Diana:
Welcome to the Beyond Awareness: Disability Awareness That Matters podcast. Here, you will find a safe space to learn and grow with leaders in education, Disability Studies, disability, advocacy, and diversity, equity and inclusion conversations. Specifically, we look at how disability fits into diversity, equity and inclusion, and how to frame disability awareness. In the context of educating K through 12 communities, this podcast serves educators, parents, and community members who strive to learn and or teach about disability in a research-based and respectful way. Moving beyond simple awareness and diving into inclusive and socially responsive conversations. Thank you for joining us today. Now let's go Beyond Awareness.
Diana:
I am so excited to have our next guest Emily Nusbaum with us today. Hi Emily.
Emily:
Hi Diana. I'm really excited too. Thanks for inviting me.
Diana:
Well, you're welcome. I would like the first thing for you to do, please introduce yourself, tell us who you are and what brings you into this field and what you're passionate about.
Emily:
So that's a long, long sort of winding path, but currently I live in the San Francisco Bay area. I teach at Mills College in Oakland, California, where I work with general educators mostly in curriculum and instruction courses where we focus on disability-centered curriculum and curricular content as well as things like universal design for learning and accessible pedagogy. And I also teach online for University of San Diego where I teach intro and advanced qualitative research methods. And lately I've, I've had the opportunity to do work with various different universities and programs around different facets of developing disability studies programming and disability studies opportunities on a handful of different campuses. So that's where I am now. You know, over the last decade plus I've worked full time in schools of education, often in special education departments focused on utilizing a disability studies framework and a social justice orientation to help us rethink how we prepare special education teachers. I've done a lot of work on the campuses where I've been to promote disability within diversity frameworks and conversations on campuses until work with faculty at the university level on accessible pedagogy. And what am I passionate about all of these kinds of things, all of the many things that can come out of this kind of work. 'm Super grateful over the last five or so years to have developed strong partnerships and friendships and like mentorship from a few ultiply-marginalized, disabled community scholars here in the Bay area, folks like Leroy Moore, and Alice Wong and the late Stacey Milbern Park,just to name a few. And so,having those relationships and partnerships in a few different projects has really allowed me to think more deeply about about a lot of the issues related to disability and disability inclusion and access and what it means to, to want to have sort of a culture of access right on our campuses or in my classroom or in my relationships with people and students.
Emily:
But I came to this after being an inclusion facilitator in San Francisco Unified School District. Before that I learned how to be a teacher and it was all by chance. One of the first inclusive schools in the United States, what was then known as the Patrick O'hearn school in Boston. And now it's the William Henderson Inclusion School and it's still a national model for inclusive practice. So I'm grateful in that learning to be a special educator, I actually never learned how quote, how to do that or be that in any way, but in the context of general education, access and placement for all kids, regardless of their support needs. And I think that's pretty unusual as a former special educator. So I rely on that experience and the sort of ethos and ideology and commitment to inclusivity that I learned from that very first school placementin like 1994 or five. So yeah, that's sort of where I've been and where I am now and who I am.
Diana:
Thank you so much. Wow. There's a lot that I did not know about you and I've known you for several years, so thank you for sharing all of that. I'm even more thrilled that I invited you to be here. So you have this amazing background with the William Henderson Inclusion School and as an inclusion facilitator, I'm wondering, and now as a teacher educator, educator, and a researcher, what is it that you have noticed that tends to be the trend in special education teacher training that contradicts what you learned in your inclusion specialist background and at William Henderson Inclusion School?
Emily:
I mean, for me, that's source of frustration with teacher preparation broadly and university schools of education is the siloed nature of it, in that general and special educators are for the most part, and in most places, taught separately. You know, there are very few programs that are truly collaborative and fully integrated programs. Often, you might see a program in which students take a track of general education courses and then a track of special education courses without sort of content and faculty integration across those spaces. I mean I used to sort of laugh, but also feel sad inside that of course I taught at a number of universities for many years was a course for special educators on collaborative practices. But I'd be teaching it just to a room full of special pre-service special education teachers. So it felt really difficult to try to talk about things like collaborative teaching models and collaborative teaming models
Emily:
When we were sitting in this room by ourselvesIn my experiences in special education teacher prep that, you know, the sort of dominant narrative about disability and most of these spaces is still a traditional deficit-orientation towards disability, right? And there's lots that's been published, and even more creative and dynamic work, that's coming out now. I was just, I just got to read a ton of chapters in an upcoming volume to help write the conclusion for a book about this boundary between disability studies in education and special education. But you know, traditional special education still dictates most of, of the knowledge in the field of what pre-service teachers engage with of like the national standards for both special education teachers and students labeled with disabilities in K-12 schools. So, you know, I'm hopeful someday for a radical transformation of what special education, and maybe it won't even be called that right?
Emily:
Of what education for all students looks like and how all teachers are taught. And for me, after my experiences in that work and having to often be a little subversive about having another viewpoint or teaching another viewpoint, I'm happy to have taken a step away from those university spaces right now. And for, for the time being, and to get to work with general educators who where I work at mills, they're very dedicated to critical frameworks and have a justice and praxis oriented general education teacher prep program. But I was the first person to ever talk about being an anti-ableist teacher, right. Alongside of what it means to think about being anti-racist in teaching, et cetera, et cetera. And it's been a really great experience and to get to do that through curriculum, right, because then we can be super creative and looking at all kinds of things that teachers can build into a curricular context, like art and language arts and social studies. And you've even talked to some of these students over the last year, some of my Mills students. And I'm so grateful for that because, you know, hearing you talk about your experiences as an educator, as a family member of somebody who experiences disability and has experienced a lot of marginalization, it really opens their eyes of like this like existence of people.
Diana:
Yeah. And why it's so important to view inclusion and the purpose behind it. Yeah.
Emily:
And, and teaching general educators in the context of curriculum and instruction, I feel also a certain amount of freedom that feels really good to give them content that that's just about engaging with the content and reflecting on it. Right? Like where does that fit into my framework of beliefs? Were there parts of that that made me uncomfortable and why?And what would it mean for me as an educator to have a student like that want to come into my classroom? And because of the orientation where I'm teaching a class like this, I think that the students I get have really been primed to think that way they just haven't placed disability within these kinds of critical perspectives before.
Diana:
You mentioned there's a distinction between disability studies in education and special education. Some of our listeners might not know exactly what that distinction is. Could you go into what you see are some of the main differences between Disability studies in education frameworks and special education framework?
Emily:
Sure. Yeah. You know, I didn't know until I started my doctoral studies in the early two thousands that disability studies as a discipline academic field existed. And what drove me to get a PhD was my experience after being an inclusion facilitator. I started doing that and still do now consulting work mostly supporting and advocating with, and for families that have kids with IEPs in the context of IEP meetingsand families that wanted their kids labeled with disability to have access to non segregated school settings. And I've written about it a few times and reflected on sitting in these meetings then, like that was like 2000, 2001. It's 20 years later. And I still do this work and sit in meetings and hear the same things of like this vast divide between what a family knows about their kid, the ways they think about their kid and know them as being learners, right.
Emily:
And as having dreams and wants and desires for their kids. And then the way school professionals often talked about these same kids and the way that kids are represented in places like IEPs, right, which are really these reports where we document the accumulation of deficits that they have. And that often that is used to segregate or keep these kids out of access to general education. So it was that difference that I was like, I want to go understand, like, what is it about this thing that gets labeled as disability that is so divisive. So then I went to get my PhD and that's where I encountered the field of disability studies, which is a flourishing, interdisciplinary transdisciplinary fields. And I got to study and learn about disability far outside of school of education, but I took history courses, literature courses, art courses, public policy courses.
Emily:
And that was so expansive for me. And so disability studies in education as sort of a sub field of broader interdisciplinary disability studiesIt's a little newer, right? It was only recognized as a quote academic field, I don't know, like 15 years ago maybe. And it's a field that emerged out of the work of some early critical special educators that, or pushing back on the traditional theories, like psychological theories of disability as being atypical as being a form of deficit or disorder. And that then, right, like those theories sort of ground and feel like special education. You know, if we think then about the way teaching practices or policies emerged out of those theories, that we see a lot of practices coming out of traditional special education that are really aimed at remediating kids fixing kids and are really focused on that thing that you label, right?
Emily:
That, that thing that you label, right. We all know there's 13 eligibility categories or 13, one of 13 labels a kid can get to qualify for special ed services. And so in traditional special education, the focus is on that and the focus is on how that exists in an individual student, right? And we see then in school districts everywhere that, you know, there's certain programs for kids with certain labels. As if, if you get a label, you need to go to a place to get a very specific thing. Disability studies, on the other hand, or disability studies in education really, you know, takes up the, the sort of broader framework of interdisciplinary disability studies, thinking about,disability being like a really natural part of human variation. And that acknowledges differences in bodies and minds and modes of communicating and ways of experiencing the world.
Emily:
But those are actually sort of facets of identity and of culture and innovation and imagination. And that what becomes disabling for people who experience, you know, body-mind differences in all kinds of ways is engaging in contexts in which context, which are inaccessible, right. And that can mean all kinds of things, physically attitudinally financially culturally, right. Well, if we think about this in the context of schools it's policies that keep kids segregated, right? Those are what's disabling, it's teachers, general education teachers that aren't equipped tothink or know differently about disability. So anyway, those are, that's a quick broad, general overview about these two kind of frameworks for thinking about disability in the context of schooling. And also, you know, I will say that a disability studies orientation is much more intersectionaland working to be much more intersectional versus we see very little intersectionally about intersectional identities coming out of traditional special education spaces. And I guess too, I, I was thinking about this earlier today that it's also about like, identity, right? Because in traditional special education disability identity isn't a choice for a student it's like this external label that is forced upon them, versus in disability studies, we think a lot about disability identity disability community, disability culture, and the voices of disabled students, their familiesand from the community as being essential to shaping what it is we know about disability.
Diana:
Beautifully stated. Thank you so much. So what do you see? This will probably be our last question. What do you see is the, for somebody I'm thinking in terms of a special education teacher or a general education teacher who says, gosh, this is all new to me. And I'm a little bit overwhelmed with these ideas. How do we, how do we bring together what we've been taught in the past and bring together what you are presenting to us today about disability studies in education, and looking at the whole person and honoring that whole person and valuing differences that we have, and being more inclusive in our schools where, where the administration may not support inclusion or where other colleagues may not support inclusion at this time. What can a teacher take back from this podcast today? Like, what are the important things that a teacher can remember today?
Emily:
That's a really big question and really honest one too, right? Because teachers that want to dive deeper and like might often be really isolated in the spaces that they're in. Right? Because I do think when we think with these other frameworks outside of traditional special education, it does automatically lead us to question practices that segregate certain subgroups of students. So one, I think find connection and allies, and that can feel hard, but social media can be good places to locate those allies. Right. I'm trying to think, like, could I recommend a couple of even books that might be helpful?
Diana:
Oh, absolutely.We'd appreciate it.
Emily:
Yeah. I think books like Alice Wong's new edited volume Disability Visibility is a great read. It's written super accessibly. It's super powerful in terms of new narratives that let us learn about disability and disabled people from their stories and voices. I mentioned the name Leroy Moore before. I think finding Leroy Moore in all kinds of social media spaces and on SoundCloud. He's prolific in terms of writing, interviewing, all of that. He has a number of children's books and young adult books that are really great resources. I think a real, a book I have been using a lot in my teaching is this book, one second. I should have had these ready.
Diana:
That's okay. Say it again. Once you're closer to the computer then .
Emily:
Undoing Ableism by Sue Baglieri and Priya Lalvani written for teachers, very applied. It has a lot of good front work about, you know, the social model of disability of why should we teach about ableism and think about ableism in schools?
Diana:
Yeah. Sue Baglieri will be on the podcast.
Emily:
Great! Talk to her about her book.
Diana:
Thank you for recommending that.
Emily:
Your book, Beyond Awareness. I see that right up there.
Diana:
Oh yeah! I have a book too. (laughter).
Emily:
I use that one with general educators as well. So I think there are so many resources out there. And also if you're on social media, like looking up some of these people's names, different kinds of groups, like finding connection that way, start a book club with one or two other teachers and read or use one of these things.
Diana:
Awesome. And there's the Disability Studies in Education Facebook page as well. Yes. People post resources all the time there. So that was a good, good suggestion as well.
Emily:
Yeah. It's, I think, important just to have community or allies, even if that's just one other person when you're wanting to start to dig deeper into these kinds of issues and sort of new potential ways of learning about and thinking about disability, just because, especially in the context of schooling, it pushes back on so many traditional structures and structures that are still really pervasive.
Diana:
Yes. Excellent advice. Dr. Emily Nusbaum, thank you so much for joining me today.
Emily:
Thank you, Diana. It was such a pleasure. Take care.
Diana:
Bye, Emily. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Beyond Awareness, Disability Awareness That Matters. If this was helpful to you, be sure to subscribe, rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also follow me Diana on Instagram @dianapastoracarson and on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/GoBeyondAwareness. Or you can go to my website for more information at www.DianaPastoraCarson.com. My books include Beyond Awareness: Bringing Disability into Diversity Work in K-12 Schools and Communities, as well as my children's book, Ed Roberts: Champion of Disability Rights. They can both be found on Amazon. For your free Beyond Awareness resource called the "5 Keys to Going Beyond Awareness," simply go to www.GoBeyondAwareness.com/keys. This podcast transcription and podcast guest information can be found in the show notes. Intro and outro music has been provided courtesy of Emmanuel Castro. Thank you again for joining me. Be well, be a lifelong learner, and let's be inclusive. See you next time.
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