Glee and Eli Clare

I think that it is important to understand not just the differences between oneself and a disabled person, but also the similarities. In fact, I feel that it is more important to understand the similarities. We really are all the same, whether the disability is physical or mental, everyone is the same inside and the world really needs to start treating everyone that way. Eli Clare had a really good point, we shouldn't see the people as their disability, we should see them as people who just happen to have something about their body or mind that makes life a little different for them. One of the things that really rang true in my head from the Glee episode was when the glee club teacher, I don't watch the show so I am not sure on everyone's name, stated that there was only one wheelchair accesspoint in the whole school. This is a big deal to me because one of my friends from high school is in a wheelchair and my high school only has one handicap ramp. By only having one way in or out it made it really difficult for him. I remember that we had a fire drill one time and we were all the way on the other side of the building, but the only way for him to get out of the school was through that one door, so I went with him and we had to take make our way through the swarm of kids going the other way just to make it out. We were one of the last people out of the building. All we could think was, "what if that had been a real fire?" So in our junior year when the school was planning on renovating the main entrance, my friend and I went to all the school board meetings in the evenings and made the people in charge realize that just because they weren't in a wheelchair and the majority of the student body wasn't in a wheelchair, it was important to have more than one access point in or out of the building. Because of our persistance, when the new plans were created they included a wheelchair ramp in the main entrance so that now my friend and everyone else in a wheelchair who goes, or will go, to my high school will not be the last ones out in an emergency.