A Social Justice Newsletter For Educators

“I can never understand how someone can profess how important it is that my voice is heard while also doing everything in their power to silence it.” – Cole Sorenson, “No Place for Disability In Special Education”

A Culture That’s Responsive

I had the opportunity to co-facilitate a small group strand at the Learning 2 Europe Conference with advocate, educator and consultant, Tricia Friedman. Our strand’s theme was Building Culturally Competent Schools. We used a loose structure of pair and whole group conversations, individual think time and even shared silence. Among the many insights that emerged, one that hit me strongly was our use of the term ‘culturally competent.’ It made me a little uneasy. I contrasted ‘competent’ with ‘responsive’ and asked our group to consider why being culturally responsive seemed much closer to the objectives we were describing than culturally competent.

For me “competent” implies eventual judgment and evaluation. It connotes a finished state at which one should arrive, whereas responsive suggests necessary adaptation and adjustment according to context. I wondered if cultural competence is a bit like putting the cart before the horse. That we can hardly call ourselves or our institutions culturally competent if we are not first tangibly, audibly and visibly responsive to students, families, staff and faculty across a full range of needs, aims and desires.

The experience of working alongside educators willing to wrestle with the language we choose and its implications; to explore alternative options in an atmosphere of both vulnerability and good humor gave me a morale boost I didn’t know I needed. I’ll be thinking about what it means to be a responsive educator and person for many days and nights to come and that’s what I hope to center in this month’s newsletter.

A couple of weeks ago I read a blog post by Cole Sorenson, a disabled autistic educator describing his experience in a special education teacher prep program (quoted above). In very real terms, I was shook. What he enumerates are several examples of patronizing, dismissive and insulting behaviors at the hands of his lecturers and some of his fellow students. I’m going to quote him again because there are so many aspects to his experience that rang bells for me.

“There’s something uniquely alienating about hearing your experiences discussed amongst people who have never lived it, spoken about in the abstract and leaving you feeling like you’ve walked into a conversation about yourself that you were never supposed to hear.” – Cole Sorenson

Sit with that statement for a moment. What do you notice? Where does it reach you?

I raise these questions as a call to action: To notice, to feel, to recognize. When marginalized folks are relating their experiences which seem removed from our own, how prepared are we to listen first in order to learn? Where do we develop and grow our capacity for responsiveness?

In service of building our responsiveness to learners of all kinds, I want to share some resources related to learning differences and autism, in particular.

• Listen to this interview with Eric Garcia, author of the book, We’re Not Broken: Changing The Autism Conversation: “Most autistic people prefer identity-first language, which is to say autistic because we recognize that autism is inextricable from our identity. It’s not something you can remove from us. To remove it from us would be to fundamentally change who we are. So I tend to prefer that.”

• I’ve learned a lot from autistic folks on Twitter. I came across a post by writer, Julia Farrell, talking about her autism diagnosis as an adult which was illuminating. She specifically notes some of the barriers to women being accurately diagnosed: “Females are more often termed ‘high functioning’ because we exhibit different behaviours to males, namely we mask our true behaviours and our confusion by expressing expertly learned behaviours.”

• In that post, she highlights an Icelandic documentary, Seeing The Unseen, about autistic women and their experiences. Watch the trailer below.

• In my research I also discovered that there are not only gender but also racial disparities regarding neurodivergent diagnoses. Black and poor folks tend to be diagnosed later and less frequently.

• Adriana White, a school librarian who is autistic shares a selection of picture books by autistic authors about neurodiversity.

• I also recommend attending the virtual SENIA Conference in early December which is focused on learning support and inclusion. My colleague, Caitlin LeBrun will be leading two workshops there.

• Finally, I want to suggest understood.org as an excellent starting point, also for parents, to gather information about supporting people with learning differences in the classroom and beyond.

As always, putting this newsletter together provides me fresh opportunities to build my own understanding. Learning about and from neurodiverse perspectives reminds me again that I am more parts ignorance than knowledge. The pleasure lies in continuing to build and shape my awareness and sharing my findings with all of you. May our collective responsiveness to students and each other enhance belonging wherever we interact.

Be well,

Sherri