Anti-ableism in Schools

Definition

Large Group Discussion

Culturally Responsive Teaching is a proposed optimum approach to educating ethnically diverse students, which means using their cultural orientations, background experiences, and ethnic identities as conduits to facilitate their teaching and learning.

• Please observe the stigma and the stereotypes attached to different cultures around the world in this skit.
• What could the teacher have done differently?(what would you do differently?)

tool box

Strategies

Universal Design

Schools can take action now!

Tool box strategies

• Include disability as part of schools' overall diversity efforts
• Encourage students with disabilities to develop and use skills and modes of expression that are most effective and efficient for them
• Special education should be specialized
• Move away from the current obsession with placement toward an obsession with results
• Promote high standards not high stakes
• Employ concepts of universal design to schooling

What is Universal Design?

tool box

• First applied to architecture (example: ramps for contemporary buildings)
• Universal design allows for access without extraordinary means and is based on the assumption that disabled people are numerous and should be able to lead regular lives.
• By-product of universal design is the benefit it brings to non-disabled people as well.
• Universal design has yet to become widespread in schools but can be implemented by designing the instructional program from the beginning to allow for access and success

How do you perceive

Ableism?

tool box

Strategies

• Establish secret codes with students that only the teacher and student knows (example: teacher standing in front of a students' desk means the teacher will call on that student soon)
• Provide students with direct instruction
• Allow wait time and processing time after posing a question-call on students with learning disabilities first so they can share their ideas
• Allow student to choose preferred learning resource (examples: Braille, audio tapes, etc)

Culturally Responsive teaching

• Knowing the values, communication styles, contributions, social problems, levels of ethnic identity development and affiliation of the students in your class.
• Knowing how students from different ethnic groups determine what is important and worthy of learning, how they engage in the process of learning, and how they organize thoughts and convey information.
• Culturally responsive teaching for ethnically diverse students should include information about the histories, cultures, contributions, and experiences of different ethnic groups in all subjects
• Bring more equity to instruction by using techniques that are compatible with many different ethnic groups, especially those who are marginalized and disenfranchised in schools
• Can match teaching styles to the learning styles of different ethnic group

• Knowing and using students' cultural socialization and experiences in teaching improves the quality of their educational opportunities and outcomes
• The most effective teachers were those who demonstrated personal caring and concern for students while simultaneously demanding and facilitating high academic performance
• Students should be routinely surrounded with images, sounds, and symbols of their ethnic and cultural diversity
• Creating more desirable multicultural climates for living and learning is a form of social action to promote social justice another critical dimension of culturally responsive teaching
• Culturally responsive teaching develops a sense of interdependence and feelings of community in which students understand that their lives and destinies are closely intertwined, and feel it is a moral and political obligation to help each other learn

Learning for All

1. Instructional Approaches

• Understanding Achievement Gaps
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
• Differentiated Instruction
• Tiered Approach

• Who are culturally diverse students?
• What is CRT?
• Why should we care about CRT?

2. Assessment for Learning

Ableism

• Assessment for, as, of learning
• Diagnostic and Formative Assessment

3. Planning Assessment and Instruction

Definition:

Assumptions

• Developing class profiles
• Developing student profiles

PLC Activity

4. Professional Learning

• Discuss strategies you would implement if you had this child in your classroom
• How can we create a safe space for students with disabilities and from a diverse set of cultural backgrounds?

Teacher attitudes toward and expectations of diversity

• PLCs

"A pervasive system of discrimination and exclusion that oppresses people who have mental, emotional and physical disabilities." (Mary McClintock, 1996, p. 198)

Let's find some tools from our tool box!

Discussion

In your group, discuss some of

your assumptions about ableism?

Assumptions

what are your assumptions toward

cultural diversity?

• There is a strong resistance to diversity: individuals are socialized to devalues, suspect, and pretend to ignore differences, especially those that derive from class, race, ethnicity, and culture.
• Why can't students with learning disabilities be normal and behave like regular kids.
• Teachers tend to perceive European- and some Asian-Americans in regular and special education to have higher intelligence and academic abilities, and less disciplinary problems than African-, Native, and Latino, Americans.
• Confusing diversity with disability: misunderstood incongruencies between home and school cultural standards, rather than biological malfunctions or intellectual limitations.

Thanks everyone for participating in our final group presentation in our MT program!

• Students with disabilities are childlike, dependent, and in need of charity and pity.
• Students with disabilities do not have the same educational right as every other child.
• The role of the teacher is to change disabilities even if that is not fully possible.
• It is better for deaf children to lip-read and speak than to learn sign language.

Survey Participation

Please go to pepper

Anti-ableism in Schools and

Culturally responsive teaching

Presented by Team International:

Chengcheng， Dedrian, Joanna, Leona, Lin,and Qingqing