Emily Ladau:
Hi, I’m Emily Ladau.

Kyle Khachadurian:
And I’m Kyle Khachadurian.

Emily Ladau:
You’re listening to another episode of The Accessible Stall.

Kyle Khachadurian:
What are we going to talk about today, Emily?

Emily Ladau:
Well actually, for once I’m handing it back over to you because this time, you get to introduce our guest. I feel like that’s fun. Usually I’m like, “Who do we have, special guest?” but it’s your turn.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes. Today, we have a guest on our show and we could not be more excited about it. Would you please introduce yourself?

Emily Ladau:
Special guest?

Alex Parker:
Hi, my name’s Alex Parker. I’m a fourth grade teacher at Cossitt Avenue Elementary School in La Grange, Illinois.

Emily Ladau:
Oh my gosh. Okay. We were so excited when you agreed to be on the show with us because we both immediately gravitated towards what you have to say. I feel like we should probably back up for a few seconds and explain how we got here.

Emily Ladau:
Kyle and I got connected with a really cool organization called The Nora Project. Alex, I’m going to have you actually tell us a little bit more about The Nora Project in a second, if that’s okay. But we gave a keynote conversation. Is that a thing, a keynote conversation?

Kyle Khachadurian:
It is now.

Emily Ladau:
It’s usually a talk, but we gave a keynote talk for The Nora Project. Alex happened to be on that particular call and said some things that really resonated with us. We were like, “Why don’t we just get him to come on the podcast? Because he seems really cool.” Honestly, this is just our way of talking with a cool person. I’m not going to lie.

Alex Parker:
I can always appreciate that. I can always appreciate that.

Emily Ladau:
We’d love for you to tell us a little bit more about The Nora Project, and then we can dive into what you do specifically.

Alex Parker:
Yeah, absolutely. The Nora Project’s goal is really to promote disability inclusion by empowering educators and engaging students and communities. The Nora Project has a series of curricula that really look to bring disability into the conversation. There’s a series of lessons and activities that teachers get to do with their class for an entire year, which I think is really the thing that drew me to the organization, is that it’s a year-long curriculum. It really allows for teachers and students to have meaningful conversations about what disability is, and it provides a disability education for students. I think there’s a real focus on just the identity aspect of who we are and how disability fits into the idea of identity as a whole. It’s an amazing organization that got brought to my school a few years ago, and I’ve just gotten very involved in it.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That is so cool. Actually, when I first heard about The Nora Project, Emily, it’s when we got approached and I met Lauren through you. I never heard of them before and I just love what they do. I remember the week before our keynote, I was talking to my girlfriend about how excited I was to be giving it because it’s such a necessary, needed thing. It’s so cool. Tell us a little bit about how you landed in your field.

Emily Ladau:
How did you get here? Why is it you telling us about The Nora Project?

Alex Parker:
It’s like how did I end up here in a conversation with both of you? Okay.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yes.

Emily Ladau:
Right, in this particular very moment, why are you here?

Alex Parker:
In this very moment? It’s really interesting. I tell people about how all of these things, they came to be because I went into college and I wanted to be a dentist. That was my goal from age 10.

Alex Parker:
I was like, “I want to be a dentist. This seems awesome. Everyone else wants to be a medical doctor, so I want to be a doctor but not like everyone else. It’s like I’m going to be a dentist.” I took a chemistry class and I was like, “Okay, there’s no way I’m going to be doing science for the rest of my life. This ain’t the life for me.” And then I quickly pivoted to law school. I was like, “I know how to read and write well. I’m going to play into my strengths.”

Alex Parker:
The person that I was dating at the time in college was a special education major. It was the first summer after our freshman year. I didn’t have a job and she was like, “Well, I work with this really amazing organization that provides activities for both children and adults who are disabled. They need volunteers who’d be willing to do it.” I was the 18-year-old in his first serious relationship with all the alacrity in the world and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll totally volunteer. Yes, I’ll do it.” I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I was just like, “Yes. If you want me to do it, I’ll do it.”

Alex Parker:
Honestly, it’s one of those things when I look back at where my life is and I’m like, “That’s actually the thing that changed my life, was actually my willingness to volunteer,” because I started working with the Illinois Special Olympics Young Athletes program, so it’s kids age two to seven who have various disabilities who are just trying to gain those motor skills to be able to participate in sports. I played soccer my entire life and through college and so I was like, “Wait, this is something I’m good at.” I was like, “Wait, I’m actually having fun doing this,” every time I come to volunteer. I hit the point where I was like, “I think I need to be a teacher. I think this is what I need to do.”

Alex Parker:
That relationship ended, of course, at some point in college, but the notion stuck with me that I wanted to go into education. I actually went into general education. I didn’t go into special ed because I started working at a day camp the following summer and I was like, “I think this is my niche. Elementary grades, I feel like I’m really talented at this.”

Alex Parker:
I’ve been teaching them for four years and a few folks in my school brought The Nora Project to me, that a parent had brought it to my administration. A parent in my school at the time had met Lauren from The Nora Project, who’s the executive director of TNP, and this parent was like, “We got to bring this to our school.” The parent brought it and my principal, he’s amazing and he’s like, “Oh, yes. This sounds great. Let’s do it.” He ended up tapping on our instructional coach and our special ed teacher, who approached me about it.

Alex Parker:
They had no idea that I had a disability background and that I volunteered with the Special Olympics Young Athletes program for about five or six years. When they brought it to me, I was like, “Wait, this is like what got me into education in the first place. I’m so passionate about this.” I love that I get to bring this to my general ed classroom. From there, it just really took off. That’s how I got here.

Emily Ladau:
Neither of us were expecting such a cool answer, not because you’re not a cool person, but just because everyone’s like, “Oh, I just wanted to help the poor disabled children.”

Alex Parker:
Of course.

Emily Ladau:
That was a way cooler answer.

Alex Parker:
I’m glad. I feel like I learned, now that I’ve helped to interview people in my school, that the answer that I’m like, “You should never give,” is I want to work with kids. It’s the answer that I feel like that’s the generic box answer, is the “I just want to work with kids.” I’m glad that my answer is not that.

Emily Ladau:
No, it’s way more fun. And also, I feel like what I love about that is that it was very organic as opposed to a forced “I’m going to fix everything for the disability community.” I’m very into the vibe here. I’m really [inaudible 00:07:38].

Alex Parker:
I appreciate that.

Emily Ladau:
I wanted to narrow our focus a little bit to talk specifically about the work that you do with The Nora Project and also through your teaching. A birdie called the internet told us that you have been a presenter on your research on inclusive schools and disability education around the world. True or false?

Alex Parker:
This is true. If it’s on Google, it’s obviously true.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, exactly.

Alex Parker:
You should believe everything you read on Google, and it’s true.

Emily Ladau:
Okay, great. We passed the first step. Second one, Google also told us that you were a Yale University Teacher Action Research Prize winner for your work, which is no big deal or anything.

Alex Parker:
That’s also true. Google’s right.

Emily Ladau:
Oh my gosh. Okay. Google, Google coming through. But really, what we wanted to get to is that earlier this year, you wrote an article for Edutopia. Do you say Edutopia or Edutopia? It’s a very important question.

Alex Parker:
I was hoping you’d say it first because I say Edutopia, but I feel like people probably say it differently. I’m just like, “I don’t know. Phonetics says it should be Edutopia, so that’s what I always say.”

Emily Ladau:
We’ll link it in the show notes. But it’s a really good article. It talks about why disability should have a place in the work that we do in schools around anti-bias. Obviously, we agree. We’re all for it, but can you talk a bit more about why that’s so important and just about your research in general?

Alex Parker:
Yeah. I think I’ll go with the research part first, just because I feel like that was on the path to getting me to where I am now with the Edutopia publication that came out this summer.

Emily Ladau:
Yeah, take us on a journey.

Alex Parker:
Of course. I would say with the research, I mean it just came to be that my first year working with TNP, the assistant principal at my school at the time, who’s now a principal at another school in our district, just passed along the Yale Teacher Action Research Prize and just the parameters for that. I was like, “Wait, this seems really interesting. This fits in line with what I’m looking to get out of my students anyway.” It was just a lot of looking at my students and seeing is the curriculum actually really making an impact. TNP’s amazing about… They have amazing data people and they have great research that shows the impact that it has, but I think like any person who enjoys data, I just wanted to see where that fit into the space that I had.

Alex Parker:
I reached out to TNP and was like, “I’m really interested in just seeing how the questions that you have for the surveys that we give the kids, how that fits into my class. Can I utilize that and then look into some boring, old research and see if this is supported by research that has been done by other scholars and see the path that we’re on? Is this in line with what we read in literature?” They were totally onboard. Lauren and Katy and other amazing people at TNP were like, “Yes, do it. Do it. Great.”

Alex Parker:
But I honestly didn’t think anything would come of it. I just thought it would be a cool opportunity to… It was before I’d… I’m starting grad school again now in August. I’ve always loved doing research, and it was honestly an opportunity for me to keep myself busy. I love research and I want to see how effective this is for my students in the first year. I was just like, “Let me just put something together,” and so I spent a couple months just writing a research paper.

Alex Parker:
I think the amazing thing, when I submitted it to Yale, was how the data showed how amazing the exchange was in my students in their beliefs and sentiments and impressions on other children who had disabilities. That was really the focus of it, was baseline, how do my students view their peers who have disabilities? Do they view them as someone who they would want to play with, as someone they have something in common with and someone they would approach, or is it kind of a, “Oh, that’s maybe a little too different for me”? The baseline data showed that most of them were a little hesitant to spend time with a disabled child. As I did surveys throughout, and as I got to my end survey, which would’ve been about March or April of that first year, it was a complete turnaround where it was 90-plus percent of students said, “Yes, I want to spend time with a child who’s disabled. Yes, he would be my friend. Yes, I will hang out with them.”

Alex Parker:
I think to me, that was really the amazing thing, was to see that wow, this program really works, this year-long program. That was what sold it in the literature, too, is that everything I found that was, I’m going to use quotes here, “a school-based intervention”, is what it’s called in literature, was maybe one presentation, maybe two, maybe six weeks. But the few that were longer term, that were maybe one or two months, had the biggest impacts statistically on kids. But the fact that The Nora Project was a year long was really the thing that I sold as to why I think it’s such… Made such an amazing impact, was I’m like, “This is something I couldn’t find in the literature and other places.” I’m sure it exists. I don’t have PhD yet. I think that’s what made it really amazing, and it made me realize that there’s something here, but there’s work for other teachers to do.

Alex Parker:
Most schools aren’t doing The Nora Project. Where does disability fit into this? That was my initial thought process, but then it really came to light post May 25, 2020, post George Floyd when lots of people started to really no longer hit the snooze button on what was going on in America and in the world. I think that was a point when organizations and schools became more interested in… Maybe some people in our school and our order are doing this work, but this is something we want to put in the forefront. This is something we want to do. My school district has been amazing in the past few years of doing a lot of equity work and really looking at this, and so I think that it really became the nice meeting point of the work I had done with my research and then where it seemed that education was trending. It seemed to be a great meeting place.

Alex Parker:
I reached out to The Nora Project and I was like, “If there’s anything I can do to help this along,” because I also work in education policy in Illinois and I do a lot of anti-bias/anti-racist professional development within the state, and so I was like, “Is there anything I can do?” They’re like, “Yes, absolutely.” At that point, I had a great relationship with them.

Alex Parker:
To me, it really became how can we get disability to fit into this narrative and this idea of anti-bias work? How can this fit into the work that we’re doing? Because I think there has been such a focus in some schools, not all, but in some schools post May 2020… Or some schools were doing it before. Not to say that every school just jumped on a bandwagon. There are schools who have been working on it before, but I think disability’s what’s left out of the conversation. I think for somebody who’s biracial, that’s a part of it, but I think disability is left out.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I would’ve loved school so much more if I had a teacher like you growing up. And I am someone who did love school. That’s just amazing.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Piggybacking off that, how do we, or teachers, implement lessons on disability in classrooms? What are best practices and what should be avoided?

Alex Parker:
I think this is a conversation I have a lot because… And I think that for a lot of people who have this willingness to do this work, they’re like, “Okay, I read this great book,” or “I was in a book club,” or “I attended this professional development.” A lot of teachers do work in the summer. Over the summer, teachers will do work and then they’re like, “All right, my kids roll through August 23. August 25, we’re talking about it.” I’m like, “That’s where you might get to the point of doing more harm than good.”

Alex Parker:
I honestly don’t even engage in these conversations with my students for the first few weeks because step one is community building because, I mean, I found, too, that disability is a conversation that oftentimes, as a fourth grade teacher, my students haven’t really talked about it. Or maybe they’ve been made aware of it, maybe there is a student who is in the grade level who has a visible disability, but they’re not aware of invisible disabilities. They don’t have family members who have disabilities. They don’t understand how this fits into identity. They have a general awareness, but some of them are like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Give me all of the information because I want to know what you mean.” Step one, before I even get to that because it’s a new conversation, is the community building piece because I think that when I was in fourth grade, I wouldn’t want to talk about something I was unfamiliar with or didn’t know or that would change my viewpoint on the world with a bunch of strangers.

Alex Parker:
A lot of it that I do at the beginning is we just get to know each other. We build relationships and we build trust. I make sure that my students can understand that there’s a level of consistency they’re going to get when they come in my classroom every day.

Alex Parker:
They know what to expect. It may be a hilarious, silly version of myself that’s different every day, but I think I want them to know that they can rely on me. They can rely on their classmates and peers. Safe space and brave space. We feel safe with each other, but it’s brave in the sense that we’re willing to talk about things. We establish routines and just how to communicate and how to listen to each other respectfully and how to ask questions instead of judging. I think that’s the big part of it, is the communication piece, of understanding how to have a conversation, and then we get into, “Let’s define it.”

Alex Parker:
I think defining terms is big, too. What does disability mean? What does disabled mean? What are visible versus invisible disabilities? What are disabilities that you may have heard of, that you haven’t?

Alex Parker:
I think for them, it’s building the knowledge base because they’re nine and 10. I think a lot of it, for us, is just building that knowledge base and then from there, I really tie into conversations that I’ve already started to have with my class about other aspects of oppression and discrimination. We talk a lot about stereotypes and prejudice and discrimination and how that looked historically, but then we also utilize great resource called Newsela, which takes new articles but it writes them for kids at their grade level. We just utilize that to read about what’s going on in the world.

Alex Parker:
And so we start to tie what we see with disability to what we’ve already talked about. They’re like, “Oh, this is a stereotype, too, because just as someone thought that girl couldn’t play football, they also think this boy who’s in a wheelchair can’t play in sports. But that’s not true.” It’s that synchrony between the work that we’re doing. It’s super multifarious, but I hope that could elucidate a bit of what it looks like in my class.

Emily Ladau:
I think that the way that you gave the overview, I could almost forget for a second that you were talking nine and 10-year-olds. I think that we’re at the point where we still need to be doing some of this regardless of age, regardless of location, regardless of setting. I feel like we’re still really at that point with disability where we do first need to build trust to have these complicated and complex and nuanced conversations about something that so many people consider an identity but to other people, it’s this taboo thing we don’t talk about. You’re not supposed to talk about it. It’s bad. It’s negative. It’s scary. We’re not supposed to even acknowledge that it exists.

Emily Ladau:
I actually was thinking about it from the perspective of how much people would benefit from having opportunities to have conversations like this in the workplace and not just in educational setting. I really feel like we’re missing the opportunity to do that trust building and not just have disability be this once-a-year awareness day or awareness week or whatever the case may be.

Alex Parker:
I think that’s so much of what I think about, too, is how does this translate beyond the elementary grades? How does this work continue? I mean, The Nora Project has this amazing curriculum that’s called the STEMpathy Club. It’s for students who have… Especially for mine, it was like once they had moved past the Storyteller Project, which is the one that I work on, is the one that has the very large curriculum. The STEMpathy Club is the one that is students who are a little bit older and are looking at how they can create inclusive spaces in their school or community or environment. I had students for two years in the STEMpathy Club and now, they’ve gone off to seventh grade and they’re going off to junior high. I know a lot of them are still really invested in this work but I wonder, what does the work look like as they continue to get older?

Alex Parker:
One of them mentioned that she wants to be a special education teacher. I’m like, “That’s awesome,” because I didn’t even know what that was at that age. But I wonder, as these kids who have gone through these conversations, how does that translate into the future? Because right now, yeah that doesn’t really happen in the workplace, or it happens once. It’s like an opening day thing. It’s one and done and then the fans don’t come back out.

Alex Parker:
I’ve thought about that a lot, too, of how can we make this a longitudinal piece of people? How can my students, when they translate into working age, be the real conduits for change in their working environment and be the stewards for change who are wanting to bring this into their workplace or who will eventually be in positions of power, who are the ones who are making this happen?

Alex Parker:
I’ve thought about that a lot. It keeps me up at night occasionally, maybe once every year, but I thought about it. Not all the time. I usually sleep really well. Usually, I’m really tired. But I thought about it, so I can agree with that, for sure.

Emily Ladau:
You, tired? Can’t imagine.

Alex Parker:
No.

Emily Ladau:
With all the energy?

Alex Parker:
No.

Emily Ladau:
Can’t imagine. You said something that raised a question for us, though.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. We were just curious. Can you elaborate a little bit on STEMpathy Club?

Alex Parker:
Yeah. Honestly, it’s another one of those things that I actually didn’t want to do it because I have no time on my plate. After my first year of doing The Nora Project with my fourth grade class who are now going to be seventh graders, I remember telling someone at The Nora Project, Katy, I was like, “I don’t think I can do STEMpathy. I don’t have time to continue to work with the students that are leaving me because I’m getting a new batch that are coming in. I’m actually changing grade levels.” I’m like, “I don’t have time for this.”

Alex Parker:
And at the end of the year, my class was like, “So what happens now? Is it over? We leave you, but is The Nora Project over for us forever?” I was like, “No, it can’t be. We have to keep going.” And so I took it on because the STEMpathy Club, it’s an amazing… As I mentioned, Nora Project has a suite of curricula. They have the Primer Pack, which is for younger students to just begin the conversation, and then the Storyteller Project is, again, another year-long thing but it’s what my students currently do, where I think we really get into some amazing things like the history of the disability rights movement and the notion of ableism. We really get into some meaty stuff.

Alex Parker:
But the STEMpathy Club is more of like the… My students have the background. They have the knowledge. They have the terms. They know how to do it. They’ve had these meaningful discussions but now, how can you do something actionable? How can you look at your school or your community, and how can you see there is a lack of accessible spaces or inclusivity? And then how can you make a change? Put together a pitch and go talk to your principal or go talk to admin or talk to other teachers. How can you inform the student population that you have about what’s going on? Is your gym not accessible? Is your lunchroom not accessible? Are classrooms not accessible?

Alex Parker:
COVID, unfortunately, impacted a lot of the work I was going to do with the students I had for two years because they were… Right as they were wrapping up, we spent the last year plus doing all of it virtually. But I think it’s really great that it allows the students to take it from the theoretical to the practical, where they really get to look at the space around them and say, “What can be done to make this accessible?” Because not every space is accessible in terms of the social setting or just the physical setting. What needs to change about that?

Emily Ladau:
We’re just over here marveling behind the scenes because we’re very into this.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I can’t imagine young children pitching their principal about inaccessibility. That, to me, is mind-blowing. I mean, I believe you, but that’s unbelievable. That’s so cool.

Alex Parker:
Yeah, it [inaudible 00:25:20].

Emily Ladau:
Especially because I think when I was that age, I was not cognizant of those issues.

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, exactly.

Emily Ladau:
Despite the fact that I am disabled, I don’t think that I was quite so aware that I could just go up to someone and be like, “I want to talk to you about how we’re going to change this situation.”

Kyle Khachadurian:
Exactly.

Emily Ladau:
I mean, I don’t know. Can I actually say that with Sesame Street? I don’t know if I can say that. Because at 10 years old, I was basically being like, “Actually, I think you should change some things.” I mean, I wasn’t aware that I was [crosstalk 00:25:55].

Kyle Khachadurian:
I mean, talking to Elmo is different than talking to your principal, though.

Emily Ladau:
Right. Principals are scary. I mean, not really. No, a little bit. Principals are kind of scary. I hope none of my old principals are listening to this. They’re definitely not.

Emily Ladau:
But I have a question. In all of this, how do you avoid pitfalls and any sense of tokenization? Because I find that when we talk about disability, it’s pretty easy, especially when you’re young and you’re trying to use association with what’s around you, to say, “Oh yeah, like Billy has this disability and Tommy has this disability.” Suddenly, it goes from being a conversation about the fact that disability is an identity and disability is something that is part of the human experience to calling out particular people because that’s what we see and know around us. I think that happened to me a lot when I was younger, where I went from being someone who was part of the group to someone who became the token disabled kid and who was almost used as part of the lesson, rather than being included in the lesson as another student.

Emily Ladau:
I’m wondering how you navigate that particular pitfall. I know that’s not necessarily an easy question, but I think because you have the insight of having done this in year-long stretches, I’m particularly interested in what that looks like.

Alex Parker:
I learned this lesson early on teaching, but not about disability, but about race, that when I would have conversations about multiple forms of discrimination and oppression regarding… I think it was a conversation regarding the civil rights movement or something. I teach in a school district that, well, my school in particular is like 80-plus percent white, and so I typically only have a few students of color every year. There was a point when I was teaching a lesson and a student brought up, “Oh, so people who are Black like insert student here couldn’t do this.” I was like…

Alex Parker:
As I’d mentioned, we built this trust and set up these community agreements and how we have a conversation. I was like, “I’m going to own up. I think I missed something.” I was like, “Whenever we’re talking about anything,” I was like, “whatever it is, let’s not ever use each other as an example. We can talk about things that you’ve seen in spaces or your understanding or something you’ve read in a book or seen in a movie or whatever, but let’s not ever use each other unless that person volunteers that information.”

Alex Parker:
If someone wants to add to the conversation that “This really strikes me because as a student of color or a Black student, I think about what my family members had to go through,” yes, let’s absolutely honor that identity and honor that experience. But if that kid doesn’t want to bring it up, we’re not bringing it up. That’s something I learned a few years ago, and so I feel like I’ve tried to include that in my framing of it when we’re having these conversations really early on.

Alex Parker:
And The Nora Project has this amazing lesson on identity. It really talks about the notion of intersectional identity, where the students get to talk about all things that make up who they are. When we have these conversations, we talk about that it’s really from an absence-based perspective as opposed to the deficit model of everyone is bringing something unique to the table because we all have these different identities.

Alex Parker:
Yes, there is overlap between our identities, especially with race or gender, for example. There seems to be a large overlap. But there’s also a lot of places where identity doesn’t overlap with them. It could be religion or it could be siblings or it could be someone’s adopted. This one might have two parents of the same gender. There’s a lot of places where we don’t overlap. I feel like a lot of it is just understanding that we’re all bringing something unique to the table, but not necessarily… Again, not calling that out unless the person offers that up.

Alex Parker:
I’ve had students throughout The Nora Project who have brought up their learning disabilities. They’re like, “Oh, we’ve talked about things that make people unique, or how sometimes we learn differently. We all learn differently than each other.” They’re like, “Well, one way that I learn differently than other people in this class is that when I’m reading, I have to process information this way or that way.” Then, that’s the time we honor like, “Oh, thank you so much for sharing that.” Someone else is like, “Well, yeah. I feel like I’m really good at math, but I struggle with handwriting.” And so it’s like I only do it if someone’s willing to offer it up, but we try to avoid that… We actively eschew that notion of pointing out the students who get pulled out for a certain service or pointing out a student who is disabled.

Alex Parker:
I think for us, it’s really establishing that early and just knowing if someone wants to talk about it, yes, we’re going to let them talk about it and we’re going to listen to them share their experience that we don’t have. But if someone doesn’t want to bring it up because you don’t want to be that token… And especially being Black and Mexican and having grown up in suburban Chicago, I found myself in that position a lot. A lot of times, I wouldn’t want to talk about it. I’m like, “Yo, let’s not go into my… Because you can tell I look different than everyone else, so let’s not continue to belabor this point.”

Alex Parker:
I think that’s the early setup, and they’re really great about not pointing kids out and saying, “Oh, this student does this,” or “This student moves this way,” or “This student has to have a special list to be able to see this way or hear this way.” I think establishing it early, fourth graders are really great about that. They’re amazing about that.

Emily Ladau:
Get them while they’re young.

Kyle Khachadurian:
That’s a really elegant solution to avoid a potentially big problem. I really, really like that. Piggybacking off of that, what do you think that we miss when we’re not addressing how marginalized identities intersect?

Alex Parker:
It’s one of those pieces I think a lot about. I think about it in my own life, and then I think about how that applies to other things. I think about the idea of one of my favorite and least favorite acronym simultaneously, the TERF, the trans-exclusionary radical feminist. I think about how there are people who can be vociferous feminists, but only for people they believe are biological women. I’m like, “We’re missing some things here.” Or feminists who only support the causes of white women. I’m like, “We’re missing some things here.”

Alex Parker:
We’re all struggling. Maybe there’s a different struggle, but our struggles aren’t siloed. They don’t exist in this complete mutual exclusivity. Even though the oppression that occurs and the marginalization that occurs happens for different reasons and the etiology may be different, but at the end of the day, there is still a level of oppression that’s happening. It’s like we should really work together against these issues as opposed to just saying, “I’m only looking at this cause,” or “I’m only supporting this cause,” or “I’m only working on this,” because so many of the experiences, they really are interwoven.

Alex Parker:
As I mentioned before, that my students are really easily on their own able to connect issues that they saw with stereotypes for girls versus boys for disabled children. It’s the same thing. They notice it all the time when we read books that talk about oppression that happens racially in the country or in the world. They’re able to see that and they’re like, “Well yeah, but then also,” because especially when we started talking about the history of the disability rights movement, and they’re like, “Oh, disability justice is really amazing but,” they’re like, “1990 wasn’t that long ago that this big act or law got passed.” I’m like, “Yeah, the ADA.” I’m like, “That’s the year when I was born, actually.” They’re like, “Okay, maybe it was that long ago.” I mean, it’s not that long ago.

Alex Parker:
I think for them, they’re like, “Wow, the fact that they were fighting for the same things as…” They connect it to the civil rights movement. They’re like, “Oh, we talked about this in this book that we read,” or “We talked about Ruby Bridges,” or “We talked about amazing activists like Fannie Lou Hamer. Wait. Wait, hold on.” They’re like, “They’re fighting for the same thing, but years later.” They’re like, “Couldn’t we have just fought for it all at the same time?” I’m like, “That makes a lot of sense,” but I was like… I mean, I didn’t go too deep and like, “Our country wasn’t really necessarily ready for that, unfortunately,” and we’ve had that conversation, too.

Alex Parker:
But I think that’s the thing, that if my students can see that, I think that adults should be able to see that, too. That if my students can point out, “Man, a lot of people have had and are still having a hard time in America. Maybe we shouldn’t just fight for one cause and only support one cause or only fight for one cause when there’s a lot of groups that need support or help.” I think that’s a piece of it, is I make sure that all my conversations don’t just focus on one aspect. They don’t just focus on disability. They don’t just focus on race or ethnicity. They don’t just focus on gender issues or identity.

Alex Parker:
But having those conversations, they may be on different days. We may read one book that’s just about disability, but then when our conversations happen, the deeper into the year, the more they’re able to connect things. I’m like, “Ah, this is it. Ah, this is exactly how I think about it, too.” I think that’s a big part of it, is we can’t just… Our liberation’s tied together, so we got to fight in multiple spaces [inaudible 00:35:58].

Emily Ladau:
As you’re focusing on getting kids to come to an understanding of historical context and also contextualizing it in what’s currently going on in our day-to-day and our political atmosphere, how do you capitalize on what I imagine to be youthful idealism like saying, “Oh, why didn’t we just fight for all of this at the same time?” and also ground it in the reality of the fact that we live in a very complex and nuanced world? I mean, I know this is a huge question here, but again, I’m thinking about it from the perspective of not just youthful idealism, but I suppose people who are working in social justice movements who are firm in their belief that we can move ahead to a better future but at the same time, we exist in our current reality.

Emily Ladau:
I think I’m asking for myself. I was going to say asking for a friend, but I’m asking for myself. [crosstalk 00:37:02].

Alex Parker:
That’s fair. That’s fair. I think one of the things I do appreciate, which you brought up, is I do appreciate about fourth graders is that they have this just amazing viewpoint, that they just… It’s weird that they’re starting to see that world isn’t fair, but they don’t quite have that jaded notion of a teenager just yet.

Alex Parker:
I definitely lean into their youthful exuberance, for sure, because I feel like when I work with a lot of adults, a lot of times it’s very gloom and doom. They’re like, “Ah, well.” And I get it. My parents were born in the ’60s and they’re like, “It’s never going to change.” They’re like, “Things that we were seeing when I was a kid, you’re seeing now. It’s never going to change.” I totally understand why my parents feel that way. You’ve seen this for 60… Well, I’ll say 59 because I’m sure my mom will listen to this and she’ll be like, “You’re telling people I’m 60.” She’s 59, everyone. She’s got time. She’s not 60.

Alex Parker:
And I totally get why they say that, but I think as you age, you see how things play out. But I think for nine and 10-year-olds, they spend probably five to six years not even having these conversations be on their radar, so they only have three years of being like, “Oh, I read a book Martin Luther King.” I’m like, “Whoa, this is interesting. I didn’t know this was really a thing.”

Alex Parker:
I feel like a lot of is I try to use their enthusiasm in the way of solutions based because I feel like in conversations that I have with other adults, a lot of times it can just be very theoretical. Especially with people who are well read, you could talk about issues in our country for hours. You could talk about historically why there are issues in our country with oppression and marginalization and where we’re at now. But it’s like that’s good and fine, but I think some people want solutions. That’s where I’m at and that’s the work I try to do in my district, is how can we do actionable things?

Alex Parker:
I feel like for them, I ask them, “What can we do that’s actionable?” Especially with The Nora Project, they would design games that were inclusive for people of abilities. They would talk through like, “Okay, let’s not just make this a game where in the middle of it, you have to do this certain dance move,” because they’re like, “Wait, not everybody is able-bodied and can move their legs in the way that I move my legs.” They’re like, “Instead of it being a dance move, you could do something silly. Whatever you think is silly is how you’ll do it.”

Alex Parker:
I feel like I try to push them to just be like, “Okay, we’ve talked about this, and you’ve started to realize that not every game that you play is inclusive to people of all abilities. How can you create something that’s different, or what would you differently?” And they’ll bring up things to me like, “Well, I was in this space and I saw it didn’t have an elevator,” or “None of the signs had braille.” I’m like, “Okay, what would you do?”

Alex Parker:
So a lot of it is just trying to get them to think about the solutions. I feel like because they’re so almost quixotic, which I love about them, and Pollyanna-ish, which I love, that it’s like they don’t feel defeated by anything yet. I feel like when I ask them about solutions, they’re not like, “Oh, I tried this and it didn’t work,” or “Someone else tried that five years ago and it didn’t work.” They’re just like, “Yeah, I want to try this. I want to do it.” I tend to use their enthusiasm as, again, an asset.

Alex Parker:
But I think the other part is just the reality of things, that I feel like especially post George Floyd that I don’t have to explain anything to them. I think that the parents in my community are really great about having conversations with their kids. All year, they came to me about things. After the summer, they were coming up to me telling me, “I went to a protest this summer,” or “I read this book,” or “I had this conversation with my mom about this,” so I feel like they now have just become so aware of what’s going on. They were very tuned into the election. I ended up teaching about the Electoral College because they wanted to know.

Alex Parker:
And then post January 6, they were the ones who came into me and were like, “I saw what happened on the news. What’s going on? Tell me more.” I feel like they have seen how things have played out in this country, so I feel like I don’t have to tell them, “Oh, you’re in fourth grade and you think everything’s positive. But sometimes, bad things happen.” They know bad things happen. They know that the world isn’t… They’re like, “I think first graders,” they’re like, “I think if they had this conversation, they wouldn’t have it the same way that we’re having it, right?” I’m like, “Oh, totally,” because I think that they know what’s going on in the world, but I think that they’re still at that age where they’re just so excited about how can I be the change?

Alex Parker:
How can I do something? How can I have a bake sale to fundraise or something creative like little flyers to pass out about climate change to put in other classrooms? I’m like, “I’ll print it out for you. Let’s do it.”

Alex Parker:
Those are the things where I’m like, “I’m just going to lean into it.” I’m just going to absolutely support them in their enthusiasm because I know at some point in life, it will go away. I’m just like, “Let’s use it as an asset because you have enthusiasm that most people don’t have.”

Emily Ladau:
I feel like you’re describing me when I was little, down to the bake sale and the flyers for climate change. I’m not even kidding. In fifth grade, after the attacks on September 11, I was like, “I don’t know what to do with myself. Let’s have a bake sale and raise some money for people.” And then when I was in high school, I was like, “Oh my God, climate change. We need to start an environmental club.” Kyle’s laughing because this is very me.

Emily Ladau:
But yeah, I wanted to be as solutions oriented as I could be within my still admittedly narrow scope of understanding. Also, I need to acknowledge that I grew up in a predominantly white middle class bubble. And also, where I live is heavily, heavily conservative. Even though I grew up in a house of democrats, doesn’t mean that I had that very strong grounding in social justice. But I was like, “I see things happening and I need to do something.” That was my approach to it.

Emily Ladau:
I’m interested in talking a little bit about the notion of allyship. I think that can look different to kids and adults, for sure. But I actually want to turn it around on you, if I can, because I think that this whole conversation, you’ve been demonstrating how to be an ally without actually saying, “I’m an ally. Give me a sticker.”

Emily Ladau:
I mean, what is it for you that drives you to be an ally in the way that you are? How can we drive other people to be an ally without having to give them that gold star for doing it, if that makes sense?

Alex Parker:
Yeah.

Emily Ladau:
We’ve been talking about this in other episodes. What was it? Episode on skepticism, Kyle, that we did?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah. We did a whole episode on how we, Emily and I, but also some of the greater disability community as a whole, is skeptical inherently of well-to-do, able-bodied folks. I have to tell you, I did not feel that for one second since you’ve been here. I think it’s just because you demonstrate allyship in a way that we wish most people did.

Alex Parker:
Appreciate that.

Emily Ladau:
I think we’re giving you the gold star, but also we want to talk about how to do it without needing the gold star. It’s a little bit of a complex question, but I feel like you’re up for the challenge.

Alex Parker:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think about this in two ways. I think one of them is, is that for me, my lens is it’s a moving target. To me, it’s never a place that you arrive because your actions can be something but to me, you’re never actually there because the needs of people and communities and society are constantly changing, that someone could’ve been really invested in anti-bias/anti-racist work in 2014, but that looked very different as of August 5, 2017 when Charlottesville happened. And that looked very different on May 25, 2020, post the murder of George Floyd. There are constantly things that change and evolve that make you have to look at what am I doing and how does it fit into the needs of the community which I don’t belong to, because you can be very well intentioned, but your intention does not always equal impact.

Alex Parker:
I think that’s always something that I try to focus on, is where am I needed? What can I do as opposed to just being like, “I just want to help everyone and just do whatever”? That’s not what’s necessary. I can’t just help everyone because I think I understand what I’m good at and what I’m not, and so I feel like I try to just [inaudible 00:46:32] the assets of what I’m good at.

Alex Parker:
I feel like for me, my lane is what I do with my students. But it wouldn’t be other things. I work in education policy, but I would be really bad at looking at policy for special education in the state of Illinois because I’m not a special ed teacher. Even though I have all this history and background of working with disabled students and kids, that doesn’t mean that I’d be good at that. I’m not just going to be like, “Wait, yes. I’m this ally. I work in policy and I work with The Nora Project. Here I am. I’m going to help write this legislation.” Absolutely not. I would ask someone who’s a special ed teacher and be like, “You work with these students every day. This is your area. I’m taking a backseat. This is not me.”

Alex Parker:
I think the second thing for me, too, is Dr. Bettina Love, who’s this amazing anti-bias/anti-racist educator, talks about the idea of an ally versus a co-conspirator. She gives this amazing narrative that I’m not even going to do justice to about what that essentially looks like. She’s like, “A co-conspirator is about putting something on the line.” She’s like, “An ally is someone who’s read all the books and they’re at every meeting.” But she’s like, “When it comes time for action, you’re looking around and you’re like, ‘Where are they?'” she’s like, “They got an Uber and they took off.”

Alex Parker:
She’s like, “An ally is a person who’s well informed and well meaning,” but she’s like, “A co-conspirator is someone who puts something on the line.” She gave the example of Bree Newsome and James Tyson when the Confederate flag came down in South Carolina about four, five years ago and about how essentially, James Tyson was a white man who helped save Bree Newsome’s life because the police at the time were going to tase the flagpole to get her down.

Alex Parker:
She said, “James Tyson, if he was on the outside of the gate, he just would’ve been like, ‘Oh, Bree, the police are here.'” But she’s like, “No. He was on the inside of the gate and he put his hand on the flagpole. The police aren’t going to tase a flagpole with an able-bodied white man putting his hand on the flagpole.”

Alex Parker:
For me, I try to frame it in that way, too, of again, in my scope of what can I do that’s meaningful that may be a little bit out of my comfort zone. I don’t know, maybe James Tyson didn’t want to be inside the gate. Maybe he just wanted to be on the outside with a walkie-talkie and being like, “Oh, the British are here. They’re coming in 50 yards.” Maybe that’s what he wanted to do, but the most important thing for that to happen was for him to be inside the gate and put his hand on the flagpole.

Alex Parker:
Especially when I started with The Nora Project, it was uncomfortable to talk with my students about disability. I had never done it with kids, and I’ve been teaching for four years at that point. But for me, it’s like, “Okay,” but I do feel like I’ve come into my own as a teacher. I feel like I know how to build classroom community. This is something I can do.

Alex Parker:
For me, I was like, “I am putting something on the line because this could go terribly wrong. I could say the wrong thing. I could give them misinformation. A parent could email me.” There’s something that could go wrong here but for me, I’m like, “But this is something that I know that I can do if I work at it.” I’m probably going to screw it up a couple times, and I’m sure I have, but I feel so much more comfortable now, this is going to be my fourth year with The Nora Project, because I was willing to not just say, “No, I don’t know if I can teach my students about disability. That seems really tough. They’re too young. They’re in fourth grade. Ask an upper grade’s teacher. Ask a junior high teacher.” But I was like, “Yeah, I want to do this.”

Alex Parker:
I think for me, it’s like taking on those challenges, but again, that aren’t just like, “Oh, I’ll do anything for you. I’ll do anything,” because I can’t do anything. I have limitations to my abilities. Where is it that I can make that change and try to do that, but not try to… I’m not going to go become special education teacher because that’s not what my skillset is. I would have to go back to school and do that. That’s not me, so I’m not just going to sit here and pretend that just because I work with an organization that now I can differentiate instruction well enough to do that. I think that’s probably where it fits in for me. It’s putting something on the line, but knowing how I can make an effective change instead of just being the cheerleader who has the gold star and says, “I do everything.” No.

Emily Ladau:
I’m not usually speechless, but I’m just like, “What?” I mean, I have to be very honest. To peel back the curtain a little bit, Kyle and I have a Google Doc with our questions and we’re just typing back and forth about how great we think you are, not because of the allyship gold star, not at all, but just because I feel like we have behind the scenes been looking for someone who would articulate a lot of this because we have a lot of people who are disabled and who listen to our podcast because they’re seeking out solidarity and they’re seeking out how they can be better allies, but we also have a lot of non-disabled people who are listening to the podcast because they are genuinely wondering how they can be better. How can I be an ally? How can I be a co-conspirator? How can I be an accomplice?

Emily Ladau:
I think that we can only answer those questions insofar as we are disabled people, so we can tell you what we would hope for, but we can’t really tell you how to do it. Everybody has to figure that out for themselves and what that looks like. The fact that you’ve been sharing what that looks like for you, and I think giving really strong and concrete advice to people who are like, “I want to do something. I want to help, but okay, let’s back up. Let’s think about how to do it very mindfully and thoughtfully,” is an incredibly valuable resource. I’m just going to make every educator, teacher, HR person, human being that I know listen to this, to be quite honest.

Emily Ladau:
But I know that we have managed to make this a rather lengthy conversation, and I think you’ve already shared so much of yourself and we’re very grateful, but are there other resources that you would suggest people check out if they don’t want to stop here, which I hope they don’t? If they see this as a starting point or a point on whatever journey they’re on, where next? Where do you go?

Alex Parker:
I feel like I’m always that person who, at every space, I’m like, “You should really go to The Nora Project.” I hate being that person. I’m like, “Am I just plugging them all the time?” But I feel like I’m totally that person who’s like, “Go look at their website.”

Alex Parker:
I say that because as an adult, you can be like, “Oh, so it doesn’t just have to be building ramps.” I feel like for me, that’s the thing, is that it’s so incredibly multifarious. For folks like me, and I think for people who actually started doing this work a few years ago, really didn’t know. Growing up, I was just like, “I don’t know.” I guess to me, it was just like, “It’s only physical disabilities. It’s only visible…” I had no idea until I started reading, so I think that’s always the first place I say to go.

Alex Parker:
But honestly, I think the biggest thing for me when I was really curious about something, because I’ve had to do this with my students, is I really thought about what is it what I want to know in particular, because I think… And I do amazing anti-bias/anti-racist work with other educators. I say amazing not because I’m tooting my own horn, but because the people I work with are amazing. These other educators are amazing. The work that we’ve done is we put together a toolkit. It was about resources for anti-bias/anti-racist work. We did it because people didn’t know where to look, because people were just googling things and they’re like, “I don’t know where to look.”

Alex Parker:
For me, I think the biggest thing that I found, especially with my students, too, is I’m like, “What is it that you want to know about in particular?” I’m like, “Because if you just google the word disability or disabled, you’re going to get so much and you’re not going to know what it is.” With my students, I’m like, “Well, what do you want to know about in particular?” They’re like, “Well, I want to know about visual impairments.” I’m like, “Then that’s what you need to look up.” I’m like, “If you want to know about Down syndrome, that’s in particular what you need to look up, as opposed to just being like disability ally.” Well, I feel like [inaudible 00:54:59] random things and now, they’ll be like, “Wait, disability co-conspirator. That’s what I need to type in now.”

Alex Parker:
Because again, if you want to make the change in the way that you want to make the change, think about what is it that you want to do. Do you want to work with an organization that’s in your community or neighborhood? Then you need to look up what organizations exist within your neighborhood or community. Or if there is books you want to read, look up book lists that are informative or something like that for what you’re trying to find. I feel like for me, I tend to say, “Focus the looking as opposed to just a broader one-stop shop,” I think, and look at multiple places because you need to make sure the information you’re getting is what you really want.

Emily Ladau:
I think that’s solid advice. It’s funny, because when you said look up disability co-conspirator, I just googled it super quickly just because off the top of my head, I was wondering what that would bring me to. And also, recognizing the differentiations between a lot of concepts within the disability community, so disability rights and disability justice. If you want to learn about disability rights, you google disability rights. If you want to learn about disability justice, you google disability justice. And recognizing that the community itself is not monolithic and that if you just look up disability, you’re not going to be focusing on learning about a community. You’re going to be getting this very, very broad and all-encompassing overview. That doesn’t boil down to the fact that we’re all human beings who have very different experiences dependent upon the other identities that intersect with disability, dependent upon where we grew up, dependent upon whether we communicate verbally or not, dependent upon our gender identity, dependent upon so many things.

Emily Ladau:
That’s the point that I’m always hoping to get across to people. I think people look at me and they’re like, “Oh yeah, disability. White girl in a wheelchair. Totally. I get it.” I have to remind people so often I am perhaps your picture of disability. I perhaps match the little parking placard, if you will, but I am not the saint of disability. I am one human being who does not know what it is like to be someone who is Black or indigenous or a person of color who’s disabled, who comes from a different economic background, who comes from a different geographic location. I know I’m a little bit on my soapbox here, but I just think that when people think of disability, their scope is so incredibly narrow, so I appreciate how much you have helped us to remember how easy it can actually be, in some senses, to broaden that scope simply by recognizing that you really need to focus in on what you’re trying to learn, as opposed to being like, “Oh yeah, disability. One word. Totally. I get it.”

Alex Parker:
Right, yeah.

Emily Ladau:
I think we have officially reached a natural ending point. I could ask you a million more questions, I’m not going to lie to you, but I feel like we should wrap up. What do you think, Kyle?

Kyle Khachadurian:
Yeah, I think now is about a good time.

Emily Ladau:
All right. At the end of every episode, we have a little something we like to do. This time, I’m going to let Kyle do it.

Kyle Khachadurian:
We do this thing called final takeaways, where you basically summarize one lesson you want listeners to take away in a sentence. I don’t think I have one. I don’t think I could say anything that’s even one tenth as good as everything you just said.

Kyle Khachadurian:
This is, I think, the first time I’ve ever been completely at a loss for words on this show. I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. I mean, this was incredible.

Alex Parker:
I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Emily Ladau:
Now, it’s your turn. You have to give us one sentence. Ready, go. No, I’m just kidding.

Kyle Khachadurian:
No pressure.

Emily Ladau:
However many sentences you need.

Alex Parker:
I think my takeaway, if I could try to make this pithy and not very full of verbosity and loquacity as I always do, is I would say the goal to becoming an ally and eventual co-conspirator is figuring out how you can best make an impact, as opposed to just trying to be the person who just wants to do everything and wants to try to save the world, because we don’t need one person to save the world. The only way the world’s going to be saved is if everyone fills these little roles. Everyone does the part that they’re supposed to do. Some people’s roles are bigger than others, but I think that’s what it is for me, is just coming to that understanding of knowing what’s in your locus of control, maybe pushing past that a bit to become uncomfortable, by not trying to be…

Alex Parker:
I live in Chicago. I’m not changing everything in Chicago, and that’s not happening. I can make a change, but I’m not literally going to change the entire city. We’ve had a lot of mayors that I’m pretty sure have been unsuccessful. So that’s what it is for me.

Emily Ladau:
One mind at a time. That’s my general approach to life. I think I’m just going to make that my final takeaway because I can’t say anything better than that. On that note, Alex, is there anywhere across the interwebs that we can find you, or are you well hidden?

Alex Parker:
Well, I was going to say apparently, I’m not well hidden because you googled the right things. No, I was going to say in particular, no, I don’t have a website myself that I… My only plug that I ever have is the website that I have that focus on anti-bias/anti-racist work is the only one that I ever push for people to go to because at least I’ve made that. It’s teachtochangenow.org. I feel like that is at least a place of resources. When we’re talking about intersectionality, they can find other resources that fit into this conversation, I feel like, the disability community versus other notions of anti-bias and anti-racism. That’s all I got.

Emily Ladau:
That’s perfect because we were going to ask you for some research links to put in the show notes and some of your work to put in the show notes. Please, everybody, go check out that website. I know I’m literally going to do that as soon as we’re done talking. Thank you so much.

Emily Ladau:
This has been incredible. I really hope that if you stuck with us through this entire hour, which is one of the longest episodes that I think we’ve ever done, to be quite honest with you, that you have taken away as much as I know we have. Alex, thank you for joining us.

Alex Parker:
Yeah, thank you [crosstalk 01:02:13].

Kyle Khachadurian:
Thank you so much.

Alex Parker:
I appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Emily Ladau:
And on that note, whew. I am Emily.

Kyle Khachadurian:
I’m Kyle.

Emily Ladau:
And you have just listened to another op of The Accessible Stall.

Kyle Khachadurian:
And might we say you look great today.

Emily Ladau:
Fabulous. Good night.