Overlooked and Underserved: A Special Education Teacher of Color and the Social Positioning of Smartness

• In Event: 31.028 - New Directions in Curriculum Inquiry: Pushing Against/From/With the Margins

Abstract

Hatt (2011) used the concept of smartness as a cultural construct, rather than biological capacity, to describe how kindergarteners were positioned relative to peers in a classroom ethnography. Broderick and Leonardo (2015) also looked at smartness as an ideological positioning with benefits obtained from in-group membership. In this paper, I argue that special education teachers of color represent a wealth of knowledge and the potential to teach for racial and dis/ability justice in schools at a time when Black and Brown bodies are being policed, surveilled, excluded, and rendered invisible in U.S. public schools. Despite their potential for resistance and relevant pedagogy, however, special education teachers of color have been socially positioned as less than. The majority of special education teachers of color obtain their education certification from alternative, part-time, or expedited programs that suffer from staff turnover and under resourced courses. Further, special education teachers of color may experience their own level of racial trauma through K-12 school experiences, which they do not have opportunities to process and deconstruct. Left alone, these marginalizing experiences for teachers of color tend to lead to instances of internalized racism and deficit framings of Black and Brown young bodies.

Opportunities and experiences that deconstruct racist/sexist/gendered and ableist practices in schools are often reserved for teachers outside of special education, mainly because of the ontological positioning in behaviorism and positivism. A consequence of this reservation, however, is that special education teachers of color are left disengaged from coursework and practices that are critical to their work as change agents in schools. I argue, therefore, that in order to begin to change some of the most challenging issues linked with special education (ex: disproportionate representation) there must be a strong investment in the support and positioning of special education teachers of color. Using the theoretical framework of Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) (Connor, Ferri, Annamma, 2015), I focus specifically on tenet two, which emphasizes the interdependence of dis/ability and race as it informs special education teachers of color and their beliefs. Through qualitative coursework reflections and in-depth interviews, I draw on a counter story of smartness (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011) of a teacher of color who worked in a large, urban school district in Southern California as a special education preschool teacher.

Leena (pseudonym), an African American woman of color, shares her experiences of attending religious K-12 schools in a city that experienced “white flight” and has suffered from a long history of redlining practices. She also reflects on her experiences of raising her own two children in the same city and how her beliefs shift through coursework in special education that intentionally centers dis/ability and race. Finally, Leena describes how she created a map of resistance that allows her to challenge the hegemonic practices that serve to marginalize dis/abled/raced children through her role as a preschool teacher. Implications from her story address ways to challenge deficit beliefs of dis/ability and disabled/raced students in schools.

Author

• Saili S. Kulkarni, San José State University