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Matan Webinar: "Inclusive Education as Teshuva" - Duration: 58:12.
So, go ahead and get started.
Hello, everybody. I am Rabbi Ruti Regan, Rabbinic Disability Scholar in Residence at Matan.
And what I do is bring together rabbinic knowledge, Jewish knowledge, and disability
knowledge from a disability community together.
I try to get the Jewish material and the disability material out of the various silos
it's being constructed in, so we can really figure out
how to apply it to the very difficult work of inclusion that we're all striving for.
And if you look on the first slide,
there's a link to the real time captions that are available.
And there's also a link to a PDF version of the slides, which I would encourage you to
look at afterwards, because there's more material than we can cover
closely in real time.
And those links are also available in the chat box, if you want to pull up the
cart or the slides later.
So with all of the preliminaries aside, let's go ahead and start talking
specifically about inclusive education as teshuva.
Now, why do I see inclusive education as predominantly a project of teshuva?
And to answer that question with another question, as rabbis do.
Why we talk about inclusion?
Why is that the word we use?
I think the reason that rabbi is not rehabis.
OK.
So the reason we talk about inclusion-- and this makes sense-- is that exclusion is really
still the default, and it has been for a very, very long time.
It just kind of goes without saying.
It's still really normal for Jewish kids with disabilities to be cut off from appropriate
education, in both secular and Jewish contexts.
Inclusion is this new, innovative, and difficult thing.
And I think that's true though, because I don't think it ever should have been that way.
Never had to be this way.
We didn't have to exclude people from our schools.
We didn't have to let people be institutionalized.
And we certainly didn't have to let it go on as long as it did.
We spent a long time making the wrong choices.
And now a lot of our work is to go on from that and to build something really positive
and constructive.
But part of that is facing up to how much harm we've done, and how much we've lost
in the process.
We have lost generations of people that [INAUDIBLE].
I think we have to remember that people with disabilities didn't just suddenly pop into
existence when we started talking about inclusion.
They always existed.
We spent a lot of time excluding them, cutting them off from Jewish education and community.
And that's done harm to all of those people.
And it's also done harm to our communities, because we've been deprived of a lot of voices
that are ours and that we need.
And it's on all of us to fix this.
And this is teshuva, because this is what we should have been doing all along.
And the teshuva that we need to do is partly for the sins that we've all committed individually.
But a lot of it's for what we've inherited.
Because those who came before us-- for a lot of generations-- made the choice to exclude
kids with disabilities from schools.
Which meant that we're left without knowledge, without infrastructure,
and with a population of students and parents who
have been hurt pretty badly.
And so we're carrying, in this generation, a really heavy load of work that needs to be done.
And I think it's helpful to both take that on willingly, and to keep it in perspective
and to remember that we are not responsible for having
created everything
we're responsible for working to address.
And something I think, particularly as educators and thinking about this as educators, we know
a lot more about teaching non-disabled kids than we do about teaching disabled kids.
And the reason for that is because, as teachers, we get most of our knowledge about
how to teach from previous generations of teachers.
We have the benefit of a lot of trial and error, and a lot of inherited knowledge of
how to teach kids who are typically developing.
Because that's a problem that's been worked on for so long.
We don't have the benefit of so much intense trial and error, just because of all of the
context in which this has not been worked on and hasn't
been worked on.
So if you're struggling with this, it's not your fault.
Everybody really has this problem, it's a systemic issue.
It's not a personal failure as an educator that this is really hard.
It's kind of the lay of the land.
But the good news is that it won't be like this forever for
everyone, because the things that you're working on and creating are making it a lot easier
for all other teachers, and for future generations.
And this is also an issue of infrastructure, right?
We have a lot more support, curricular resources, other people's lesson plans, education
classes, people to go to for help for typically developing kids.
If we'd been creating infrastructure in the same ongoing way over
generations, we would have a lot more now.
And so this also makes it a lot harder.
We're also working with people who have been hurt pretty badly.
And even in the best case scenario in our schools, our disabled students
live in a very difficult social reality.
So kids really should be able to count on having teachers
who-- you know, most of the time-- understand them, get them, know how to teach them.
Kids with disabilities not only can't count on their teachers getting them, they
can't count on even being welcomed in school at all.
They can't count on being respected in basic ways.
And they face a lot of pain in a lot of different contexts they operate in.
And part of our work of teshuva is to learn to face the
realities that our disabled students live in without flinching and without evasion.
Because we can, and it's important, because we don't want them to be in this alone.
And this can be really hard, it can be really painful.
And I know as myself as an educator, I love being successful.
I love children.
I don't want to hurt them.
And I don't want to think-- I don't want to experience not being successful or really
struggling with a kid.
And the reality of inclusive education is that it's harder,
and we're going to make more mistakes that hurt people
just because of the lack of inherited resources and the social contexts.
And it can be really hard to think about both our own failures, the failures of people we
respect, the ways in which children are being hurt, and all that we've lost as a result
of all of these mistakes.
But really, the only thing that hurts more than thinking about this is not thinking
about this.
So we've got to be able to face it if we want to get anywhere.
So the good news is we're Jews.
And that's, I think, one of the most helpful things that we have right now.
Because being Jewish is really hard, and inclusion is really hard.
And being Jewish gives us a lot of tools for facing hard things,
right?
So the legacy of centuries of exile and anti-Semitism, persecution, really has a lot in common with
the legacy of exclusion of people with disabilities.
And I think, if nothing else, we can use that as a source of empathy.
So we really know a lot about responding to collective trauma constructively, because
our survival has depended on it.
And we've managed to thrive.
We know a lot about facing intractable problems without falling into despair.
I think that's pretty central to what being Jewish is like
right now.
And as a result, we have a spiritual tradition that-- if we lean on it-- can really make
a lot of these things much more bearable.
And we're in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur so I'm going to talk
some about Yom Kippur and how I think Yom Kippur can really help us to be better
inclusive educators.
And I think one central thing is that Jewish tradition can help us resist the temptation
to seek inappropriate absolution.
Forgiveness isn't always appropriate or constructive, sometimes it's a temptation.
And if you see in Mishnah Yoma, like some of the rabbinic
literature about what Yom Kippur is supposed to be, see it goes into various ways to do
teshuva and deal with things.
And it says, sins committed between a person and another person, Yom Kippur does not atone
for that until the person who did wrong makes it right with the person
who they did wrong to.
And unfortunately, the reality of the magnitude of the problem we're dealing with is that
right now there are problems we can't fix, and things we can't be forgiven for.
Because we can't be forgiven until we make things right.
There are some things we don't know how to make right.
None of us are going to be able to undo all of the legacy of exclusion this year.
And this doesn't need to lead into despair.
Life without forgiveness is worth living.
We can get closer, we can do better, and our liturgy can really help us with this.
And one way that in which the Yom Kippur liturgy can help us is that it's a really powerful
reminder that God already knows we're flawed.
Like, whatever we do, God already knows about it.
And both individually and communally, if God was going to smite us for it, it already
would have happened.
It didn't, so we may as well face it.
And I think praying together in community, acknowledging sins together in community,
can really make that both bearable and comprehensible.
Because sin is huge, and it can be easy to get stuck in abstraction.
But teshuva is not abstract, it's specific.
And we open one of the key prayers talking about sin on Yom Kippur, with an acknowledgement
that we can't pretend to be better whom we are if we want to get anywhere.
Our God, and God of our fathers and mothers, hear our prayer; do not ignore our plea.
We are neither so insolent nor obstinate as to say before you we are righteous people
and we have not sinned.
But rather, we, along with our forefathers and foremothers, have sinned.
And I think it's true.
Like, we've inherited some mistakes.
We make mistakes of our own.
And we're not expected to be perfect.
We're expected to grapple with it.
And one of the great things about Al Chet-- the, like, all sins prayer--
is it's a really long list, and it's recited in the plural.
We recite it specific together, because we're all in this together.
And we also get specific, because we have to get specific if we want to go anywhere.
So I would urge you on Yom Kippur to pay really close attention to what the words you're
saying mean, and how they might apply to your work as an inclusive educator.
If you don't understand Hebrew readily, I have personally
found that before I learned Hebrew, it was very helpful to recite it at least once in
English.
Because there's a lot there that's very helpful, and that's worth taking literally.
And so I want to go through-- and I think every single thing on the list has inclusive
education related examples-- but I want to go through a few specifics that jumped out
at me when I was reviewing this.
So for all the sins which we have committed by disrespecting parents
and teachers, since we work with parents and teachers-- and are parents and teachers in
many cases-- I think this is a key thing to think about as inclusive educators.
So one part of respecting teachers is how are we treating teachers with disabilities?
Are there teachers with disabilities in our schools?
Would a disabled applicant be considered seriously on equal terms?
When accessibility is talked about, is it only on the students, or is it
thought about as something that might be important for teachers as well?
And are teachers free to talk about it in appropriate ways, or are they expected
to pretend to be non-disabled as the price of being taken seriously as an educator?
Again, I think these are all things that it's worth keeping on our radar, Because none of
them happen automatically.
So just think about that.
And if you are a disabled educator, think about
how you're treated as a lens on how other people are treated as well.
Another lens on sins committed by disrespecting teachers and parents,
let's think about disabled disability experts.
And I speak as someone who often addresses a lot of audiences as a disabled disability expert.
And I watch a lot of other disabled speakers give presentations, and I've seen a lot of
real disrespect of disabled teachers on these topics,
in ways that are often very unintentional.
So I think first question I would urge people to
ask themselves is how often do you listen to what
disabled people are teaching about disability?
Do you take their expertise seriously?
Are you really prepared to learn from them?
Do you focus on being inspired, or do you think about
their expertise in the specific things that they're
teaching you that might be important?
Do you say, you have such a unique perspective to
every disabled presenters without learning new things from them?
When you feel inspired, what do you feel inspired to do?
Is it learning, or is it a feeling?
Just think about that, because I think that I've been on both sides of this.
I am often not taken seriously in these kinds of ways.
And I often fall into not taking other disabled presenters
seriously in the ways they should be, especially when I'm listening to presenters who have
intellectual disabilities.
So I think this is something that we should all watch.
Another aspect of respect for teachers and parents is thinking about our disabled students
as future teachers and parents.
Are Jewish students with disabilities treated as people who are
growing into Jewish adulthood?
Are children with and without disabilities all taught to teach
Torah, and is what they teach taken seriously?
You know, this often doesn't happen automatically either.
So it's worth paying really close attention to who's seen as a teacher.
Because we often, in our educational programs, place a
really high value on seeing all of our learners also as teachers.
And that doesn't always happen automatically with disabled students so think
about it.
So how are we treating teachers who are in the process of learning how to be more inclusive?
The reality of inclusive education is that it's often really hard, and there's a lot
of cheerleading that can make that really difficult to talk about.
Like when people are told things like, yeah, inclusion is all about attitude, or
it doesn't have to be hard, it can be really humiliating
and degrading for educators who are facing hard problems that they don't know how to
talk about or make progress on.
So thinking about, like, how we're supporting each other as educators who are doing something
hard, and who are sometimes going to have feelings about that, and are sometimes going
to need help.
So, like, how are we supporting each other?
What else is needed?
What can you do?
Parents of disabled children are often not treated with very much respect.
The parenting relationship is often undermined.
They're often blamed for their kids' disabilities.
They're often expected to know things about how to teach their kid that we would really
not expect from parents of non-disabled kids.
They're often forced to describe their kids in really negative ways in order to get support.
I think it's important to reflect-- when we say this prayer about the sin of disrespecting
parents-- thinking about how parents of disabled children are being treated.
Similarly, some parents have disabilities.
Are we respecting them?
Is accessibility on the table for parents?
When we have accessibility students-- when we have accessibility statements for schools,
do those statements talk about access needs for parents, or only children?
What do we do to remember and keep in mind and speak with the awareness that parents
of students with disabilities is a group that contains parents
with disabilities.
And I see these discussed as mutually exclusive categories a lot.
This is also a thing I've definitely done myself.
So I think thinking about how are we communicating that parents with disabilities are welcome,
expected, and valued?
What else do we need to do?
How are we going to change this?
So another category, for all the sins that we have committed without thinking.
There's a lot of things that happen to disabled participants
in our programs because of what we don't think about.
Yeah. I-- in school-- had a lot of access needs.
And had a lot of people who were really consistently did not
remember to make me source sheets that I could read.
Didn't fix it quickly, and didn't show any real remorse about that.
Umm. So a lot of people who have access needs who hear a lot of, oh I'm sorry, the bus isn't
accessible, or, we didn't think about accessible bathrooms.
Or, yeah, I guess we didn't plan for that.
And a lot of this even goes unnoticed.
So one thing I advise is if you use a lesson planning
template, put an accessibility section in it.
It makes it easier to remember.
And more generally, just think about how are you making sure that you and others consistently
think about accessibility in inclusion?
What else do you need to do to make sure this stays on
the radar?
Again, this is a problem I think we all have.
Another category, the sins which we've committed through conversation.
This is a huge one.
We're making a lot of different mistakes in the ways that we have a lot of different
conversations.
So one question to ask regarding sins committed through conversation is, how
are we talking about our students with disabilities?
Are we using stigmatizing language?
Are we refusing to acknowledge that disability exists?
I did a webinar a while back called, Disability Is Not a Dirty Word, which is pretty directly
relevant to this.
Which, if you haven't seen it I can give you a link to the slides
if you're interested.
This is also the Matan pledge kind of thing.
Are we able to acknowledge disability, capability, and unique humanity at the same time?
How are we showing respect?
Where are we falling short?
And a huge one is, are we talking about disabled students as though they're not there?
Because this happens all the time, especially to
students with communication disabilities or intellectual disabilities.
I've seen so many students discussed in their presence, as though they're not there, as
though they have no thoughts about this, without any chance
to correct the perception someone else might have or participate in the conversation.
Another thing to think about in terms of conversation, is when we say 'we,' does it include people
with disabilities?
And, again, for people with disabilities, we are just as guilty of this
as everyone else is.
Like, every-- I've done this-- every disabled presenter I know I've seen do this.
So think about it.
How might we be speaking so everyone present is non-disabled.
Do you say things like, you and I can tune out the fluorescent lights, but they can be
really painful for people with autism?
Or you and I take walking for granted, but not everyone can.
No one wants to be a 'they' in our communities.
People want to be a 'we.'
And when we talk about disability-- or anything else really-- we should really be thinking
about everyone in the room, and how we're sending the message that everyone's part of
our community.
A big one, again, about this, a point of disconnect I've
seen happen a lot-- is when there are disability awareness days.
A lot of times disability awareness days fail to show awareness of the presence and perspectives
of students with disabilities.
Because when we're teaching about disability, our students with disabilities need to be
learning about disability, too.
Because it's really important for them.
And their perspectives need to be taken into account in the way we're talking
about it.
Because if we're not taking the presence of disabled students into account when we're
talking about disability and inclusion, we kind of have a problem.
So, again, this is something I think that pretty much everyone does at some point.
So think about how are we saying 'we' in a way that really includes everyone, including people
with disabilities.
Another example of the sins committed through conversation, are students
with disabilities included in the important educational conversations that we're having?
For instance, are students with communication disabilities given a way to participate
substantively in class conversations?
And are their contributions taken seriously?
Do people listen to them?
Do people argue with them?
Do you have strategies for repairing communication breakdowns with students who are hard to understand?
I have one method in the link in the slides.
Another way is a lot of conversations happen through, like, written big paper activity.
How are students with motor skills impairments part of those conversations?
And just more generally speaking, what other barriers to equal participation in conversations
might exist?
What can you do to fix them, and to include more people in the vital educational
conversations that take place in our schools?
Another thing in thinking about fixing the sins that
take through-- happen through conversations, one sin we commit through conversation is
by avoiding necessary conversations because we're afraid
of saying the wrong thing.
Fear of saying the wrong thing can lead to not talking about disability at all.
So just think about what conversations aren't happening that need to, and how might you
be able to break those silences and push forward those discussions.
So moving on to another topic.
For the sins that we've committed through empty confession.
And I think that this is pretty key to any kind of teshuva.
It's not enough to talk the talk, we have to walk the walk.
And sometimes empty confession can feel like a
substitute for fixing the problem.
Umm.
So thinking about things like how much does 'we're an inclusive school' really mean in practice,
push come to shove?
Yeah.
When you apologize for an access problem, what happens next?
How often do you do more than apologize?
How often does it result in improved access in a
consistent way?
Have you made promises to end bullying that your school wasn't able to keep?
Because I've seen that happen a lot, particularly with this promise that this or that awareness
program is going to mean that there's no more teasing or bullying
of students with disabilities.
I think those programs can help, but they never eliminate it.
And I think that we need to be careful to be
honest about that, so that our students aren't bearing this alone.
Have awareness days been a substitute for effective action?
So generally speaking, which things might be being said about inclusion and disability
and welcoming everyone?
Which of those things are real?
Which of those things are empty words?
And how can we make more of them real this year?
There's a lot of power in our hands to make more of this real.
So another category that's related to false confession is the sins we have committed by
scoffing.
And I've seen this happen in a surprisingly broad range of ways.
One is scoffing at people with disabilities.
Again, this is something I was talking about earlier with regards to disabled presenters.
I see a lot of presenters say various serious things about their experiences
and perspectives, and then get laughed at.
Like, yeah, I've seen people with intellectual disabilities
talk about being treated like a child in a group home and having to fight for their adulthood,
and have other people respond like this is cute.
Have somebody who's, like, 30, talk about how people try to impose a bedtime.
And make them drink, and they just, like, want to be
able to go to a bar because they're an adult, and
have people laugh at them like this is-- like, it's cute, like a five-year-old talking about
wanting to be a grown up drinking beer.
So I think, again, I've seen this across contexts, including from people who meant very well
and had no idea that they were doing this.
So, like, watch.
Are people being laughed at when they are saying things that are very serious and
important to them?
And if you see condescending or dismissive laughter at disabled people who are serious,
what do you do about it?
And I've been struggling myself with thinking about, what do I do about this?
When I am moderating panels, I always pause, show respect for the question, and then, like,
repeat it.
When I'm teaching and a disabled student says something that I think was probably serious
that other students laugh at, I repeat it and say, so
it sounds like you were asking, you know, x, y, or z.
Did you mean that seriously?
I can give you an example of that.
There's an exercise I do where it's an accessibility scavenger
hunt of a school or building.
And one of the questions I have on my scavenger hunt list is a rule or program-- a rule
that makes the building or program less accessible.
And there's always really interesting responses to that.
One time I was teaching to a group of teenagers.
One teenager who had a disability set as an example of a rule that causes access problems,
have fun.
Everybody laughed at him.
I thought he might be serious, so I said, so when you
said, had fun-- have fun is a rule that creates an accessibility problem, did you mean that seriously?
What do you think about that?
He said, yes.
He thought it was serious.
So then I said, you know, do you know why?
And then we had a really good conversation about
that, which was able to happen because I shifted the conversation from scoffing to seriousness.
And I think there's a surprising number of contexts where this comes up.
And if we're prepared to respond to it, a lot of really great things
become possible.
So another kind of scoffing that I think we should think about is that are people with
disabilities allowed to bear witness to experiences?
Are they allowed to be honest and are we willing to be honest?
Because students with disabilities face some really difficult circumstances.
Again, even were all of our schools perfect, that would still be true in their secular
schools, walking down the street, in a lot of context.
But usually there are some difficulties even in our
schools, and often problems we don't have the solution to in any sort of near term.
So when disabled students have feelings about that, are they
allowed to express them, or do they have to smile
all the time?
Are they told that 'it can't really be that bad,' or 'I'm sure they didn't mean it' in situations
where actually it is that bad, and they did mean it?
Are there very reasonable fears of dangers they're actually facing dismissed as
irrational anxieties?
Like, kids with disabilities need emotional validation and support in these
things, for the same reasons typically developing students need emotionally validation in
emotionally difficult circumstances.
They often don't get it.
I think we should think about how are we showing respect for the
reality of our students with disabilities, and how are we scoffing?
How else might students with disabilities be facing scoffing and silencing?
What can we do about it?
So I think there are-- I think we all have things we can do about it.
And I think that there's overlap.
But I also think there's things are different.
Because we're all in different teaching contexts, and the problem is huge.
So another-- no, this is the wrong one.
So another category is all of the sins that we've committed through lashon hara, through slander.
So, you know, I'm going to say a very bad word which I think should not be said, but
there's no way for me to say this without using the word that I'm saying.
So are we describing some students as things like
low functioning or retarded or unteachable or something like that, one of those words
that means not really part of the group, not really
capable of learning?
Because those words get thrown around a lot.
And I think we've got to be careful about saying
them, and we've got to be careful about believing them.
Because while disability is a very real thing, everyone can learn.
And we have to take everyone's humanity seriously.
Do we say or let people say things like, ugh, she doesn't understand anything, or nothing gets
through to him?
Do teachers get together to vent about how much they dislike a particular student?
And if people are in that space, do we insist on moving to something more constructive?
Are students who are struggling with an inaccessible environment described as difficult and
defiant without regard for context?
Because I've got to say, like, when I've been a student and
teachers give me activities that it is physically impossible for me to participate in, I'm pretty
difficult and defiant.
And that's more of a statement about the environment than it is about me.
And I think that we've got to think about that, and not use this so much as a pejorative
and think about what's going on.
Because kids who are giving us a hard time are almost always
having a hard time themselves.
And lashon hara when we're frustrating is a great temptation.
So similarly to that, often when students have disabilities, there are detailed records
kept of everything somebody doesn't like about them
or everything someone, umm, thinks is wrong with them.
And, you know, we're human beings, and all of us annoy people from time to time.
All of us lie from time to time.
All of us refuse to cooperate from time to time, but most of us don't have files-- detailed
files-- of every lie someone else thinks we've told,
everything we've done that's annoyed someone else.
And the cumulative effect of that can really be dangerous-- can be damaging.
So I think it's important to be mindful of how we're talking, and also be
mindful of what we're believing.
So again-- and getting back to more general-- how else might we be inadvertently slandering
disabled students?
What might be able to do about it?
Because there are probably things, we have a lot of power.
So another category-- and I've got to say this is a real hard one to talk about-- for
all the sins that we have committed through uncovering nakedness, through violating people's
bodies and intimate space.
One thing that we know is that the rate of abuse of people with disabilities,
including sexual abuse of people with disabilities, is incredibly high.
And that this is a problem that exists in every community, every setting, people from
all walks of life.
I don't know what to do about this, but I think it's something that at least needs to
be on our radar.
And if you're in a school, I think thinking about does your school have a policy about
reporting suspected abuse, and is there any sort of abuse prevention training is something
well worth looking at in this one.
Another one with uncovering nakedness is, you know, is physical boundaries and privacy
tend to develop in typically developing kids as kids learn how to use the bathroom independently.
When kids need help longer, that often doesn't happen naturally.
And there can be a lot of age- inappropriate uncovering of nakedness and
lack of regard for boundaries when they don't develop naturally.
It's something it's really important to watch.
And I think, particularly for people who work with younger kids, making
sure that privacy learning is happening at the usual age, even for kids who need physical
assistance with various things.
Another thing with uncovering nakedness is, you know, regardless of what kids' interests are or
what their academic level is, puberty matters.
And the way that we touch kids who are pre-pubescent and kids who have-- versus kids
who have gone through puberty, are really different.
And there's some very important reasons for that.
Particularly-- and that doesn't always happen in the same way with kids with disabilities.
And it's really important to uphold and enforce those boundaries
in a consistent way, because
it's not good if people are bear-hugging each other
in ways that if they were not disabled would be regarded
as sexually inappropriate.
It's really dangerous, and we need to watch that.
Because it's a pervasive enough bias that we can't assume
that appropriate behavior will happen by itself.
Another thing regarding privacy and boundaries and respecting the significance of puberty,
is some students with disabilities are gay.
Some students with disabilities are trans.
Could a student with a disability safely come out
to you, and have that taken seriously and have their privacy respected?
And how-- the perimeters of that are complicated.
But thinking about where-- making sure it's part of the conversation can really make a
lot of teshuva possible.
So another category, for all the sins that we have committed by throwing off all restraint.
The literal meaning of this has a connotation
of throwing off the commandments.
And I would broaden this to talking about the extent to which we feel bound by laws,
ethics, and decency in our work with people with disabilities.
Because often a lot of restraint is thrown off.
So do we do things to disabled kids that we'd see as unacceptable to do to non-disabled kids?
And, again, I have talked to people with disabilities-- including children with disabilities-- in
ways that I now consider unacceptable, that I'm ashamed of, and that I don't think would
have been tolerated if I'd talked to non-disabled people that way.
There's a lot of iterations of this.
Like, do we-- are students with disabilities expected to tolerate bullying and teasing
on the grounds that the other kids just don't understand disability yet?
Yeah, because I know as a kid I was expected to absorb that, and I've seen that happen for,
with a lot of other people, even now. Umm.
Are we expecting kids with disabilities to perform activities by
rote that are only superficially similar to what their
nondisabled peers are doing?
Are they getting access to the same learning?
Are we treating them with the same respect?
What happens with violence against kids with disabilities, or in the news?
Umm, so I've got to say, as a disabled person, I see a lot of stories about caregivers abusing
or murdering disabled children.
And usually when that happens, I see a lot of sympathy for the caregivers
who committed murder or violent abuse.
A lot of talk about how hard it is to parent disabled
people, and very little talk about the people with disabilities who lost their lives or
were otherwise harmed.
And often the people in those stories have the same disabilities that I do.
And it's pretty emotionally devastating.
And I think it's also dangerous.
I think-- so I think that we need
to watch that.
Well, yes, we do have a really big problem with lack of
support for parents.
We also have a really big problem with not valuing people with disabilities
in the way that we should.
And this is-- again, thinking about sins committed thoughtlessly-- something that a lot of people
do by accident with the best of intentions, because we want to empathize with people.
And just, like, thinking about that, what can you do to make sure the
lives of people with disabilities are valued in our communities, and that the way we talk
about violence reflects that?
Similarly, laws and ethical standards.
Do we act as though student's disabilities mean that our ethical standards of kindness
and respectful teaching don't apply to them?
And, again, I think-- getting back to the thing about emotional validation and scoffing--
kids with disabilities need emotional validation and support for the same reason that typically
developing kids do.
And they don't always get it.
And I think that we've got a lot of work to do.
There's any number of other things.
For instance, if you teach in a school that has therapy rooms, I encourage you to look
in the therapy rooms and ask if those are set up in a way that you would consider acceptable
for non-disabled students.
Because I've seen a lot of therapy rooms that would not be considered acceptable in that way.
Similarly, do we fail to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act and other civil rights legislation?
Because sometimes we're obliged to follow it by the strict letter of the law.
Sometimes we're not, but we really always should, and we don't always.
What other laws, ethical standards, and rules might we be unjustly exempting ourselves from
in our work with disabled students?
What can we do to fix it?
This, again, I think that all of us-- myself included-- have been guilty of this at some point.
All of us have the power to make a real difference.
And conclude with a final category-- which I think is critical and hard to think about--
for the sins that we've committed willingly, and for the sins committed under duress.
Because sometimes we do it on purpose.
You know, sometimes inclusion is intentional.
And sometimes we are willing participants in exclusion.
And I'm not going to go through all of the examples here, but what I'm going to say is
that I've seen a lot of schools have a policy of not
accepting more than a certain percentage of disabled kids because
there's some quota on not wanting to have too many, lest you undermine the program.
And I think that's willful exclusion.
And I think that there are a number of other examples.
And just one more is are students excluded on the grounds that we feel he'd be better
off at a place more equipped to meet his needs, when
we have no reasonable basis to believe that that place actually exists.
Because I've seen that a lot, and it's willful.
So I want to talk more about duress, because I think that we all act under duress a lot.
Sometimes, we act under duress in the sense that we don't know how to do the right thing.
Sometimes, it costs more money than we have.
Sometimes, people-- sometimes, we're overruled by people who are more powerful than us.
Sometimes, we're really terrified of what the consequences would be.
And, again, I think this is pretty universal.
And I also think it's pretty important to keep in mind that whatever we do under
duress, we still do, and the consequences still matter.
And we're responsible for what we do, even if we didn't want to do it.
And it's worth thinking about what we can do, to be more powerful.
So, some examples of what duress can look like is, you know, parents might vehemently object to
inclusive policies because they think disabled students will draw attention away from their children.
Again, this is a problem we encounter from a lot of education directors.
And this is not the fault of people who disagree with parents
about that, but children are just as excluded from the school.
Another form of dress that's very common is our donors would withdraw funding if
we did that, you know, liability.
There's any number of other examples of really common forms of duress.
So what does teshuva for sins committed under duress look like?
Thinking about this, like, what have you done under duress this year
that you regret doing, you know, last year I guess?
And in the year going forward, how might you be able to make yourself more powerful so
that you're not as vulnerable to duress, and you'll
be able to do the things you weren't able to do last year?
Probably won't be able to eliminate all duress, but we're often able to find power
through contemplation that we weren't able to find in the moment.
Similarly, what have you seen other people do under duress?
How might you be able to help them become more powerful, and support them in doing the
right thing this year?
Like, are there teachers who are afraid that they will crumble if they say
the wrong thing?
Can you support them in realizing they won't?
Can you back people up when they're being attacked for being inclusive?
Can you fundraise from a different source so you're not as vulnerable to that one donor
who doesn't think a ramp is a good use of funds?
Any number of other things that are often-- when we think about it-- both ways we can
find power, and ways in which we can make others more powerful.
Similarly, what-- how might you have pressured people to do the wrong thing in the past?
What can you do to support them in doing the right thing this year?
For instance, if you put pressure on an educator to not talk about
their disability, can you this year support them in choosing to talk about
it if they would like to?
Or can you support them in having various other kinds of
access needs so that the vulnerability is lower?
Any number of other things.
Just thinking about...duress happens.
How can we be more powerful so that we have more real practical power to do what
we want to do, rather than what we're forced to do?
Another element of thinking about duress is preparing to face it.
Because teshuva isn't just about letting go, it's also about holding on.
And one thing to keep in mind is you've done a lot of things right.
There's a lot of things you've done right that it's really important to hold on to
your ability to keep doing.
That can be really hard.
And you'll likely come under some renewed pressure to do the wrong thing this year.
Some people might even try to make you ashamed of wanting to do the right thing.
You know, I face that all the time.
I know a lot of other people do as well.
So one thing you can do on Yom Kippur is think about what you're proud of.
Think about what you want to hold on to.
Think about how you're going to resist pressure to hold on-- to let go of the things that
are best within you, and are best within your inclusive practice.
Because the good things you do are important to think about, too.
And to broaden the category a little more before we conclude, you know, this list in
our liturgy has a lot in it that's valuable.
And there's-- you know, I only got to a very small percentage of what's there, because
we could go on for years, really.
But not everything's there, because the people who wrote it didn't know everything.
So I'd say also another category is all the sins which are not on the list.
So-- sorry I-- wrong thing.
OK.
So and thinking in both specific and general terms, I think, can be helpful.
So just adding some of your own.
What have you inherited?
What have you done personally?
What have you seen as a problem in your community?
What might you have been complicit in?
What can you do about it?
When you think about the list, also think about what's not on the list.
Also keep in mind, we're all in this together.
This is not on you alone. You may actually sometimes be absolutely the least culpable
person in the room.
It's really hard.
Teshuva is hard work.
We're all responsible for it.
And that's why we say these things together on Yom Kippur in plural
language, because we're in this together.
And having done things wrong, doesn't mean you're broken.
It means that you are a human being who needs Yom Kippur.
And that's a pretty great thing to be.
Another thing to keep in mind about how we're holding all of this work of teshuva,
is Yom Kippur is also a celebration.
Yom Kippur is not just about celebrating-- confessing sins-- it's also a celebration
of what teshuva is and what teshuva has been.
There's so much work left to be done.
There's also a lot to celebrate.
We've done a lot of successful teshuva, both individually and collectively.
And on Yom Kippur it's appropriate and necessary to celebrate that.
Because some of the things we can be forgiven for, some of the things that we have moved on from,
it's really amazing.
Yom Kippur is a holiday, it's not Tisha B'Av.
So something I think it's worth-- to keep in mind this-- I would-- something I would
urge you to keep in mind this year is to ask yourself, what teshuva are you celebrating?
Between this year and last year, I am sure that you've grown a lot and done a lot of successful
teshuva, because you're a serious person who really cares about these things.
So think about it on Yom Kippur, what changes are you celebrating?
What teshuva are you really proud of?
What teshuva have you done yourself?
What have you seen your community do?
What's the joy that you bring to Yom Kippur?
Because it's a reminder and a celebration of what's possible and what has been done.
We're never done doing teshuva.
And we should also never be done celebrating teshuva.
Because the distance we've come is beautiful and worth celebrating and worth valuing.
So Shanah Tovah, and may we all be written and sealed in the Book of Life, and go onward
with the teshuva that is necessary, both now and going forward, and
with the celebration of what's gotten us here.
So it looks like we have about a minute left.
And so are there any questions?
I'm now looking in the chat box.
All right. Thank you very much for coming everyone, and Shanah Tovah.
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Education: Invest in your Future series - Duration: 2:36.
For more infomation >> Education: Invest in your Future series - Duration: 2:36. -------------------------------------------
Executive Education - On Strategy and Asking the Right Questions - Duration: 0:29.
Through the discussion and debate that we have in class, do they sharpen their
ability to ask the right questions when we are speaking of strategy? Because to
my mind that's one of the most critical skills senior executives need to have, to
ask the right question. Because the way I think it - what's the point in finding the
right answer to the wrong question.
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