One Disabled Student's Dream Syllabus Statement

Vee Kennedy

<h1> One Disabled Student's [[Dream->Inclusion]] Syllabus Statement</h1> by ''Vee Kennedy'' [[I->I, The Professor]] am committed to making our [[classroom->classroom]] culture [[inclusive->Inclusion]]. If you are [[a student->You, the student]] with a disability or you think you may have a disability, including mental health conditions such as but not limited to [[depression and/or anxiety->Statistics]], please contact me as soon as possible to discuss ways in which I can better accommodate your learning needs. While we may also discuss university procedures for establishing [[formal accommodations->Syllabus Statements]], I do not require that my students are registered with the campus Disability Resource Center to discuss these needs. I [[welcome->Inclusion]] this conversation [[at any time->time]], from any student, regardless of diagnosis, documents, or lack thereof. The [[[Campus Resource Center->Disability Resource Center]]] is located in `[Location]` and can be reached at `[Contact Information]`. Depending on your support needs, you may also benefit from other services on campus or in our community, as outlined in the [[Student Resources->Student Resources]] section of this syllabus. [[Statement of Critical Making->Critical Making]] | [[References->References]]

''I, The Professor'' The mentor. The teacher. The grader. The one who writes your letters of recommendation. The person you, the disabled student, must ask for a job reference. The one who stares you down when you bring them a piece of paper from an office. The one who hopefully won't say, "Oh, PTSD? I didn't know you were a veteran," when you are not in fact a veteran and something somehow even more unseemly if you do also happen to be a veteran because there is no right way to be disabled in the classroom. <iframe src="sketch2344002/index.html" width="100%" height="400" title="Shitty Things Professors Say to Disabled Students"></iframe> ''Clickity Clack '' //The above frame contains click poetry of the following phrases, provided here for accessability purposes. Each click generates one of these phrases in white text on a pink background as coded in p5.js. To simulate the disabled student experience, hear a bunch of these over and over without real solutions. // You don't look disabled How did you get into this school? DEI—Didn't Earn It What was the trauma? Where did you serve? Don't you get tired of leaching off your parents? You're a burden to your family

The dream is just to be included, like everyone else. "Minute requirements for access accumulate and interact with other forms of privilege and marginalization and can result in the loss of access itself," said Annika Konrad (2021, p. 182), in "Access Fatigue: The Rhetorical Work of Disability in Everyday Life."

''You, the Student'' You want to learn. To grow. To thrive. To be included. You look to this page of the syllabus [[first->first]], knowing nothing of documents or ecologies or how much or little control your professor has over this paragraph because this is the paragraph that tells you if you will be able to so much as breathe in this room for the next sixteen weeks. Perhaps this page was written ten years ago by a faculty member who no longer works here. Perhaps it was penned by an anonymous person in an office on the other side of campus. You don't know. You won't know. You will simply try to be. <iframe src="sketch2344005/index.html" width="100%" height="400" title="Shit I Want to Say to Disabled Students"></iframe> ''Clickity Clack'' //The above frame contains click poetry of the following phrases, provided here for accessability purposes. Each click generates one of these phrases in white text on a pink background as coded in p5.js. // You're welcome here You matter You got this Neurosparkly Bitches ain't shit Keep going! The world will change

''The kids are (not) alright. '' The 2009–2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, 2020) showed overwhelming growth of students in the 9th–12th grades who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, seriously considered suicide, made a suicide plan, or attempted suicide. By 2019, nearly 37% of these students had at some point experienced symptomology that may be aligned with depression. The pandemic only worsened matters. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data Summary & Trends Report for 2011–2021 (National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, 2023) showed even further stark increases in mental health challenges, particularly among girls and youth who identity as LGBTQ+. This report suggested that nearly 60% of female students and nearly 70% of queer-identified students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, with 10% of female students and more than 20% of queer-identified students reporting having attempted suicide.

Elizabeth Brewer, Cynthia L. Selfe, and M. Remi Yergeau (2014) wrote of "a culture of access" for composition classrooms in a manner that stretches far beyond the classroom space. They stated: "There is a profound difference between consumptive access and transformative access. The former involves allowing people to enter a space or access a text. The latter questions and re-thinks the very construct of allowing" (pp. 153–154). Who is allowed and disallowed to learn in your classroom according to the text included in your syllabi? What affordances or dysaffordances are created? What systems do you reinforce? What systems will you break?

Tara Wood and Shannon Madden's (2013) Kairos PraxisWiki work called <a href=" https://praxis.technorhetoric.net/tiki-index.php?page=Suggested_Practices_for_Syllabus_Accessibility_Statements">"Suggested Practices for Syllabus Accessibility Statements"</a> set forth recommendations for creating genres and metagenres with access in mind. These recommendations were crafted with the intent of moving beyond "meeting legal obligations," and instead promoting access. The authors included being intentional about the location of the accommodation statement on the syllabus (being careful not to bury it so deeply that it codes as unimportant), considering the terminology in the header, acknowledging differences in learning style and neurotype, encouraging collaboration, and advocating for the inclusion of universal design principles, with additional care as to the mode of delivery for a course.

Not a place you send students to get rid of them.

The access needs of students do not magically change after the third week of class, or whenever the supposed deadline may be. It is therefore important for us to rethink any required timings for these conversations, and perhaps, to respect when these conversations do not occur [[at all->Imagine]]. Annika Konrad (2021) encouraged us to "`[treat]` moments of disengagement as sites of action rather than inaction, `[so]` we can see how access is a rhetorical experience that requires a great deal of mental and emotional energy, which are not unlimited resources" (p. 196). Let silence carry rhetorical work. Let disengagement be rhetorical. Understand that the resources that you have are not the resources that your students have.

Vee Kennedy (they/them/theirs) is an autistic rhetor, PhD student of Texts and Technology, and a faculty member in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. Their least favorite activities include handing prehistoric paper copies of Letters of Accommodation to their professors, being told they don't "look autistic," and not being included in classroom genres like syllabi. This webtext project manifests one disabled student–teacher–researcher's dream Syllabus Accommodation Statement. It is not to be taken as token of all disabled experiences of all disabled students everywhere. The hope, dream, and goal in guiding this project is that [[you, the Professor->You, the Professor]] will understand the discursive nature of discussions about disability rhetoric and perhaps empathize just a touch with the loops and landscapes we endure for the sake of learning from you.

''References''

Brewer, Elizabeth, Selfe, Cynthia L., & Yergeau, M. Remi. (2014). Creating a culture of access in composition studies. Composition Studies, 42(2), 151–154.
Konrad, Annika. (2021). Access fatigue: The rhetorical work of disability in everyday life. College English, 83(3), 179–199. https://doi.org/10.58680/ce202131093
National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. (2020, October 21). Youth risk behavior survey: Data summary and trends report 2009–2019. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. <a href="https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/115813" target="_blank">https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/115813</a>
National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. (2023, February 7). Youth risk behavior survey: Data summary and trends report 2011–2021. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. <a href="https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/124928" target="_blank">https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/124928</a>
Womack, Anne-Marie. (2017). Teaching is accommodation: Universally designing composition classrooms and syllabi. College Composition and Communication, 68(3), 494–525. https://doi.org/10.58680/ccc201728964
Wood, Tara, & Madden, Shannon. (2013). Suggested practices for syllabus accessibility statements. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 18(1). <a href="https://praxis.technorhetoric.net/tiki-index.php?page=Suggested_Practices_for_Syllabus_Accessibility_Statements">https://praxis.technorhetoric.net/tiki-index.php?page=Suggested_Practices_for_Syllabus_Accessibility_Statements</a>

Anne-Marie Womack (2017) stated: "The syllabus is the official document that declares certain practices are 'accommodations' whereas others are normalized. While accommodation is traditionally one aspect of the syllabus—contained in the official disability policy— . . . the syllabus is a `[also]` one aspect of accommodating students" (p. 501). Womack not only suggested that the syllabus and accommodation statement are essential components of access in our classrooms but also that the syllabus itself represents a form of accommodation. The syllabus, therefore, remains a useful genre in which we as teacher–researchers can reflect upon culture in our classroom culture building, so long as we are mindful of the complex ecology that exists beyond the document and the limitations of the document.

Imagine if each term you forced your nondisabled students to prove to you that they were not, in fact, disabled, in order to exist in your classroom space. Imagine if you sent them to an office to get a letter proving that they are not disabled, that you could not allow them to participate in the classroom until you got that letter. Imagine if that office then denied the student that letter based on a technicality—perhaps their paperwork is out of date, or their specialist appointment isn't for another month, or their doctor is in their home country and they're waiting for a translator to put the paperwork into English. Would [[you->You, the student]]? Would [[you->I, The Professor]]?

You can make a difference.

Not a list of broken links you haven't updated in five years. Not a wish. Actual support for actual humans.