The person who arrives: Storying connections between disability studies and educational practice

I am a disabled scholar, activist, parent, and public-school educator. My practice as an educator is informed by my interactions and activism alongside Autistic/Neurodivergent and other disabled people. The connectivity of social media has created a tremendous opportunity for us to work collaboratively on projects, locally and internationally. My research is situated within the paradigm of practitioner research, and the finely measured attunement and noticings that arise both during and in reflection upon my work with others. Specifically, I am interested in undermining the dominant narratives that suggest disabled people are less than, in order to consider and make space for including alternative perspectives. I seek to understand and respond to disability and disabled children/students/people in our schools and our homes and communities in ways that honour who they already are. I explore opportunities to disrupt the predominant pedagogy around disability within our school systems and the greater society, and as such I work to engage educators (and others) with the ideas of disability studies, drawing upon and amplifying the perspectives and voices of disabled people. What are the opportunities to teach and engage educators (and others) with the ideas of disability studies outside of higher education? My practice, aligned with my scholarship, is political, and I collaborate with other disabled people to shift the conversation about disability so that educators can explore and question ableist attitudes and thus be positioned to become co-conspirators for disability rights alongside their students. My research is a narrative exploration; a weaving of poetry, story, images, and theory that locates me firmly as a member of the disability community. I ask: what are the possibilities for transformation when educators are supported to view disability through a social justice lens that highlights counter narratives of disability, resistance, and pride

The Chronicle [April 12, 1988]

The Chronicle, April 12, 1988https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/chron/3681/thumbnail.jp

The Alestle - Vol. 66 No. 21 - 02/13/2014

Vol. 66 No. 2

The BG News September 19, 1990

The BGSU campus student newspaper September 19, 1990. Volume 73 - Issue 16https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/bg-news/6109/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, December 5, 2002

Volume 119, Issue 66https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10710/thumbnail.jp

Blazing trails, being us: A narrative inquiry with five high school students with autism who type to communicate

This dissertation chronicles the experiences of five high school students with autism who type to communicate as they navigate the terrain of high school, adolescence, and identity through collaboration and dialogue with one another, their school support team, and the inquirer (researcher). This study employs a multilayered approach to narrative inquiry to unravel and (re)present the students’ (co-inquirers) individual and collective stories as constructed through observation, performance, dialogue, and art. While acknowledging the importance of families and school personnel, the students’ storied lives and perspectives—as well their participation in constructing the inquiry process—are foregrounded to supplement research dominated by adult, and/or spoken voices. Grounded in a disability studies in education framework, this work traverses the institutional, performative, and dialogic landscapes that the students help to shape (and are shaped by) to reveal the complex interplay between diverse ways of being and communicating, dominant discourses of normativity, and resistance through advocacy, inclusion, and research. The reader is invited to follow along as the students cultivate community through (inter)action grounded in shared experience, inclusive educational contexts, and emerging ownership of their situated identities as individuals with autism who communicate in diverse ways. They/we feel compelled—by default and/or design—to put these perspectives and stories into the world as counter-narrative(s). In both content and form, the (re)presentations emerging within/out of this inquiry start a conversation about the constraints of research and inclusion understood solely as practice, advocating for a broadened conception of both as co-constructed, relational experiences

New Mexico Daily Lobo, Volume 087, No 103, 2/22/1983

New Mexico Daily Lobo, Volume 087, No 103, 2/22/1983https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/daily_lobo_1983/1027/thumbnail.jp