More and more, I hear of frightened disabled students. A science teacher yelled at a disabled student in class regarding testing, and scared her so badly that she was barely able to describe the incident to other disabled students she knows. When I asked these students why their friend would not go to her disabled student counselor, the reply was: “What for? That doesn’t stop the teacher from doing it.”

I saw a disabled student I know running away from a computer class on Saturday at De Anza. He was almost crying.

He was not accommodated on a test for his particular disability, so rather than face the humiliation that the teacher’s lack of care, preparation, and concern was causing, he decided to drop the class.

I have also been the brunt of unprepared, unconcerned teachers on this campus. Social sciences, some art and math teachers whom I have taken classes from have forced me into dropping classes, taking incompletes, or drowning in pain and misery to complete my class, just so my project or course work could be like everyone else’s in class.

I see only such a teacher’s concerns for a fake front of fame. Where is real concern for students who are in pain, medicated, can’t hear or see, don’t have their limbs in full function, and lack the normal communication methods? These teachers won’t spend any time opening up their tight curriculums and figuring out how a disabled student could grasp it better.

Why spend more time and money than they have to, right? Why bother to attend a “MacWorld” conference to see the latest teaching software geared to a variety of students in college? It probably would mean a day out of someone’s sabbatical. I didn’t see any De Anza teachers in there the whole day.

Teachers are so divided on the issues that they, along with their own part time faculty, won’t even respect each other’s needs. I would bet that full time teachers don’t give copies of the faculty disability handbook to lower paid part-timers.

The district allotted $3,000.00 for a purchase of equipment for the assisted technology lab recently, but that won’t go far enough to do much good. I think the district keeps disabled students off campus, understaffed and underfunded, because that way they won’t have to acknowledge the gifts of knowledge and creativity disabled students can give their fellow students. The district has better paying customers to attend to, after all.