Monthly Highlights – July 2022

Throughout July, we will be curating resources that amplify disability history, support accessible education, and consider innovative teaching methods. 

Blog Posts

These blog posts are 3-5 minute reads and provide background information on a topic, classroom applications, and a list of resources for further inquiry.

"Bringing Disability History Back In," by Daniel Castaneda

"Universal Design for Learning: Increasing Accessibility with Classroom Choice," by Vanessa Madrigal-Lauchland

Teaching Resources 

Contemporary Issues in American Society

• HSS Standard 11.11 Students analyze the major social problems and domestic policy issues in contemporary American society
• This inquiry set is designed to provide 11th-grade students with an overview of recent social and cultural developments. Two documents in this collection – one about the fight for the 504 and another about bathrooms for transgender students–seek to illustrate some of the complexities in this topic that touches our students so directly.

Many People, One Nation 

• HSS Standard 1.5  Students  describe  the  human  characteristics  of  familiar  places  and  the  varied  backgrounds  of American citizens and residents in those places.
• This first grade inquiry set focuses on people from a diverse range of experiences, cultures, and backgrounds who have lived in the United States and contributed to its richness.

Disability Rights are Civil Rights

• The focus question for this lesson is “How did disabled Americans expand their civil rights to more fully participate in our society?”
• HSS Standard 11.10 Students analyze the development of federal civil rights and voting rights. 
• HSS Standard 11.11 Students analyze the major social problems and domestic policy issues in contemporary American society.

Longmore Institute

The Longmore Institute’s mission “is to study and showcase disabled people's experiences in order to revolutionize social views.” 

• Patient No More Digital Exhibit
  • Discover a remarkable, overlooked moment in U.S. history when people with disabilities occupied a government building to demand their rights. Known as the “Section 504 Sit-In,” the protest profoundly changed the lives of people with and without disabilities, and paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. – Description taken from the Longmore Institute
• Disability History Curriculum Guide 
  • UCSF prepared these materials to help you bring disability history into your classroom; included are activities meant to be taught using the virtual "Patient No More" exhibit. Generally, we designed this curriculum for grades 7-12, so adjustments may need to be made for your unique situation. Tips and tweaks welcome! –Description from lesson plan, which includes historical background, guiding questions for discussion, and several student activities.

Emerging America

Emerging America supports K-12 history educators and students – especially struggling learners – to develop skills of inquiry, exploration, and interpretation of the past through primary sources.

• Model Lessons on Disability History

  • These lesson plans and primary source sets are collected on the 
    Emerging America website. The standards are aligned with Massachusetts state history standards, but will likely overlap with the requirements of the FAIR Act. 

• Disability History: From Almshouses to Civil Rights

  • This primary source set provides students with a better sense that "disability has been interwoven into America’s history...through letters, images, newspapers, diaries and other primary sources." Students will learn that efforts to include people with disabilities have been complicated and hard-fought. 

Picture Books

• We Want to Go to School!: The Fight for Disability Rights by Maryann Cocca-Leffler and Janine Leffler  
  • Story of seven students with disabilities who were not allowed to attend public school in 1971.  this book follows the case of Mills v. Board of Education of the District of Columbia which led to laws ensuring that children with disabilities would receive a free, appropriate public education.  Excellent back story about the court case.  A terrific addition to any classroom.  
• A Friend for Henry by Jenn Bailey
  • Sweet book about Henry, an autistic boy, who just wants a friend who isn't too loud or too busy.  Could be used to promote an inclusive and empathetic environment in the classroom, especially for younger students.
• All the Way to the Top:  How One Girl's Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything by Annette Bay Pimentel
  • True story of Jennifer Keelan, a young girl with cerebral palsy, who joined activists in Washington, D.C., for what became known as the Capitol Crawl.  The Crawl, along with other protests, lead to the signing of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.
• Unbound: The Life and Art of Judith Scott by Joyce Scott with Brie Spangler  
  • Judith Scott was born with Down syndrome.  She was deaf and never learned to speak.  She was also a talented artist whose work was displayed in museums and galleries around the world.  Lovely story of the bond of sisterhood and appreciation for our differences.  California story.

Recent Scholarship

• Sandra M. Sufian (2022) - Familial Fitness: Disability, Adoption, and Family in Modern America
  • “In Familial Fitness, Sandra M. Sufian uncovers how disability operates as a fundamental category in the making of the American family, tracing major shifts in policy, practice, and attitudes about the adoptability of disabled children over the course of the twentieth century. Chronicling the long, complex history of disability, Familial Fitness explores how notions and practices of adoption have—and haven’t—accommodated disability, and how the language of risk enters into that complicated relationship.”
• Bess Williamson (2019) - Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design 
  • “Have you ever hit the big blue button to activate automatic doors? Have you ever used an ergonomic kitchen tool? Have you ever used curb cuts to roll a stroller across an intersection? If you have, then you’ve benefited from accessible design—design for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. These ubiquitous touchstones of modern life were once anything but. Disability advocates fought tirelessly to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities became a standard part of public design thinking. That fight took many forms worldwide, but in the United States it became a civil rights issue; activists used design to make an argument about the place of people with disabilities in public life.”
• Douglas C. Baynton (2016) - Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics
  • “Immigration history has largely focused on the restriction of immigrants by race and ethnicity, overlooking disability as a crucial factor in the crafting of the image of the  ‘undesirable immigrant.’ Defectives in the Land, Douglas C. Baynton’s groundbreaking new look at immigration and disability, aims to change this. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Baynton explains, immigration restriction in the United States was primarily intended to keep people with disabilities—known as “defectives”—out of the country.”
• Audra Jennings (2016) - Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America
  • “Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America explores the history of disability activism, concentrating on the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (AFPH), a national, cross-disability organization founded during World War II to address federal disability policy. Unlike earlier disability groups, which had been organized around specific disabilities or shared military experience, AFPH brought thousands of disabled citizens and veterans into the national political arena, demanding equal access to economic security and full citizenship.”
• Lennard J. Davis (2015) - Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights
  • “In this riveting account, acclaimed disability scholar Lennard J. Davis delivers the first on-the-ground narrative of how a band of leftist Berkeley hippies managed to make an alliance with upper-crust, conservative Republicans to bring about a truly bipartisan bill. Based on extensive interviews with all the major players involved including legislators and activists, Davis recreates the dramatic tension of a story that is anything but a dry account of bills and speeches. Rather, it’s filled with one indefatigable character after another, culminating in explosive moments when the hidden army of the disability community stages scenes like the iconic ‘Capitol Crawl’ or an event when students stormed Gallaudet University demanding a ‘Deaf President Now!’”