What is ableism?
According to the Center for Disability Rights, Inc. (CDR), ableism is a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities. Furthermore, it often rests on the assumption that disabled people need to be ‘fixed’ in one form or another. Ableism shows up in classrooms in a number of ways, but it tends to be rooted in negative cultural assumptions about disability.
For example, the idea that it is “better” to walk than roll; to talk than sign; to read print than Braille; to spell correctly independently than with the use of a spell-check, etc. This arises from a lack of understanding of disability issues such as efficiency or difference. It’s just as efficient to roll as to walk from class to class. It’s as easy to obtain information in Braille as in print.
Ableism operates on individual, cultural, and institutional levels: each of us has our own implicit biases.These resonate in our cultural beliefs and practices.
Our cultural norms determine the institutions that we build.These negatively impact people with disabilities because they have created barriersーboth literal and figurativeーwhich disallow people with disabilities from full participation.
Personal, cultural and institutional ableism reinforce one another: as our culture and institutions inform our individual perspectives and biases, so in turn do our personal biases resonate in our culture and institutions. In addition to modern ableism, the Latin classroom must contend with the Romans’ legacy of ableism.
What does ableism look like in the Latin classroom?
Textbooks and resources
The treatment of people with disabilities in the ancient world, and its depiction in our textbooks, must be confronted. Oftentimes people with disabilities are erased entirely from our textbooks. When this happens, it’s important to supplement the textbook.
For example, when teaching vocabulary through PowerPoints or storytelling, include people with disabilities. When someone is reading, for example, there’s no reason they couldn’t be reading Braille. When people with disabilities are represented in our textbooks, in my experience, they are portrayed through a lens of ableism; books tend to report how the ancients regarded people without actively critiquing Romans’ assumptions and beliefs.
If characters with disabilities are othered by your textbook (if they are presented as caricatures, rather than as whole people; if their existence is played for laughs or presented as part of a larger spectacle), it’s important to point that out to students and to discuss it with them. Name it for what it is: ableism. Otherwise we run the risk of reinforcing negative assumptions or stereotypes, and doing real harm to students.
Classroom practices
Because personal, cultural, and institutional forms of ableism exist and often reinforce one another, it can be difficult to untangle the ways in which ableism exists in our practices. Unless we critically examine how we ourselves were taught and assessed, we are likely to teach and assess in the same waysーand with the same biases.
What can we do about it?
Here are some ways I combat ableism in my Latin classroom
- Use videos with closed captions
- Arrange my space so everyone can access what they need
- Judicious use of fonts and colors: Is everything legible to everyone?
- Format tests and quizzes into manageable sections that don’t feel overwhelming
- Be aware of learning disabilities when writing and grading assessments: no assessing paradigms; use rubrics based on ACTFL proficiency guidelines; focus on error patterns, rather than each individual mistake
- Provide targeted, scaffolded feedback. A student doesn’t need a list of all their mistakes. Instead, highlight a specific change they can make, or one specific area in which they can improve. For example, if a student makes most of their mistakes with tenses of verbs, address that issue, even if they also made mistakes in other areas.
Final thoughts and further learning
We must work to understand disability culture and its place in the majority culture; recognize stereotypic and stigmatizing views of persons with disability; create socially and curricularly inclusive environments for students with disabilities; and cultivate ability awareness. Remember that we don’t know what we don’t know. Build empathy. Learn to see the world through other lenses.
Learn more about this topic in Jenn’s webinar on equitable assessment:
Jenn Jarnagin has taught Latin at the Episcopal School of Dallas in Dallas, TX for the past six years, and taught Latin for twelve years prior to that. She is passionate about making Latin fun and inclusive, and believes that every student deserves to see themselves reflected in her classes. Jenn utilizes research-based practices that help all students find success. In addition to her work in the classroom, Jenn also serves on the Finance Committee of ACL and is an active member of Lupercal. She holds a B.A. from the Louisiana Scholars’ College at Northwestern State University, and an M.A. from Indiana University. You can follow Jenn’s work at here.
Nota bene! This piece on combatting ableism is part of our Diversity and Inclusion in the Latin Classroom series. As this is a new initiative for us, we would very much appreciate your feedback. Please let us know what you thought of this piece.
With your feedback, we hope to expand the project into a robust toolkit for teachers, adding resources and perspectives to further learning and effect meaningful change together.
To learn more about the series, please visit the home page.
