Haunted Trauma Narratives in a School Community: Transforming "Disability" and "Inclusion" for Students of Color

• In Event: 66.037 - Race and Radical Imaginations: Critical-Theoretical Possibilities for Education Praxis

Abstract

Memorial Elementary has been transformed by dreaming of inclusion for special education students with severe emotional/behavioral disabilities (EBD), largely those stemming from complex traumas. By typical definitions in special education, inclusion and disability would not be recognizable as they exist at Memorial. Given this context, I have two purposes for this paper. One is to theorize what has transformed Memorial, its educators, and school community. My primary argument is that Memorial’s transformation has been made possible because it—the building, the students, the teachers and leaders—is haunted. Second, I consider how “disability” and “inclusion” might be reconfigured as the locus of a school community of resistance that affirms the presence and personhood of students of color with ghosts of trauma.

Author

• Irene H. Yoon, University of Utah