude. It is just like learning about the culture of a different country before visiting. Some things in the deaf culture can be a bit backwards to hearing people but it is just as backwards as the US compared to some other places in the world.

Carly's Voice

The book Carly’s Voice I read recently. It was a very good and informative book and the book was partially written by Carly, a girl who has autism. This has helped me a lot with the special education class rooms I help in. The students in the rooms show similar signs and other things she describes in the book that she does when something is happening. I use her descriptions to help the other students that aren’t able to communicate what is wrong like she is.

The book was published under her father’s name but I think it was mainly her writing in the end. The book tells her life story and gives a nice look into the normally silent world of autism. The last chapter in the book is actually completely her own writing where she wrote a short story.

Another part that was very cool was is when she is finally able to describe what is going on and what is happening with her body. This can be very helpful when trying to help someone showing similar motions when they cant communicate for themselves. I think it is more helpful to have someone to tell you what is wrong that is experiencing it than a doctor or someone who has never felt it. 

My favorite part of the book is when she is finally getting her voice for the first time. I can only imagine how great it must feel to be able to finally communicate to everyone what is going on. That would be such a hard thing to know something and not be able to tell anyone. I wish there was some way every person with Autism could find their way they could communicate what is going on inside their mind.

The most memorable part of the story for me was the part when Carly described why she hit her head on things. She said it felt like the equivalent of someone shaking up a pop can. She said when she hit her head that the pressure in her head started to go away and get somewhat released. This was particularly memorable for me because a lot of the students I help do this and I was never able to figure out why until I read this. I found out of you give them pressure they tend to stop wanting to hit their head so the pressure build up in their head must go away.