Khan Academy Ed Talks with Judy Heumann

Hello and welcome to Ed Talks with Khan Academy. I'm Kristen DeCervo, the Chief Learning Officer here at Khan Academy, and today I am excited to welcome Judy Heumann, who is an international disability rights activist. I look forward to talking to her about her work and how we can help learners with disabilities succeed in the education space.

Before we get started, I want to remind you that Khan Academy is a non-profit, and we are able to continue to do our work thanks to donations from folks like you. If you are able to, we appreciate every dollar that you are able to give. If you go to khanacademy.org/donate, you will find an easy way to make those donations.

In addition, we want to thank some companies who helped us during the COVID-19 crisis to continue to maintain the quality content that we offer, and those include Bank of America, AT&T, Google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and General Motors. Thank you!

Next, if you want to listen to other guests we've had or to re-listen to this episode in an audio version, you can find a podcast version of our Ed Talks in Homeroom Chats under Homeroom with Sal, the podcast, so take a look for that wherever you get your podcasts.

As I said, today I am excited to welcome Judy Heumann. She is an international disability rights activist. She's also an author; she's written more than one book, but her latest is "Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution." This is a book aimed at kids who are about 10 years old, so that's a good space if you have kids on your holiday lists—take a look for this option.

Welcome, Judy.

Judy: Hi! So happy to be with you!

Khan Academy: Thanks for joining us. So, let's take it out quickly.

Judy: Yeah, I was going to say, in addition to that book, the original book, which came out in 2020, is for adults and it's called "It's Not That There's Anything Pornographic." The writing is more for adults, so it’s called "Being Human: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist."

One of the differences between this book and "Rolling Warrior" is we had a group of young people work with us on the transition from the adult book to the youth book. So, you'll see not only is the cover different, the title is different, the layout is different, the chapter names are different. The story is essentially the same, but it's for a younger reading audience.

For all of you who are Japanese readers, the Japanese have come out with a translation of "Being Human," and here it is! So if any of you are in Japan or know people in Japan, it's the same book in Japanese.

I was very happy that people that I knew in Japan from the disability community wanted to translate the book, and you can get the book also in Great Britain. They have their version—same book. Sorry, guys, a little more boring cover, but same with "Barely's Life."

If I could also say, I’m one of the people in an A&E Academy-nominated film called "Crip Camp." I think "Crip Camp" is a really important film and it's probably for 10 or 11-year-olds and up. It's rated R, so some schools have not been able to show it because of that until the upper grades of high school. But certainly all of you should be watching it. It’s a great documentary; it's won the Peabody Award and many others.

It is, as I said, a documentary, and I think from an educational perspective, while it's not talking about pedagogy, it has a number of people like myself who had our disabilities when we were younger. I think it allows you to, in part, see some of the differences that existed in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and early 70s before there was any legislation in the United States that was meaningful and made it a requirement that disabled children go to school.

Khan Academy: Excellent! Well, you just took a whole lot of my recommendations! I recommend all those things, but particularly I found "Crip Camp" to be an excellent piece of work and also recommended.

So, speaking of your story, let's start there. Tell us a little bit about how your experiences growing up influenced who you are today.

Judy: Well, I was 18 months old when I had polio, and I learned when I was 36 that a doctor had told my parents that he recommended they put me in an institution when I was two. The reason I tell you I didn't learn about this until I was way an adult was my parents never wanted me to know this, which I think was a very good thing, actually.

But they're German. They were German Jewish refugees, and for any of you who know the history, under Hitler and in the Holocaust, the first group of people that they were killing were disabled people.

My parents, obviously, because they also lost all their families, were reconstructing and starting a new family. So, we were on the road to, from my parents' perspective, raising me like they intended to raise me if I didn't have a disability. But they began to realize that that wasn't really the case.

I mean, accessibility in the 40s, 50s, and 60s started changing in Brooklyn and New York City, but still not significantly. I started using a wheelchair; I used braces and crutches, but I wasn't really able to walk independently. My arms—I'm a polio quadriplegic; my arms are not very strong. I wasn't using a motorized wheelchair because they didn't even exist then. They started slowly coming in in the 60s and then more in the 70s, and I did get a motorized wheelchair in the late 60s, and I've used one ever since.

For those of you who work with children who have physical disabilities, mobility is something which is very important. Sometimes people look at using a motorized wheelchair as something which is not going to advance your strength, but I think the reality is that we really need to look at what children need.

One of the things children need is to be able to be as independent as possible with their friends. I didn't get a motorized wheelchair until my late teens, 20-21. So, I had never gone across the street by myself; I had never just gone out and walked around the neighborhood. I couldn't take a bus; I couldn't take a train; they weren't accessible.

All of those things, from an educational perspective, kids beginning as they're getting older to go across the street and visit a neighbor, and as they're getting even older, taking a bus to go someplace and being able to go to the store by themselves—those are things I couldn't do by myself. Now, of course, I can.

But I really think, you know, when we think about education, there's the classroom, but there's life, and life also does impact.

When my mother took me to school, the principal denied me the right to go to school because he said I would be a fire hazard. This again was before we had any of these laws in the U.S. I wasn’t like home-schooled because there wasn’t anything like that at that time. My mother was teaching me, and then in the first grade, a teacher started coming to the house twice a week—once for an hour, once for an hour and a half.

So until the middle of the fourth grade, I was getting two and a half hours a week of educational training. Then I went to segregated education, special ed classes, and quite frankly, they were not comparable to the same classes for non-disabled children.

Then I went to college and wanted to be a teacher, but was denied my teaching license because in writing they said I couldn't walk. So then I sued the Board of Education, and the judge remanded a case back to the Board of Ed, who did grant me another medical evaluation, and I did get my teaching license. I taught in New York for three years.

But, during all that time, I was learning. When you look at "Crip Camp" and read the book, you'll get a chance to understand what many of us were going through and still go through, and that is the discrimination that we experience and what both our families and we as individuals, as we're growing older, what responsibilities we need to take for ourselves and how we individually and more collectively have been working together, not only to improve the system but also to give ourselves stability and confidence.

Because, you know, one of the issues that this is not just a disability issue but race or religion, which is different or sexual orientation, whatever, and disabled people come from all of those categories: black, Asian, indigenous, Latino, gay, straight, Muslim, whatever.

I think what's important about the work, for those of you who are doing anything in education, is really to understand some of the very important additional issues that are beneficial for families and disabled kids to be able to get the kind of support they need so that, assuming they're getting a decent education, they are not fearful of going out into the world, getting a job, and being competitive.

Khan Academy: Yeah, that issue of establishing your own independence is such a key both psychological issue and an issue that we all go through growing up, but it has different kinds of elements as we're thinking about learners with disabilities.

When you think about students...

Judy: Students, yeah!

Khan Academy: Right, right. Thinking about schools, as many of the folks who are joining us today are related to either schools or teaching—broadly, how do you think about the needs of learners with disabilities in schools? What should folks that are in schools be thinking about in order to ensure that those students get the education that they need?

Judy: Well, you know, the word disability is so broad. So, there isn’t one approach for all kids. Now, that's also true for non-disabled children, so what we really need to understand is every child is different. Whether or not you have any kids that are defined as having a disability, as I was saying, not all kids learn the same way.

Part of what we're needing to do is to enable the teacher to have knowledge and confidence that they can look at what the needs of the child are. I do believe we need to be getting our universities to do a better job of teaching teachers and administrators about how to have effective classes and for teachers to have some more knowledge about the types of needs that some students identified with disabilities or not.

When I taught, there were no children who were identified in my three years of teaching who had disabilities. On the other hand, categorically quite a number of them did. They had things like learning disabilities or dyslexia at a time when those words weren't even known in the system.

I think it's teachers knowing how to teach reading because that's a very big issue in younger grades. I think phonetic learning is very important, and it's been shown to really help children learn to read and also in some cases not result in the child needing additional services. But if they do, at least you know that you've clearly been working with the child and the family to help them get the kind of supports that they need.

I think having an assistant in a classroom, which may happen if you have a disabled student, can be very helpful, and trying to have that assistant not just work with the disabled kids. Sometimes it needs to be that way, but I would say, by and large, you want the child to be in the classroom and be as integrated and included as possible.

It’s not being afraid; I think it’s really not only learning about the child but learning about the disability that the child may have. Really be there because you believe that the child can learn like the other children in your classroom.

I think those are all very important points, and it may mean that you need to, you know, get some literature, look at some of the organizations that are out there that could provide you with assistance. But I think the most important thing is that the classrooms of today—meaning now, 2021—continue to change every year with the diversity in our schools: cultural diversity, language diversity, food diversity.

I mean, I'll tell you a story. In the second year I was teaching, in the first year I taught special ed and I was an itinerant, which meant the teacher didn’t want to teach a class, they asked me. So I was teaching a myriad of classes. The second year, I had a second-grade class, and one day one of my students, who was a very good student—I really liked her—was kind of having a little rough day. Her mother would bring her to school and pick her up, and so when she came to pick her up this day, I said, “You know, could you please speak to Diana and just tell her that, you know, she had a little kind of rambunctious day and just talked to her about it, no big deal.”

The next morning, her mother said to me, “She will not do that again; I had her kneel on rice for three—three hours—saying, oh my goodness—some prayers.” I felt terrible because I had no idea that—I'm really—I was not hard with the mother; it was just like I knew the mother came here to support bringing her school every day. She was really engaged. So, I never said another word.

Yeah, it’s those kinds of things where we need to know more about the cultures of the families.

Khan Academy: Yeah, that makes sense. What are some things that we can do to— you mentioned, you know, if the student—when the students are in the classroom, we want them to integrate with their peers and have those interactions that are so important. What are things we can do to work with students or that students themselves can do to help make sure that that’s happening?

Judy: I mean, first of all, I think the teacher sets the example. If you are setting an example that this child is not being distinguished—they may be getting some assistance; they may be sitting in a different place in the classroom—but it’s to allow for the students to really learn and respect different ways that children learn.

Depending on the age, younger children really are pretty into accepting each other, and if there is any bullying going on, I think that's something which really needs to be addressed right away. That shouldn't be just because typically if somebody is bullying, they're not just going to be bullying the disabled kid.

I think, you know, we’re hearing that one of the effects of the COVID period is that kids are exhibiting more angry behavior in classrooms than before. So, I think it’s just a mix of what’s going on. Some of the universities in your area also have teachers who are knowledgeable about inclusive education; that's something that you also may want to call on.

And I hope that you were receiving some education in school about working with students who have disabilities. But by and large, I think it's you treat the student like you treat any other student, and that sets an example for the class about what you're expecting through your leadership.

Khan Academy: Right, that makes sense. We have a comment that came in from Facebook from Cynthia Bailoff Slava, who says, “I feel we have youth with invisible disabilities, things such as anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety.” This reminds me of your comments, especially now. It seems like some of those are there, and those can go under the radar in our system. How do we ensure that we're making sure we're serving all students who may need help?

Judy: I wish I had an answer or a magic one. I think your point is very well taken, and those children and youth have always been there. But I do think we are seeing it in a much more extreme way. There are more students, and it really is a district issue, a principal issue—meaning really looking at social workers and school psychologists and others who need to be there so that as a teacher, you can be given some basic skills on how to be working with students like this who may not be identified as having a disability.

They may need to be identified in order to be able to get appropriate supports, but not to pull them out of a classroom but rather to make sure that they can get some accommodations that could be helpful.

So, you know, they could be anything from extended time for testing. I really think some of the flaws in our system are now really becoming more apparent—like not having enough school social workers or school psychologists.

Khan Academy: And, you know, if you have time, it's also getting other teachers who can really be working with families and trying to address some of these issues from a fiscal perspective with school boards and city governments and state governments.

Judy: So, that leads into my next question. Your history of activism is so impressive. How do you advise folks to maybe start getting into a little bit of advocacy or activism in their communities?

First of all, anybody in education is an activist, because that's the way I feel about it. You know, you have a commitment to working in a classroom knowing that there are all kinds of diversity: families at different income levels, different needs. In some way, you know, teachers are also a little social workers, right?

We have lots of responsibilities. Yes!

I think some people, you know, will get active in a union, will get active in teacher associations. For me, the work that I've done in advocacy has typically not been—I mean, I advocate on my own behalf—but the majority of the work that I've done has been collaborating with others who have similar views and objectives.

I think that’s really what we’re talking about: what do we need to do to ensure that children in our classrooms are getting the right education? In part, that means what do we need as teachers to be able to be as effective as possible? At the end of the day, for disabled children, my belief is children need to be in integrated classrooms. They need to be getting the support so that they are living in the world of today, and that's the other students also see them as valuable members of the community.

We have a range of people with various forms of disabilities. Some people don't have a good day every day, and it may be because of their disability, and it may be because of COVID, and they're having more acting out. You know, we need to—I very much respect the amount of work that goes on for a teacher. But really, I think from an advocacy perspective, allowing people to have more of an understanding of what we believe can be done and what we need in order to achieve that.

Khan Academy: Fantastic! So, if you did have a magic wand—and we'll get back to that magic wand—what are one or two things that you would like to see changed about either schools or legislation about schools or things to improve on where we are today?

Judy: Well, one is that all educators, school board members, administrators, principals, teachers believe that all disabled children can learn and have the right to learn and that the education system has the responsibility to teach that.

Universities are doing a better job of training teachers so those teachers are equipped to effectively work in a classroom, and if they have a child or two children or three children, whatever it may be, with disabilities, that they feel confident and that they get the support that they need.

But I think still too many universities are not training general ed teachers in basic education to work with children who have disabilities. Some universities are doing better jobs; they're offering dual degrees in early childhood and primary education, but there’s still not enough of that going on.

So, in waiving my magic wand, it would be that academics that are training teachers really have more knowledge about effective ways of inclusive education, which I also believe addresses issues around race. Because I think what we are seeing, and have seen for many years now, is that the biases that teachers may have towards certain populations of kids may also be resulting in higher rates of suspensions and expulsions.

Cultural competency, I think, is really difficult. Honestly, I also think that salaries need to be raised so that people, like in Finland and Japan, and other countries, teachers are earning and respected for the work that you're all doing. And I think that’s something that is not as strong as it needs to be, and I'm really appreciative of the work that all of you are doing.

Khan Academy: Well, that is the end of our 30 minutes. I really appreciated all those thoughts. Particularly, I think that's an interesting point about bias being across groups and thinking about where that is. Thank you so much for joining us today, but thank you more for all of the work you've been doing in activism for learners with disabilities.

I look forward to seeing what you do next and to picking up your most recent book.

Judy: Thank you!

Khan Academy: Thank you very much!

Interpreter: Thank you!