GS 420 Exam Essay Spring 2015
Essay Prompt: (10 points)
Five years ago, the GS 420 class was threatened by budget cuts. In Fall 2010, our class was actually cut, but due to bureaucratic details, was re-opened. The next year (2011) our Fall class was capped by the College of Education at 170 students and we had to turn away over 100 students who wanted to add this course. Knowing that our class has a history of being an “optional” course (much like the history of ASL) in the eyes of the bureaucrats, and was threatened to be eliminated, we would like for you to respond to the following prompts:
(All students will use this format for scoring)
Name
Student Number
Class Section (1 or 2)
Date
Exam Essay
One of the goals of GS 420 is to develop competency in understanding the disability experience and interacting appropriately with people with disabilities.
1). How have you changed as a result of taking GS 420?
2). Identify at least three different examples of class activities, information, or presentations that contributed to this change.
3). Describe at least two specific examples of how you will demonstrate competency in interactions with people with disabilities due to the information and experiences provided by GS 420.
4). How will this information impact your future career?
5). How will you act as an “ally” in protecting this course and ensuring the education of the disability experience remains a priority at SDSU?
Reminder: Essays must be typed using the format above, (double spaced is easier on my eyes),
Explanation
This is a general education class: Disability of Society class in San Diego State University. The assignment is to write about a 3 pages essay answering the questions in prompt of what you learned from class, how it helped you personally, what will you do to help continue this class. Everything is mentioned in the prompt. I really learned al lot from this class and it inspired me; for example, the professor, Mendy McClure, helped us visualize the life of people with disabilities and made us help them in any way possible. I am not used to interacting with people with disability until this class which increased my comfort zone, and also she always mentions many community service opportunities in San Diego to help them. I also learned about the different kinds of assistive technologies that people with disability use like technology to help them type in the computer, wheelchair, and anything to make their life easier.
To give you a brief explanation of the class. Once a week the professor bring guests speakers with different kinds of disabilities to talk about their lives. There were amazing and really teachiiiiing. Also, learned during class how to speak and communicate with people with disability through people’s first language and the Ten Commandments.
There were some activities that really helped give us the message. The best activities are 1) the orange activity that made us learn that each person characteristics are unique. The activity was for each student to bring an orange to class and after the professor divided the auditorium in huge groups, we were required to pass all the oranges to one person in our group to collect them in a bag. Then after returns back the oranges, each student was responsible to pick out the same orange that he bring to class. 2) The activity that I really enjoyed and leaned from it a lot was with the first guest speaker in class which was Jacqueline Jackson. The activity was to chose which disability you chose to have and which disability you don’t want to have and why. The responses where astonishing; for example, some students won’t want to be deaf because they can’t live without music and some don’t mind being blind and etc. I learned a lot from this activity and always thank god for what to you have.
Another part of this assignment is to talk about the guest speaker. The easiest speaker you could talk about are Jesse Billauer and Urban Miyares because they are famous and you could search about them online about there stories; for example, Urban met with president George Bush, talked in Ted Talk, and successful business person. Jesse started his own company Life Rolls On to help people with disabilities. There were also veterans guest speaker who where really motivational and participated in the Iron Man Triathlon. I really learned a lot from them and they were inspiring.
I have uploaded the prompt (to read the source goals), syllabus, ten commandments(important to mention), and people first language (Important to mention) to help you understand the class and make it easy to write. This is the final exam for this class so make it really interesting and really want to make this class continue. No need of outside sources or a cover page and try divided it in paragraphs to make it easier to read. I mentioned above all the interesting things I learned in class, you could also add your personal teach to it but relate it to the class. I will help make this continue this class through educating others, hire diverse individuals if I have a chance, etc.
