Worlds Apart:Disability and Foreign Language Study

By Tammy BerberiAssistant Professor of FrenchDirector, Hasselmo Language Teaching Center University of Minnesota, Morris

A Word from Simone de Beauvoir

~partout des contraintes, nulle part la nécessité.

Everywhere limitations, nowhere necessity.

Memoires d’une jeune fille rangée

Who is in my classroom?

11.3 % of students in undergraduate classrooms today report having a disability

40% report a learning disability 16% a visual impairment or blindness 15% a “health-related” disability 7% an orthopedic disability. 17% characterize themselves as “other” with

regard to these categories.

Where have these students come from?

An environment tailored to K-12 education and mandated by IDEA Accommodations determined by a team of

specialists who must complete and update an IEP (Individualized Educational Plan)

Reasonable accommodation in college

Education is no longer “free and appropriate” The Americans with Disabilities Act offers provisions

intended for the workplace, but has only recently clarified language to explicitly acknowledge higher education

Reasonable accommodation depends entirely upon a student’s self-disclosure

Students may not disclose because… they lack self-advocacy skills the stigma attached to impairment leads to all kinds of

misinterpretations and myths do not wish to burden professor with “extra work” or to

draw attention to themselves as a person who “can’t do it” or “makes excuses”

Reasonable accommodation in college

Accommodations in FL courses vary widely… Basic accommodations in the classroom, use of

adaptive technology, flexible attendance policies, extended test time, special sections with modified goals and pace, waiver for GER

and don’t work… Data suggests that the prescribed process for

getting needed services often fails: among students reporting disabilities, 26 percent received the accommodations they needed; 22 percent did not.

Who is not in my classroom?

Numbers of students with disabilities completing HS has risen from 61 to 78 %, but only half of these receive traditional diplomas (in NYC, only 23% of students receive standard diplomas; the rest earn an “alternative diploma”

Of the students with disabilities who began college in the 1995-6 school year, only 15% had earned a B.A. by 2001 (compared to 29% of non-disabled peers); nearly half of those students had dropped out

Examining our (Learning, Physical) Environment “I don’t have any students with

disabilities in my courses.” “If you build it, they will come.” U.S. Department of Justice crackdown

on college campuses to improve physical accessibility 3% housing accessible parking, doors, restrooms, signage,

seating, web accessibility

We’re “brainy” people!The four skills:

listening, speaking, reading, and writing

vs.

Recent advances in neurosciences: PET scans confirm that we draw on networks all over the brain to apprehend a word or a sentence, and that as we advance, all areas of the brain work less…

Building Networks

Recognition Networks “WHAT”enable us to receive and analyze information—to recognize patterns, concepts, and relationships.

Strategic Networks “HOW”generate patterns and develop strategies for action and problem solving

Affective Networks “WHY”fuel motivation and guide the ability to establish priorities, focus attention, and choose action.

Basic Principle of Universal Design

What’s good for some is usually better for everybody.

Universal Design in Instruction

UDI calls for… Multiple means of representation, to give

learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge,

Multiple means of expression, to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know

Multiple means of engagement, to tap into learners' interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation

Simple UDI strategies

Foreground learning “styles” to teach all students how to make best use of their strengths and compensate for weaknesses

Assign a learning styles profile Assign reflective essays at beginning and

end of semester Create modular syllabi that allow students

to choose how to demonstrate mastery Teach “bridging” techniques to activate

areas of the brain that are less effective

Simple UDI strategies (cont.)

Color-code to help students perceive and understand patterns of language

Make lectures and course materials available to all students for adaptation and self-study

Create a note taking network and generate sets of notes for each class period

If a particular student needs material recorded, make it a “teaching moment”: enlist students to practice and create the recordings for the student

Make technology-based ancillaries a centerpiece of the course, rather than an ancillary

Familiarize yourself with Assistive Technology at UMM so when you are called upon to help a student, you can

Technology

Textbooks are linear, while technology enables associative materials; that is, content delivery that engages all areas on the brain, thereby compensating for deficits in individual areas

Current state of affairs: we have to cobble together associative materials from scratch, which can be tremendously time consuming, and well nigh impossible if one isn’t trained or isn’t inclined to develop meaningful technology-based tools. BUT…

Introducing NIMAS

National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard

NIMAS, which took effect on August 18th, 2006, guarantees that all course materials used in K-12 be available in formats accessible to students with disabilities. A state’s failure to comply with NIMAS Standards results in loss of funding

Implications of NIMAS

For now, NIMAS does not apply to higher education and simply guarantees that the publishing industry will provide XML versions of all texts used in K-12. XML versions are much easier to feed to braillers or to read by means of a computer

But FL publishing is already quite advanced and vast amounts of material are already available in “alternative” formats. Why are these still alternative?

Putting the rubber to the road (when I feel like I’m still using my learner’s permit!)Take stock of what you already do well

(because we FL teachers are ahead of the curve) we encourage collaboration we are fairly well-versed in the use of IT,

though we should strive to learn more about AT we develop sequenced lessons that allow

students of all levels to participate we teach and encourage kinesthetic study

strategies and develop all kinds of activities for our classroom

Putting the rubber to the road (cont).In our teaching, what assumptions do we

make about how students apprehend material, the world?An inability to perceive sound or visual cues is only a deficit to us: people with disabilities experience our class and the world through their impairment.

Examples: Tactile activity Describing the seasons through sounds Film clip with sound / image turned off

The Flip Side of UDI

UDI also calls for us all to recognize the role we can play in mediating the stigma surrounding disability and in acknowledging it as part of the fabric of daily life and a dimension of simply being human.

After all, why have we become teachers of foreign languages and cultures?

Recognizing disability as an important element of the target culture Challenge body normative materials by

teaching students “the words to say it”: 1001: wheelchair, blind, deaf, disabled,

autistic, diabetic, HIV-positive Joe Shapiro: “There is a disability angle

to every story” Incorporate materials that relate the

history or daily lives of disabled people The James W. Moment

Examples for the French classroom

L’accès en France: http://www.infomobi.com, http://www.ratp.fr The story of Laurent Clerc and Thomas Gallaudet in

the 18th c. or Louis Braille Diderot, Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux

qui voientLettre sur les sourds et muets

Excerpts Notre Dame de Paris Gide, La Symphonie pastorale Collectif des Démocrates Handicapés Kristeva, Lettre au President sur les citoyens en

situation d’handicap

A final thought

"More than at any other time, when I hold a book in my hand my limitations fall from me, my spirit is free." ~Helen Keller

Basic ResourcesCenter for Assistive and Special Technologies

http://www.cast.org

David H. Rose,  Anne Meyer, and Chuck Hitchcock (eds). The Universally Designed Classroom: Accessible Curriculum and Digital Technologies

Thomas Hehir, New Directions in Special Education: Eliminating Ableism in Policy and Practice

Kendra D. Johnson and Trudy N. Hines, 100 Things Every College Student with a Disability Should Know

Andres Leibs, Field Guide for the Sight-Impaired Student: A Comprehensive Resource for Students, Teachers, and Librarians