This is Jennifer Gonzalez, welcoming you to episode 253 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast.

In this episode, we'll talk about the things teachers can do to help build and sustain disability identities for their students. Over the past few decades, significant strides have been made in the field of special education

to make every classroom a place where students, regardless of ability or disability, can reach their full potential. Most of that work has been

driven by a focus on access, working to ensure that students with disabilities aren't left behind

academically. And while this is obviously an important goal, it has sometimes been viewed

through a deficit lens, where there is one default way of doing

school, and then there are strategies for helping students with disabilities fit better into

that default way.

While these efforts have succeeded in improving access, they still position disabled

students as lacking in some way. What's been missing is an approach that affirms and

sustains disability as a source of identity and pride. That's the focus of my conversation with

Amy Tondro and Lori Rabinowitz, authors of the book Sustaining Cultural and Disability Identities in the Literacy Classroom,

K-6. Drawing from their own experiences as educators, as well as the voices of over 20 classroom

teachers, their work introduces the concept of disability-sustaining pedagogy, an approach

that goes beyond access to help students with disabilities take pride in who they are.

While their book focuses primarily on literacy instruction at the elementary level, it offers

valuable insights and practices for anyone who teaches or works with disabled students.

In this episode, we talk about how this idea builds on the framework

of culturally sustaining pedagogy, what it means to treat disability as a cultural identity,

and the specific things teachers can do to create classrooms where disabled students feel,

as Tondro puts it, fully seen and fully known. Before we get started, I'd like to

thank Alpaca for sponsoring this episode. I've been a big fan of Alpaca for a while now,

...