(Cw Ableism at school)

One thing that I rarely talk about in my work, at least publicly, is that almost every new K-12 space I’ve been in I’ve been made fun of in some way about my disability by students.

Sometimes it’s the ableist slurs, or it’s making fun of

My voice or the way I walk. But I always hear or see it. Cerebral Palsy in me manifests in a way that is visible enough to make people feel uncomfortable but not so visible that people’s automatic response is pity.

it’s hard for the first few moments and I get pulled

back into elementary school. But when I convey these stories, often the response is, “kids are cruel” and that’s plainly just not been my experience.

In almost every circumstance, I’ve been able to have good conversations with kids about why those comments are harmful and

In almost every case we’ve been able develop a positive relationship.

Part of the reason is how we do and don’t teach about disability in schools.

Explicitly, we rarely teach students about what disability is and what it can be and what it means in all our lives.

We rarely teach explicitly about ableism, because, to be frank, many of us don’t have the capacity.

Implicitly? Students learn A LOT from us. Most of what students know about disability comes from how schools treat disabled students. Students learn where disabled kids

belong and don’t belong in our schools. They learn from us what we believe disabled kids can and can’t do.

They learn a lot from us, whether it’s intentional or not.

So, it’s not really a surprise, then, when I get called an ableist slur when I walk into a school…

We’ve taught that student for 3 or 10 or 12 years that disability doesn’t *really* belong in these spaces.

One last thing. The number of times I’ve had to interrupt an ableist slur about me when a (presumably) non-disabled colleague overhears it and just isn’t equipped to deal with it…

Again, capacity and education are crucial.