[MUSIC] "Celebrating difference". And for this session, we're going to focus on disabilities, or as some would call it differently-able. The first slide I want to draw your attention to is the convention of the rights of persons with disabilities. I'd like you to read that slide and get a sense of what are the issues that are being raised? [MUSIC] Firstly, there is an instruction or commitment of what state parties will do for the inclusion of learners with disabilities, in terms of having access to teaching and learning, and access to schools. But also what's important is when people or learners with disabilities have the right of expression. But, I would like you to read through those three points and to look at what the implications are for your school, for your classroom, but most importantly for you as the teacher. [MUSIC] I want to draw your attention to the second slide. The cycle of socialization, written by a social justice educator called Bobbie Harro. Now, in the cycle of socialization, it kind of starts the cycle about when you are born. And of course, we don't know much about people with disability when we're born or people who are able bodied. But as we grow up, we learn messages: because we look around us and we see those who have disabilities; we see how they're treated in our society; we also learn some names that we use to refer to people with disability. I know in my own context, we had some names that we used to refer to people with disability, and as I grew older, I realized how offensive those terms were. And as you go on, you learn these messages from your family, from your friends. I remember, when I was very young, my friends had a particular attitude to people with disabilities, and those were not the nicest of attitudes at times. When I went to school, I didn't see any learners with disability in my school. I learned that learners with disabilities, or young people disability didn't need to be in school, because there was no space for them at school. I recall seeing my own school and thinking, if someone was in a wheelchair, how would they enter my classroom? In the first place, how would they get up three flights of stairs? Or how would they use the toilets in our schools? And I realised that my school wasn't built for people with disability. It excluded them. And so, when I looked around me, I didn't see many learners with disability. I remember when I was young as well, I was left-handed. And I recall that was seen as something that was not right. My teacher often smacked me on my left hand and asked me to put that behind my back. And I was forced to write with my right hand. I remember my friends in my class would refer to me and say, that I was writing with the monkey's hand. That was just one of the misinformations or the stereotype of somebody who would write with their left hand. So, I was forced to conform and be like everyone else in the classroom. Now, I can only imagine, if I had a friend with a disability that couldn't write with either of his hands, and how he would have been instructed in my class at the time. As we continue in the cycle, we think of how institutions can continue to exclude people with disability or learners with disability. We think about the societal messages as well: the television advertisements that exclude people with disabilities; our magazines that don't include pictures, comments, or people with disability. So, in many ways, people with disability, are fairly invisible in our spaces, and we've kept them feeling invisible in our spaces and in our schools. Now, you as a teacher, are there learners with disabilities in your school? Are they invisible? Are they invisible in your classroom? How is your classroom made to include them? So, this cycle ends with a choice: You can continue reproducing the suppression, and enabling the suppression of excluding and making people with disability invisible; or, you can make a conscious decision to seriously look at your own classroom, your own curriculum, your own pedagogies of how you can include learners with disability. Now, in terms of disabilities, you might be able to identify learners with disabilities in your context, and they might be very different to the list we've come up with. We've spoken about learners who are physically challenged. We're talking about learners who are challenged in terms of hearing, or visually challenged. What are some other disabilities that we may not be aware of in this list, that you are aware of, learners that really need supporting? But there are also additional support needs in our schools. In my country, in South Africa, in the early 90s, many young children lost their parents to HIV and AIDS. They had to stay at home. Some of them came back to school, but just had to continue with teaching and learning, with no engagement of dealing with their grief and their pain, and school just continued. Think about those learners. How did express their pain and grief? And how will they eventually do that? So, these are additional support needs that schools may have, and may be particular to your classroom. What happens to learners who stay at home, or have an accident or an operation, and feel fearful of coming back to class? Because they have to re-integrate or they have to catch up on what's been lost in the curriculum. How can you allow for those learners to be re-integrated? How do you support those learners? Also, some learners might just have to stay at home, because they have a mother or father who's very ill and they have to look after their mothers and fathers. In most cases, those are young girls. And remember, we were talking about how do we integrate, or let girls know that there are great opportunities for them to finish education. How do we integrate them into our curriculum and into our classroom? Now, there are various levels of support we can draw on - sometimes we are not able to do everything. For instance, in providing grief counseling, we may not be able to do that because we're not trained in that area, and in that case you might have to draw on experts from outside the school. Also, there's individual support that you may have to give to learners for instance who are visually challenged. You may have to provide material constructed in red, or you may have to enlarge and photocopy so the learners can see it. So, I'd like you to think about the following: How do you set up your classroom to the pupil's advantage, but is not obstructive and that makes people invisible? Can learners access material and resources independently in your classroom? What questioning techniques do you use? Do you only use techniques where students have to answer verbally? Do you allow for other pedagogies, where people can express themselves in terms of mime, or drama, or dance, or paintings? Do you provide enough thinking time, sufficient time for learners to process what you are actually are asking? What language do you use? Terms commonly used to refer to disabled people sometimes may be offensive. Like, for example, the term I used originally of being "disabled" as compared to being "differently able". So, the language: look at the words that sometimes they use, and how offensive this can be? Look at the word "invalid". The term literally means "you're not valid", and can you imagine somebody calling you and telling you that you're not valid? "Handicapped". Many disabled people find this offensive. What is there more that you can do? What are the ways you can create visibility for some of these issues, to be brought to the forefront, not only of your classroom, but for your school and your context? In what ways do these extend what I already know and do? And in what way do these issues challenge, what I already know and do? See, in many ways, those misinformations and stereotypes that we learned very young, how can we change those now? And bring about a learning space that is inclusive for all learners, as the declaration I opened the session with intends to do. [MUSIC]
