It's a false choice, I'm given. Or a real choice, but false accessibility.
A choice, pushing as much guilt onto me as possible. Trying to push responsibility onto me. Trying to force yourselves not to be accountable for any of your actions.
A false set-up. Making it so that thing can be okay for me or those I care about. Never both. And I have to choose.
That's what the people who are supposed to help us do. That's a situation I've been put in so many times I don't even think twice about it happening. Things being acceptable for me necessarily hurts others. If I'm safe, others fail. If I'm stable, others are are abused. If I'm given a chance to be healthy, then others aren't given a chance at a high-school education.
I'm given the choice. Myself or them. This false dichotomy. This "but we can't have a disabled person teach". This "but there's no way we could accommodate you". This it's My Fault if I say there are things I can't do for my own safety, but it's not anyone else's if they won't support me in ways they're required to do.
But you know what?
They're wrong. And this choice is wrong.
It's wrong because they're wrong in putting me in this situation. And it's wrong because we break it, beating them at their game of trying to force me out.
Instead my students do everything they can to accommodate me.
The adults treat scented products as more important than my presence in a room. They ignore me, insult me, and expect me to be someone I'm not.
But my students, they pay attention, and choose to help. They've recognize that my needs aren't always the same, and go so far as learn to recognize my external signs of when I might need help. I've gotten questions of what helps, and changes to the classroom based on what they know helps them in order to try to make it easier on me. Help with sensory, and executive functioning, and physical, and emotional have just been given out, as if they're not accommodations, they're the basics of how to interact, person to person.
This me or them? This is a false dichotomy. That I have to give myself up for them, or to let them fail.
This is children doing the jobs of those who are paid to help people like me.
Disabled people supporting disabled people, while we're not simply failed, but obstructed and damaged, by those who claim to help.
What do you teach? I want to be a teacher in the future. It seems that I may (or may not) have a knack for pedagogy.
ReplyDeleteMath. And some fragments of the neurodiversity movement and social model of disability, and helping kids find ways to hate themselves less.
Deletemay I offer my version ? I am, if not deleted here.
ReplyDeleteOften anything is commonly described as Either-Or, black-or-white, good-or-bad, him-or-her-or-it-or-? etc.
I know life on earth to be a continuum = like light spectrums are described, like rainbows are seen, like continuities are mostly denied or unknown. Less easy to label or decide what/ who / is/ what or isn't. "And" works more appropriately than "Or" does.
Real life as I experience it is never a 'straight line" nor does any language allow full expression or full meanings of inner or external events. But we talk that way. A man [now dead but still heard/read] who described and reminded us about this 'error' repeatedly made in society is called Alan Watts. Heard of him?
1 Book he wrote long ago is called "The Book -The Taboo against knowing who you are" = sumptin like that. Audios of him are now sold by son at some websites. check it out.
We repeat what we hear and others insist they know the 'Only 1' way, the Holy Truth, they are Right [only 1 allowed] person, and more...up and down demands for status and authority.
I refuse them all, when possible.
Some teachers do not use that label but find ways to 'teach' anyone who wants/ needs to learn what is available, and somehow teacher-learner meet and find they share both roles. Done that ? Sometimes rules and social limitations pretend they own the spaces, properties, jobs and positions and can control everyone else with Their Definitions [rules]. They really don't. They want to. I refuse them.
People often ask if I am "a teacher?" and i am startled. It is because I know stuff, talk a lot, share it easily, am extroverted and talk to strangers [even cops and tuff guys and less to pretty women]. I later realize I am 'teaching' just because the learner is getting something they want, like, need from my expressiveness. You too ?
I don’t do classrooms.
labels are easy to take on because many prefer to USE labels and insist they exist in nature/ earth/ every circumstance. They are limited and I disagree, and say so too. Being older means being bolder too.
so your thoughtful writing on dichotomies prompted me to write more, again, and however...internet sure has opened up stranger-communicating as never before..when we have time and willingness to share info, not just ask for favors or get $$$ or positions [statuses].
that's it. [again] m - m