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The insistent alarm cuts into my ears, each beat like a hammer to the forehead. I quickly silence it, taking a moment to try and enjoy the quiet. It doesn’t work. I can feel my heartbeat in my temple.
I’m trapped. This pain is persistent and insatiable. Only more sleep may help. But more sleep means missing work, or at the very least going in late. I still feel like I’m not supposed to do that.
If I go back to sleep, I leave them with one less teacher to help supervise the chattering throng of students. My normal breakfast buddies will wonder where I am. I won’t be there for the morning assembly. In short, I’ll be letting a lot of people down.
But if I go, I let myself down. I push through relentless pain just to meet ideas of productivity and responsibility. What will my students think, knowing that? They’d be able to tell I’m not well. I’d be telling them: look, kids, you should push through. Overcome. Beat the disability to be a productive citizen.
My mind flashes back to my introductory slides for this summer. “My teaching is grounded in Disability Justice, especially the principles of sustainability and interdependence.” Sustainability.
I know what I have to do. I open my phone, fighting through the blur to send a short message to my boss. “Migraine. Bad. Be there by 10.”
It’s difficult to ground teaching practice in Disability Justice when so much of the educational system is antithetical to those values. Still, I try, and I am very open with my students about that.
Things are a bit easier as a mentor. My first-year college students are able to comprehend more quickly the tenets of DJ, and we can meet outside of the crushing pressures of the educational system. I’m able to offer more one-on-one support and, at the same time, better live up to my values.
Some parts of the struggle never change. When I have a bad pain day, fire racing up my leg, it’s hard to cancel on a mentee. Not going to group events because of a migraine sparks shame. As long as I live within productivity culture, this debate will never go away.
(Episode continues below)
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Through helping my mentees, I’m also learning. When I give them advice, sometimes I realize I can listen to it myself. And they show me new ways of thinking, new pieces of media, new methods of navigating the world. I may be the mentor, but both of us are learning and changing.
That reciprocal relationship is, to me, approaching the core of interdependence. This is a relationship where, in one way or another, we can each lean on the other, and each get our own things out of it. A balance of give and receive. That balance can be hard to maintain, but when done well, the results are truly beautiful.
[Note: the following activity is one I have adapted from Aja Wolfe.]
A room full of college students stare at me in anticipation. Most are queer. Many are neurodivergent or disabled. This will be a perfect group for the activity.
Guest teaching at the college I attend is a weird feeling, but I enjoy it. A chance to share my knowledge with another group, to potentially provide some new insight, fuels me. It brings me joy and hope.
First, I ask the group a series of questions. According to their answer for each, they pick up a number of objects. Small things: marbles, dice, stones. Ones that can easily fit in the hand, until you have a large number of them.
When the questions are over, I make sure each student has a piece of origami paper. “Holding all of your objects in your hands,” I tell them, “follow along with this origami butterfly tutorial.”
We hit play and I watch in amusement. There are no written or vocal instructions in the video. One must follow along to the images alone. Everyone struggles somewhat. But the neurodivergent students struggle a bit less. They have fewer objects in their hands, after all.
When the video is over, I ask the students to hold up their butterflies. A few well-formed butterflies float into the air. The rest are amorphous creations of sharp edges and undefined angles. Exactly as I’d hoped. I ask them to reflect on how they felt doing this activity.
Silence. I’m comfortable with silence, so I wait. Finally, a student raises their hand.
“For the first time in my life,” they say, “I felt like I had an advantage.”
Externally, I nod and usher us towards more reflections, saying I’ll come back to that point soon. Internally, I beam. That’s exactly what I wanted them to get.
This is only one small class, ninety minutes in an entire lifetime. But for some of those students, this activity will leave an impact. It may act as a gateway, a nudge for reflection, or a stepping stone into something new. Even if it’s just a brief moment of happiness, that’s enough for me. Disabled folks need a lot of those.
I look over at the class’s professor, a good friend of mine. Our eyes meet and knowing passes between us. This is where we need to be. This is how we keep fighting, surviving, nurturing. This is how we make the world a better place for disabled people, ninety minutes at a time.
Buy me a cup of tea on Ko-Fi
Ashton Rose 