https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/3/19/22339228/intellectual-disabilities-challenging-curriculum
I came across this article and wanted to highlight it here. Because it deserves a click and your full attention, I will be discussing it with the assumption that you’ve read it and will not be summarizing it.
In this article and the related one about The Celery Story (linked in the original article) Susan Taylor not only highlights her disabled son’s different experiences at two different schools, but also a common issue across many disabled kids’ lives that is so often overlooked. In these specific examples, she describes how her son’s quirks were met with concern by one school and celebrated in another, and the drastically different effects of each.
Not only is standing out generally frowned upon, but such reactions are also generally supported by professionals working with those individuals. A sad fact considering such professionals should be advocating for their clients’ rights to stand out, not helping stamp it out. This is what we get though, when we insist on functioning within a system built on ableism. Instead of advocating for our disabled clients’ best interests, we intervene on silly things that aren’t harmful, such as bringing celery with them to school. Because that’s “weird” and “weird” is allowed to be uncomfortable. Often, it’s justified by throwing the disabled child’s peers under the bus, and calling it preventing the disabled child from being bullied– because the peers’ bullying is somehow less our responsibility than a kid bringing celery to class.
Let me tell you something a little personal: Everything I did was considered weird in school, with or without celery or a diagnosis. The other kids were shitty to me even when I appeared and tried to act “normal” because they were allowed to be, and no responsibility was put on them to be better– but that’s a different story.
Lack of effort is failing our kids
Schools have a tendency to scrutinize the wrong things, especially with disabled kids. I’ve discussed before that we put far more pressure and higher expectations on kids who are different than on kids who aren’t. Behavior that is typical child development suddenly becomes concerning when that child has a diagnosis.
Too often, the priority is on forcing kids to fit a certain expectation based on maintaining comfort for the typical people around them. At the same time, no effort is put in to expose disabled people to the same benefits as the typical people around them. They are simultaneously expected to appear normal, but without the expectation of competence. The lesson for disabled students is then a confusing mix of passing as “normal” but without access to the same benefits of the typical world they are meant to “pass” in.
You will be working on the same preschool level work until you graduate, but don’t you dare act look disabled in public.
This issue came into stark contrast for me when the pandemic hit. Kids were sent home with enormous packets of work to “keep up” with their education in the new uncertain times that had no clear end in sight. This is not to place blame on teachers for how the 2019-2020 school year ended. There were a lot of failures around them (i.e. our country was facing a global pandemic with an overgrown infant at its helm), so they did what they could with no support or attempts to set them up for success.
What I can place blame on them for though is how the 2020-2021 school year went for our special education students. The work that came home with them was often very obviously pulled from Google or Pinterest with very little thought or effort behind the content. Massive packets of word problems that were identical except for the numbers involved, written in paragraphs beyond the learner’s reading and receptive language levels. Sometimes there was a reading comprehension section with questions such as “why” and “how” when the learner is still working on answering simple “what” questions and is not yet able to provide multi-word answers.
Then there’s the flip side: A 5th grader who has proven he is able to complete multi-digit addition and subtraction problems sent home with packets of single-digit addition, or tracing the day of the week when he is able to write sentences. Let’s not even discuss the sheer volume of repetitive busy work. It’s been a while since I’ve been in school, but I like to think that no elementary school student is doing that much busy work in a single week.
So here I come, with my client’s needs in the forefront, being told to help them get through learning at home. There’s “problem behavior” being observed when they have to do e-learning or their homework and I’m supposed to intervene on that.
Absolutely not.
Refusing to accept ableism is a skill, not a problem behavior
If there isn’t enough respect for my learner to provide work that’s appropriate in level and volume, under no circumstances am I going to teach them to accept that. They should be protesting. They should be speaking up in any way they can. Throwing mountains of advanced work at them without any attempt at making it accessible is just as insulting as forcing them to complete the same nearly identical preschool level worksheets over and over again.
Yes, a high schooler can enjoy Sesame Street and balloons and still learn about sex education or current events. It would be easier to understand if we stopped stereotyping disabled kids based on their interests, and using outdated and inaccurate descriptions such as “developmental level” or “mind of an X year-old.” At the same time, printing out grade-level pre-made worksheets completely defeats the purpose of special education. The goal is equal education with appropriate support to make grade-appropriate work accessible to disabled students. It’s not a matter of “can they” but “how can we,” together as a team that includes the student.
Disabled students deserve far more than copy-pasted busy work and infantilizing assignments. When we let them be themselves and meet them where they are with an understanding that they are whole people, we will see them thrive. Special education should not be treated as babysitting perpetual toddlers as long as we’re legally allowed to. Special education means educating with accommodations appropriate to each individual learner. Really, all education should be special education.
Where’s the line between being deserving of a science class and having to spend gym class picking up trash around the school? What diagnoses allow for a person to be at the top of the social strata and which diagnoses push them to the bottom? Might as well define it more clearly, because assuming all students don’t notice the difference is an insult to all of the kids’ intellects, regardless of ability.
As Susan Taylor puts it: “My son is not developmentally 5 years old. He is a 14 year old young person with his own interests, experiences, and opinions.”
Our disabled students deserve better. Do better.