PRIDE in Preschool

PRIDE month might be over, but I wanted to write about how we absolutely can and should create LGBTQIA+ affirming, inclusive early childhood classrooms — including in early childhood special education classrooms.

When people ask, “Why?”, I want to respond, “Why not?” Because, to me, it’s obviously the right thing to do. I love my students and their families. Loving them means accepting them. It means cherishing their autistic selves. It means supporting their gender identity. It means welcoming their families, in all the forms they take. I want to live in a world where everyone knows that they belong, as themselves. Unfortunately, our world doesn’t do a very good job of this yet. I can, however, make sure that my classroom does.

All too often, people answer “because it’s inappropriate”. If this is you, if this is what you’ve thought, then I ask you to please sit with this post, breathe, and think through what I am saying. Those automatic responses have all too often been ingrained into you by a homophobic, transphobic world. And I am asking — for the sake of our students — to try to understand a different way. Remember that autistic individuals are up to 6x more likely to identify as trans, nonbinary, or genderqueer. My guess is that you probably know someone who identifies as such — and just hasn’t told you, because it’s not a safe world to do so. It might even be one of your students. And, yes, even in preschool, there are students who want to explore, to question, or even flat-out know.

Those kids deserve the words and language to do so. I didn’t have these types of words for how I felt when I was little. They didn’t exist, and they weren’t mainstream. It was agonizing. Agonizing. Because when we don’t have the words, when we don’t know that it’s okay, all we feel is alone. Deeply, deeply alone. Alone and wrong. I remember being brought to the store to buy “more girly clothes” multiple times per year. I remember trying, so hard, to do what everyone else wanted, to wear what I was “supposed” to wear, to fit in. I remember it being painful. I remember it being short-term, and impossible. I remember the exasperated sighs when I chose cotton t-shirts, lounge pants, and VANS. Repeatedly. I remember being afraid to cut my hair short. I remember being so confused. Twenty years later, I remember all of these things. And I’m forever, forever, forever grateful for the Internet and friends who gave me words like agender (not identifying with a particular gender) and autigender (a person whose experience of gender is influenced by their autism).

Personal experiences aside… when I hear, “it’s inappropriate”, what I hear is discrimination. We talk about boys and girls, moms and dads, in every single preschool classroom I’ve ever seen. We have whole units of study about family, dress-up corners for trying on different roles, and practice he/she pronouns when we teach language and read stories. Cis-hetero culture is mainstreamed and embedded in our classrooms as “the norm”, as “accepted”. So when we say that talking about LGBTQIA+ stories is “inappropriate”, then we are discriminating by making something taboo, turning different into “deviant”, and perhaps even sexualizing something — all of which are common foundations on which hate speech, conversion therapy, and other oppressive actions have been built on for eons and eons. My guess is that you’re not thinking about the connection, but it’s there. Think about it with something else — if you never, ever talked about red-hair color, if you only ever acknowledged blonde, brown, and black, or if you even told them that, “no, we don’t talk about that here”, then what would our students internalize about red hair? We can’t do that to our kids. We can’t do this to our fellow LGBTQIA+ humans. We can’t do this and still say we love them. We can’t do that and still say we are building inclusive spaces.

So, yes, we can make different choices with toddlers and preschoolers. We can choose to affirm a world where everyone belongs. We can choose to name things, to normalize them, to make them part of our circle. And it’s really not that difficult. Read some of the suggestions below and ask yourself, “Would this really be that hard? Would this really be too much? Wouldn’t it be worth it, if one kid felt seen? If one kid felt heard?” I know it is.

Ways To Be More Inclusive

Stop using “boys and girls” to call students to lunch, line-up, or any other activity. There are lots of other ways that you can refer to students (including… students). Using “boys and girls” to call kids to line up, create patterns, separate into groups, etc.., just reinforces that there is a gender binary, either/or. It’s an easy change.

Create an LGBTQIA+ inclusive library. Books are everything! Make sure you have books that include all kinds of families, gender expressions, etc, in your library, and do it all year long. Some of our favorites are Mom, Mommy, & Me, Jacob Wears A Dress, Daddy, Papa & Me, Julian Is A Mermaid, Love Makes A Family, and so, so many more. Fill your library with the diversity of our world.

Encourage pretend play and dress-up explorations by all students. That means boys can try on dress-up princess outfits, heels, and sparklers. Girls can decide to be the daddy in the family. Address bullying, “that’s for girls”, and “only boys do” immediately. This is the time for kids to explore the world; exploring roles is part of that. I frequently mix dress-up clothes into the blocks area, or trucks/cars/etc into the pretend kitchen area. It helps prevent gendered use of these centers and encourages imaginative thinking.

Model using different pronouns, including the singular they. This is one I find myself still working on. If I am reading a story with a character whose gender is unknown — even when it’s a lion or a sheep, I catch myself automatically referring to them as he. What? Why is he the default? That’s our conditioning, but I’m determined not to pass that pattern on. I practice using they for unknown gender, as well as using she much more often, too. I’ve started practicing before we read-aloud a book, even if it’s a book I’ve read a million times, because practice breaks that habit. I also have started modeling different pronouns when we’re playing with puppets and people.

Be thoughtful if considering pronouns as a speech-language objective. Pronouns are a common language target in early childhood special education, but I think we need to be really careful about how we address this. Too often, it consists of looking at pictures and practicing he/she. This heavily reinforces the idea that we can determine someone’s gender by looking at a picture, as well as using stereotyped images to do so (e.g., long hair is girl). When possible, I recommend using pictures of familiar people whose pronouns you do know for sure, as well as embedding practice throughout the day. I also recommend teaching “they”. You can use books to support this, such as the awesome What Are Your Words? which also has a teaching guide.

Make it normal. Don’t make it exceptional. It’s life. It’s families. It’s who you are. Read books all year long, not just in June. Talk about pronouns in the beginning of the year. Incorporate pictures of different families when you talk about the farm, or holidays, or Spring, not just during a specific family unit. Wear a pin with your pronouns. Add it to your signature line in your school email. Make all of this a normal, every day part of life. Your students will feel seen, heard, and respected all year long. They will also grow into compassionate, accepting human beings, which we always need more of.

Are there other activities that you’ve found to be successful or important in early childhood classrooms? I would love to hear them! Undoing the things we’ve been taught, “the way things have always been”, can take time and practice. I still catch new ways that I’ve been reinforcing the gender binary, even after much reflection. But it’s always, always worth it.

Image Credits: SharonMcCutcheon. (2018, November 13). Human-rights-equality-rainbow-lgbt-3805188 [Photograph]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/human-rights-equality-rainbow-lgbt-3805188/

Physical prompting is excessive.

We are living through a really horrid time. Period. The level of trauma — from death, illness, job loss, housing insecurity — is astounding. There is, amidst the wreck around us, a desperate thirst to return to normal. But normal didn’t work for everyone. I want safety. I want healing. I also want reimagining.

And one thing to re-imagine? Special education’s heavy use of physical prompting. When I hear blanket statements about how “virtual learning won’t work for my students with disabilities”, there is almost always a reference to a “need” for physical prompting. Students with disabilities are often at higher risk of contracting COVID-19, experiencing more severe illness, or even dying. Yet we are willing to place them at this higher risk because they “need” physical prompts.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not our students that “need” these physical prompts. Maybe it’s us.

As I’ve written before, physical prompting has a lot of caveats and even more alternatives. We should be asking and waiting for clear consent from a student. We should remember that students can remove consent at any time. We should be exploring other options first and concurrently. But that’s not what is showing up in schools. Instead, we have embedded physical prompting into how we teach, made it foundational to special education. It is an easy way for adults to get students to complete a task — and to do it in the manner the adult wants, at the time the adult wants. It’s also a tool that has the consequence of teaching our students that their bodies are not their own. Their bodies are allowed to be manipulated and moved by others. It normalizes this for our students in a dangerous way, considering the horrific levels of abuse that the disabled community still face every day.

(Side note: Yes, we can adore our students. We can work hard for our students. We can be horrified by abuse towards our students. And we can still teach in ways that unintentionally reinforce systems of oppression. Being a good teacher for our students means open listening to the impacts of our teaching, even when they were unintentional. Being a good teacher means re-evaluating what we are doing and thinking of ways to do it better. We don’t have to stay in the defensiveness of “but that’s not what I mean when I physically prompt!!!” I get it. I get that’s not what you mean. But now we have a chance to do better.)

Within virtual learning, the same reliance on physical prompting is not available for those who maybe haven’t yet transformed their practice. But that means we now have the opportunity to re-imagine our teaching. How do we teach? How do we support engagement? Creatively! Here are some of the ways we’ve supported success with our students — without relying on physical prompts. These tools can be used virtually, but they also, importantly, can be used when we return to face-to-face instruction to significantly decrease or remove the need for physical prompting.

Model skills. I love this guideline from language modeling on communication devices — “model without expectation”. When we teach communication partners to model on devices, we teach them to immerse the student in modeling. They learn to model as a way of being, rather than as a prompt for doing. Students then have many opportunities throughout the day to see others communicating in a form that they may be more easily able to produce. We really stress taking the pressure off in this process, because communication is about sharing your own message — not about saying what someone else wants you to say. Well, learning is about the process of discovery and exploration and making meaning. It’s not about regurgitating an action when someone else wants you to do it. There are also many reasons that someone may not be able to imitate actions on demand — apraxia, anxiety, autonomy… Indeed, many autistic students show more strength with delayed imitation, showcasing the modeled skill when both context and supports align.

We also need to recognize our student strengths when modeling. Modeling isn’t just about in this moment — and it’s certainly not about being in person with each other. I’ve been able to use a lot more video modeling throughout virtual teaching, and my students have thrived with it. Each video is no more than 3 minutes in length — and often 1 minute. I quickly demonstrate a skill that we are learning, from the names of shapes to the way we form letters for names. I’ve sent videos of myself playing dinosaurs, reading books, and creating cakes with Play-Doh. Students can then watch these videos on their timing — when their body feels safe and ready to engage in learning. They can watch it one time, five times, ten times. They can watch it now and again in seven weeks.

Priming, chunking, and repetition — with variety. These three tools should be used way more often than physical prompting, yet I see them written into IEPs way less frequently. Priming is a preview of a skill or concept prior to when it may be taught in class. If tomorrow’s class is going to speak about the causes of the Revolutionary War, key terms could be reviewed or introduced prior to class, whether in a session with a teacher, through materials at home, or even through one of those video models! It helps prepare students to engage with the material more deeply by activating background knowledge — and decreasing anxiety! It can also be a preview of an expectation or an opportunity to respond. For example, a student who may require time to build a message on a communication device could be given their question for morning circle in advance (if they prefer to prepare their message in advance).

With chunking, we break larger concepts or skills into smaller, more manageable sections. Like we chunk telephone numbers into 3-4 digits at a time, we can chunk the information and activity into pieces more easily stored, manipulated, and mastered. I have started to prefer this term as “task analysis” tends to lend itself to an ABA approach, which is not what I’m advocating. But we call can get overwhelmed when given too much information at once, or when a task involves far too many challenging skills and not enough “just right” learning opportunities. With chunking, it could be breaking a 30 minute lecture into 2-3 minute video clips, with opportunities for practice in between. Or it could be a student practicing circles and stars in a sorting activity first, while an adult continues to take turns, where they model the other shapes for now. (Yes, I teach preschool.) The size of those chunks is really going to be dependent on the student in front of you, but ensuring that we are working within that “zone of proximal development” also ensures that we are staying in emotionally safe, ready to learn zone. Everyone wins.

Repetition with variety is a phrase I first heard from Linda Burkhart, and I fell in love. Repetition with variety means that we teach content and skills multiple times but with differences. It could be teaching letter sounds across transportation, farm, and zoo themes in preschool. It could be exploring new content vocabulary through picture, video, and hands-on materials. It means that our students get that repetition of the word or skill, but they get it from different angles and different examples. Special education is known for our love of repetition, but YIKES when we don’t include that same rich variety of content that all students access. First of all, it’s an educational and human rights issue. Our students have the right to access the general curriculum. They have the right to learn. They did not lose this right when they were found eligible for an IEP, and yet so many of our students access to repetition has robbed their access to the curriculum. Second, this is how our brains build connections. I love Burkhart’s example at the workshop I attended, which was around the concept of “shoe”. (But you can do this with any word or idea). When we think “shoe”, we don’t envision one or two or even five images that we were drilled repeatedly. We think about so much more — what it looks like, how many different kinds there are, what they feel like, when we wear them, where we get them… We have an entire schema built around “shoe” that cannot be taught with picture cards, nor can it be assessed through trials. We must include a variety of experiences in our curriculum so that our students can build ALL of those neural connections. Finally, it’s so much more interesting! I am autistic and I love familiarity. I love sameness. And I also still get bored out of my mind when something is the exact same way, over and over. Variety catches the brain’s attention and keeps us engaged.

Support emotional needs. Learning is hard. We will make mistakes. We will feel incompetent sometimes. Adults still avoid both of those things. For learning to happen, our students need to feel safe. They need to feel physically and emotionally safe. They need their accommodations to be respected and delivered, their sensory needs respected. They need encouragement. They need their teachers to respect fight-flight reactions, be present with them, and create the space to re-regulate (or co-regulate). They need to know that IT IS OKAY TO BE MAD, including BEING MAD AT US. It is okay to be frustrated. They also really, really need to know that you know they are competent, capable learners. (This also means not using baby voices that you wouldn’t use with other 13 year olds.) Each student’s individual needs may look different here. But it cannot be forgotten.

Multiple means of expression. When I model skills during a synchronous lesson, I am fully aware that in-the-moment imitation and response can be difficult for my students. And so I never, ever assume that students are not learning or do not have the knowledge because they cannot express it in a specific way at a specific time. I may model a concept through song, demonstration, or a game-like Google Slides activity during a synchronous lesson, with opportunities to respond via vocalization, gaze, or gesture. But that’s not the only way students can show their learning. Instead, we create multiple opportunities in multiple formats for students to showcase their knowledge during a unit. Students may make letters with Play-Doh, stamp letters on paper, or match letters in a See-Saw activity. Families can choose activities from BOOM, See-Saw, file folders… Art and toys…. All kinds of ways, all kinds of skills. We are all about finding best fits for students and their families.

We also look for that knowledge in different ways. Many of our students use their bodies to communicate more easily than they may use words. What are they telling us with their bodies? Do they move differently when one of the choices is stated? Do they look at a different part of the screen? Are they shifting the type of gaze? I am 100% over “need to generalize” being used as a stand-in for “need to show it on my assessment tool when I want”. Learning is our goal. And our students show it many ways. My daughter may turn her head, watch something from the corner of her eye, pause her music, or reach out during a lesson. Each of these actions tell me something about what she is learning, her response to the material, and what she is thinking. And none of them are inferior to saying or touching the answer on the screen.

Time. I’ve said this over and over again, but we need to make sure we are giving our students enough time. They need wait time in the moment. They need the time and space to show their learning in ways that work with their ways of thinking, communicating, moving, and being. Time is not something often found in our rapid pace, standardized testing world. But all — all, IEP or no IEP — students need it.

Blanket statements about how students with disabilities cannot learn in virtual settings ignores (1) the ableism inherent to these blanket “cannot” statements, (2) the responsibility of educators to adapt and accommodate, and (3) the very real problems inherent in physical prompting. I have seen students with complex communication needs and complex bodies be successful within virtual learning. I have seen and heard of autistic students, students with intellectual disabilities, students with learning disabilities be successful.

Is virtual learning during a worldwide pandemic ideal and sustainable and sunshine-rosy-perfect?

That is obviously not what I am saying. I am not ignoring the real challenges that educators, families, and students all face in our current world. I am not ignoring the stress that each parent feels as they wonder if they are doing enough, if they are being enough. (You’re doing awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you.)

I am saying that our students can learn. I am saying that we have the opportunity to gain teaching skills and techniques that will make us BETTER teachers when we are able to be safely together again. I am saying that we have the opportunity to imagine and create a better model of school, where physical prompting is a rarity, where students own their own bodies, where multiple ways of learning are recognized and celebrated.

Autistic Passions Are Everything

I am an autistic adult. Many, many autistic adults have been traumatized by the world, simply for being autistic. There are so many things that people do that hurt, unknowingly.

Removing and controlling autistic people’s passions is one of them.

It seems harsh, maybe. But when you take away the Dora, the Pitbull, the Ben 10, the repeated final scene of End Game?

It hurts. It traumatizes.

First, we allow allistic (non-autistic) children their interests. We encourage their passions. We take them to dance camp and pay for travel soccer teams. We should do the same for our autistic children. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it. It doesn’t matter if it’s Legos, or yarn, or the way the light filters through the blinds. It’s their love. But, also, autistic passions are more than just “likes”. For me, it is integral to my very being, like breath and thought, intertwined with all the joy and brightness that exists within me.

One of the worst insults I’ve received, one of the ones that has stung and last the longest, was when colleagues told me: “Gosh, you really love this job” about teaching in a way that implied “too much”. Because it’s what I want to talk about, always. All day. It shut me down, closed out connection, and cut at the very heard of who I am.

Growing up, free access to everything I loved is one of the ways that I knew I was loved.

To share an autistic passion, to see it, to experience it… It is an autistic love language.

My mom bought me every Titanic book and helped me find cool Titanic exhibits to see. She stored bins and bins and bins of newspapers from the time when I was laser focused on politics and the media. I was allowed to spend whole days in my books, days and days.

My grandparents decorated their guest room in Little Mermaid when that was all I would watch. They recorded my absolute hands down favorite episode of Babar so that I could watch and re-watch and re-watch, long past the age that other kids were watching. They created Saturday morning routines and stuck to them, because I needed them.

Some of my daughter’s largest smiles are when we sing, “Click! Take a pic!” on repeat for twenty minutes (especially if we can do it in the pool). My son loves to show off his collection of sticks that he’s found.

Think about this when you tell a child that they spend too much time talking about Disney, or when you ask them to comply with neurotypical standards before you deign to “provide access.” Or when our children hear that they must hide this part of themselves, that it’s “too much” for their classmates or friends. That they must change. They must be LESS.

What are you telling that child about themselves?

What are you telling them about the things they love?

What are they learning?

And is that the story you want them to learn? Are those the feelings that you want them to have?

My guess, my hope: No.

So, please. Just don’t.

Being A Good Communication Partner

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that changing our behavior is one of the most critical ways we support our emergent communicators. I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count… A child communicates successfully in one environment, only to struggle in another. A student has back-and-forth conversations with one staff member, but says nothing to another. We are quick to blame the student or — worse — to not believe the student, their family, or their staff about that student’s previous success. But when do we look at ourselves? What could we be doing that leads to this shut down, this quieting?

In the field of supporting people’s communication, we tend to hear a lot about “creating communication opportunities” and “engineering the environment”. The role of the communication partner is often seen as someone who blocks access to items in some way, and then prompts the student to request or comment about that item.

This is not being a great communication partner. For starters, few people would like to live a life in which access to everything we love came through gatekeepers. It is not fair. It is not respectful. It also doesn’t teach voice. Instead, it teaches that you can perform this specific action to say exactly what I want and get the item that I’ve selected. On top of this, it creates pressure and demand, two things that frequently make it more difficult for our students to access their language or motor skills.

I believe in our students. They have so much to say. And, most importantly, they have a right to say what they want, when they want, how they want. If you’ve made this mistake, if you weren’t taught to center autonomy, there’s still time to change.

Start by believing your students. This is not just the first rule, but it is the hands-down most important rule. When your students say something, that is their voice. Believe that they are saying something. Respond accordingly. Do not say, “I don’t think he meant that.” Do not say “she’s just playing around.” Do not ignore, walk away, pretend it didn’t happen. If there might be a mis-hit, because we all mis-speak sometimes — wait and see. Or ask — just don’t assume. Conversation is an art of co-creation, and we must respect our students as that co-creator. Even with our earliest and youngest communicators, who may babble and explore as they learn where words are… They benefit from us responding to their words. They learn the meaning and context of those words by hearing our response.

In my Spanish lessons, if I say the wrong word for what I mean, my teacher still responds. She works with me to figure it out. This is the basic building block of seeing me as a competent communicator, as someone who will be a fluent Spanish speaker one day. This is also why I keep trying. No shame. Our kids know whether we believe they have voice and autonomy, if we believe that they can be fluent communicators. They know whether it’s worth the effort. They also know when they will be doubted, misheard, misunderstood, and disbelieved. And they stop talking. If a student is not using their communication system in your environment, but used it elsewhere… Ask: What can I do differently? What did they do to support them? Do not just write it off as an exaggeration or that it did not happen. (That was a really, really long paragraph. But I cannot overstate this as a key difference between environments where kids are successful, and environments where they are not.)

Give plenty of wait time. Oh my gosh, guys, can we please just slow down? Have you tried to use a communication device to express your thoughts? Even when very familiar, it can take time. Auditory processing, anxiety, apraxia… There are a dozen reasons why our students need time, and zero reasons why we shouldn’t give it. Stop asking question after question. Stop assuming they can’t do it if it can’t be done within 5 seconds or 10 seconds. Stop assuming they can’t do it if it can’t be done on demand. Learn to observe. Watch for communication all day long. Comment, ask your question, or perform your action — and wait. Wait 15 seconds. Wait 30 seconds. Wait 2 minutes. Observe your student to see what their wait time is, and then wait. Count in your head if you need to. Learn to be okay with silence. Ask or observe if they prefer your attention — eagerly watching and directing your gaze to them — or if they prefer you to turn away, continue with an activity, or come back to them in a few minutes. There are a wide variety of needs. Our students will tell us what theirs are, if we’re listening.

Stop asking so many questions; comment and wonder. Think about the conversations you have with your friends, your loved ones, or even your speaking students. We comment. We draw attention. We describe our feelings, or theirs. We typically don’t engage in 20 questions every time we converse with our friends. Why do we do this when someone is nonspeaking? Why do we pepper them with questions? Why do we relegate them to the role of respondent, and never initiate? We can do the same with our AAC users. We can comment on their actions — describe what they are doing, describe our own actions, share our feelings, connect their words or actions to something else we know. If you don’t know, try wondering. Try offering choices. This allows you to be equal communication partners, but it also can decrease the anxiety and difficulty responding as the demand drops significantly. Students can respond when they are able and want to, instead of feeling pressured to respond when we want them to.

There are so many more ways to converse that don’t involve questions. Examples of adult commentary that pepper our snack times (not all at once), with key words highlighted: You look hungry. You have an apple for lunch. I love to have apples. I ate an apple last night. I wonder if you want your apple whole or cut. I wonder if you want your banana or apple first. Oh, it looks like you want the banana. I wonder if you need help to open that. Let me know if you need help. Your friend has a banana too! I had so much fun building with you before lunch. I wonder if we should build more or play music after lunch. You looked happy when you were building. I wonder what we could tell your mom about your building… It looked tall and red.

All the words, all the time, for all the reasons. This is just a reminder that our students need so much more than a few nouns. They need action words, describing words, complaints! They need to tell us how they feel, where they hurt, what they did last weekend. Even if they are not yet doing that now, they need to be able to grow into that. When we say “core words are too hard” and then don’t include them — we are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every student has a right to as many words as they can access. They have a right to have those words available everywhere they go. And they need us to be modeling all of those words. We cannot just model requests or happy words. We should model “this sucks” and “I hate this” and “leave me alone”. We should model “stop” and “help” and “need” and “tell” and all kinds of words. We can model what it looks like to comment, to protest, to ask questions. (Yes, our students should be able to question us for once!) Communication autonomy cannot happen without access to lots of words (and a keyboard!) Too many times students have stopped using their communication systems or shown low interest simply because they could not say what they want to say. My students’ first words have been everything from “mad” and “stop bugging me” and “play” to “train” and “fruit snacks” and “hungry”. All the words.

Respect the power of their voice. This is honestly a repeat of the first one, but, yes, it’s that important. If our kids use their voice to tell us to stop, then we need to stop. If they tell us they need a break, then we need to give a break. We can compromise, we can negotiate, but we must listen. The quickest way to get a student to shut down is to act as if we do not care. My daughter once was asked if she liked a book. She clearly said “no” with both her voice and her body (tapping a “no” button). The teacher took her hand and said, “Yes, you do like it”. My daughter learned so many things that day. She learned that her opinion was both wrong and didn’t matter. She learned that other people could put words in her mouth and manipulate her body. She learned that it was not worth the effort. When I saw that video, I was no longer surprised that my daughter did not use her communication device in that class. Because why should she?

Go with the ebb and flow of communication. Communication growth spurts come and go. There are times when our students may be chatterboxes, and other times when they go silent. My daughter may not use her communication device for 3 months, but then use it to talk to me back and forth for 25 minutes. It could mean that she’s focusing her energy somewhere else. It could mean anxiety or illness or sensory processing or even just a temporary change in preference of communication form. It doesn’t mean everything is lost. It doesn’t mean that we stop doing any of the above things. It means that we are patient, that we stay with them, and that we respect whatever communication form they are able to access in those times.

Let’s commit to being better communication partners — though the highs and the lows. Let’s show our students that their voices matter to us. We want to hear them. Them. Not us. Not what we think should be said or done. But their truest voice. Because the world needs that voice. We need that voice. And they absolutely have a right to that voice.

Creating a classroom culture of respect

There are some really meaningful conversations around abuse prevention happening over in one of my favorite AAC groups today (AAC Though Motivate, Model & Move Out of the Way, managed by Kate Ahern). The statistic on abuse in the disability population are appalling: 1 in 3. I’ve written about the ways that physical prompting can — even if unintentionally — teach our kids that other people are allowed to manipulate their bodies.

This is only one piece of the puzzle, however. It’s one piece of teaching consent, one piece of creating a classroom culture that is centered around respect. We are not only working to prevent abuse now, but we are teaching children and their families advocacy skills and environmental expectations that can help prevent abuse in the future. Below are some of the many other pieces that our essential to our classroom.

Our classroom has an open door policy. Parents are always welcome in our classroom, and for as long as they would like to be there. We literally keep the shade on our big window on our door open at all times. We keep the window shades open on at least half of our windows. When toileting, the bathroom door is cracked open at all times (balance between privacy and safety). I would be 100% okay with the push for videos in special educatio nclassrooms.

We fill our classroom with general education students. I do teach in a self-contained setting. It is something I wrestle with often, as I advocate inside and outside of schools for inclusion for many reasons. And it’s a whole other post conversation to be had in the future. In the meantime, we have general education students in our classroom for 40-50% of our school day. We’ve had years where we’ve been able to have general education students in our classroom for even more. I trust myself and both my staff, but having general education students who are more easily able to report on what happens in our classroom only increases student safety.

We document, document, document. If something happens to a student, if they fall, if they bump their head, if they skin their knee… We write down exactly what happened and what it is. This establishes the expectation that we should know what is happening to students — and that it should be shared. I would add that we share tons of information about what students are doing each day. Abuse prevention is one piece, but there’s also educational neglect. My daughter has sat in rooms where she did nothing all day. It’s not okay. We share all the cool things that we do during our super busy day so that we can celebrate kids, share their wisdom, and establish the expectation that school is for learning.

We are all about cooperation & shared control, not compliance or power over. First: I do not “sanitize the environment”. I do not make students “use their words” or tell them that the only way to good things is through me. That is not the classroom that I run. Students have access to things that they cherish all throughout the day, freely. Students also have unlimited number of breaks. Yes, unlimited. Does that mean there are times when a student takes so many breaks that we don’t get all of their work done in one day? Yep! Is that okay? Yep. We are also flexible. Sometimes we work at the table. Sometimes we bring the work to you. Our focus is on meeting student needs as much as any need for instruction. Sometimes, our entire focus is on social-emotional regulation, sensory regulation, and communication. Those are really important skills. (And if a student is having to take that many breaks regularly, then we need to go back to the drawing board re: the tasks, accommodations, and assistive technology.)

We center our classroom around communication. Respecting students’ communication to us — in all forms — comes first. Modeling language on AAC, whether that’s high-tech, gestures, ro some other form, comes second. Between the two, we are teaching students that their voice matters, that their voice should be respected, and that there are multiple ways to express what’s important to them. We also need to make sure that words important to students and important for abuse prevention are available. They need to be able to say: no, stop, don’t, don’t want to, don’t like this, etc… They need words that can express something is wrong, whether that’s illness, injury, or being hurt. They need to have body parts (all of them) so that they can accurately report if something happens to them. It doesn’t matter if it takes their entire school career for a student to accurately report an injury, it is always, always worth it. Do not give up. Do not fall back onto “requesting only”. Do not fall back on to nouns.

We center respect in every student interaction. We need to think about what we are doing with and to students. We need to think about where we are placing our hands and why. The vast majority of the time, we don’t need to physically prompt students. The limited amount of times that we do, we can ask for student consent and be mindful of how we do it. For example, when walking down the hallway together, we hold hands. We don’t hold wrists. We don’t hold forearms or upper arms. We listen to students’ bodies: pulling away, tightening, facial grimacing… These are all ways that our students say no to us.

If a student drops to the floor while holding our hand, then we sink with them and get low, releasing the hand as soon as we can. We don’t hold a student’s hand up in the air as they lay on the ground. If a student is upset, we wait. If a student won’t do something, we re-evaluate how we are doing it. We don’t pull or push or maneuver our students’ bodies. When I want to have a face-to-face conversation, I get low and kneel next to a student to talk (without ever forcing eye contact). I might offer my hands for them to hold or squeeze. I don’t hold them in place. If they are about to engage in dangerous behavior, such as throwing a large object, I move the object, not the student. If a student is grabbing something, then I move the object, not the student. I don’t block students in an area with furniture. I don’t use seat belts or tray chairs. And — once again — when the culture is built upon respect, when communication is foundational, when the focus is on regulation and accommodation, we don’t have to worry about these things that much.

We talk to students about what is happening. There are times we have to be in a student’s space. This might be when we are supporting them to stretch their muscles, to change positions in a chair, or simply wiping their face after a sneeze. We can still tell students what is happening, why we are doing it, and respond to their needs. We can talk to them directly: “Your nose is very messy. I know you don’t like for me to clean it, but I really need to.” You can offer choices: “Would you like to wipe your nose, or would you like me to do it?” or “Would you like for me to use a wipe or a tissue?”

We listen to our students, even when they are refusing something that feels really important to us and for them. If my daughter’s hip stretch is too much, she will push back. Her physical therapist doesn’t push into it. She waits. She waits to see if the discomfort will pass. She might try the other leg and come back. She might ask my daughter to move a certain way. But she respects what my daughter’s body is saying. She talks to her about what is happening: “This muscle is really tight, and we really need to stretch it. It might be a little uncomfortable but it shouldn’t hurt. Let me know if it starts to hurt.” Shockingly (sarcasm intended), this is what doctors and therapists and people due with neurotypical and nondisabled patients all the time. It’s the same.

We consider abuse prevention in instructional planning. Even when a class or school culture understands this with behavior, there is a continued use of hand-over-hand prompting in instruction and communication. There were so many times that my daughter came home over the years with work that was so clearly not hers. But the use of hand-over-hand prompting within instructional settings is still teaching students to be passive. It is still teaching students that adults are in charge of their bodies. So when we plan our instruction, we need to plan how we can support student learning without that reliance. What accommodations and assistive technology support can we include in this lesson? What ways can a student participate without needing their body to be moved? What other prompts might be effective?

It also means teaching the skills that, over time, build up to being able to self-report. We teach names. We teach pronouns. We teach body parts. We teach words for hurt, burn, sick, hit, bad, dislike… We teach sharing of messages, such as sharing with an instructional assistant an activity that a student completed with me. These aren’t words that always can be made concrete. They can take a lot of modeling, a lot of immersion. All the more reason to start in preschool, not after some arbitrary prerequisite has been met re: “traveling” with a picture symbol.

When we do use physical prompting, we ask. Yes, I’ve probably said this a dozen times before but I’m saying it again. We ask. I have “ASK CONSENT” in big, bright red letters on our prompt hierarchy (as well as a note about how this is the least preferred prompt). Sometimes, I have students for whom pointing to an image, modeling an image, using a pointer, etc, are not effective for that very first time of finding a word on a talker. I ask: “Can I help you?” and hold out my hand. They are free to say yes or no. We occasionally teach skills that benefit from a few times of doing something together (pedaling, the scissor action). I ask. And I remember that consent can be revoked at any time. I remind students that they can revoke their consent at any time. And I 100% listen when they do.

We reflect on our practices, always willing to change. Earlier this month, one student was trying to take another student’s talker. They all have talkers, so this student did have an identical one they could use. I blocked the taking of the other talker, and the student became quite distressed. I then made the mistake of touching the student’s wrist — not grabbing, not holding, but a light touch that was meant to be calming. Except it wasn’t, and I get that. Light touch + me = I cringe (understatement). I was trying to be helpful, but I wasn’t. I was in their space and I was providing light touch that likely pained their sensory system. I was the exact opposite of helpful. The student escalated.

But — I didn’t blame the student. I acknowledged my mistake. I apologized to the student when we were able to talk. I apologized and reminded him that I will not make his body do things that he does not want to do. I talked through the moment with my staff, discussing again the importance of giving this student space to work through his feelings without us being all in it.

This is part of the process of growing as a teacher and of unlearning the ableist and oppressive culture norms that we’ve been raised in. It means sitting with our mistakes, being open to feedback. It means reading blogs, and thinking: oh, maybe I need to think about doing something differently here. It means being open to change. We can keep doing better.

Why We Quit ABA, Part 2

For more stories, including autistic voices that must be heard, check here.

You can read part one of our story here.

When we quit ABA, it wasn’t just my daughter that quit ABA. I am a special education teacher in my fifteenth year of supporting autistic individuals. When you serve autistic students, there is a certain amount of pressure to pursue a BCBA. It’s not always formal pressure, though some districts are increasingly requiring it. It can come informally, through meetings where BCBAs discount your professional opinion or through the knowledge that parents in your communities are seeking out those initials. 

Because of that pressure, I started (and stopped) the coursework towards my BCBA twice. The first time, I made it through one class. I am not even sure if I took the final exam, or if I just took the W. The second time, I made it through three. I wanted to know the terms and the practices and the terminology that are being quoted as the best thing for my daughter and my students. I wanted to read the research for myself. 

I still quit. Two different programs. Permanently.

There are tools that are used within ABA that many really good teachers use — and probably used long before Skinner ever came along. For example, breaking things down into smaller pieces can be really helpful in determining where a learning breakdown is happening. Or “shaping”, where we celebrate kids’ good attempts at something long before they are perfect.

But I found that it was impossible to separate these tools from the culture. It was impossible to separate task analysis from a heavy reliance on physical prompting. It was impossible to separate shaping from an emphasis on verbal communication. It was impossible to ignore the research that included forced feeding programs, elimination of vocal stims, or provision of limited communication systems to students. It was heart-wrenching to be in classes with professors and people who likely thought the JRC was a good thing. It was impossible to ever choose presence with students over quantitative data. It was impossible to ignore the compliance-oriented research and strategies.

And it is pervasive. This harmful, harmful idea that autistic students cannot learn outside of this one way is pervasive.There is plenty of behavior modification talk in special education programs. There are still plenty of special education textbooks that write about discrete trial as the way to teach literacy. This pervasiveness is why I write — not just about quitting, but everything I write. To break down these harmful ways of thinking and teaching. To do better.

Three semesters of coursework on ABA specifically with autistic students, and how many times did I read about autism from the words of autistic people? Zero.

Three semesters and how much did we learn about AAC? One week, and limited to PECS.

Three semesters and how much did we talk about accommodating sensory needs? Zero.

These things are important to me. These things are what make me the teacher I am today. These are the things that I want my child’s teachers to know — what her experience of the world is like, how to support her communication, how to meet her sensory needs. These things are what make my classroom successful and my students happy to be there. 

This is why I write so much about the culture of our classrooms, because that’s what comes first. We need to know who we are as teachers, who we want to be.

I want to be a teacher who explores concepts with my students. I want to be a teacher that expands their schema and understanding of the world. I want them to learn about mud puddles and the way friction slows a ball going down a ramp. I want to immerse them in literature and letters and writing. I want my students to build deep understandings of number sense. I want their vocabulary to be built through rich sensory experiences, not time at the table, not pictures. I want them to fall in love with learning. 

These things are not easily measured. I won’t be able to create a list of 1,000 pictures that my students can name when asked (and I’m okay with that). These things are not taught by reading sight words or repeating math facts until we reach a set level of fluency. But these are the things I want to spend my time and money studying. I want to study how I can be a better communication partner to my students. I want to study what a literacy block can look like for my emergent literacy students, what accommodations and strategies will help them when they enter elementary school. I want to experiment with what sinks, what floats, and why we think that happens. I want to make messes. I want my time to be so fully immersed in being with my students, not in sitting behind a desk and graphing. 

I want to be a teacher who gives my students an education. 

It’s not easy to quit ABA. I mean, it’s super easy to quit in that my classes were against everything I stand for and frequently made me shake my fist at the sky. But it’s not easy to take the leap against something the whole world pushes. There is a fear that one day, I will no longer be allowed to teach my students. There is a fear that families will think our classroom is not good enough. 

I have thought long and hard about how I would respond to this fear. I believe in my students. I believe they are smart and capable and funny and talented. I believe that they have the same right to a full, well-rounded education as any other person that walks through the doors of school. Because, I promise you, if you give us the chance, you will not regret it. 

Why We Quit ABA, Pt. 1

I’ve mulled over writing this post for a while. There are so many voices out there who have better spoken about the challenges of ABA therapy. The voices that should be the loudest are #actuallyautistic individuals who have lived through ABA therapy and are begging us to listen.

They aren’t being heard enough. So I write, in hopes of bolstering and supporting their words. I write at the unique position of being a professional who has been pressured to pursue my BCBA, and as a mom to a child who has been pressured to enroll her in ABA.

(And go read from this list. Seriously. So much important stuff.)

I’ll start with my daughter’s story. She has unfortunately experienced ABA therapy twice in her life, and it is a deep regret. They are my mistakes, ones I own and can never fully make up for, though I try. Her first experience was in a private school placement. We had found out that she had not been safe in school. We advocated fiercely for a transfer within the public school system, but were rapidly running out of time and options. We chose the private school that, at the time, was least committed to doing things the “ABA way” with her. Or so it seemed. We ended up fighting to bring her back to public school. (Happy ending, at least: she is now with a teacher that is about as far from ABA as you can get… and having the best education she’s ever received.)

Her second experience was when she was 12 — and in pain. She was in so much pain and expressed her distress through her actions. I am not going to get into all of that, because it’s her story to tell. My story is about how we went to multiple doctors at multiple places. The recommendation, again and again, was ABA. I knew in my heart that ABA was not right for us. We had lived this before. We saw that it was not a match. We knew knew ABA would not solve this problem. I knew that she was in pain and that we needed to find the answer. After over a year of searching, it felt like doctors would not even look until we enrolled her in ABA therapy. We reluctantly enrolled her after asking for numerous recommendations for an agency that would focus on her communication device, participating in her daily life routines, and respond to our boundaries and feedback. We honestly hoped that we were going to get one of those places that doesn’t really do ABA but bills as ABA**. Except we didn’t. (Another happy ending: we found an amazing medical team, got appropriate treatment, and know they will always listen to her pain.)

We lasted not even 2 months before quitting.

We rarely saw the BCBA. When you go to therapy for anxiety, you see the licensed counselor. They provide direct services. When you’re in a special education classroom, the special education teacher is in that room supervising every single day. They know your child. But within ABA, the person that designs the instruction, makes the rules, determines what and how to teach? They may see your child less than 5% of their service hours. When she received in-home therapy, the BCBA met her one time. Once! In six weeks! That is a travesty and it happens way more frequently than most agencies are willing to admit. Instead, the person serving her may have little to no experience in education, psychology, learning, disability studies, or anything related. They may receive minimal training and support. And yet, here they are, getting all the funding and all the attention.

ABA is built on the prerequisite model. ABA therapy is built around breaking big tasks into smaller pieces. This alone would not be problematic. Breaking things down can be helpful. The problem lies in what we break down, how we teach it, and how we move on from it. For too many of the children in my life, “how we move on” has meant never. Arbitrary and meaningless “mastery criterion” kept my daughter listed as a “pre-learner”. The insistence on keeping a list of words that can be performed on command for 80% of opportunities across 3 people and 3 settings prevents students with apraxia, anxiety, or just a desire for communicative autonomy from having their voices heard. The inability to break down some concepts into easily measured discrete pieces prevents some children from ever accessing them (e.g., non-speaking students and true literacy instruction). ABA therapy was unwilling to address any of the goals that we had for our daughter, because they felt they had too many prerequisites to teach first. Prerequisites that we told them she already had. Prerequisites that were sometimes completely disconnected.

New ABA is old ABA. Knowing what we know, we set a lot of rules around in-home ABA therapy and supervised every session. We emphasized in every phone call that our focus as on meaningul activities connected to every day life and expanding my daughter’s use of her talker through modeling. The moment I broke was when I sat and watched an ABA therapist say to my daughter, “Hi Jane, what’s your name?” and then prompt her to say “Jane” on her talker. She had literally just said her name. They proceeded to repeat this several times in a row. I interrupted it before it could go on any longer. This moment just epitomizes everything for me. It showcases exactly what the therapists, BCBA, and system think of my daughter. To say her name to her face and then ask her what her name is… To ask that question in repetition… I offered advice, such as talking to my daughter about why being able to answer her name is important, talking to her about practicing & role play, and so on… Rather than take any of that advice, they just stopped working on anything with her device (see below, re: ABA is the only way.)

ABA still wants to control what my daughter loves. The moment that my husband broke was when they asked us if we could take my daughter’s iPad and iPod away for a hour before they came, so that these tools would be more powerful for them. We refused. They pushed. We refused. For starters, no, I am not going to take things my daughter loves away from her so that you can use them to manipulate her. Second, my daughter has physical disabilities in addition to being autistic. Taking away her iPad and iPod mean taking away her leisure activities, ones that she adores partially because it’s one of the few things she can do all by herslef. Finally, if we have to remove everything a kid loves in order to get them to love us, what does it say about us? What does it say about our actions? And what kind of professional are we if we ignore this information? Her current team certainly doesn’t. She listens to music all day, with her only restraint being volume and school-friendly lyrics — and still does all of her work.

The ABA way is “the only way”. Trying to get any BCBA or ABA therapist in this child’s life to ever listen to us about AAC, vision, or motor needs has been nearly impossible. Bringing in other professionals has rarely made a difference. We’ve met ONE BCBA who truly works as part of a team. Why is this so hard for them? How has ABA taken control over every other field, from feeding to speech to anxiety to riding a bicycle? At the time, I had over a decade of experience in supporting children like my daughter. I had all the experience of being her mom and knowing her deeply that they did not have. Yet I never felt so belittled and unimportant as when they pressed the need for “parent training” — while never actually defining what this meant.

They are always there. This was my husband’s ultimate complaint. When was my daughter supposed to be able to have a life? We asked for 2-3 days of 2 hours, at most. They wanted to provide over 20 hours. They wanted her to be pulled from school to provide that 20 hours. They wanted to somehow go to her school and do more hours there, interrupting her education. They always seem to want more. Their answer to “this is not working” re: a plan or strategy — let’s do it MORE. My daughter was a 12 year old girl. She deserved more in her life than ABA therapy. She deserved swimming in the pool and chilling in her room watching YouTube and spending time with her family. She deserved a summer.

Work as an act of love, or work as an act of work. We never really connected to our ABA therapists. I know that some families really connect to the people in their home, but ours always felt like they were coming to work. I can’t understand it. I go to school every day as a teacher with fire and passion in my heart for the little ones I serve. I delight in them. I adore all their habits and quirks and big personalities. I am the first one to celebrate every success, your child’s biggest non-family cheerleader. Maybe that’s unfair, but if you’re spending 20+ hours with my daughter — it needs to be more than work.

Turnover, cancellations, and the like. Turnover in the field is high. We stayed with in home ABA therapy for six weeks. We had 2 therapists and 2 BCBAs in that time period. We were in private school for 2 years. We had 5 BCBAs, a huge chunk of time with no BCBA, and who knows how many number of instructional assistants… And cancellations by therapists for in-home therapy were high.

And they still didn’t help with “behavior”. After all of that, they didn’t even do what they came for. Her private school didn’t help problem solve her distress behaviors. They didn’t disappear until she was back in public school. Her in-home therapy team was worthless at helping to collect data to analyze for patterns in what could be triggering the distress, the data that would have helped us advocate for her with her medical team. They took frequency. They wrote down what happened directly before or after. But that’s not enough. We needed to look at sleep, eating / what she ate, weather, seizure activity, symptoms, and missing supports. We needed to model pain-related vocabulary, protesting, and complaining. 7 BCBAs in her life and not a single one did these things. Not a single one.

It would be easier not to write about this, if only over the shame I feel when I think of those choices. But it needs to be shared. I’ve been stuck in a system that feels as if there is nowhere to turn. My daughter and I have both yelled and screamed and begged to be heard, while being completely shut down. We have been bullied. (Teachers, please don’t do this to your families. Respect the decisions they make for their child’s life outside of school.) If we were able to do it again, we would home school. We would travel as far as needed to find the doctor that listens. But not everyone has that luxury. A single parent working multiple jobs doesn’t. A parent without health insurance doesn’t.

That’s why we have to continue to share. The current system has to change. The way that insurance and professionals gatekeep and dictate what is right for their clients, instead of their clients deciding what is right? That has to change. There are pitiful supports for both disabled individuals and their families, across the board. There are few doctors who listen, few school systems that include, and way too few funding for communication systems, adaptive equipment, retrofitting spaces for physical or sensory needs, personal care attendants, classroom staff supports, and so on… There is so much support and money for ABA therapy, while everything else is left behind.

This won’t change just by switching to “nice ABA”. It is only going to change when we overthrow the ableist foundation on which it’s all built — that people become more worthy as they become less visibly disabled.

People are worthy of the supports they choose now. People are worthy of accessible communities now. People are worthy of quality & affordable healthcare now. People are worthy of being seen — not just as people to support, but as people with thoughts, feelings, talents, and skills that are important to and for the world. Now. My daughter deserves real therapy when she needs it, real education always, and real support from people who love and appreciate her. Now.

And that is why we quit ABA. Forever.

Part 2 documenting my own story will be posted later this week. I’ll also share what we do at home instead. What I write about every day is what I do at school instead 🙂

** I know realize the problems inherent to people practicing something not ABA but billing as ABA. While it’s great that a child can access supports that are helping them, it makes it more difficult for others to differentiate between harmful and not harmful. The non-ABA lends credence to the ABA, as people hope that they can enroll and get basically a play therapist (as we did). It also makes it more difficult to advocate for insurance and other support networks to better fund non-ABA supports.

My Teaching Goal (Spoiler: It’s not Fixing!)

Earlier today, I was looking through one of the many assessment tools that are available to me, and trying to decide what’s useful, what’s not, and how it will feed into instruction. One of the warnings on this tool, and many others, is that using different materials or question phrasing invalidates the standardization process.

Except, outside of eligibility where I begrudgingly complete standardized assessments, I don’t care.

A training I recently attended said that children who can do something with family but not under a standardized test condition may have the knowledge, but should still target the skill due to the “performance problem”.

Except, to me, it’s only a “performance problem” if the student in front of me sees it as such, if they believe their difficulty accessing this knowledge is interfering with their goals and quality of life. Even then, I look at accommodations before re-teaching. Otherwise — if it is just a matter of “I can’t show my skills in these test conditions”, it’s okay. If you can name a bunch of farm animals when playing with toys or singing with mom, but not during a standardized test? That’s fine. I’m going to write that you know your (farm animals, letters, addition, etc).

Because here’s the thing — I don’t see my job as fixing children. I think my students are harmed if the primary focus of education is to bring their curve or scores closer to a normative one. It’s also simply not possible for many students, at least not without the terrible toll that comes with masking.

This doesn’t mean presuming incompetence.

This doesn’t mean babysitting.

This doesn’t mean not doing anything.

We hold high expectations and believe in the capability, value, and leadership potential in every single student that enters our classroom. We teach to those high expectations. We look for alternate ways to capture that learning.

I see my job not as fixing, but as supporting. I am here to support each student to finding and sharing their voice. I am here to support engagement through accommodations and universal design. I am here to support learning by ensuring access to the fullness of a curriculum, including real reading and writing and making sense of numbers. I am here to create a world of opportunity for every student to have the best possible life, to create, to think critically, to experiment and explore and uncover.

And students don’t have to become “normal” or “typical” to do that. In fact, our world is made richer when we see and encourage all the ways there are to create and synthesize knowledge.

So, no, I don’t care if my assessment tool is standardized or if I totally skip any and all goals around eye contact (*intense side eye* — why does that even still exist???). Because I don’t need to fix my students. They are already worthy and valuable and wonderful — just as they are

Teaching Values

As we enter a new school year, I find that it’s the perfect time to get clear on our teaching values. Teaching is inherently a political act, and I don’t mean this party versus that party. Each day we enter the classroom, we act on our values. And our values either uphold or break down systems of oppression.

There is no neutral.

To quote Elie Wiesel, “Neutrality helps the oppresser, never the victim.” Neutrality doesn’t exist. Neutrality means the current systems continue as they are. Neutrality means that the current power structures stay as they are. Neutrality means we don’t unwind all the bias that we have imbibed from our larger culture, whether intentional or not.

And so we need to get clear on who we are, what we value, and what we will implement in service of those values. We need to be clear on who we are there to serve: our students. Do we want to serve our students on autopilot? Do we want to serve them up the same systems that lead to the current outcomes, which aren’t very good for students with disabilities? Or do we want to serve them something more?

I want something more. So much more. The following five beliefs form the core of who I am as a teacher. There’s so much more that I can say. If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen our classroom poster. I had to force myself to stop adding to it. But it all comes back to this.

Kids do well when they can. If things are not going well, then it is our job, as the adults in the room, to adapt so that things can go well. It is not the student’s job to adapt to me, to my environment, or to my needs. It is my job to adapt my teaching, to adapt my environment, to adapt my needs. It is my job to be flexible. This is why you’ll see me change the schedule, move a couch, adapt my data sheets, and a million other things throughout the year. It’s not because I love change. I hate change as much as the next person, and maybe more. But I know that it is my job to change for my students. It is my job to change so that our instructional assistants can be successful. That is the responsibility that I accepted when I entered the classroom. I take it very seriously. It also tends to be both the primary reason that my students succeed and the primary reason that outsiders dislike my room (see: “what? Why don’t they have shoes on? What is wrong with this teacher? THEY NEED TO LEARN!”, and also: my response).

Every student has value. Every single one, and that’s as they are right now. Not “when they talk” or “when they learn to read” or “when they hold a job”. They have gifts to offer right now.  I am ten thousand times over confident that the world would be worse off without the students I serve. My world would be worse off without the students I serve. I see part of my role as teaching this to my students, my families, my school community.

Everyone has something to say. All of my students have creative and funny and interesting things to say. Sometimes with words, sometimes with their bodies, sometimes through their art or curiosity. I want to amplify their voices so that everyone can hear them. I want to give them the tools they need to amplify their own voices, whether that’s access to an AAC system, increased vocabulary on that system, vocabulary instruction, or just telling people to stop and listen. Every student leaves my class knowing that their voice mattered to me.

Students have autonomy over their voices and bodies. Yes, that even means that students can tell me no. Yes, that means they can tell me to STOP and that they are MAD and even that they HATE me. A dear friend of mine has heard “we don’t say no to teachers” enough in classrooms that she has a whole blog post on how problematic it is. And it is so problematic. Our students, probably more than any other students, need to be taught that they have the right to say no. It’s abuse prevention. It’s voice amplifying. It is a fundamental human right.

Every student has the right to access rigorous curriculum. I wish that this didn’t need to be said. Yet I have spent most of the last six months defending that, yes, autistic students can learn to use core words. Yes, nonverbal students can learn to decode and comprehend what they are reading. Yes, students with language disabilities can engage in creative writing and the acts of putting written word to paper. No, a fourth grade should not be re-reading Pete the Cat as the core of their literacy work for the fifth year in a row. Whether they are served in the general education classroom, a self-contained classroom, a hospital, at home… They have the right to a robust education that teaches oral and written communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and so much more. An IEP does not mean “less”. It means more.

 

As I write on the eve of my fifteenth year serving other individuals with disabilities, this is what guides me. This is what I keep in mind when I write assistive technology evaluations, when I select IEP goals, and when I speak to parents about all the joy and beauty and honor that has come with teaching their child during the year. Because it is — it’s an honor. And one that I work hard to live up to.

 

 

The right to NOT talk.

We all have times where talking is not happening. We ignore questions. We don’t answer the phone. We flat out tell others that we don’t want to talk. Some of us have times where we simply cannot talk; I’ve had many conversations with my husband via text message. At other times, we may want to talk — just not about the subject at hand. Our partner may ask if we want hamburgers or grilled cheese for dinner, but we answer with complaints about something that happened earlier during work.

Yet, this is forgotten or completely thrown out the window when it comes to the students that we serve (and children, generally, in our compliance-driven society).

We ask students what they want (often within limits). If they begin talking about something else, then we take it as proof that they weren’t listening, that they don’t understand, or that they don’t have the ability to answer. They talk about Diego, because it’s their all-time favorite, and we say they “perseverate” or “only know one word”. They don’t use their talker on demand, and it’s written off as “inappropriate” or “not being used” or “they don’t know how to do it” or “too much”.

We need to ask ourselves: what is our goal? Is our goal for students to say what we want when they want? Or is our goal for student’s to have a voice? Because a voice means they get to say what they want when they want.

A voice means being able to talk about your passions, whether they are Diego or the alphabet or worms. A voice means being able to change the topic, interrupt, or ask for something that wasn’t on the menu.

A voice also means being able to NOT talk.

It means that I don’t have to answer your questions  — not when you want me to, and maybe not at all.

It means that I can go hours without talking, or days, or whatever, because it’s my voice and I can use it when and how I want it. I can be silent, and I won’t have people then try to take my voice away.

Autonomy isn’t autonomy if it’s only allowed at the convenience of adults and professionals in students’ lives. A voice isn’t a voice unless we grant the full range of freedom — freedom to use, but freedom to not use as well.

Silence is okay.

Silence doesn’t mean “doesn’t know”.

Silence doesn’t mean “doesn’t need”.

Silence certainly doesn’t mean “take my voice from me”.

Silence is just that — silence. And everyone has the right to it.