Dr. K. Shimabukuro

Dr. K. Shimabukuro

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Diversity and Accommodation for Your School's Adults

Too often in professional development, faculty meetings, things that schools host or do, they seem to ignore or not even consider the diversity and accommodation they insist on seeing in their classrooms.

Presenters don't use mics. They seem to take pride in saying "I'm a teacher, y'all can hear me."
PD often requires movement, not considering that people may have mobility issues.
PD treats educated adults, like students, not showing/sharing ideas, but forcing adults to go through the steps.
Items are color coded, and not distinguishable otherwise.
Adults are forced into groups, forced to talk.
PowerPoint presentations are shown, but not read.
Fonts are small.
Images and videos aren't cited. Or described.

I have known since I was little that the standard world was not designed for me. I've counted ceiling tiles and window panes to calm anxiety for as long as I can remember. My room was always neat, because I shoved everything troublesome into my closet.
I never felt part of anything, always weird, always different. We moved a lot, and I guess I always attributed it to that. I was enthusiastically me, which never ended well. I took notes passed in class at face value, not realizing I was the butt of jokes. In middle school I ran for school treasurer, telling everyone Spock was my dad and I was the "logical choice." I didn't win. But I did get my ass kicked for weeks. I didn't understand it, Spock was the closest representative I knew for what I was like.

My family acknowledged my inability to eat food that touched. Jokingly said I wanted to join the Navy only because I could eat on divided plates for life. They knew I had few friends, and spent most of my time alone, but I was classified more as book worm than anything else.
I continued to have a hard time socializing because I took people at face value, and always said what I meant.

These things do not go over well.

College was better, if only because I quickly fell into theatre, becoming master electrician, a world of easily understood rules, math, science, and color coding. It was a field my issues became skills in, and I loved it. Everyone was weird in theatre. No one made fun of me. You worked, played, and hung out with the same people, so I never felt like there was a set of social rules I didn't get and failed at.

Grad school was for all intents and purposes a step back. My first one was okay, I liked the CUNY system, and the professors, if not the commute. I was teaching at this point to, so I saw the real connections between my classes and my teaching. My second program was not so great, it was summers only, and suggested that we do the reading before hand. So I did. I was made fun of for not knowing the northeast private school references. For having my reading done and reading "fluff" out in public. For always answering first when the professor asked something. For arguing with classmates.

It was then I realized that these were not quirks, these were real differences. It was also the first time that people actively disliked me for these parts of me.

Later teaching jobs highlighted these issues more.
I would attend a  PD or conference, make notes on things I could try, plan it out, go back and the next school day implement it.
I get told constantly that my issue is I want things to change overnight and that's not how things work.
I think that if there are changes we can do immediately that help kids, any reason not to is bullshit.

These opinions do not make me popular.

I get told that if things don't go my way, I Lucy and the football and go home.
I think that if I put work into something, and you decide to do it differently, a way I no longer believe in, I lose interest because it's not what I want to spend time on.

I am Amelia Bedelia.

I don't play politics because I can't, and worse, I don't understand when others do.
If you ask me your opinion, and I tell you, and you get mad, I am totally confused.
When you ask me out to a social event and I say no thank you, I often don't notice, and never understand why you get upset.

Over the years, I've learned to be formulaic in responses, answers, to try and mitigate the me-ness of me, while resenting the fact that I have to.

I have been told by bosses and supervisors I am too blunt. That I should soften myself so other people like me more. I resent this too.

I always volunteer for things, because I don't believe in pointing our problems without being willing to do the work. But I get told by others I work with, often in what I assume are snarky tones, that I'm making them look bad.
I think if they cared then they should do better.

I wear simple things, often just different colors of the same thing, a rotation I've made work over the years because I have no concept of acceptable, and trying to reason it out gives me anxiety. When I am under stress everything becomes color coordinated.
I can't handle my systems being out of place, the more stressed I am, the more rigid my adherence to Post-Its squared on papers, color-coded writing, becomes.

I used to have a friend who would walk into my apartment, flip corners of rugs up, turn books upside down and wait to see how long I lasted before fixing it.
I never thought these things were funny.

Despite all this, I've never had a hard time packing everything up and moving across the country on a whim. Quitting a job/field and starting from scratch.
Traveling is hard for me, but over the years I've discovered that if I follow my systems- packing the same way, two hours early to the airport, follow the same night and morning routines, I can mitigate a lot of it.

I take anxiety medicine, but while that has helped with me feeling ill, my systems and "quirks" remain as strong as ever.

I might not seem like a great fit for being a teacher. But my non-typical issues have served me well. My organization helps me stay on top of things. I can model systems for students, making patterns and structures they can understand. Color coding is a teacher's friend. And while I routinely mutter "I hate people" on my commute, preferring the company of my dog, because people are exhausting with their social cues I can't read, and their hypocrisy, high school students are honest, often brutally so.

I don't need to figure out what my students mean. They tell me. They don't lie. They don't dissemble.
I think me being different, which I'm open about in class, how I learn, like things, understand items, makes my classroom more accessible, more welcoming, to all kinds of students who may be different.

My students don't mind I'm honest, it's one of the things every year that they say it's one of the things they appreciate. My college students didn't always agree- evaluations frequently said I was too blunt.

I never have issues with days just spent with my students.
It's only ever the adults.

I dislike being forced to join groups of people I don't know at meetings. It makes me irritable to have my time wasted when I'm told to read a book for PD and then they read it to me. I don't like group work, although I'm always willing to work collaboratively if I can complete my work on my own. I don't like small talk, I don't see the point. I'm bad at it, and I long ago just stopped trying.

Department and faculty meetings and professional development are not designed with me in mind.

Some schools are finally, way too late, starting to insist on diversity, representation, and accommodation, from their teachers and in their classrooms. But too often, like lots of things, these become just the latest fads to check off, without any real investment. Lip service but no real change.

I think if schools really cared about these things they'd have staff priorities to hire more educators of color. Not just read about poverty in schools but hold teachers accountable for implementing real change to address poverty in their classrooms. They hold anti-racist workshops, and make teachers create action items they're held accountable for.
Schools would model representation and accommodation in how they lead meetings, the readings they assign.

The mantra I've had the last couple of years is "I love my students more than I hate X" with X being whatever nonsense I don't understand that week. This week, I had a hard time with that.
Just as the constant gaslighting women, and WOC, and queer women, receive all the time, especially at work, wears on us, exhausts us, saps our strength, I wondered how much my stress about anticipating how to act in a world not accommodated for me, wears me down too.

I know my happiest days are those with no adults in them.

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