英米　２年　　
Thank you for your wonderful presentation and thank you for coming to the class, Kaito. What impressed me most about your talk was that it is important to love and care about each other even if the person has disability. Through the activity, I came to believe society has to accept people who are different, especially schools should pay more attention because children are apt to sustain emotional harm. My junior high school accepted children who have disabilities, but some school didn’t accept them I found that this hurts not only children, but also their parents. Thank you for coming today..

英米　２年
Today’s lecture was really enlightening. I was impressed to hear “Life is not about efficiency.” Actually I have been feeling that people, especially in Japan, are putting too much value on efficiency and do not enjoy their lives. For example there are some companies that make employees work so much that the employees die. It seems terrible and we cannot be happy in such a society. The Japanese economy show a higher GDP level but people are hurting inside and I feel that this is also a kind of barrier in our society. We should find some way to create a barrier-free society for everyone, all together.

英米　２年
Ms. Berkowitz’s speech was very enlightening. I think that disability can be a taboo topic and it is not often discussed. Hearing about her experience in taking care of her daughter as well as seeing her daughter’s pictures and seeing Kaito smiling sends a positive message that being different isn’t a bad thing. On the other hand, hearing the story about her difficulties made me think that the Japanese society and government needs to improve the way they treat people with disabilities. I hope that Ms. Berkowitz can continue to inform others so that we can raise awareness and improve our society.

英米　２年
“Normal” is safe and “non-normal” is scary. These words impressed me very much. We often distanced from people with disabilities. Some silly people say “they are repulsive” I don’t agree with that. They are so rude but I’m wondering if this word “repulsive” is not what they actually mean. They just feel scared. They do not know how to help “non-normal people” and they do not know how to communicate with them like in the case of foreigners too. This is a bad aspect of Japanese society. So, we should live with disabled people and notice they are the same as us and not strange. We should get close to them.

フランス　２年
When I was a junior high school student, there was a student who had a disability in my class. Hearing today’s presentation, I remembered the boy. I was very young, I kept away from him, but now I think that my behavior was bad. There are a lot of people all over the world, so it is natural that there are different types of people. We shouldn’t think about differences, we should think about how to live together happily. Today’s presentation was good for me to think about our behavior and our society.

フランス　２年
I was really sympathized with Prof. Berkowitz’s opinion. If society changes its attitude everyone will find it easier to live. I can understand this idea, but I think it’s a real y difficult point because I think that now most of our society is built to match the majority, and a lot of people have prejudice against people who are different. I think it’s wrong to divide people between normal and abnormal, and to consider that abnormal people are different from normal. So I think we have to understand people who have disabilities and we must not have prejudice against them.

スペイン　４年
Today’s topic was about the defenses of the minority. I think that it’s a really important discussion but it’s hard to get a definitive answer because we are all different and we have our own opinions and thoughts. Basically, in Japan, we think that we should be similar to other Japanese people. So many people are worried about being too different. However, through today’s message, I realized that we shouldn’t be afraid of differences and we should understand our differences and accept them. She also mentioned the purpose of life. I agree with her thoughts, but I don’t know how to love everyone because no one is perfect. I have to think about this issue more deeply.

中国　１年
Thank you for your lecture! I never think about having a disability. So, I don’t think about disabled people enough. I’m sorry about that. In the picture in the class, the woman who uses a wheelchair was worried. When we thought about “where’s the shogai”, we have our own opinions. Because I thought the stair is only shogai, I was surprised that there were a lot of opinions. I must think about things from some angles.　When I was an elementary school student, some disabled people came to school. They said “We feel very sad when we are given special treatment.” I think we must think about them and have contact with them like we do for the other people. But there are some disabled people who need help depending on the context. At that time, I want to help them willingly. And I hope the world will change to be an easy place to live for all people.

国際関係　１年
I would really like to thank Ms. Melisanda for her presentation today because it taught me to be kind to everybody and really “not judge a book by its cover”. I felt that she had gone through tons of hard times but she doesn’t seem to lose her shine. The little girl form the video was the same. There were no differences between her and a “normal” person. She was cheery and excited about going to Disney Land like any other kid. I felt that we should know more about families with disabilities and create a place where everyone can live in harmony. Everyone is different in their own way to other people so it shouldn’t be a problem..

留学生
Thanks to Ms. Berkowitz for giving such a great presentation. Today, I have learned a lot. Firstly, everyone is free to be different. Everyone is normal and non-normal. It depends on the context. And secondary, we did an activity which made us put cards of shapes in a box with a hole. We came to the conclusion that if the society allows only a few people to get in, then we should change the society to let everybody join in. Thirdly, Ms. Berkowitz told us that we should care each other, care for each other and enjoy living.　And I always think about the question that when we see somebody with a disability like using a wheel chair, should we go to help them? Because sometimes that will wound their pride. So just think when we are in such a situation, how we would like to be treated.