Renee Lee is a special education teacher here at ALHS who works everyday with students who have developmental and cognitive disabilities. Inclusivity is something that she directly works towards on a daily basis. She has some pretty eye opening things to say about how your understanding and acceptance of inclusion can change for the better as you grow older, and how that can lead to great things. 

While you might think someone who has chosen this career path would’ve grown up around more of an inclusive environment, that was not the case for Lee. She states, “When I was young, I had a pretty narrow understanding of diversity. When I was growing up, ‘Anoka University’ was still operating, initially called ‘First State Asylum for the Insane.’ This state hospital was about 15 minutes from where I lived. I only knew one person, Stevie, who had Down syndrome, as most people with Down syndrome and other developmental and cognitive disabilities were at the state hospital.”

Her perspective completely changed when her mom forced her to go to a camp. She explains “When I was in high school, my mom forced me to become a counselor at ‘MR Camp’ (MR: Mentally Retarded – yep, that’s what it was called) at Camp Salie.” The thought of going to a camp like this originally filled her with a lot of uncomfortable feelings. It is hard to step outside of your comfort zone and see a whole other perspective, but she did. “I was kind of scared of some of ‘those kids’,” said Lee. “It was an eye opening experience. We were paired up with children/teens 1:1 throughout our week at camp”.

Those seemingly uncomfortable moments were all for the better. Lee explains, “One thing I learned is that people with Downs are as different from each other as anyone else. And we had the best time together.” While it can be uncomfortable to connect with new or different groups of people, Lee’s experience proves that you never know what you are missing out on until you step outside of your comfort zone. At the end of the day people are people, and we all deserve to be included and treated with kindness. 

What’s something we can all do to step closer to this goal of inclusivity? Well, Lee explains what means the most to her and her students, “What I like seeing are students who scoot their chairs a little closer instead of further away, who say hello rather than ignore, and who are secure in themselves to be kind to everyone.” Is that too hard for us to do? I think we can all take a look at our actions and try to correct ourselves, accept people for who they are, and embrace our differences.