Help Teach

Help Teach: Episode 8 - It’s Your Right

Mihai Covaser: [00:00:00] Welcome, learners and learned alike, to Help Teach.

Mihai Covaser: Hello and welcome to our community audio project. I am your host, editor, producer, and project co-lead: Mihai Covaser. I am also a youth living with a physical disability. My most formative experiences living with a disability have come in the Canadian public education system. Many students like me, with physical, emotional, or mental challenges, go through their years of schooling lacking the supports and accommodations they need to partake of the same opportunities offered to their peers. The vision of this project is to provide educators in Canadian classrooms, students with disabilities, and members of the general public, with the tools and knowledge that they need to make our institutions more accessible and inclusive for all. Join me and a diverse cast of guests as we explore perspectives on disabilities and education in this podcast series. [00:01:00] One last message for you teachers tuning in: Listen in each episode for our key takeaway that you can implement in your classroom today to help us further this vision.

Mihai Covaser: Hello and welcome back to Help Teach. Today I am here with another one of my co-leads, a guest with whom I am very excited today to discuss a subject that is perhaps little brought up in the public school system, but that is very important to us as students and as individuals that love to maximize our potential in education. But, first and foremost, before we get into that, I’d love to introduce our guest for today: Élise Doucet. Élise, welcome back to the show.

Élise Doucet: Hi, Mihai. Thanks, it’s great to be here again.

Mihai Covaser: I’m sure our audience would love to hear some more from you, because you always come prepared with your historical knowledge, your background knowledge, and I think that’s always really nice to get all that information. So thanks for coming back on. So today, that subject that is little discussed, that I think would be great for us to talk about, [00:02:00] is something called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Now this may sound familiar to a lot of teachers listening. It was quite a landmark document to be published by the United Nations, under the umbrella of UNICEF, which was responsible for child welfare especially, amongst other things. This convention was published in two versions: a standard legal version, to which the member states agreed, and a child-friendly version, that all children around the world could more easily grasp, so they understand their rights. So to cite from the actual website of UNICEF, they say, “In 1989, something incredible happened. Against the backdrop of a changing world order, world leaders came together and made a historic document to the world’s children. They made a promise to every child to protect and fulfill their rights, by adopting an international legal framework: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. [00:03:00] Contained in this treaty is a profound idea: that children are not just objects who belong to their parents, and for whom decisions are made, or adults in training. Rather, they are human beings and individuals with their own rights. The convention says childhood is separate from adulthood and lasts until eighteen. It is a special, protected time in which children must be allowed to grow, learn, play, develop, and flourish with dignity. The convention went on to become the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and has helped transform children’s lives.” So today, Élise, I’d love to get started by talking about four key articles that are most relevant to us as students and people with disabilities, or disabled people. So, yeah, I’d love to turn it to you, maybe to introduce the first article, if you’re okay with that, and tell us a little bit about what it means to you.

Élise Doucet: Sure. Article Two is the first one, and it’s essentially the right to have no discrimination, on the basis of a long series of [00:04:00] things, things like, you know, religion, what they look like, if you’re a boy or a girl, if you’re rich or poor, no matter who your parents or families are, or what they believe, or what they do, and essentially the right to be treated fairly, and disability is one of these things that you’re not supposed to be judged on. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for very long, I think we all have had stories about being discriminated against on the basis of our disability. The most obvious example that comes to me right now is when I went to a museum, and they only had audio for pretty much everything. They had audio descriptions of things, but they didn’t have any written text or ASL interpretation, and when I asked about it, they said that it wasn’t worth it to make it available to everyone, it wasn’t worth the effort. Which was frustrating, because that person who said that to me had gone on like a five-minute rant earlier about how important this display [00:05:00] was for everyone to see, so it felt very hypocritical. So that would be my most prominent example that comes to mind, of my personal experiences with people not listening to that article. What about you, Mihai?

Mihai Covaser: This idea of discrimination is sort of a complicated one, right, because discrimination is an umbrella term for many acts, both malicious or just negligent, that end up setting up an unfair playing ground in society for people to participate. As you said, this article essentially posits that no matter who you are, where you live, what language you speak, anything like that, no matter the things that make you different from your peers, if you live in the same society, you should be offered the same opportunities, right? And I think that’s something that’s really important to highlight, because it’s not just about [00:06:00] bullying people or treating them poorly outright by pushing them away or rejecting them, but when we don’t have, for example, like in the education system, where we don’t necessarily have a universal design set up–which is something you brought up in the episode when we spoke together, was the principles of universal design–that already sets up an environment where, if you come in with differences that shouldn’t, by any description, lead you to be treated differently, if you come in with those difference, you’re already at a disadvantage. So I think that’s what important to point out about this article, is that discrimination comes in many forms, and the best thing we can do to help that situation is to set up a playing ground that everyone can participate in, by making sure that those differences don’t have any effect on the environment and how you can participate, right? So in the article that is actually published by the [00:07:00] United Nations, in this sort “adult article”, the legal article, the second part of this says that “state parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment of the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents, legal guardians, or family members.” Which I also think is something important to point out, because we talk a lot about advocacy on this show, right, because that’s what we do, we’re here to advocate, and coming into an environment with certain beliefs or opinions or learned values from your family, that perhaps contribute to that environment of discrimination without even knowing it. I think that’s really important to point out, too, is that together, we have responsibility, I think, to help teach our peers, too, right, if they come in with these opinions that might be harmful. It’s not necessarily that they want to be malicious, but it’s how they were taught, right, and so that’s why shows like this are really [00:08:00] important to help spread these ideas that might be helpful in changing minds, right. What do you think about that, Élise?

Élise Doucet: Yeah, no, I definitely agree. People don’t necessarily understand how harmful comments that are just like borderline offensive can be, especially because they’re not meant to be offensive. Like most people, they don’t mean to be offensive or say anything, like they don’t–that’s not their intention, which I think is important to remember and understand. But the fact of the matter is that the world is set up to discriminate against people with disabilities or disabled people, and–Yeah, I think it’s a difficult situation, like being kind of in school and having peers who say these harmful things, that don’t really understand it, being disabled and on the receiving end of some of these comments. You aren’t able to explain sometimes why they’re wrong, or you just know that they’re wrong, or they just feel weird. [00:09:00] And I think that’s where teachers can kinda come in, I think they can moderate discussions in a better way than just a bunch of kids stuck together can do.

Mihai Covaser: So, from that subject of the discriminatory environment, the next article that we think is really key here is Article Twenty-Three, which is around–specifically–the treatment of children with disabilities. Now this is a very long article, but to summarize: It essentially says that every child with a disability should enjoy the best possible life in society, that governments, that the member states that agreed to this should remove all obstacles for children with disabilities to become independent and to participate actively in the community. I think those are two really important key terms that we can start to talk about. First of all independence, and second of all, that active participation towards the best possible life. I’ve always been on [00:10:00] the fence, when it comes to the subject of independence, because for me, being someone whose disability is fairly mild, in terms of its impact on my ability to be independent in the day-to-day. I’ve always had this desire to do my own thing, to not be stopped, you know, to not have obstacles put in my way towards doing things, and so I’ve pushed towards that independence, while sometimes there have been things in the way that have tried to hold me back, whereas for other people, it’s rather the opposite, where you are pushed to be independent, because that is something that people just parrot or mimic. They say, “Oh, people with disabilities should be independent.” And so you’re pushed in that direction, but at the expense of not being offered support, when you really need it. So it’s always been a really interesting thing to balance, for me personally, and I’m sure you have some experiences with that as well, this idea of independence.

Élise Doucet: Yeah. No, I think I’ve also always strived to be [00:11:00] as independent as possible, but yeah, if you just like sent me out into the world with no supports or anything, I wouldn’t be able to, you know, I wouldn’t be able to go and get a higher education or, you know, do a lot of different jobs. I think there has been, you know, other examples, for things like driving; there seems to be this thing that people don’t think that Deaf people can drive, because they think that you have to hear traffic in order to drive in traffic. I would say to that that they should go and just try to walk through traffic just with their ears, and they’ll find that that’s usually not the best way to go. Your average person who’s not used to that wouldn’t understand how to do that, because people don’t realize how much of stuff is visual, so, you know, for a Deaf person, we can see the other cars. We can see the lights, and you know, things like ambulances and police cars: they have lights on them, we can see them, and we can also see everybody else pulling over, as well. So there are examples of things [00:12:00] that people think that I shouldn’t be independent in, like driving.

Mihai Covaser: Yeah, and the other aspect of independence is that you think about any other condition that isn’t technically classified as a chronic disability. For example, I wear glasses, and many people in the world are either nearsighted or farsighted, right. Imagine being sent out into the world without a pair of glasses. When you find out in the fourth grade that you can’t see the whiteboard, imagine everyone saying, “Oh, you should be independent,” and send you out into the world without glasses, where I would have probably been hit by one of those cars in traffic many times if that were the case. People don’t understand that all of a sudden, when the disability label comes in, it seems like an entirely separate issue, when really, often it’s just a matter of receiving supports in the same way that everyone else who isn’t classified under this disability umbrella receives supports, in order to, you know, be safe and secure and successful [00:13:00] in society, right. And the second part of that is, as I mentioned, participating actively, which I think is really key, and not just sitting on the sidelines. I’ve told my gym story, the bench story, at least a couple of times on this show already, but not just sitting on the sidelines and being there, but being able to contribute something to discussion, being able to participate in the activity. It remains inaccessible until such a point that some little adjustment is made to make it more accessible, you know.

Élise Doucet: Mhm. Yeah, there seems to be some sort of tipping point, where things become worth it for general society to kind of make it accessible, like with glasses, and I think–But people don’t realize how easy it is, in a sense, for a lot of other conditions or other disabilities, how easy it is to make it accessible, and oftentimes, how there’s benefits for general society, as well. I mean, for captions–I have a thing, I push captions [00:14:00] a lot–but for the general population, there’s a lot of benefits, as well. People find that they’re more engaged in a video or something if there’s captions, most people will use captions if they’re available. Self-reported: People think that they understand better when there’s captions, like they absorb it better, or you know, if you’re learning English, it’s a lot better if there’s captions, you know. So there’s a lot of benefits in general society to having captions, and it’s the same for a lot of other adjustments or accommodations for other people, as well. Because disability is a spectrum, so there’s a lot of people who can sort of, you know, they can get by without accommodations, but they do find a lot of benefits when they do have accommodations, but it just doesn’t necessarily outweigh the usual price of trying to get those accommodations for themselves, which is something that I have to consider oftentimes, [00:15:00] in the classroom especially. It’s like, “Do I really want to push for this and get on the bad side of the teacher, because, you know, they’re grading me.” If your teacher doesn’t like you, it does not make for a fun time in class, but then if I’m not getting the accommodations I need, that is also gonna bring down my grades, so which way is the best way for me, with that teacher and that environment and that time.

Mihai Covaser: You are listening to Help Teach, and after a short break, when we return, we will continue talking about the remaining articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and bring to you our key takeaway, that you can implement in the classroom today, to make it more accessible and inclusive for all.

Mihai Covaser: Welcome back to Help Teach. I am here with my guest, Élise Doucet, talking about the United Nations Convention on the Rights [00:16:00] of the Child. So far we’ve discussed a couple of articles, the first on discrimination and the second on disability, and for the latter half of this show, there are two articles dedicated to education, that I think would be very important for us to discuss. So Élise, why don’t you do the honors and introduce our first article, Article Twenty-Eight?

Élise Doucet: Alright. Article Twenty-Eight is about access to education. It states that every child has the right to an education. It also says that primary education should be free, and that secondary and higher education should be available to every child, and that children should be encouraged to go to school to the highest level possible, and that discipline in schools should respect children’s rights and never use violence, which I think is interesting.

Mihai Covaser: Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a couple key elements in there that I want to discuss. Namely, this difference between post-secondary education and primary and secondary education, [00:17:00] which I have personally come to experience as of recently–I just finished my first year of university–and it’s honestly quite interesting to analyze the differences in accessibility between the two systems. Because I think what happens is, at the post-secondary level, you come into it as an adult, right, you are encouraged to be a lot more self-reliant, to take things on of your own accord, and to–You take responsibility for your own education more so, and also at that age and at that point in your life, a lot of people start to gain more advocacy skills, right, and push for change through the student unions or the other branches of the university that are responsible for accessibility and for supporting the rights of the student. But in primary education, it’s not quite the same, because students are almost subject to the umbrella of accommodations and the system set up by the provincial government, [00:18:00] which doesn’t always live up to those expectations. I don’t know if you have something that you want to add.

Élise Doucet: I don’t know if you ever got this, but in–Pretty much from primary school to secondary school, there was always people telling me that accommodations were going to disappear as soon as I got to university and that I would have to be self-reliant. Which, first of all, they weren’t giving me accommodations during a lot of primary and secondary school in the first place. You know, I needed those accommodations and my need for those accommodations wouldn’t just disappear by working harder. Because for disability, you know, there’s a lot of things where, you know, I can’t just pull myself up by my bootstraps or something and get things to work. But advocacy skills are something that you start learning in primary school, or you theoretically start learning in primary school, but I found that I mostly just got subjected to whatever the teachers [00:19:00] thought I needed. I don’t know, what was your experience like?

Mihai Covaser: Yeah, I think if you do not have those advocacy skills, or you don’t build them as quickly in the primary school system, it gets exponentially harder to fight for what you need, and I agree; I think I had a similar impression that, in public school, I have the opportunity to be helped by people and to adjust the system to my needs, even though–as you say–that wasn’t always quite the case, and that in university, it was like every man for themselves. But I felt quite the opposite, where, in university, the branches of the university responsible for either disability accommodations specifically, or just for student wellness, are very dedicated to each student that comes in through their door to ask them for help, and if you are able to ask for those things for yourself, they can come very, very quickly. Whereas in the public school system, the restraints put on it by the fact [00:20:00] that it’s a government institution, right, a provincial entity, even if you can fight for yourself, those restrictions make it all the more difficult to actually get those accommodations put in place. So that’s all to say that post-secondary education has been quite a positive experience for me in the realm of accommodations and support, and I think that public school can take some strategies from how post-secondary institutions go about doing it, in order to, as it says, encourage children to pursue the highest education possible. Because I think we can both agree, and studies show, as well, that students with disabilities are often stopped at the primary or secondary school level, not the post-secondary level. If you get there, often you’re set up for success in a lot of ways, but it’s getting there that’s the big problem. Our co-lead Alexis likes to talk a lot about this, because, as she’s said on previous episodes, she was told by a guidance counselor outright [00:21:00] that she shouldn’t pursue higher education because it’s not worth it, she wouldn’t make it anyway, right. So that’s something that really needs to change.

Élise Doucet: Mhm. I wonder if it’s something to do–Because I know, you know, at most universities, maybe not so much at colleges or perhaps really small universities, but in general, I think universities, they have a separate disability office with their own dedicated employees, whereas, you know, at primary or secondary school, it’s just sort of the teacher, or there could be a guidance counselor, there could be the principal there, depending on the size of your school, and they’re the ones who are kind of deciding on your IEP and stuff for you. And in the case of myself, there was also the teacher of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing, who was somewhat involved in the IEP. But in the end, it’s pretty much up to the school, because they–Teachers of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing, they’re usually an outside contractor, [00:22:00] so they don’t really have final say.

Mihai Covaser: Yeah.

Élise Doucet: So I think it’s different when you have a whole department that–Yeah, I think they can operate a little bit more freely, because–

Mihai Covaser: Absolutely. Absolutely. Those restrictions come, I think, from the construction of the system and the fact that if you’re outside, it’s hard to make changes inside, which is why it’s so important to highlight this, because the more that the families and the students with disabilities can get a say in how their education is curated and the supports that they get, the more suitable it will be for them, when the decision is their own. I think that takes us well into the last article here, which is the aims of education: Why are we supplying this education? Once we agree that it should be supplied to all students equally and help them get to the highest level possible, to the best of their ability, why are we doing it, right? And the children-friendly article reads that: “Children’s education should help them fully develop their personalities, talents, [00:23:00] and abilities. It should teach them to understand their own rights and to respect other people’s rights, cultures, and differences, and it should help them to live peacefully and protect the environment.” Now I think that’s absolutely key to this episode, and I’m sure you’ll agree, Élise, because the reason we are bringing this up is that education should ultimately be setting students up with the life skills that they need to shape the society that they want to see. That’s why we learn, right? In order to make the world a continually better place, and to have the tools and the skills to do that. So we help students to develop their talents–all students have a talent of some kind, regardless of the obstacles in their way–their abilities–more or less in some areas, depending on their obstacles, but can always be helped and supported and developed–and teach them to understand not only their own rights, but their peers’ rights. [00:24:00] I’ve had a pretty fortunate experience with my peers in the education system, but not everyone has. I’ll pass it to you to ask what you want to add on that.

Élise Doucet: Yeah. I really like this article, and I also really love the final, “It should help them to live peacefully and protect the environment,” because I think people sometimes forget that that should be kinda the aim, is the idea that we should be striving for everyone to be essentially as happy as possible, and we need educated people in order to do these things to build this society that we really want.

Mihai Covaser: And in the same way that we encourage cultural education and cultural sensitivity in order to understand people from different places, understanding people with disabilities or disabled people’s perspective on the world is really no different, right? I mean, we have our own life experiences that contribute to our values and how we think and how we want to see society shaped, and that deserves to be heard, so I agree. [00:25:00] This article really does bring it home quite nicely. And what it also does is bring us quite well to our key takeaway for this episode. Élise, I’ll let you introduce the options for the key takeaway, and what we would encourage teachers to do.

Élise Doucet: Alright, so, for today, our key takeaway is to put up the UN poster outlining the rights of the child in class, and you can do that. Alternatively, you could also do a class activity, where students make their own poster with a few key articles to them. You could do this, depending on what grade you’re teaching, you know, it could be their drawing and handwriting and article, or they could do something fancy in Canva. Just sort of an activity to, you know, introduce them to the poster and get them thinking about and really just understanding what rights they have.

Mihai Covaser: Absolutely. So much like a lot of classrooms will put up the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in their class, because that’s important for students to know, [00:26:00] this UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we believe, should be accorded that same importance. So if you can put up the child-friendly version in your classroom–both of which are accessible online, and will be linked in the description of this episode–then your students can look at it, read it, and really start to understand their rights as a student. And, if you make it a class activity, students can put up their own creation that really shows what they understand and what is important to them from this article, that they can take into their future. Élise, I’d like to thank you very much for coming onto another episode with me and helping us to understand this article, and I think it’ll be very important for students and teachers alike. Thanks for coming on.

Élise Doucet: Thanks. It was a lot of fun.

Mihai Covaser: You’ve just heard another episode of the community audio project, Help Teach. I’d love to give a huge thank you to my other co-leads on this project, Payton Given, Maggie Manning, Élise Doucet, and Alexis Holmgren, all youth leaders at the Rick Hansen Foundation, who I’d also like to thank for their continued support in this initiative [00:27:00] and others. I’d like to give a huge shout-out to our community mentor for this project, Charl Coetzee, and to our professional contact helping in the editing process, Chester Hull. My name is Mihai Covaser. I am your host, editor, and producer for this podcast series. As promised, you can now find all our transcripts, episode notes, and links to other resources on Transistor.fm, or listen to us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you have any questions about the show, if you’d like to offer suggestions, or you would like to be connected as a guest, you can now get in touch at helpteachpodcast@gmail.com. That’s helpteachpodcast@gmail.com. Please send in any questions you might have regarding our episodes, and we would love to address them in future ones. Tune in next time for more great conversations and key takeaways that you educators can implement in the classroom today, to make it a more accessible and inclusive place for all. Thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next time. [00:28:00]