Competency One--Categories of Disabilities

Competency One

Categories of Learning Disabilities



The word disabilities is defined as 

"A physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities."

This term covers a multitude of conditions that professionals like to classify as one condition or another. While we understand that labels are not conducive to empowering our students, we also acknowledge that the bureaucratic world needs labels to be able to offer assistance to these students. Due to federal laws, classifications are required to ensure students are receiving adequate support and help from their school community. If a student is not classified as needing assistance, the school cannot access federal funds that could provide that assistance.  

In creating our PK handout for learning disabilities, Sandra Grimm and I investigated the broad range of disabilities represented under the umbrella term "learning disability." The broadness of this category makes it difficult to generalize about this population. A big part of the learning for me was just to realize how arbitrary labels can be. A label can help a teacher understand a part of where a student is coming from, but it fails to take into account the student's personality, home life, and the inherent variance in unique humans. In this way, classifications can narrow a teacher's approach to a specific student, thinking of the student simply as a dyslexic student. Person first language is attempting to change that, making disabilities just one aspect of a student's makeup, rather than the front and center motivating factor. 

I think we learned a lot from creating both the PK presentation and the handout to go with it. 


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