Episode 51: Empowering Equity: Engaging Students to Explore the Disability Rights Movement

Transcript

Arthur: I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. I am your host, Arthur Aston, and I am joined today by my guest, Kate Sullivan. So, Kate, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation.

Kate: Thank you for having me.

Arthur Yes. So I started out the conversations by asking my guests to introduce themselves.

Can you share a little bit about yourself, what you like to do for fun? And also, if you have a story about it, can you share how you became interested in the world of inclusive education?

Kate: Absolutely. So my name is Kate Sullivan, and I'm a middle school educator, also an adjunct professor at Kean University. And I have an educational consulting business where I do teacher training and staff development in all different topics language arts, inclusive education, social-emotional learning.

I've been teaching for 20 years, and I think my that just teaching middle school is you have to have an interest and understanding of inclusion because it's paramount to the mental health of everyone. But pre-teens make it really visible how a lack of inclusion can be so detrimental to our sense of self. Middle school is a place where everybody, regardless of ability or privilege, feels kind of out of place.

Kate: As an educator, you're fighting a battle to make these students feel as included as possible during a time where developmentally they start to exclude people and feel excluded themselves because of their brain development.

And then if you're a member of a marginalized group that adds a whole other layer to that. So, we know that students can't learn if they don't feel included. They can't learn in the best ability that they can. So that was kind of my interest deduction, I would say, early on. But I don't think I really understood what inclusive education was at that point.

I think every teacher thinks they're inclusive. And so I started to understand it a little bit more probably in the past ten years. I teach a post-graduate course to educators through the Kean University Holocaust Resource Center, and they have a course called Teaching Prejudice Reduction. And what I've found in developing lessons for that course, which I also took years ago, is that the strategies for inclusion and inclusive education are also strategies for prejudice reduction.

So inclusion is really at the heart of that course for teachers. And, I work with incredible educators that are committed to examining their own relationship with inclusion to better serve students and their community.

Kate: I’m a parent of a child with a learning disability. She's not a child anymore. She's in her twenties. But my daughter has ADHD.

I was parenting at a really young age, so I made a lot of mistakes in supporting her. And I feel like I've learned so much about how kids with ADHD learn socially, academically and emotionally. And I'm trying to restore some of the mistakes I made with my own daughter by helping parents and teachers do better.

Kate: Kids with ADHD and learning disabilities and any behavioral issues, or mental health.

They have so many negative interactions during the day with others because of something they can't control. And so I think that on a personal level was something that started to shift in me because I didn't have a learning disability growing up. So I didn't know what it was like to sit in a classroom and struggle. Obviously school was a place that made sense to me because I became a teacher.

But having a child that struggled, that it really that's where I began to realize how little I knew and how much I needed to listen more to people with disabilities.

Arthur: I really like that you said you're teaching a course that you took in class. That's a class one time. That's great.

I was going to say, providing a new perspective on how you saw it as a student when you took the course and now, as an educator, which is awesome.

And your own experience with your daughter and how that shapes how you teach and the way that your like you said, you're helping others now as parents and students to help them better have a better grasp on, inclusion and learning that's really, really important.

I was sharing with you myself how growing up with a disability, the things that I experienced and now that I'm able to work in a field and a few fields that relate to disabilities and helping the disability community, that's really what I've always saw myself doing was I majored in psychology, so I wanted to do it in that way, you know, but I took the shift and now I'm just like, This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I love this. So it's great how our stories and our own personal experiences can often shape the way that we do things in life later on in life.

Kate: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Arthur: So can you share with us how you define inclusive education and what does inclusive education mean to you?

Yeah, I mean, I'll do my best. On the one hand, it's something really simple to define, but it's also really complicated. I think inclusive education is a practice that we need to work towards every day as educators because classroom teachers, especially are bound by an educational system that still has a lot of barriers to inclusion.

And every day teachers have to find ways to remove or climb over or sneak around those barriers. So it's hard to give a physical and a visual definition of inclusive education because it means so many different things to different people. Someone might see a bunch of students in small group instruction and say, Oh, that's inclusive just by looking at it.

But if you aren't explicitly teaching students the social skills and the emotional intelligence to engage with people of all backgrounds and abilities and personalities, or if you're grouping people by the measure of their ability, is that really an inclusive environment? So it gets complicated in that way. Like, yes, there are physical and practical strategies that we can do, but we also need to think are these strategies working?

Are they working for the kids in front of us? And I would say, as I said earlier, I've always thought of myself as an inclusive person. But I realized, I think in the past ten years, five years even, that it's not about how we feel. It's about what we do. So I started to think about what I do and don't do to support inclusion.

And it's really hard because you reflect on the mistakes you made as a teacher, and as a parent. And I think that's why a lot of people don't get past that part because you have to own some of the ways in which you didn't do things well. And no educator wants to think that they're not being inclusive because there's so much love in education and a lot of passion for what they do.

Kate: But, when you know better, you do better. As Dr. Maya Angelou said, you do the best you can until you know better. And so I'm trying to, that's been kind of my evolution. How do I do better. And a lot of that is a lot of listening, and reading and listening to my students, to people with different kinds of disabilities, people from marginalized groups, and exposing myself to that knowledge that I really didn't get as a student.

Kate: There’s a lot of reasons for that. And we talk about how public schools have been. It had a long history of being exclusive, but I would say that the one thing that I've realized with inclusive education is the strategies that I use for my students with disabilities typically benefit all my students. So it's just because someone doesn't have a diagnosed disability, it doesn't mean that they're not going to benefit from an educational environment that's inclusive.

In fact, it it benefits all students, regardless of their background, their privilege, their ability. And so I think some people might feel like, well, I might be lowering the bar academically or making these assignments easier, but it's not about that. It's about making things more accessible and we all benefit from that. And then going that step further when we go from accessibility to inclusion, that gets to the heart of our humanity.

What does that mean to truly include everyone and make everyone giving a comfortable environment for everyone?

Kate: So, it's it's hard to define the concrete strategies I try to, it’s something that I think deeply a lot about.

Arthur: Yeah. The accessibility I think that's there and making it better for everybody. Like you said, all of your students benefit from the way that you make the classes inclusive.

And that's I think that's the big you know, that's a that's a big message to put out there that we all benefit from inclusion and accessibility. And I always because I have a physical disability, which is the example of a ramp, everybody can use a ramp that's accessibility, but everybody can use it, whether you're in a wheelchair or not, you can use the ramp, but not everybody can use a set of stairs.

So, accessibility does benefit the majority of people in a positive way. So and I think it's the same for inclusion as well. So that's like you said, though, it is difficult to define and everybody has their own, definitions, their own feelings about how to define inclusive education.

Arthur: One of the big things that I like that you said is it's not about what you feel. It's what you're doing, what you do. And that it's an action, it's an active thing that takes time and it occurs over time. And it's not just a one-time thing. It happens constantly. And, you have to keep at it and not, give up on it.

So that's a good message to send for sure.

Arthur: So we connected through the NJCIE summer inclusion conference and this season on the podcast we are highlighting a lot of the presenters from that conference that took place in June. So you presented on the topic called Empowering Equity, Engaging English Language Arts to explore the disability rights movement.

So I love that title. And so can you share with us an overview of what your presentation was about and why do you feel learning about things like the disability rights movement for students is so important?

Kate: Absolutely. So the presentation was about a unit I teach in grade eight language arts, but it really could be adapted to any grade level and be used in language arts or social studies because those subjects overlap so much.

It's a historical topic, but there's also a lot of skills in reading, writing and communication and media viewing, and it's about disability rights movement and also its impact on inclusivity in our world today. So the goal of my presentation was to give teachers resources and strategies to teach students about the disabled heroes of the movement and have students think more critically about inclusion in schools where they are right now and in the workforce where they will be and in their social lives.

And I think the disability rights movement is such a powerful introduction to the concept of inclusivity because it centers disabled folks as the leaders of the movement who fought for their own rights. And I think that's really important to do when you're talking about any marginalized group to center the people who are part of that group and their stories and that movement.

Kate: We do talk about how non-disabled allies were important to the movement. And it's important to have allies, but it was disabled people that made the greatest sacrifices to fight for their freedom and also had the imagination to envision a better world. And that's another really important piece, I think talking to students about civic engagement and activism, how do we imagine a better world?

And so students, learn about the actual physical barriers to inclusion, such as wheelchair accessibility, public transport, accessibility and exclusion from public schools. But they also start to examine the difference between accessibility and inclusivity and those invisible barriers to inclusion, and how well-intentioned people can often create barriers to inclusion in the name of achievement, productivity, competition, and fiscal responsibility.

So as a culminating project, the students design a business plan for a local business that is accessible and celebratory of employees and patrons with disabilities. So this gets them identify A barrier, gathering information, and brainstorming solutions before they plan and act. And it's so incredible the ideas that they come up with. I teach in Monmouth County and in Middletown, there's a cafe called the No Limits Cafe.

And so it's local. It's like 10 minutes away from where I teach. And we learn about how that business started as a business that's inclusive for and employs people with disabilities. And, we think about in our area what other businesses and it turns out it's all of them. There's not one even ones that you would think can't be accessible and they're like, well, if you just do this, it becomes more accessible.

Kate: So I can't this unit is so engaging for students. I love teaching it because there's so many opportunities for like metacognition and self-questioning because there's so many problems to solve. And I think students see this topic as extremely relevant to them and to their future because all of us have some sort of relationship with disability, whether we have one, whether someone we love has one, and there's the inevitability of disability in all of our futures if we're fortunate enough to grow older.

So it’s relevant to everyone and they really see that. And for kids, for teens, for anyone, relevance is really important. And in their learning. And I think kids these days, they have greater intelligence about disabilities. And I think they're they're really dying to learn more beyond what they see on social media. I think we really underestimate the social intelligence of this generation when it comes to inclusivity, but they're lacking the background knowledge and the history in how that change actually happens.

Like what is activism? How can I make a change in my community? How can I imagine a better future? I think that supports their mental health as well. We blame a lot of kids anxiety on some social media overscheduling, but I think a lot of it comes from a sense of helplessness, a lack of agency in the world.

And this is an opportunity to empower them to be brave leaders and to see the leaders that came before them and the sacrifices they made and how hard they were willing to fight to help them see that this is something that they could do someday, too.

Arthur: Yes. Yeah, I love that you do that. like you said, when they're teenagers at that eighth-grade level, that's just such a great time to really explain everything to everyone.

And they really do understand it. Like, so quickly. They get it right away. And just to going back to what I was saying about ramps, like to show a ramp, but then you're giving them the historical context of how it came to be that we have ramps that in places and how like you said, the people who were there fighting for all of this, you know, way back before the Americans with Disabilities Act that's what we often hear of when they refer to disability and the Americans with Disabilities Act, because it's the most recent and most recent one.

But it's like, no, this started way before that. And then people were fighting before then and still since then. So and then to put them to create the business plans for how to be more accessible, more inclusive like that really does, that's really great. When you said that, I was like, Wow, that's a great idea to move their thought process in that direction of, okay, you have these businesses like how can it be that can operate better to serve the community members that have disabilities?

Because as you said, we either have a disability, we know someone with a disability, and like you said, if we grow old enough, we may acquire a disability.

Arthur: So definitely disability impacts so many more people then we might never realize.

Kate: One of my favorite ideas,I mean, they were all so creative; some kids set like they had ideas for a bookstore or an ice cream shop and but one of the students came up with an idea, a clothing store that was inclusive to people with disabilities of all body types, and that there would be fashion shows in the clothing store, like showcasing the clothes and having people with disabilities and of different body types wearing the clothes and showcasing the clothes.

So I thought that was so cool how she brought together something she is passionate about. And this the idea of what is it, you know, the intersection between disability rights and body inclusivity. I thought I was like, what an incredible idea. You know, a 14 year old girl.

Arthur: Right. And that is that's so true, because how disability impacts different people.

a lot of times you may not think about how it might be difficult, for example, to button a shirt for someone who is an amputee or something, has some other type of disability where their fingers don't work as well. They don't have strength in their fingers per se. And so like you said, to take something that you're passionate about design, fashion design and clothing and say like, okay, well, let's make this accessible and inclusive for everybody.

So that's really great. I love working with children in that way to see their creativity and just how you give them a simple task, an idea to say like create a business plan and they just go with it and come up with something so great like that, that's awesome.

Kate: And so that's the best part of teaching what they can teach you.

Arthur: That’s really good. I like that. Oh, wow. So can you give an example or two of some strategies that can be used in language arts or social studies? As you said, they can be very closely related, those two subject areas. Can you give one or two strategies of that can be used in those classrooms and how these strategies can empower students to advocate for equity?

Kate: Yeah, I think just starting with the project I was talking about, project-based learning and giving students Choice is a really great practice in teaching to begin with, and it lends itself to inclusivity because you are opening up the assignment for students to use their strengths to be successful. I think representation is really important in both subjects, in the curriculum of activists, marginalized groups, minorities, and people who have been silenced throughout history.

And I think when I was younger, I learned nothing about the disability rights movement. And part of it was because some of it hadn't happened yet, but it had been happening since before I was born. And it was so intersectional with the civil rights movement. So it's kind of strange that I learned about the civil rights movement, but I didn't learn about the disability rights movement.

They were happening at the same time with the same people working together. So I think that's something that we always have to work towards as English teachers, as social studies teachers, because when the more that we hear stories from all different kinds of people, the more we build our understanding of humanity and our empathy. And I think both subjects are about deep thinking and effective communication.

But I think to make these subjects inclusive, we also do a lot of teaching or should do a lot of teaching about character and humanity. When we discuss these subjects, what do we value as a society? What are our personal values? What civic responsibilities do we have to each other in this nation that's committed to equality?

Right. social studies teachers are many of them, especially at the middle school level and at the high school level, are teaching about the founding values of our country. How they've changed and what are they today. So, making it relevant to students, making that content relevant. Why am I learning this? Why do I need to learn this?

Kate: How is this going to help me be a better person, be a contributing member to society and take care of the people in my community? So I'm an English teacher, but I have always had a passion for history and social studies. So I think there's a lot of intersection there to talk about these topics.

And I think that's kind of our first step in making a more inclusive curriculum. And then and then we need to look at our assignments and how we achieve standards that we have to meet and achieve and how we can do that in a way that's more inclusive and accessible. And it's difficult because you want to have high expectations, you have standards to meet, but you also need to realize that everyone's going to come to that in a different way, right?

And so that is I think that's something that teachers need a lot of support on ongoing support because what works with one student next year, you're going to have a totally different experience. So I think that's the other piece too, is how do we get our students to meet the standards in the way that is most accessible to them and focuses on their strengths/

Arthur: Yeah, that was great. And I like the everybody well, everybody will get there. They just get there in different ways. And that can be the fun of figuring that out and just giving you as an educator ways to keep it fresh for you and to create new and fresh ideas.

That's cool. I like that. But everybody will get there. But they just take a different path sometimes. And as educators, that's the test to figure that out. What's the best way to get everybody there, the majority of everybody there.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah. And I think too like we we try too hard to do that on our own.

And I think we need to lean on each other and we also need to listen to our students a little bit more like involve them more in how they get there, because we're taking the onus completely on ourselves. Like, I have to figure this out. I have to. And if that's not how the best decisions get made,

Arthur: And I think that actually leads right into our next question, which is, do you have any advice about inclusion that you can offer to educators and those in school leadership positions?

Kate: Yeah, I mean, just branching off this idea of like support and guidance. I think it's so important that educators and school leaders and stakeholders, board members, and parents have ongoing guidance and education on how to make their curriculum instruction and assessment more inclusive.

There can be a lot of tension between stakeholders; parents, teachers, and child study team over child education. And sometimes that turns into a battle of ideals rather than this concerted effort to figure out what this child needs to receive an equitable education. We know that inclusion works, but as I mentioned earlier, a lot of us there's a lot of teachers that don't understand how it works or see it done effectively in action.

And I know I said this, but I think we need to include more people with disabilities, more marginalized people in these decisions. How many child study teams have teachers and parents out there where no one in the room has a disability? And that's not going to change until the profession of teaching becomes more inclusive to people with disabilities and to marginalized groups, minorities.

And that's something that I've become interested in researching and how to solve is how do we get a more diverse workforce in our public schools? Because if we're making decisions about what benefits these children, we need to be making decisions based on people who have experienced what they're experiencing. And then I think it's important to remember, too, that the values of a school or community can sometimes inadvertently create barriers to inclusion.

Kate: I think if a community values achievement, success, and competition, which are not bad things, but sometimes the importance of inclusion takes a backseat to being the best, being number one. Right. And we talk about this in my class when it comes to sports. In the documentary Crip Camp, which I watch excerpts of that my students fantastic, fantastic documentary, an incredible introduction to the disability rights movement.

And there's this scene where disabled people are playing Wiffle ball. And actually the team is a mix of people with and without disabilities, young people and one player with a physical disability hits the ball and he's running really slowly to first base in the best way that he can. And he's got this huge smile on his face and everyone else has a big smile on their face.

And then another player is a wheelchair user, and instead of running, two of his teammates, get on the ground with him and they link arms and they help him crawl to the base. And I asked the students, So what are the values of sports that you see here? And they say, Oh, it's teamwork, belonging, pushing yourself to do the best that you can.

And then I asked them, So why don't we see this on sports teams in schools or on travel teams? And I think it's important to assist in a non-judgmental way so that they can feel comfortable being honest, you know, which is like, well, why don't we see this at our at our school sports? You know, why doesn't this happen?

Kate: And so we talk about how it's the value in sports is competition winning, being the best that can create a barrier to inclusion. And that's an uncomfortable thought for a lot of people. But I think it's a really important one because school sports are at the heart of so many issues with inclusion, not just for disability, but gender.

So I think really reflecting on do your values support, inclusion, and do you have some values that maybe are not bad values to have, but should we examine them a little bit more and think about are they creating invisible barriers that non-disabled people might not see?

Arthur: Yes, that was a great analogy using the Crip Camp. I love that documentary.

It was really good, but using that to explain and ask the question of your students about school sports and travel sports like that. So really, like you said, the competition part of it can blur the lines of a lot of things and, oh, and just making it above the challenging of the critical thinking, I guess making them think in a different kind of way and bringing up different topics that all relate to each other through the movie Crip camp, but then relating it to them, playing sports in their own lives, in school or on their local township teams.

That's awesome.

Kate: And that's not going to be like effective, challenging them, asking these tough questions. It's not going to be effective unless you create an inclusive environment. That’s this piece of like creating safe spaces and places where people can express out. That's where you're going to get kids to really think and open up and challenge the ideas that they just think there's nothing to think about there.

So it's all kind of connected.

Arthur: Yes. So the last question I have for you is, do you have any recommendations, books, articles, videos, movies, or anything you can recommend to our listeners to help them better understand inclusive education or your topic of the disability rights movement?

Kate: Well, I mean, Crip Camp, I thought everybody saw it. And when I saw it, I'm like, Well, you've all seen this movie, right?

And there are people who haven't seen it. So if you haven't seen it, you have to see that movie like. Yes. And it's just I love documentaries. So from a documentary standpoint, it's so incredibly done and it's inspiring, but not in a patronizing sort of way. It’s in a way of like, we can do anything to change the world and we're not helpless.

We just need to have a better imagination. We need to create spaces where we can imagine this better world. And if you haven't seen it, it's just such an incredible introduction to the disability rights movement and it's going to get you going down other parts of; Well, I want to talk a little bit more about the movement. I want to learn about it. There's another great film, I think it's on Vimeo about A.D.A.P.T. the activist group that led the transportation movement for transportation accessibility and if you haven't seen it, you'll get led in all these other directions.

Like, I can't believe I didn't know this. I can't believe you didn't learn this. And now I want to know more.

And now I want to understand these laws better because that's things like that. And it's like, I can't believe it. I took civics and I went through all of these history classes and it wasn't mentioned at all. And I'm hoping that a little bit of that is due to my age. And when I was coming of age, maybe it just wasn't in the curriculum yet.

Kate: But I think New Jersey has incredible mandates for education, and one of them is to teach the history of disabilities. So I'm really hoping and the contributions of people with disabilities. So I'm hoping that that kind of spearheads more education and then one of the books that I read for the class that I teach on teaching prejudice reduction is A Disability History of the United States by Kim Nielson.

So I think it's a really incredible introduction to how disability has been defined in our country from the ways that she talks about how indigenous groups embraced inclusion as a foundation for their society. So it's not something new. It's just something that we have gotten away from or coming back to at different points in history.

And it traces she traces how America, as this new country developed this view of disability that intersects with racism, with the history of immigration. So it's a great primer for educators in my cohort that I teach because like me, so many of them don't have that background knowledge. And it it's also really comprehensive in that you then you start to think, Oh, I want to research this more.

It just it's such a great overview. Then if there's something you want to learn more about, you can piques your curiosity in that direction.

Arthur: So those are two great recommendations. So thank you so much for that and thank you so much for this conversation.

So Kate, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. I really enjoyed talking with you and hearing more about this great topic of the disability rights movement and how and why it is important that we talk about these historical movements that have happened within the disability community that are often not talked about, as you said when you were a student and when I was a student, we didn't talk about that as well.

So I'm glad that you are there in your school district talking about these these topics and, you know, making your students aware of of what has occurred within the disability community throughout the year.

So thank you again for this conversation

Kate: Thanks for having me, I really enjoyed it.

Arthur: You’re welcome, and I will be in touch.

Kate: Thank you.