BADD 2012: Toppliing Transactionalism

"Happy Birthday Vivian?" I ask. "Why would anyone put up a poster like that?"
"Vivian?" the response is somewhat incredulous. "What are you talking about?"
I point through the windshield. She follows my finger and stares. Then, because, well, we've been together a long time, "Oh no," she laughs, "those are candles! not letters, birthday candles!"

Ahh, the entertaining world of dyslexia.

Less entertaining might be a few recent wheelchair experiences. A DoubleTree Hotel (slogan: "cookies instead of service") in Roanoke, Virginia with no curb cuts near entrances, unnavigable ramps which changed slope suddenly, and a stage for me to speak from which prevented any physical interaction with those who had come to hear me speak. Or, sitting at the freezing cold plane ends of jetbridges because Rahm Emanuel's City of Chicago can't be bothered with timely responses to wheelchair requests at O'Hare Airport. Or, whether a restaurant in Roanoke or Michigan State University's campus police station, facilities whose "accessible" doorways feature thresholds so high and steeply cut that wheelchairs become stuck - if you're lucky - or you get tossed to the ground - if you're not.

But equally less entertaining are the millions of classrooms in which student movement is considered a problem. The millions of classrooms without student seating choices. The millions of classrooms without Text-To-Speech and Speech-To-Text routinely available. The millions of classrooms where cultural diversity in learning is sacrificed to the corporatism of the "Common Core."

And, I suppose, particularly less entertaining are the many places, from schools, to restaurants, to education PhD programs, where people with "disabilities" have to declare themselves pathologically damaged and beg for help in order to be allowed to pretend to function like "normal humans."

I believe in "Transactional Disability," a spin on Tom Shakespeare's great work linking the social and physical models of disability. To me, there is no actual "disability," there is only "able" and "unable," which are sometimes stable, but more often a constantly changing state of affairs - based on age, health, sleep patterns, energy levels, weather, the day of the week. "My ability to walk has been rapidly improving since my last surgery, but last Thursday the pain was really beyond my tolerance." "I thought I was reading pretty well Sunday, but when we got to the restaurant, and the menu was in ALL CAPS, I couldn't read anything."

"Able" equals, I can take care of it myself. "Unable" means I need help or tools. Those are basic human conditions, and no one should ever require a special permit, or a costly medical examination, or distinct permissions, to use the tools, or get the assistance, they, as equal children of God, need to function in their lives.

Whether you choose to take an elevator instead of the stairs, or you need to put on eyeglasses,
or you need to listen to text instead of "reading" (text-decoding) it - or watching
a video, or whatever... is a personal decision, not a societal prescription

The difference between "ability" and "inability" lies in the "transaction space." And "transaction space" is an ever-changing location. My living room is a different "transaction space" today than it was two months ago. The room, of course, is much the same, but where I can go in it, and where I am willing to go, are very different. The same classroom which may be fine for the "average," compliant, calm person, may be a nightmare for me. As I often say, the story of my friend Melissa and her son represents this perfectly: In the daytime, crossing a street, he is "visually impaired," and needs a cane and often assistance. But at night, as they walk around the lake, he is able to navigate perfectly, while she needs a flashlight/torch and often assistance.

A film is the easiest of transaction spaces for me to navigate in terms of literature, a print-on-paper book is the most difficult. A three-story high urban chain-link fence was a fine transaction space for me when my PF Flyers fit easily between the wires, now it would be an impossible barrier. I will never be able to reach the top shelf in the supermarket without some tool or strategy - that transaction space becomes otherwise impossible.

(Above and Below): fence... book... paths or barriers?

Now, Transactionalism arrives when someone, often someone in power, decides that their tools are fine but yours or mine are not. There was the Michigan State professor, wearer of thick eyeglasses, who drove five miles to work each day instead of walking, who often took the elevator between the third and fifth floors, but who thought I needed a $500 psychological assessment, and five dozen forms filled out, if I was going to use  text reader. There are the schools with impossible wheelchair ramps run by principals with reserved parking spaces up front so that they lose less time coming and going. There are politicians who use drivers for "convenience" and efficiency who run airports and transit systems that make life for wheelchair users close to impossible.

I see teachers and principals who use digital mail, messaging, and calendars all day but who operate in schools where students are not allowed to choose the same tools. I see students blocked from using school elevators so that students must declare their "inability" loudly if walking stairs is very hard one day. I see students denied the right to stand through class times by teachers who have the choice to stand or sit.

Which is all so very, very wrong. Without qualifiers. Without excuses.

Transactionalism is an evil. It must be confronted everywhere, every day. Until Transactionalism is toppled, "the disabled" will always live with identities crafted by others, and equality will always in unattainable.

- Ira Socol on Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012

Transactional Disability and the Classroom

I've written on this before, but this week I introduced the idea of "Transactional Disability" to my class at Michigan State University as we discussed classroom strategies for ADHD. One major disussion the students had involved the question of whether ADHD was a "socially constructed" disability or a "medical condition." This was driven, in part, by an article we'd read looking at a comparison between Sweden and the US, and the vastly different rates of ADHD diagnosis and the very different ways this "disorder" is accommodated. It seems important, so I wanted to bring it up once more...

The debate between the “social” v. “medical” models of "disability" are endless and ongoing. This is often seen most clearly when international, or intercultural comparative studies are done. In the case of the ADHD study comparing Sweden and the US, the sharp differences in the number of children seen as having “a medical disability” (and thus needing medication for “symptoms”) in the two-nation study demonstrates both sides of the debate. Across cultures we see the “differences” and yet, across cultures, we operate very differently.

One of the things which began troubling the Disability Rights/Disability Studies movement in the mid-1990s was the question of “the body” in the social model of disability. This first emerged as the Queer Studies movement’s thoughts (see Judith Butler) began being heard within Disability Studies, and was amplified by Deaf Community Activists who made their physical/sensory differences the heart of their culture. “Where is the body [in disability theory?” asked both Tom Shakespeare and Michael Oliver.

In this question I think of Michel Foucault, who, according to my favorite Foucault scholar, wanted to investigate not identity, and not causes, but the movements - the acts - we make in the "spaces" between us when we interact. “Don’t look behind the text,” he suggested, look at what people are “doing.”

So, beginning in the mid-1990s Tom Shakespeare joined the social model of disability to the body directly, yet without resorting to the medical model. He wrote about disability occurring at the "intersections" - the "places" where our bodily capabilities meet the world "as it exists."

Last year, a Twitter-pal with a visually impaired child made this very clear to me when she wrote: "Going to get son to walk around lake with me in the dark - he won't need his cane, but I'll need flashlight."

Transactional Disability

Somewhere between "the medical model" - difference described as a medical illness the way North Americans do - "a person with cancer" "a person with a reading disability" - and the "social model" - difference described as only a problem created by societal norms, lies what I have begun calling "the transactional model." Yes, we are all different in various ways, including our set of capabilities. But these differences only become "impairments" when we - the differently capable - find that we cannot negotiate the world, or a specific corner of the world, the way others have set it up.

I may not be disabled when I watch a movie. Nor when I watch television, listen to the radio, listen to a friend or a teacher, listen to music, look at art. In fact, I think my capabilities are at least "average" or better when I meet these tasks. I become disabled when people choose, instead, to present information in alphabetical code. Those former information transfer systems I can navigate with ease. The alphabetical code leaves me tripping over myself. There is nothing "wrong" with me, nor is there anything wrong with the alphabetical code - the problem occurs in the transaction space - where print and I meet.

Similarly, I am fairly short. This is not a problem in most things, but at the grocery store, top shelf items are out of my reach. Thus, my height becomes a disability. At Aldi (no shelving units) this is not a problem. At typical Walmarts (very high top shelves) it is a big problem. Now, how do I deal with this?

One way is for me to climb the shelves to get what I want. I actually have done this many times. It gets you yelled at, as many of the ways kids cope in school gets them “yelled at” or much worse. (One group of university researchers suggested about 10-years-ago that Nicotine and THC were one excellent way to reduce the tensions related to ADHD (here’s one article) which may explain much of the ‘self-medication’ you see in secondary schools.) Another way is to wait and ask for help, but I think this diminishes me as a “whole human,” and over time saps my initiative and any sense of independence. But what if there were step ladders in each aisle, something library stacks often have? That tiny shift in the “transaction space” might eliminate “my height disability.”

The challenges of wheelchair shopping

However, this winter I have been in a wheelchair. This physical reality changes things in important ways. I can’t, for example, get into the MSU police building without help to buy a parking pass (just had to throw that in). But back to the grocery store: So now, Aldi is hard, but Meijer and Walmart become impossible. 90% of items are out of reach, and the cool stuff, “gourmet” cheeses, etc, and many fresh vegetables are completely out of reach, and sometimes out of sight. No step stool will solve this – perhaps an old fashioned “grocery grabber” hung in each aisle might help – but large parts of the store would need to be completely re-conceived to make independent shopping possible for me.

However, where (and when) I grew up, grocery stores were different. The clerks stood or sat behind a counter. You went in, handed them a list or told them what you needed, and they went back to the shelves and got your order. Or you could ring them, and they would get your groceries and deliver them. This was also true of the butcher and the green grocer and the pharmacist. In fact, one of my first jobs was delivering prescriptions, and as part of that I would go into the customer’s kitchen, and if they had arthritis or a broken arm, I would open the childproof cap for them.

In that world, the wheelchair was much less of a disability while shopping. Same physical facts, different transaction space, different result.

So there is no doubt that the mother and son in the Tweet at the top have actual capability differences. Their vision capability difference is not merely a trick of societal construction. Yet there is nothing "wrong" with either. This need not be a "diagnosis." As the mother knows, the description of "disability" changes as the light does - thus it changes as the seasons change - and changes as the location changes. Walking around the lake in the dark she needs Assistive Technology, her flashlight, while he needs none. Moving across a street in the daylight, he may need supports, and she not.

This is important. I really believe it is. Right now we describe both the son above and myself in pathological terms. There is something "wrong" with us. But who decides that? That is society abusing some to raise up the power of others. The person who can't translate a construction document goes through much of their life without problem. But when they end up with a pillar in the middle of their office (I actually saw this almost happen) they are having a "transactional" problem – we need not label them "a person with a construction plan disability." The person who cannot find their way around the NYC subway system is not described as having a “directional disability,” instead we put up maps for everyone to use.

Changing the transaction space in the classroom

Which brings us to the classroom. Consider the child who is "fine" until you ask him to sit in a chair for an hour. Is he disabled? Must he be diagnosed? There's nothing inherently wrong with the chair or the child, just what happens when they meet. Alter the transaction space, or the rules of the transaction space, and the facts of the "disability," the actions of the “disability,” may not exist.

The child who can not decode alphabetic text, Is she disabled? Must she be diagnosed? What if she can understand and work with any information given to her auditorally? There is nothing wrong with alphabetic text, or the child. But the transaction as defined by the "space" - the teacher handing her the book - is failing. Text-To-Speech software and audiobooks might change that space, and that failure may not exist.

I once sat in an IEP for a fourth grader labeled ADHD and EI. “He does really badly on all of our timed math quizzes,” the teacher said, “he gets all nervous and then starts acting out.”

“How does he do if the quiz is untimed?” I asked. “They’re all timed,” she told me, “all the kids like to race.” “Well, not all,” I muttered.

So, a student with, perhaps, a definable brain difference. And a transaction space designed for other types of people. And the result is “disability.” We moved this child to another school with a Montessori type program. I checked in after his first week. The teacher came and met me in the hall. “You said he had IEPs at [x],” she said, “why?”

Change the space, the transactional area is altered, and thus the actions themselves are altered. If we follow Foucault's dictum and, as this new teacher did, and refuse to look "behind the text" - refuse to see anything but how the student is acting/functioning now, the disability has become non-existent. It has not just vanished - it has never existed in this new space.

- Ira Socol

Suicidal Ideation

Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009

At a recent presentation I did for instructors in my college I told the story of being an undergraduate student in a creative writing course. First I said that the course was really good, and that one of the stories written for that course eventually became a 'chapter' in my novel. But I told my assembled colleagues that what I most remembered was my first day in the class.

"Everyone come up to the board and write the title of a short story you'd like to write," the professor said. One of those innocuous ice-breaker activities creative instructors are so fond of. I stayed in my seat. "C'mon," he said, looking at me, "everybody." I still stayed. I do not like to introduce myself to people through my hand-writing. It creates an immediate impression that is often impossible to recover from ("I have a four year old nephew, he makes letters just like you." "What are you, dyslexic or something?") He looked at me again, "I really need everyone to do this." I groaned, got out of my seat, walked to the board, picked up a piece of chalk, and drew an "X." And then I sat down.

I told this story, at the end of a presentation on making online courses accessible, to illustrate a key point about making all courses accessible. I referred to this as "humiliation from the start," doing things which, on first meeting someone, humiliate by forcing undesired, unplanned disclosure of differences which impact how someone might be seen by the group. Later, in the elevator, a prof said, "I really learned something about those ice-breaker exercises, I never thought," he paused, "and I should, I teach our diversity course."

If you're a regular reader here you've heard this before, and you've heard the story which follows as well.

Recently, flying Delta Air Lines back from London, walking (badly) with a cane, I fell at US Passport Control. Other travelers, not the US Officer, ran to my assistance. A bit later, at the luggage area (with no seating) I fell again. This time my Delta flight crew literally stepped over me in their rush to get out of the airport.

What makes one feel a part of the world, a part of a community, a part of a school, a part of a place?

Since I wrote for BADD last year I have a lot of things I feel very positive about. I'm in a wonderful relationship with a wonderful woman. My kid is doing great.My family in general is doing great. I've made some big progress in my PhD program. I've presented internationally, and successfully. I've taught pretty decently. My Toolbelt Theory gets used more and more.

But still, I rarely am comfortable in any way. I rarely feel a part of what has become my world. Often, too often, I am uncomfortable enough that the thought of leaving creeps into the corners of my mind. Why is that? And, if I feel that way - and I'm pretty damn lucky - what about others?

This isn't about the anger I expressed when I wrote of "Retard Theory." And it is not about getting even with anyone. It is, instead, about all the ways we choose to divide ourselves, and to hurt each other.

When I sat in that class above, or in many others - including some in my Special Education PhD program - or as I lay on that floor at JFK airport, I was being separated from humanity. And when you are separated from humanity, life looks pretty grim.

In my education I read too slowly, even with literacy software, and I struggle staying on task, sticking with schedules, meeting the artificial deadlines of semesters. This makes me "a problem" for the school. Got to finish in a certain number of years, you know - the rules. Now I walk too slowly too. It takes me too long to get from here to there. If I wanted to get food during a 15 minute break in a three hour class I probably couldn't make it there and back. Outside of school, the guy in the DIY store races away from me trying to lead me to the door hardware section. Half the area's restaurant's have no handicapped parking spots. Other car park spots are too narrow to allow me to fully open my door, which is the only way I can get out. "We're too small," I'm told, "It would be a burden."

And with each of these I am diminished as a human, I am separated from the herd.

The instructor for a required course runs her classroom like a frenetic TV game show, setting off both panic and a migraine in me, driving a woman with a visual impairment to despair. I flee after session two, but the gap on my transcript remains an issue. The airline offers me a choice of a wheelchair or being accompanied through the airport by my companion, I choose to walk, and I fall, requiring numerous new medical experiences.

about 7 minutes in, you begin to see the classic school experience for struggling children

With every step then, the labels descend: dyslexic, ADHD, handicapped. I'm not against labels. Labels can confer interesting information. But when labels are used primarily as a method of discrimination...

I look around. I have been preaching the word of assistive technology in schools for a dozen years now. During that time the technology has gotten better and better as well as cheaper and cheaper, and yet, if I walk into a school I will not see it. I will instead see "special" students begging for handouts from schools which seem committed to the prevention of independence.

I look around. I see counters too high. I see elevators far away from traffic patterns. I see clueless clerks in banks. I see police and legal personnel untrained in human diversity. I see non-readers virtually unable to apply for aid. I see "standardized tests" and a "commitment to accountability" being used as an excuse for acts of terror against children. I see governments doing 'the legal minimum.' I see no enforcement.

I see a normalist culture, an ableist culture. A culture which wants faux diversity - where people might look different, and eat different foods, but really all do things the same way.

Do I see a future? I don't know. On my good days I imagine employers who will welcome me for what I can offer. On my bad days I see people looking at me and seeing nothing but problems. I have wandered among jobs, among places, among nations, among interests, searching for the place where I did not feel "stuck outside." A place where success would not come with the qualifier, be that, "Super Retard," "Super Gimp," or the only slightly crueler, "that's great for you."

What would that place really look like? I remember, as a kid, walking down streets, looking in the lighted windows of homes in the night. Wondering, is that family normal? What does normal feel like? What's it like to be like 'everyone else'?

What would that place look like? I don't know. But I'm guessing it would be the place where the "Exit" sign no longer lit a corner of my brain. Where it's red light no longer interrupted my sleep.

- Ira Socol

Re-imagining Ability

When I taught my class last semester (“Special Education Students in the Regular Education Classroom”), I ran across a roadblock. The future “Special Education” teachers who filled the room clearly saw a bright line between “able” and “disabled.”

This is not surprising. The field they are entering exists because of this perceived difference.

Early in the course I suggested that I could “disable” any of them. That I might speak in a language they did not know (I asked them to read and pronounce Irish, for example), or that I might speak using words they did not know, using, for example, British educational jargon rather than American, or that I might ask them to choreograph and perform an interpretive dance as their second paper.

For some these concepts got the point across, but not for most.

So I decided to try to get them to “re-imagine ability.” I gave them a series of possible “tasks” and asked what “assistive technologies” they would need to complete them. One was getting from a neighborhood on the Atlantic coast of Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan (near the United Nations). Another was bringing a refrigerator from a store into their kitchen. A third was getting from the street to a meeting on the 88th floor of the Sears Tower.

View Larger Map

Many of the students responded with comments about maps and map reading, about reading directories, about measuring doorways, but none understood the basic concept. They were all completely unable to perform any of these tasks without massive technological and human assistance. And the amount of assistance needed varied greatly across the student group.

But I pointed out to them even those they probably at least needed some kind of shoes/clothing to cross Brooklyn, at least some kind of assistance or at least a strongly woven cloth strap to carry the refrigerator, and if not the elevator, at least the stairs (a vary early assistive technology) to climb the Sears Tower. Not to mention a bridge to avoid swimming more than half a mile across a wild tidal strait in New York, or a truck for the refrigerator. Some, I'm sure, could have swum the river. At least two or three might have been able to, given enough time, have jumped and pulled and climbed up 88 floors without stairs. One guy might have been able to lug at least a fairly small (full-size) refrigerator from Sears to his house, and yet...

If they needed help would they be "disabled"? And what of the other four dozen?

This began to work on their thinking. Yet, every day they spend in our College of Education reinforces their traditional thinking about “ability.” “Ability” is everything “they” (the kind of students who go into education) do well. Reading, writing, speaking like a middle class protestant white person, answering questions with definite answers. “Ability” is not being able to attend to 25 things in a simultaneous mode, or entertain a class with jokes and stunts, or dream up really exciting fictional worlds, or a million other things that kids can be great at. No one is sent to the Resource Room because they throw a ball badly or can’t tune a violin or are unable to navigate an urban street scene effectively. I need special permission to turn some paper documents into electronic versions but the Dean of the College prints out her emails for reading without having to declare herself “disabled.

I'm not suggesting that individual differences in capabilities don't exist. I'm not very tall. That makes some things more difficult than if I was. Tom Shakespeare is right. It is not "all social" - we are born different, we end up different. Some of us struggle with things in ways others don't. Reading sucks for me. I wish it was easier. This month so does walking. And I sure wish that was easier. Still, I can fix my own computer (some of the time), and if you can not, do you need a government affixed label?

Back in May 2008 (on "Blogging Against Disablism Day") I suggested on my blog that we not allow anyone into an elevator without a note from a doctor, that we require that people with eyeglasses get special permission to use them, that we not let anyone ever convert digital text to paper, just to expand the realm of disability. Because as long as we think “disability” exists, it does indeed exist, and it limits who we are and what we can achieve

- Ira Socol

A Week in Hospital: Constructing Disability

Last Friday night I walked out of my "not-quite-in-laws" home and walked around my car to put something I was carrying in to the trunk. It had started to snow while we had been visiting inside, and the temperature had begun to fall rapidly. As I reached for the trunk lid, my feet went out from under me, there was a panicked moment as I tried to juggle what I was carrying, and then I hit the pavement and an explosion of pain went through my body. I reached out to touch my right knee, but found no kneecap there. And then I just struggled to stay conscious, to stay out of shock.

It is now about seven days later, and I'm finally back home. Surgery has scraped together as much of my shattered patella as was possible, cleaned out other bits that were pressing badly on certain nerve endings. I've been locked into a knee immobilizer, fed a steady and massive stream of painkillers, been taught (once again) to move with crutches and (for the first time) a walker, and I've discovered how difficult many of life's most basic tasks can be.

I've discovered something else as well. I might have been deeply foggy for the past week, but I kept observing. And one of the things I observed was how professionals construct disability while working with their patients-clients-students.

1. Not bothering to know who you are.
When the police arrived at the driveway, their mission was to hurry the ambulance and keep me talking. I know this drill. I have worked in emergency services - even emergency medical services. My 'friend' mentioned that I had done that job, and so I might be able to answer questions more clearly than most. The paramedics took that information and ran with it, asking me about morphine dosing, using more "professional" vocabulary. That kept me engaged, attentive, and less focused on the rather remarkable pain level. They treated me as "me," and not as a "patient."

Later, at the hospital, most of the nurses and aides never considered these facts, or asked any questions which might have uncovered them. I became such a "non-specific patient," just a "diagnosis" and thus uninvolved in my own care. This became so extreme on a few nursing shifts that I actually wanted to resist their efforts to treat me.

With the ambulance crew I was a person with a somewhat unique knowledge base who needed help. With the hospital staff I was simply disabled.

You know the parallel: Every time we reduce our students to a label, discard the essentials of who they are, ignore their 'backstories,' we dehumanize them, take them out of the process, almost force rebellion. We also create dependency because we eliminate the contributions of the student. And we typically don't know what to do to help at that point, because we have stopped listening to the best information source.

2. Not really listening.
"On a scale of one to ten, with one being no pain and ten being the worst pain you've ever felt, what's your pain level right now?" I was asked this fifty times. Maybe more.

What's wrong with this question? You would have to make sure you know the patient's prior pain experience. You would have had to really listened before. Because, obviously, if one patient has previously, say, been shot, and another has never experienced anything more catastrophic than a sprained ankle, the two scales will be wildly different in size.

Just as in special needs education we've reduced something very personal into a codable scale that leaves us knowing nothing. Just as I didn't want to be measured against "Third Year Standards" when I was struggling to read when I was eight, I didn't want my pain scale measured against some nurse's arbitrary understanding. (I've had some massive injuries, but this was, without a doubt, the most painful, with the highest "baseline" - always there - pain level.) And because the hospital staff was not really listening, they never could quite get my pain under control.

And I lay there - in pain - and thought how often I hear educators referring to "mild" and "severe" disabilities. And no matter how often I challenge them on this, no matter how often I say, "how do you know what is severe to this student?" They keep using these terms as a way of disabling their students, of turning them into chartable diagnoses.

3. Assuming that "you" can't hear.
Two nurses stand by the edge of the bed and talk about you, assuming that you are not hearing. They stand just outside your door, talking. They give each other 'looks' as they are working on you. They talk to your family without including you in the conversation. They throw open the door, turn on the lights, write something on a chart, and leave without acknowledging you - leaving the lights on and the door open.

Nothing creates disability faster than pretending that the person in question cannot function in the most basic ways.

In the class I taught this past semester we read a bunch of "first person voices" of "disabled"students. Many of the soon to be teachers expressed surprise that the students seemed "so aware." I told them that we are all very aware. We know what every head shake means, what the big words imply. We know that when the person examining you writes a bunch of notes, you've done, or said, something wrong. We even know what you say about us in the Teachers' Lounge, because we see the results. What we learn from your attempts of ignore us is that we are worthless, that we truly are "disabled."

What a difference you might make if you treated us as fully human. If that nurse had said, "Excuse me, I just had to put something on your chart. Do you still want the lights off and the door closed?" She might have handed me a bit of power, and dignity, and allowed me to think of myself as 'as human as' she was. Again, a person in need of help, rather than a person with a disability.

4. Infantilizing.
This is simple. Making it easy for someone to ask for help enables. Assuming a person can not do, or can not make choices, disables. "Would you like to get cleaned up? I can bring you things or I can help if you want me to," enables. "Now we'll get you cleaned up so you'll feel better," disables. It reduces anyone to the status of helpless infant.

Just as, "That's a great book, you know we also have that as an audiobook or as text set up to run in WYNN," enables, while, "That is a great book, but I think it will be too difficult for you," disables. Which is why most classroom reading groups (those based on reading "ability") disable.

5. Making it look easy.
My physical therapist was great. He really was. If I look at the previous issues he was on the right side every time. But there was one moment.

He was helping me practice stairs. To do this I had already walked further than I previously had, to get to a stairwell. And I struggled up four steps - feeling dizzy, unbalanced, exhausted. It is very difficult to go upstairs when one leg can not be bent at all. You have to swing this incredibly heavy, non-responsive thing, out to the side, hold your balance, keep it out of the way of the crutch on that side... you know.

I came back down. He said, "Let me show you again." And with that he slowly climbed the stairs, with his unencumbered right leg bent at a 30 degree angle.

I could have done that too.

We do this so often in education. We act as if the task is easy or simple, all that's missing is the effort. And then, yes, people who can't do even the simple and easy things, are disabled. We forget that many of these tasks are extremely difficult and complex. We forget that our demonstrations are laughably distant from the way a "beginner" would approach this. And we forget that "we" - educators - might be built radically differently from the students we are trying to help.

Don't suggest "ease" or "simplicity" - admit that things are difficult. That won't discourage, as long as we celebrate every victory over every component process.

So, coming home was dramatically liberating. Here, I may not have all of the supports, but I'm much less disabled. Here, no one is working hard to disable me.

- Ira Socol
who hopes this is readable, I'm still fairly 'foggy'...