Edu 430/530 Professionalism& Social Justice

Teaching About People with Disabilities

Developed by Pat Russo

In the past, several student teachers have reported using a modified simulation activity to introduce conversations about people with disabilities and social justice. Often the simulation went like this:

The teacher set up an activity where some students were blindfolded to simulate blindness; and/or where some students had a hand/arm immobilized, had to use a wheelchair, or were in some other ways given a disability.
Other students might act as helpers to these students with disabilities.
The students would be required to complete an activity, or transverse an obstacle course.
The teacher would read a story about someone who had a disability
The class would have a discussion about people with disabilities (this discussion might include issues of sympathy, empathy, or proper ways to act around and toward people with disabilities.
In a few cases, the children went on a tour of the school identifying places where there was good access, or limited access for people with disabilities.

The rest of this document provides some pointers for teachers who want to address issues of disabilities and TSJ. The table below addresses things to think about, comments/discussions to avoid, activities to avoid, and recommended comments and/or activities. At the end of this paper you will find a list of resources to use if you want to find out more about this topic.

Where are people with disabilities? Who are people with disabilities? What do people with disabilities do in society? Often, in our classrooms, we simply leave out any mention of people with disabilities who have made contributions to our society. Or we talk in ways to suggest that simply being different is a deficiency in a person.

Avoid saying things or acting in ways that suggest that there are very few people with disabilities. In fact there are all sorts of levels of physical, emotional, or cognitive disabilities in people around us. Another way of saying this is that there are all levels of physical, emotional, or cognitive strengths in people around us.
Avoid using literature about people with disabilities that only focuses on the disability, and otherwise leaves the character/person completely undefined.
Avoid talking about “disabled people” (or using other obvious slurs).
Use the term person with a disability, or person with a hearing impairment (put the person first).
Include discussions that help us realize people with disabilities are all around us, even though we often ignore them.
Include information that talks about famous people (historically and currently) who have disabilities.
Use plenty of literature (fiction and non-fiction) that includes people with disabilities as independent, interesting, strong, and participating characters.

Sympathy and people with disabilities. We often hear teachers talking about people with disabilities and directly (or in very subtle ways) encouraging sympathy because someone has a disability. Not only does this suggest that the teacher is uninformed, it also quite often insults the person with a disability. Be careful.

Avoid talking in ways that suggest we should feel sorry for someone with a disability. This assumes the disability to be a deficiency, which is not necessarily the case. There are many reasons to help kids think about being sympathetic toward their peers. If someone loses something, feels bad, gets injured, gets caught in the rain, gets left out, etc. There is really no reason to encourage sympathy when we are talking about someone with a disability.
Include conversations that encourage sympathy only when it is called for. When reading stories that include characters with disabilities, talk about all characteristics of the characters, not just the disability.

Empathy and people with disabilities. It does help for children to have some sense of what it feels like to have a disability. The key difference here is that we are not facilitating such an experience to allow us to feel sorry for the person. On the contrary, we might have (or help children have) an experience of not being able to see, or hear, or move, or think clearly, and so on, to understand better. Part of this understanding might help us know how to interact better with someone with a disability (I know if I am talking with someone with a hearing impairment, it helps if I face that person, keep my hands away from my mouth, and try to speak clearly and slowly). This empathetic awareness might also help us understand how buildings, classrooms, sidewalks, and social groupings should be structured so that we can accommodate our surroundings and our activities to be sure to include people with disabilities.

Avoid being silent about issues of disabilities. Don’t ignore the topic.
Help children learn about the strengths and weaknesses of people with disabilities. Carefully plan simulations (and follow-up conversations) that help children feel what it’s like to have a disability.
Discuss, and provide examples of, how a person with a disability in one area might have strengths in other areas, or might make use of the disability to understand the world in ways we have never thought of. There are many new resources available now about how people with autism see things in the world that most of us miss; people who are deaf have sophisticated abilities using sign language; people with depression (or other emotional disabilities) have developed wonderful art or poetry, and so on.

Social Justice and people with disabilities.Working for social justice means learning how our society treats people with disabilities so that they are denied opportunities to flourish and contribute to society. Social injustice occurs when people resort to ignoring or feeling sorry for someone with a disability; or when we try to be empathetic toward someone with a disability, but only to the point of a simplistic understanding of what it means to have a disability.

Avoid tendencies to ignore, leave out, or feel sorry for someone with a disability.
Avoid seeing people with disabilities as deficient.
Avoid simplistic simulations of being blind, or deaf, or immobilized. These activities can often result in children knowing very little about people with disabilities. The simulations can also lead to children being mis-informed about what it’s like to have a disability.
Work to help students see that how we think about, talk about, and treat people with disabilities plays a big role in their exclusion from society or can play a big role in helping people with disabilities flourish and contribute.
Help children recognize and value the difference between people with all sorts of disabilities and strengths.
Help children identify instances where people with disabilities could be excluded or denied opportunities (lack of access to buildings or activities, denied work opportunities, and so on).
Help children think about how they can contribute to changes in the school community or the wider community so that people with disabilities can be included.

Guilt, social justice, and people with disabilities. Often when we try to have conversations about social justice issues, people get uncomfortable, thinking that they should feel guilty about something they have said or done—or didn’t say or didn’t do. In fact there is no room for guilt when working for social justice. Keep in mind that developing a socially just society is an on-going project. As we engage in this work we learn more. As we learn more we find new ways to move this agenda (TSJ) further along. Every step we take along the way is progress. There is no need to look back and feel guilty about what we didn’t know back then.

Avoid feeling guilty about something you didn’t know, didn’t do, or didn’t say.
Avoid suggesting that your students should feel guilty or apologize for something they did or said in relation to people with disabilities.
Help children learn about issues of injustice related to people with disabilities. Help them learn to make changes in how they talk, how they act, and in the attitudes they have about people with disabilities.

Resources:

Derman-Sparks and the ABC Task Force (1989). Anti-bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children.Washington, DC: National Association of the Education of Young Children (video and book).
Teaching Tolerance Project (1997). Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades. Montgomery, AL: Southern PovertyLawCenter.
See also: document that focuses on (Dis)ability in section one of this course packet, “What Does It Mean To Teach For Social Justice?”
“Lesson Plan: Bones and Muscles, Before, After, Why the Changes?” pp 88-91 (for grades 3-5), in Grant, C. A. & Sleeter, C. E. (1998). Turning On Learning: Five Approaches for Multicultural Teaching Plans for Race, Class, Gender, and Disability. Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, an imprint of Prentice Hall.
“Lesson Plan: The Legacies of the African American Civil Right Movement (Before, After, Why the Changes?” pp. 158-161, (for grades 9-12) in Grant, C. A. & Sleeter, C. E. (1998). Turning On Learning: Five Approaches for Multicultural Teaching Plans for Race, Class, Gender, and Disability. Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, an imprint of Prentice Hall.
“Lesson Plan: Wheelchair Basketball, Before, After, Why the Changes?” pp. 145-147. (for grades 5-8). in Grant, C. A. & Sleeter, C. E. (1998). Turning On Learning: Five Approaches for Multicultural Teaching Plans for Race, Class, Gender, and Disability. Fourth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, an imprint of Prentice Hall.