Ability Inclusive Mindset
when i was eight years old
i moved to one of those idyllic suburban
streets
with tons of young families that ends in
a huge cul-de-sac
i spent most of the rest of my childhood
in that cul-de-sac
playing four square and kickball and
rollerblading in circles
most of the kids i grew up with on the
block would say the same thing
but there was one boy a couple years
older than me who was a little different
he talked differently and behaved
differently
and he didn’t spend much time outside
with the rest of us
i remember asking an adult on the block
one day why the boy was going inside
after school
instead of staying out to play
i don’t remember exactly what the adult
said but i do remember the look on their
face
it was like i have no idea how to answer
this question and i really wish you
hadn’t asked
i distinctly remember being told that
the boy had
problems and that i should stay away
from him
and that was the extent of my education
on disability growing up
no one ever talked to me about it in
school not once
ever so everything i learned about
disability i learned by inference
for example i inferred from the adult
grimace and from the fact that no one
talked about disability that
it was something shameful and i didn’t
have students with disabilities in my
classes
at least not that i was aware of so i
inferred they didn’t belong there
i didn’t have children with disabilities
on my sports teams or
in my theater productions or in my dance
classes so
i inferred they couldn’t participate
and from what i saw when children with
disabilities needed help
that help was provided by adults so i
inferred they couldn’t really be friends
with other children
in short i inferred from my life
experience that children with
disabilities were very different from me
that they weren’t really a part of my
community and frankly i grew up hardly
caring about disability at all
to the extent i gave it any thought i
thought disability was sad
definitely a problem even a little scary
and disability mattered even less to me
as a young adult
is a political science and international
studies major at one of the most
progressive colleges in the country i
took courses in human rights and
humanitarianism
political philosophy identity studies
and i cannot for the life of me recall
ever learning about disability within
any of them
i had one college classmate with a
visible physical disability
and i specifically recall thinking to
myself what an anomaly she was
so smart for a disabled person
and then i went on to law school where i
learned all kinds of obscure laws that
frankly don’t matter at
all in everyday life but i never learned
about the
civil rights legislation at the core of
the disability rights movement
i’m not sure i could have if i’d wanted
to
disability was off my radar
and i fear it may have been forever if
my daughter nora hadn’t come into my
life
when nora was nine months old it became
clear she had significant physical and
intellectual disabilities
i mourned i mourned because i believed
her disabilities meant her quality of
life couldn’t be as good as mine
that everything would be somehow worse
and harder for her
i mourned because i feared what others
would think of her
i’m mourned because i thought that like
the little boy on my block
she was destined to grow up an outsider
if i’m being honest i’m mourned mostly
for myself
believing that a child with disabilities
like nora’s
couldn’t bring me the joy i’d hoped to
experience in parenthood
fortunately it didn’t take long for nora
to teach me that everything i’d inferred
about disability was wrong
and that i was losing precious time
mourning the loss of the child i thought
i wanted
instead of reveling in the wonders of
the one i was lucky enough to have
let me catch you up nora is neither sad
nor a problem and she certainly isn’t
scary
she’s a little girl she is capable of
learning and a friendship and of
recreating though she’ll do all those
things differently than i do
which is challenging and can be
frustrating for both of us
but really it’s fine and it can often be
joyful and really exciting
nora is loved and she feels love
she melts my heart she infuriates me
she makes me laugh just like her little
sister she runs me
through the full spectrum of emotions on
a daily basis
she’s a person she matters exactly like
all people matter
she demands and deserves to be seen and
included and supported and accommodated
so that she can live her best life
how could i have missed that
how many people had my ableism hurt
how many people had i pitied who i
should have gotten to know
how many people had i judged as less
than without knowing a single thing
about them
other than that they had a disability
how many people had i uh walked past or
worse
turned away from how many friends had i
missed out on
and as these questions swirled inside of
me i realized i had a lot to learn
years and years and years of catching up
to do on what this disability thing is
all about
and i also realized that if my
daughter’s peers were going to know the
things i was learning
someone was going to have to teach them
and fast
or else they’d be left to draw the same
wrong inferences
i drew growing up and that would be
terrible for nora
and it would be terrible for her peers
too
so together with my cousin who at the
time was a fifth grade teacher
i founded an organization to do exactly
that
to provide mindset training curriculum
and coaching to teachers
so that they can teach their students
about disability as diversity
and so that they can facilitate
meaningful equitable
inclusion in their schools the
organization is called the nora project
named for my daughter who is now six
years old
at the outset of my nora project journey
i was disappointed to find that despite
a great deal of legal progress
many things haven’t changed since my
years as a student decades ago
for example it remains the norm to
segregate students with intellectual
disabilities and autism
into separate special education programs
and those programs sometimes exist
in different hallways or even different
buildings than the rest of the education
in the community
children with complex medical and
accessibility needs are often forced to
attend schools
miles from their neighbors because their
local public schools
simply aren’t equipped to include them
today 30 years after the passage of the
ada
most public schools in the united states
still are not
fully accessible and
even in those cases where students with
and without disabilities are taught in
the same
physical space they’re opportunities to
really get to know one another
to forge the kinds of friendships that
make lasting impacts
those opportunities are scarce
and while inclusive public education
certainly isn’t right for every child
regardless of whether they have a
disability
we can do better it’s time for schools
to start building more accessible
empathetic inclusive cultures
here’s how in three manageable
steps first demystify
disability teach about disability as you
would any form of human diversity
don’t ascribe a positive or negative
value to disability
teach simply that it exists always has
always will that most people will
experience disability in their lives
because disability is part of the human
experience
teach about assistive technology and
medical equipment and how it works to
empower
adaptation teach about accessibility and
universal design
in how everyone benefits when everyone
can participate
teach about the rights and
accomplishments of people with
disabilities
read their books study their art
talk about the discrimination they face
and why it’s wrong
help students understand why language
matters what words are appropriate
how to be allies take away the stigma by
giving students a language for
disability
by naming identifying and standing
against
ableism and by creating a dignified
place for disability studies
in every child’s education
number two teach friendship skills
anti-bullying programming has become
very popular in american education
and it should be this programming serves
an important purpose but
let’s be clear not being a bully
is not the same as being a good friend
and how to be a good friend
is not obvious particularly to somebody
who seems very different from you
fortunately there are foundational
friendship skills that can be taught
and practiced and honed over time and
they can be applied to all your
relationships
these skills include understanding the
needs of others and anticipating and
adapting for those needs
they include empathy imagining how other
people feel
in pro-social behaviors like taking
those feelings into account
on the playground or when you’re making
your birthday party invitation list or
even when you’re deciding how to phrase
a question
studies show that students who are
explicitly taught these skills
are not only better friends but better
employees
better teammates better partners and
happier adults overall
friendship skills are critical to living
in community
whether to teach them shouldn’t be
aspirational schools should approach
them with the same rigor
they apply to their math and literacy
curriculums
finally number three my favorite
bring kids together and let them really
get to know one another
proximity is only a starting place for
changing minds about difference
the work that’s required to forge real
bonds and deconstruct prejudice is far
more complex
a great place to start is curriculum
like ours that bring students together
to solve a problem
tell a story or make an impact
we cannot continue to abide systems that
keep students with disabilities
physically or culturally segregated from
their non-disabled peers
and expect for them to feel like or
become
a part of us we have to transform those
old spaces and practices into new ones
where students are expected to
collaborate to include
and to believe and behave like everyone
belongs
at the nora project we call the values
embedded within this
the system of of activities we call this
the ability inclusive mindset aim for
short
and we strive through our programming to
help teachers and ultimately their
students think
differently about disability to consider
the disabled perspective by talking to
the folks in their communities who live
it firsthand
and to adopt accessible and inclusive
practices
to aim higher we’re only a few years in
but the data suggests we’re on to
something
in nora project schools community
culture shifts and students see
themselves as teammates
responsible for one another’s success
this makes classroom management easier
because students co-regulate meaning
they help each other
which requires less adult intervention
in the classroom
and teachers report a marked reduction
in bullying and anti-social behaviors
and minds are changing about disability
too
at the end of the 2018-2019 school year
three times as many students without
disabilities believed they had things in
common with their peers with
disabilities by the end of the school
year
and best of all 97 percent of students
who identify as disabled
reported that the nora project made them
feel proud of who they
are let me tell you what i’ve learned
from nora
and the nora project and becoming a
student of disability
smart disabled people like my college
classmate are not an anomaly
i’m mortified that i even thought that
at this point i’m so deep into aspiring
allyship i cannot for the life of me
understand
how the non-disabled majority isn’t
listening on a large scale
to what the disability community has
been telling us for decades
i’m going to summarize it here but i
encourage you to listen to the leaders
of the movement
and hear what they have to say
themselves many of them have ted talks
of their own that have supported me and
my work
but right now when i’m listening to the
community
this is what i hear them saying we are
people
full complex people we have
rights legal rights and innate human
rights
stop treating our access like an
afterthought
our dignity is an object of your
benevolence
your kindness toward us as charity
listen to us learn about us
include us allow us to live the lives we
want and are entitled to live
can’t we do that i’m not trying to say
this is easy clearly there’s a whole lot
of reimagining to do
but we are primed for reimagining right
now
the pandemic has changed the way we work
the way we connect with those we love
it’s laid bare massive systemic
oppression and is kindled within us
a desire to build more just more
equitable systems
it’s made clear that our decisions
impact others
that our personal well-being is tied to
the well-being of
all of our neighbors in all of their
diversity
and as part of this awakening it’s time
to unlearn
the oppressive cultural narratives we
learned by inference
and to do that we have to center the
voices that for too long have been on
the margins
just imagine if disability studies
empathy education and real equitable
inclusion were ubiquitous in american
education
i think the paradigm could shift the
time has come
for nora and everyone else
thank you