This essay is the continuation of a story with its origins in a tweet thread from December 2022. You can find further details on what the process of transitioning students with intellectual disabilities to high school looks like in the Vancouver School District (and why it needs to change) in this letter that I wrote to the trustees in February 2023. For more on what my ‘radical vision’ is for the future of high school inclusion in Vancouver, see any/all of Dr. Shelley Moore’s work, but especially her doctoral dissertation.
Last week I signed the paper and agreed to the ‘offer’ to place C in a “Life Skills” classroom at a high school that is not in our neighbourhood. We met the teacher and despite my fears and low expectations I did like him and what he told me about how he works, why he loves his job, how he especially loves the students. I liked that we were able to visit during school hours and meet the students and support staff (we had been told this wouldn’t be possible) and that one of C’s future classmates took us on a tour. I liked that four of the students in her class introduced themselves on their talkers. I was glad that C was comfortable right away and told us she liked the teacher. I was happy that the students in this class have lunch with the rest of the student population in the cafeteria. And that they take classes with them, even if those classes are limited to electives, for now. It isn’t the complete picture of what I dream of and know to be possible, but I think she will be happy there and learn.
I never wanted a school bus to pick her up at our door and take her to another neighbourhood’s high school each day…but then again she does love school buses. I never wanted her to be at a high school where she doesn’t know a single student…but then again she loves meeting new people. I thought I wanted the students who knew her to be able to see her in their high school…but then again we seem to have fewer and fewer connections to these students as they have grown older and seemingly less interested in C. I still believe she and her disabled peers in our community have a right to be properly included in the high school we can walk to, but I can no longer conjure feelings of fondness for that school when it doesn’t seem ready to welcome her.
I have learned that her growing is a process of being increasingly more left behind. By the non-disabled peers who are now socializing in vastly different ways, way beyond her and their desire to bridge the gap. By the school system that insists on its archaic practices, despite what they tell me about ‘being on a journey’ of properly including high school students. By a world that still insists on a certain way of being when it comes to those with intellectual disabilities.
We are left to carve out our own niches, communities, places where she can feel belonging. To grasp at the scarce opportunities to be a part of a group that gets it. To be witness to the chasm between what we know to be possible and what we are being offered. It is exhausting to keep insisting on pushing in on a society that doesn’t want to make room for her. A system that is constantly pushing back until she is eventually left out altogether. It is why most parents at this stage in their disabled kids’ educations have given up on trying. But despite my weariness, I am not giving up.
I signed a piece of paper with language on it I do not agree with. Before that, I bit my tongue in a meeting about the offer, listening to people who should know better say things that deeply offended me. It is frustrating that they will simply not know better until they have the supports and learning in place to update their practice. It is frustrating to know that providing and integrating that learning does not seem to be a priority of the district. When these people I met with talked about the “Life Skills” program at my neighbourhood high school they said those students will never ‘go out’ into the greater school community because of their particular disabilities (hence it might not be the place for C). They have created these homogenous, segregated groups of students with similar needs thinking it is what is best, not considering how much we can learn from those who have different strengths and stretches from us. In the meetings I’ve had with them they repeatedly called enrolling disabled students in their neighbourhood schools ‘mainstreaming’ despite how outdated that term is. And yet they insisted, over and over again, that they want transformation as much as I do and are working on it but simply aren’t “there” yet, in case I hadn’t already noticed by the number of times I had to stop myself (sometimes didn’t) from rolling my eyes, sighing, holding my head in my hands listening to their outdated terminology, wondering why the people whose job it is to know better don’t seem to know better at all.
The form that I signed is an offering of something that is, and we are accepting it with the determination to transform it into the something that we know it could be. This is not giving up. I have met with an engaged trustee who told me she agreed with me about kids going to neighbourhood schools but my further thoughts on the future of high school inclusion represent a ‘radical’ shift in philosophy for the district. We discussed the necessity of the district laying out their plans for how they will make strides in their ‘journey’ as without goals and strategies in place to mark progress and a clear statement of their vision, we can’t expect them to realize that vision. We discussed how imperative staff development is to achieve the radical transformation that I dream of. We discussed the possibility of a pilot project. I felt some hope.
I have also joined a small working group of parents who want positive change in the district for their kids with disabilities and neurodivergence. The existence of this group also offers hope, and an understanding audience for our mutual complaints and frustrations. Accessibility, inclusion, consultation, what steps can we take, how do we make this happen, when do we think we will see progress, these are the words and questions and conversations happening, and it is promising that there are some of us who haven’t given up on the possibility of better.
These are the parallel processes of making this transition – establishing C in the best possible existing situation for her high school education while working to improve the situation for all students on a systemic level. I want these high school years to be more than constant complaints filed against a system that won’t move out of the dark ages. I want her to experience joy and community and friendship and pride in her learning. That will be the marker of success for the next five years as much as any transformation to the system that I may help create. I want both of these things – feelings of success within what is and movement towards what can be. I am ready to see what’s next for us. I think we might even both be ready for high school.
