Disability History Month: authentic representation
Posted 19th December 2024 by Kathryn Downs, Teacher of Maths at Dixons Unity Academy
As we approach the end of Disability History Month, Kathryn Downs, Teacher of Maths, Dixons Unity Academy, reflects on her personal experiences and highlights the importance of this month and what we can learn.
Disability History Month (DHM) takes place from the 14th November to 20th December 2024. It’s an annual event that aims to raise awareness of the inequality and societal barriers that disabled people face accessing the world around them.
Every year has a different theme and this year’s theme is ‘Disability Livelihood and Employment’ and this theme is particularly important when we start to look at outcomes for our students. Current statistics for SEND students indicate that their outcomes for employment and earnings remain significantly poorer than their non-SEND peers.
SEND students are also often at higher risk of poorer health outcomes, both physically and mentally. Disability History Month reminds us of the need for society to collaborate to ensure that all barriers for SEND students are removed so that they can fulfil their potential throughout their life.
As an educator, I strongly believe that history has a vital role in teaching the next generation how to create a more inclusive world. It’s only through understanding the intersectionality of our struggles for equality that we can understand how to make a fairer community for everyone to thrive. Disability history is empowering, it’s a story of a community who are determined for their fight for equality to be understood and to ensure they have a voice in the world that sought to exclude them.
For our SEND students, authentic representation of disabled and neurodivergent people in schools can be life-changing and help them feel like they are seen and understood in a world that can often be very isolating. Seeing people like them as role models, employed in jobs they would like to be employed in, experiencing life in a way they dream of can raise their expectations for their future and build their self-confidence.
It’s also a great way for our non-disabled students to understand the lived experiences of disabled people, remove bullying and build a more inclusive school community where all students feel safe and supported.
DHM is a great way to explore some of those authentic lived experiences but it’s also really important that educators think about how they frame disability and the language they use to talk about disabled people’s experiences.
Firstly, it must be authentic and avoid tick-box, stereotypical or tokenistic representations of disability and neurodiversity. Secondly, it’s important to avoid language or phrases such as ‘suffers from’, ‘afflicted with’, ‘achieved despite their disability’ or other forms of ‘deficit’ language. We are not here to be pitied; we just want the world to be accessible to us and for non-disabled people to understand the role they can play in ensuring accessibility. Thirdly, representation and visibility need to be accessible and relevant to our students, people they can relate to and identify with.
*Please note that I have used the term, ‘disabled people’ in this article because this is the term I prefer as a disabled person. However, some people prefer person with disability so it’s always best to ask the individual how they would like to be referred to.
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