When you have a disability, you have a different kind of relationship with rejection than non-disabled people do. Especially as a disabled child your day is spent in school receiving various forms of micro and macroaggression experiences of rejection all day. We receive all sorts of distorted forms of feedback that erode our sense of self-worth and question our identity based on other people’s biases. As a child you are not aware of this and internalize people’s ableist perceptions as accurate facts and it shapes a warped version of yourself for you to struggle with. No wonder people with disabilities struggle with accurate self-assessment.
Rejection is a normal experience that everyone experience. Not everyone is going to like us. Not everyone is going to want to date us. Not everyone is going to want to hire us. That is pretty standard for every single person. The sliding scale of the intensity of that reality depends on many variables. Depends how close you fit into societies definition of ideal.
There are movements happening. Movements looking to reshape the definition of beauty within the disabled community, accepting the different forms of the human body. Self-help acceptance movements in various disabilities have been building since the 1970’s in various communities and are quite established now.
When people dismiss the importance of tackling ableism as if it is no big deal, bring the discussion to the topic of rejection. Rejection is something that we can all understand and it can be a connecting point of empathy. Everyone knows what rejection feels like.
Groupthink is defined as “a process of flawed decision making that occurs as a result of strong pressures among group members to reach an agreement”.
“Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides people’s common sense desire to present alternatives, critique a position, or express an unpopular opinion. Here, the desire for group cohesion effectively drives out good decision-making and problem solving.” mindtools.com
RELEVANCE TO PARENTS: This could be why specialty programs never evolve, why some programs designed to fail are accepted by Boards, why some programs are described as a “dumpster on fire” and how they slip through the cracks. How things that are obviously broken in schools, stay broken, and how systemic oppression to marginalized groups are rarely challenged.
Does anyone remember the NASA Challenger disaster that exploded in space? When they analyzed the process that led to the deadly decisions, they concluded it was partly due to Groupthink.
Groups that are too cohesive, too tightly bonded, too tightly dependent on each other, too tightly socially connected, and are too similar, will bread an environment where it’s best that everyone just agree. Even when the evidence is laid out in front of them, it will be ignored and the pressure to agree will push people to just go with the flow and carry on. Conflict, even productive conflict, will be discouraged. An environment will become the norm where no one speaks up…even when they should. Groups that are too cohesive apply social pressure for everyone to conform. Disagreement is then seen as a negative trait, insulting to the members, or that person is labelled a trouble maker and their input is disregarded.
It takes a specific type of person to want to be a teacher. Many teachers have similar personality traits and temperaments, a common thread amongst all of them. For the people who have the desire to advance their careers, and for the ones who fit the tight mold of administration, I feel it’s a fair assessment in concluding they are all expected to belong to a very exclusive highly dependent social-work group.
Groups that create an environment where it is safe to disagree with the topic, are the level that we want our district and Boards to function. Especially because open system groups are the most responsive to change and feedback from their community. **Feedback is a crucial part of the program management cycle.
Points of impact:
Program development and program maintenance
Whistleblowing, staff not being able to bring up concerning issues
One way to tell if the Board of your school district is potentially stuck in a Groupthink path is to conduct an interaction diagram.
When you attend Board meetings…is everyone just agreeing? Constructive conflict is healthy. If you are doing an interaction diagram and all you see are support lines…you might have a poorly functioning Board.
Common Roles in Groups:
Task Roles
Defines problems
Seeks information
Gives information
Seeks opinions
Gives opinions
Tests feasibility
Group Building and Maintenance Roles
Coordinating
Mediating-harmonizing
Orienting-facilitating
Supporting-encouraging
Following
Individual Roles (Non-functional)
Blocking
Out of Field
Digressing
After a few meetings you can start to identify if statements are ones that are asking questions for clarification, which statements are supporting other points of view, which ones are blocking, disagreeing, requesting more info etc. Pick a few that you observe as repeated the most often and then start plotting. For every statement/question put a line. The arrows that go into the center of the group are statements that are said to the group. The arrows that directed at a specific person go directly to them. Then for any repeats of similarly purposed statements get a tick on the same arrow. This allows you to get a visual of how they function as a group. Too many supportive statements aren’t necessarily a sign of a functioning healthy group.
If school districts are interested in auditing their staff meetings from time to time, to get a birds-eye-view so to speak of how they function, the person doing the tracking, can’t be involved. Some meetings move really quickly and it will take practice for people to quickly identify and assess the types of statements/questions made. This is a quick way to take a pulse of the group for anything on the surface, and groupthink could be obvious.
For the parents attending board meetings, it’s great practice. Board meetings tend to move slowly so it’s a great place to practice and build your skill. Soon, you’ll be able to identify roles people play in PAC or school meetings.
Ideally, we want Boards of Education and district teams to have a high level of trust and respect in the group, where discussion or disagreement is welcomed, critical thinking is expected and they are open to feedback.
Does anyone remember a Twinkie? Do they even still make these?
Cut it half down the center and it will look like this….
This is one point-of-view, one perspective.
Cut it length wise…
This is another point-of-view, another perspective.
If you looked at the last two pictures individually, you could easily think you are looking at completely different objects. When in fact, you are looking at the same twinkie. Two different perspectives, same object.
I have worked in public schools. I am also a parent/advocate in the school system. Two perspectives. Same Twinkie.
If you are ever in the middle of trying to bring two conflicting groups together…look for the Twinkie in their communication. The reason they are arguing in the first place, is because there is one!
I think educators and parents have a lot more in common than we think. I think we often feel we are looking at two different objects, when if fact we are looking at the same thing with sometimes different understandings of how to arrive at the same goal. Sometimes. Sometimes we are looking at the same Twinkie.
Let’s larger the scope beyond parents of disabled children and front-line staff. There are many stakeholders in education. A mixed bouquet of perspectives. Do we all share a common goal?
So…when it comes to inclusive education…what is the Twinkie?
When it comes to literacy there are many documents and studies on the importance of having context and meaning, for the words we are learning to read, and how those aid in our understanding of text but also comprehension as a whole. Context and meaning can be applied to many activities that are requested of children in schools and not just be connected to literacy.
I worked in a class for teenagers with disabilities in a school outside of this province many years ago. Ok…almost 25 years ago. At that time, I was completing my student practicum for the Developmental Service Worker diploma at Humber College.
The teacher was trying to engage his students in cleaning up the classroom. This involved duties like wiping down tables, organizing book shelves and vacuuming the carpet. This one young man was Deaf with a developmental disability. He did not want to push this vibrating machine around the floor, just for the hell of it. Did not. Sometimes in classrooms when students refuse to follow instructions and complete tasks, behaviour programs come out, from star charts to more intrusive measures. This teacher was very creative. He walked over to the hole punch and removed the base. He scooped up all of the white dots and sprinkled them all over the floor. He took the vacuum and showed that the vacuum was sucking up the white dots and through American Sign Language and modeling explained, cleaning. The student walked over to the vacuum and vacuumed the carpet. He quite enjoyed it and was very satisfied by seeing the success of his work. His teacher gave the activity, context and meaning.
It doesn’t matter what type of a disability a child has, or whether they communicate this question to teachers or not, I can tell you, that when children are given instructions at school, they are asking themselves, WHY. Why do I need to run 4 laps around the gym? Why do I need to cut this paper? This overt purposeful planning of added communication, in my mind, doesn’t happen enough with kids with disabilities in schools. People tell them what to do, without explicitly explaining why they are doing it. And I can not scream this loud enough, visual supports are sooooo important. I really value my experience learning from the Deaf community in this context. They do such a great job of visual supports. It’s not viewed as a “crutch” the way some hearing people view it.
Context and meaning.
Next time your child is being viewed as “un-cooperative” at school, you may want to figure out if your child understands WHY they are being asked to follow a specific instruction. It may turn out that your child is not a sheep, and willing to just follow random instructions over and over again without any purpose, just for kicks.
I’d like to bring up the subject of scarcity and the concept of applying the impacts of limited resources in the education system. It could be physical, social, emotional, or mental scarcity.
Limited resources change how people interact and behave at the most primal survival levels. There are already many scholar reports on how scarcity affects decision making and neuropathways. Scarcity is when there are limited resources and people are not getting what they need. Animal and human behaviour will change in these environments. When something is scarce, people will put a higher value on it. People will use social capital, aggression, secrecy or whatever strategies they can to obtain those limited resources for their own unfulfilled need. This is evolution and not a personality deficit.
Whittling the education system to bare bones and creating an environment of such limited resources will turn Mary Poppins into Cruella Deville in just a few months. Work environments can become toxic. Communication and information among staff can be used as a source of power. Confidentiality among staff can be used as a social manipulation tool to build a sense of belonging or exclude. Subgroups become even more exclusive. People are being set up to fail. It’s not personal. It’s systemic design. Evolutionary instincts will kick in, and not the kind ones. Stress bubbles will burst. People will snap. Children included. Recruiting and retaining quality educators for any length of time, will be challenging. This will have more of an impact on students with disabilities and those in marginalized communities. I repeat. This will have MORE of an impact on students with disabilities and those in marginalized communities.
Understaffing is a form of scarcity. When there aren’t enough people to fill the job duties that are required for functioning, and people need to step over their own job description boundaries to fill in for other people’s work, that has multiple direction points of impact. If it’s chronic, then you’ll see the ripple effects of scarcity. Work environments will become “unhealthy” and over time people will become very dissatisfied with their work, ultimately pushing them out of the system and creating a deeper wedge in the cycle and it just goes on and on. Underqualified staff just filling “the body” in the role, is not the solution. Take a look at the number of job postings for school districts and take a look at the ones that are just continuously on repeat. The districts are all in the same basket. They are even competing with each other trying to coax staff out of each other cities with advertisements.
School districts are extremely complex human systems. The number of connections and moving parts is overwhelming to me when I try to put this system into a visual representation. It looks like a large spiderweb post wind storm. Not only do I look at all of the individual parts when I look at a system, but it’s the connections and relationships and what is generated out of those connections that also makes my head spin. Now put this very complex system in a situation of scarcity. This has disaster written all over it.
The alarming fact is that the direction the current climate of education in this province is heading, will require people to become even more competitive over the limited resources. Money won’t solve all of society’s problems; however, chronic underfunding is definitely the fuel to this education fire…amongst other things.
Brainstorming exercise:
Let’s list all of the resources that someone seeks in the education system. (I will list a few, but really, I am hoping to encourage the conversation and for people to start making their own lists)
Resources in education. (Staff and students)
Social relationships- support, sense of belonging, attention, power, purpose
Mental stimulation, communication, information, choice, adequate training, knowledge, context & meaning…blog about context and meaning for students coming in the near future!
Physical space, food, water, access to washroom, fresh air, safety…and yes all of this applies to staff too!!
Access to tools to complete tasks/goals with success
Time to process, time to complete work, alone time, enough sleep – proper work hours (homework or class planning)
Currency – (staff) to access resources in their personal life and avoid scarcity
Now take all of those resources to function. Put someone in the situation of abundance. All the time in the world, lots of attention, all the communication and information they need to understand their environment. Now take the minimal of what you need and cut it in half. Survival mode kicks in. You will have very different people on your hands.
If people have options, they will leave the system. We all have our breaking point.
Who is controlling the resources to this system?
It’s not the school districts. They may be managing…I mean struggling, with the system, but they aren’t the Wizard of Oz at the end of the road. The Ministry of Oz is hiding amongst ambiguous unanswered questions in their huge castle.
Provincial systemic issues, are going to need a provincial intervention approach, and will require a provincial response. Let’s start with some resources, shall we? Adequate funding please.
I have heard many people admit that they have sent emotional emails, or that they are labelled as “rude” or a “tense advocate”. I have heard of parents being banned from schools or they have had to pull their child out of their school or even the district because they are viewed as too emotional. When parents admit that they have “lost it”, and sent angry or emotional emails, it’s admitted as if its some shameful act. I will admit that I too have sent my share of emotional emails. So why are so many parents losing their shit?
This is a symptom of a much larger problem. This is what happens when there is no accountability for decisions made from district administration or Boards of Education. It’s when administration have all the power and don’t need to do anything they don’t want to. It’s when parents are bullied, have fear of retaliation, or are served emotional abuse on a plate with a smile. When there is a fish flapping around and behaving strangely, we all point at the fish and wonder what is wrong with them. No one looks at the pond. Let’s take a look at the pond, shall we?
Parents are legally required to send their child to school. Parents need to work and fit in daycare schedules to cover their working hours. Transportation from home to school comes into the decision-making filter and everything needs to fit perfectly. Now let’s say school is turning into a disaster, and as a parent you need to advocate. This is not a minor issue you are dealing with and you feel that your child’s physical or mental health is being severely affected. The stakes are high. This is after all your child. However, you are being ignored by administration. You are being lied to by administration. The problem is not being fixed, and they don’t have to do anything about it. They are gaslighting you. You feel you are an ant under a magnified glass and they are just watching you squirm in the sunlight. And. There. Is. Nothing. You. Can. Do. About. It. And now you send an email and lose your shit.
Parents, don’t feel bad. Your reactions are normal and given the situation, one could argue even healthy. The amount of self-regulation that I have had to go through to send emails to the district, is intense. There are times, I literally need to leave my home to get myself away from a computer. They are getting a fraction of my true feelings and intensity. It’s normal that one squeaks through, every now and then. It’s not you. It’s the pond.
Now, you have sent your emotional email. I have heard stories that as part of their strategy, parents have experienced the districts using their emails against them as emotional blackmail. I have never had this experience, thank goodness. I would snap. I’d think you would see me on the 6 o’clock news looking like I popped out of a zombie movie ranting about the education system. There is a definite abuse of power and toxicity about the lack of protection vulnerable children and families have in the education system.
