The Power of Storytelling in Disability Rights with Jeiri Flores

Jeiri Flores: One big piece is that a lot of people don’t view us as human. And so a lot of opportunities we don’t get, right? ‘Cause we just don’t get to be human. We just don’t get to be celebrated in any space, right? I can’t just wake up one morning and be like, “Ah, this is just what it is like today.” I think for me, one of the harder parts as I age is kind of aging, but also witnessing how much people don’t view me as a human, who don’t view me as part of their tribe, as part of this connective piece of society.

It just becomes complicated, and then also everything else in life is really hard. Navigating these services, navigating Medicaid. Having to think about all of these extra worries that I feel like people my age aren’t even thinking about, right? I could never not have health insurance. I always have to worry about, well, you know, if I pursue this job, will it have enough benefits to cover whatever Medicaid might not cover? Or will I make too much and lose access to Medicaid? So there’s always that constant worry for me. And then I think there’s a constant undermining buzz of self-segregation, right? Like, do I really want to work this hard to fit myself into that space that everybody is just living in, that it’s just a theme of what life is going on right now, but I know it’s not gonna be comfortable for me.

Tim Villegas: Hi friends, it’s Tim Villegas. This is Think Inclusive. And who you just heard was Jeiri Flores, a Puerto Rican disability rights activist from Rochester, New York. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology and African-American studies at SUNY Brockport in 2014. Her master’s is in human development at the University of Rochester.

Jeiri serves as a resource for residents in her community by connecting them to existing services and supports. As a disability advocate, Jeiri shares her unique perspective at various colleges and conferences where she introduces attendees to the struggles and invisibility that people with disabilities face.

She provides insight regarding inclusion, citizenship, disability, intersectionality, and challenges that remain unaddressed by society. She hopes to influence young, disabled people to fulfill their purpose and create a new narrative for what it means to be disabled. Thanks so much for being here with us today.

We appreciate each and every one of you listening to or watching Think Inclusive, MCIE’s podcast that brings you conversations with people doing the work of inclusion in the real world. And while you’re here, make sure to hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you are so that you can keep getting Think Inclusive in your feed.

In this episode of Think Inclusive, Jeiri and I discuss our contrasting familial stories. Jeiri opens up about her advocacy journey, shedding light on the additional burdens faced by disabled individuals, particularly regarding societal expectations and access to services. Jeiri highlights the dehumanization and isolation often experienced by people with disabilities and underscores the critical role of love and belonging in creating inclusive spaces.

We also delve into the power of storytelling as a tool for advocacy and personal connection. Jeiri shares their roots in spoken word poetry and emphasizes the importance of vulnerability in both art and advocacy. Before we get into my conversation with Jeiri, I want to tell you about our sponsor for this season.

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Plus, each learner receives a personalized learning plan to effectively address any knowledge gaps. Interested in learning more? Visit ixl.com/inclusive. That’s ixl.com/inclusive. Alright, after a short break, we’ll get into my conversation with Jeiri Flores. Catch you on the other side. Oh, and a quick production note, this episode is actually cut into two parts.

The first part was interrupted by some technical issues, so Jeiri and I had to reschedule and record another session.

Tim Villegas: Um, okay, so let me make sure I have your name right. It’s Jeiri, right?

Jeiri Flores: Yes. Jeiri, spelled J-E-I-R-I.

Tim Villegas: Okay. But it’s pronounced like the J in the D.

Jeiri Flores: Yeah, because it’s in Spanish and you would roll your Rs. So it’s really not a D sound, but in English it sounds like a D. So my name is Jeiri. And so the easiest way to get folks to understand how to say it is to be like, “Oh, well just say Jeiri.”

Tim Villegas: Okay. So you have a Latin background?

Jeiri Flores: Yeah. I happen to be Puerto Rican. My parents are from Puerto Rico. I was born in Puerto Rico. I was named after one of my aunts, whose name is Jie, but her name starts with a Y. My dad wanted to be a little extra spicy and he was like, “I’ll make a name for you.” He took some of the spelling from her name and added it to my name, and so it became Jeiri.

Tim Villegas: Okay. My family is from Mexico. Both my mom and my dad. My dad was born in Mexico. My mom was born in Los Angeles, but both sets of my grandparents are from Mexico, Jalisco. And, um, well, I can’t think of it. What’s the state that Juarez is in?

Jeiri Flores: I don’t want to lie to you. I don’t know. My best friend is from Veracruz. That’s all I know.

Tim Villegas: Okay. Yeah. Sorry, Dad. I mean, you…

Jeiri Flores: You gave him his Mexican card. You said he was from Mexico.

Tim Villegas: He is from Mexico. Promise. Scout’s honor. The reason I said that is because my parents did not teach me Spanish.

Jeiri Flores: Oh no. You’re a “no sabo” kid. That’s so sad.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah. My parents did not actively teach me Spanish. In fact, they used Spanish as a way to communicate without me understanding them.

Jeiri Flores: Oh no. That was so American of them. What is wrong? That is such colonizer-like behavior.

Tim Villegas: I know, I know. What’s really interesting is I worked in the public schools for 16 years, right? Whether it was in California or in Georgia, where I live now, everyone assumes I speak Spanish.

Jeiri Flores: Yeah, you look it. It’s like hella embarrassing. It really is.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, because you do look like it. I’m gonna be honest, you would be somebody I’d roll up on and be like, “Hey, como esta?” And then you’d look at me like…

Tim Villegas: I’d be like, “Lo siento.”

Jeiri Flores: You had one job and you dropped the ball. My bad, Jeiri.

Tim Villegas: I do feel embarrassed though. Honestly, it’s a little bit shameful. I’ve been trying not to let it bother me, but I gotta be honest, you know?

Jeiri Flores: I get that though because it’s such an integral piece of who I am. You know, it’s such a piece of resistance in a way, right? Because while it’s not our native tongue, right? Because obviously the colonizers are who imposed Spanish upon us. But I think that once you take it and you start owning it, it becomes a unifier of sorts. And it also just gives you a piece of home wherever you’re at.

So I get it. It’s a little frustrating to not be able to commiserate with other folks in this one piece that we all get to share. It’s such an access creator, right? Like me knowing Spanish creates access to so many other people because the way I was raised is I don’t mind translating for just anybody. If I just gotta pop in and say whatever I need to say, even if we’re at the grocery store and you’re struggling, I’m happy to pop in and be like, “Hey, I understand. Can I help you?” And most folks are super grateful and welcoming to that.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah. I wish, you know, I guess there’s also a part of me that was like, well, I guess I could have, like, I’m 46, so there’s still time, you know?

Jeiri Flores: For sure. There’s time for sure. And I think there’s lots of people who are willing to, you know, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of tías and tíos out there who would sit with you. I mean, they’re gonna be mean about some things just ’cause that’s in the nature of our folks. But I think there are lots of folks who would be willing to just kind of drop little bombs of knowledge on you.

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Jeiri Flores: So that we can get just enough.

Tim Villegas: My dad’s mom, my abuelita on my dad’s side, she refused to speak English, refused. And so whenever I came over to visit, she would always talk to me in Spanish like I knew what she was saying.

Jeiri Flores: It’s so funny ’cause I feel like my mom does that with my nieces and nephews. Like they just gonna have to figure it out.

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Jeiri Flores: And then when they don’t understand and she doesn’t understand, and they’re both flustered, she’s like, “This is why your parents are bad, because they should’ve taught you.”

Tim Villegas: Basically, yeah. I think she would turn to my dad and be like, “You had one job.”

Jeiri Flores: You had one job. Keeping them alive and teaching them Spanish, and you dropped the ball.

Tim Villegas: Oh man. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I guess I needed that.

Jeiri Flores: I respect that. I think that we are each other’s business, so it’s my job to take care of you as much as it is your job to take care of me.

Tim Villegas: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Jeiri and I met at the AUCD Leadership Conference in Atlanta this year. So we’re recording this near the end of 2024. It was amazing to meet you and to hear your story. I’m wondering if you could tell our audience, which is mostly educators, like a lot of K-12 educators listen to this podcast. There’s a lot of crossover between teachers and teachers who are parents of children with disabilities. So I wanted to know from your perspective, what do non-disabled people need to know about living a life as a disabled person?

Jeiri Flores: That’s such a heavy question. It’s a big question. Yeah, I know. It’s such a heavy question because we can look at it from so many different angles, really. One big piece is that a lot of people don’t view us as human. And so a lot of opportunities we don’t get, right? Because we just don’t get to be human.

We just don’t get to be celebrated in any space, right? I can’t just wake up one morning and be like, “Ah, this is just what it is like today.” I think for me, one of the harder parts as I age is kind of aging, but also witnessing how much people don’t view me as a human, who don’t view me as part of their tribe, as part of this connective piece of society.

It just becomes complicated. And then also everything else in life is really hard, right? Navigating services, navigating Medicaid, having to think about all of these extra worries that I feel like people my age aren’t even thinking about. There are people my age who don’t even have health insurance. And in my mind, and not that that’s a good way to live, right? But realistically, I could never live like that. I could never not have health insurance. I always have to worry about, well, you know, if I pursue this job, will it have enough benefits to cover whatever Medicaid might not cover? Or will I make too much and lose access to Medicaid? So there’s always that constant worry for me.

And then I think there’s a constant undermining buzz of self-segregation, right? Like, do I really want to work this hard to fit myself into that space that everybody is just living in? That it’s just a theme of what life is going on right now, but I know it’s not gonna be comfortable for me.

One of the examples I can give you is I’m in my early thirties, and at this stage, a lot of folks in my life, like my friends, are either partnered off, getting married, or having babies. That’s just what’s happening for them. That’s what happens at this time and age. But that’s not what’s happening for me, right? A lot of people don’t view me as a partner, like a sexual partner or even just a partner in general, someone to be with. And so if our parents all get together, my mom doesn’t have anything to input in that kind of conversation. She can’t say, “Oh, well, you know, Jeiri brought such and such home and this is what it was like when she did.” My best friend just had a baby. Her baby just turned one. And there were so many conversations about parenthood that happened while she was pregnant.

And I felt like, “Damn, I’m not pregnant. Why do I have to sit and listen to these kinds of talks?” This isn’t my reality. I’m not at the stage where I’m becoming a parent, but it does create this space where my parents are also looking at like, “Alright, so is it gonna be our turn? Is this something you’re into? Is it something you’re considering?” And it doesn’t matter if I’m considering it, if no one else is viewing me as a partner, if no one else is viewing me as someone to have a baby with.

It’s hard and it’s uncomfortable. And then you gotta have all these extra conversations about saying, “Listen, although nobody views me as a partner, although this is not what’s happening for me, this is where I am in life.” So I feel like I’m in a constant battle space of not, I don’t wanna say proving my worth ’cause that feels uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s that deep, but proving that I am enough. I have to remind myself, I have to work really hard at reminding myself that I’m enough.

Even if I don’t, and this could just be also an issue because it’s a hot topic for women without children right now too, right? Because of the pending election, that I’m enough, just me. That I’m enough with what I’m doing, enough with the roles that I play for folks. Maybe being a mom isn’t for me. Maybe being a wife isn’t something that is in the cards for me and that is okay. I don’t feel unfulfilled because I’m not in those spaces. I only feel uncomfortable about it when all of these other conversations around me are happening and I need to remind you. Like, listen, I’m human and my experience is just a little bit different.

I don’t know if that really highlights a lot of what you’re asking, but that’s what I think about constantly.

Tim Villegas: No, thank you for that. There’s a couple of things I wanna unpack because you said something about not knowing if you wanna self-segregate. I hear this sometimes when we talk about public schools and classrooms. One of the arguments for separate classrooms for students who have more significant disabilities, maybe it’s multiple disabilities, maybe it’s intellectual disabilities, or maybe there are health-related issues that take a lot of time to address in a school setting.

One of the arguments is, “Well, you know, my student, my child doesn’t feel safe or wanted in a regular classroom. And these separate classrooms provide a safe environment for them to feel like they belong or are wanted.” I’m in no way advocating for segregated classrooms. But what I am trying to unpack here is this idea of you or anyone else not feeling wanted in a space that is made for quote-unquote everyone else, right? And so what do we do about that?

Jeiri Flores: I mean, I think sometimes this is gonna sound so cheesy, but sometimes the answer really is love. I think that those spaces where I have felt the most welcomed are the spaces where I am openly loved. I need you to acknowledge me as a being, but also acknowledge my experiences, acknowledge my difference—all of it in a tasteful way, so that I don’t have to do all the work.

I think the hard part for a lot of folks with disabilities is that we don’t get to just be. We don’t get to just show up anywhere and just be. There’s always all this proactive work that we have to do because everyone always wants to force us to behave in a certain way. And I think that’s when we become disruptors, and people are like, “Oh no, we gotta get them outta here,” right?

Like, this person is self-soothing because they’re rocking, but they can’t rock because the other kids don’t. So we gotta get them outta here. That’s not cool because realistically, if someone is self-soothing, if it’s not making noise, if it’s not disrupting the class, why does it matter? Why can’t we just be welcoming to what they need?

We already do this for certain folks. Something really simple that we’ve learned to do, that we’ve changed the way we do business, is we ask people their pronouns now. We ask them their pronouns. “Hey, what is your pronoun? How do you like to be addressed?” Real simple, real easy change because we want to be welcoming to who you are, who you feel you are in your soul.

My godkid is non-binary. It takes me but three times to tell someone, “Hey, listen, my baby over here is a they.” That’s my expectation that you respect them as a they. And you move along. Now we’re at a place where everyone asks. So we don’t even wonder anymore. We just ask, “What are your pronouns?” My godkid also has a different name. They like to be called Alex. I’m not sure why. That’s also not my business. But if that’s what you want, then that’s what we do.

There are pieces in society that we have learned to shift and change our thinking to open up and to love people as they come. I think it could be easy in other ways. For me, what that looks like sometimes is if we go to a restaurant and the waitress has preselected my spot. That’s not something I enjoy. It irritates me. I don’t know why, but don’t tell me where to be. It’s just something that pisses me off.

But what my friends have learned to do is they’ll stand at the table and say, “Oh, where do you wanna sit?” So it doesn’t matter that the waitress pulled the chair out to this one spot. They ask out loud, “Where do you wanna sit?” They set the precedent that I get to choose where I place my body. That’s just a shift that happened amongst us that I announced. I don’t like when people tell me where to pre-sit. I don’t like it. Don’t tell me where to be.

All of my friends, we all happen to be women of color. One conscious decision that we choose to do is we don’t describe each other as aggressive. Even if our behavior may seem aggressive, we actively choose to use different verbiage to describe ourselves to each other. Because we understand that if someone walks past us and hears us addressing each other in this way, then we further feed into the stereotypes of women of color. So we say, “Oh look, you’re being real passionate today.” These are shifts and changes that we did ourselves so that we can openly be welcoming and loving to each other.

There are spaces where we do it. And then when it comes to people with disabilities, we always fall short because the expectation is that we have to fold and fit and change everything about us so that we can fit in what society has deemed as acceptable. And that’s just not fair, that’s not loving, that’s not a place where I can come in and just feel super welcome, super celebrated, and also thrive in. I thrive in those spaces where I’m just allowed to be.

I don’t have to work hard and really have to prep myself to deal with all my baggage before I enter. Because if I have an emotional outburst, or let’s say I hit something in my chair, not on purpose, it’s not this whole weird ordeal.

I think that really, I hate that it’s so simple, but I really think if you were to lead with love, that really would change a lot of how we do business.

Tim Villegas: Mm. Yeah. And there is a certain amount of privilege that happens in spaces where it’s just… How do I say this? Let’s just say in a classroom where usually there aren’t disabled individuals, especially with an intellectual disability or multiple disabilities. If you’re in a space, let’s say a classroom, and it’s just typical for a certain kind of person to be in that space, then there’s privilege in that, right? Because that’s the norm. It’s normed for that classroom.

You don’t have to work as hard or think as hard because you automatically already fit in. But for those, especially when we’re talking about disabled students who are included and maybe historically haven’t been, that’s a lot of pressure. It’s what I’m hearing, and I’m trying to make that parallel. There’s a lot of pressure.

Jeiri Flores: Yeah, for sure. I think that it’s also harmful, right? Because you work so hard at making sure that you are as prim and proper as you can be, so that you are comfortable in these places—not for yourself, but so that other people are comfortable, right? A lot of folks in the autism space call this masking. Everybody masks, right? It doesn’t matter in terms of disability; everybody’s masking in one shape, way, or form. This is why ableism has been able to thrive within the education system because the idea is that you will basically fall into whatever the status quo is, right?

So we learned, we all raise our hands when we talk. We all follow the line leader. There’s all these practices and procedures that you have to follow. But if you’re a little bit different, then that might be hard for you. My right foot leans right. If I were to be a walker, I would never be able to walk straight because my right foot just leans right. It’s just how my body naturally developed. But I can tell you that I was expected to work really hard at figuring out how to walk as straight as I possibly could. Or, you know, if I sat somewhere, sit up straight, make sure you don’t make a lot of noise—all these different things. They were expectations of me that I had to do.

And that’s where it becomes harmful because now my body in my early thirties is exhausted because for so long I had to push myself to really fit in and hit all the same marks that my non-disabled counterparts were hitting because that was the expectation, even though I had to work harder at it.

Tim Villegas: We are gonna do this. Jeiri, I do not remember what we talked about before. Do you?

Jeiri Flores: We talked about you not speaking Spanish. ‘Cause you’re a “no sabo” kid.

Tim Villegas: I just snorted on my mic, by the way. That’s… I like to hear that.

Jeiri Flores: I don’t remember what else. We were talking about something about disability, but I don’t know.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah. I know it’s just been… I don’t know about you, but it’s been a month and some change.

Jeiri Flores: I feel like it’s been a year. Like since the election, it’s been a year.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah. ‘Cause we talked pre-election, so…

Jeiri Flores: Yeah. I feel like so much is up in the air and so much is… it’s just a scary time. So everything feels like it’s moving so fast, but so slow at the same time.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. You know who I saw today? Mark Crenshaw.

Jeiri Flores: I just talked to him. For leadership, we’re planning and prepping. I don’t ever know if I’m getting invited back. You know, working in the advocacy spaces, you never know when you are good, when you’re not. Because obviously, in front of you, everyone tells you, “That was beautiful. That was amazing.” And then you might not get invited back. So you can never tell. I never know when I’m a hit or when I’m a miss.

Tim Villegas: That’s interesting. I remember that. I think this relates to what you’re talking about. I remember what I wanted to ask you last time. I ended up watching at least one of your comedy…

Jeiri Flores: Oh yes.

Tim Villegas: Your comedy, I guess… what do you call it? Gigs?

Jeiri Flores: It was actually not meant to be funny.

Tim Villegas: Really?

Jeiri Flores: No.

Tim Villegas: Okay. Tell me more about that.

Jeiri Flores: People tell me I’m funny all the time. And I always tell folks, “I don’t know if you’re laughing with me or if you’re laughing at me.” I very much don’t understand that I am super dramatic. So a lot of what I talk about just sounds like a lot and it just is naturally funny. That was a storytelling event and they wanted you to tell a story of your holiday.

Tim Villegas: Okay.

Jeiri Flores: It was so funny ’cause it was the first time I was coached. I had never been coached before. It was the first time someone was like, “Oh, we want you to write your speech down.” I’m not really a good prepper. I’m the kind of person who likes to just show up and do my thing. I have faith in the universe that it’s gonna carry me through. I always just think I’m gonna be okay. But they had me write this whole script down, and then the coach was like, “I don’t like it. It’s messing with your cadence. You need to not do that. So we’re just gonna have you show up and you tell it.” And I was like, “Okay, cool. I’ll just show up.”

They wanted me to pick my favorite holiday, and I was like, “I don’t really have a favorite holiday.” But I had been calling my mom my favorite holiday for years. This has been something that I have always called her because to me, my mom is so magical. That’s to make her seem larger than life, but she just makes things happen. So when they were like, “Oh yeah,” I asked, “Can I tell it this way instead of you forcing me to pick a time that I’ll be lying about?” And they were like, “Yeah, tell it.” So when I did it and people laughed, I was like, “Oh, I didn’t think I was funny.”

I know when I’m giving a lecture or a speech when it hits ’cause people hum and nod their heads. You can kind of tell and feel the vibe in the room. But when people laugh, I always feel like, “Alright, they laughing at me, not necessarily with me.” Most often the crowds happen to be white. Culturally, I know we’re not vibing in the same space, so I just be like, “Yeah, I don’t know.” But my friends, when I tell folks all the time, people at home don’t laugh. So I don’t think I’m funny because people who I live with don’t really laugh this much. I’m not this funny to them, but people laugh all the time. They say it’s because they see you all the time. I don’t know if that’s true, but yeah.

That was one of my… it really came together, but it was also something really outside of the norm for me because I had never been coached or directed in this way.

I think I was a sophomore in high school. She woke up Thanksgiving morning and said, “I don’t wanna have Thanksgiving here. Thanksgiving in Rochester is boring. I don’t wanna do that. I don’t want people to come to my house. I don’t wanna clean up my house. I don’t wanna do any of those things. That doesn’t sound fun.” My aunt had just moved to Kentucky the previous year. So she says, “We’re gonna go to Kentucky. That’s it. Let’s go pack a bag.” So not only did we pack a bag, but we packed the groceries, the turkey, the fixings, everything. She stole my father’s whole Thanksgiving dinner. She put it in a cooler in her minivan in the trunk and said, “We are gonna go.”

Did she call him and let him know? No. He expects Thanksgiving dinner to be ready when he comes home from the tree trunks that he’s standing in all day. He never catches anything either. We all laugh every year because he spends all this money on bullets and doesn’t kill any deer. We call him in the middle of the day, “Hey dad, you caught a deer yet?” “No, not yet. I shot a couple shots. I missed it though.” So he’s expecting to come home and Thanksgiving dinner to be there, but it’s not that year because my mom and her younger sister, who was like my big sister, decided to go to Kentucky. So nine hours later, in an awkward phone call to my dad, she’s like, “Hey, guess what? You gotta go to dinner with your boss because we are not home and there is no turkey for you because we have the turkey.”

I asked her, “Why did you take the turkey?” She said, “What if we got there too late and couldn’t go shopping? Then we wouldn’t have had dinner, so he could find it. It was a lot more of us than there was of him. He was one, there’s eight of us.” So we stole Thanksgiving dinner and she kidnapped his children because she also took us. We were in Kentucky and sent pictures to him like, “Hey look, we got the turkey. It’s here.” And also, you know what I forgot to tell in practice is that he actually prepared it. It was marinating. He put in the work too and he just never got to taste it. And so that’s my mom, Leslie. She just decides things. [end video clip]

Tim Villegas: I like where this discussion is going about storytelling ’cause it’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about, especially around advocacy. So let’s start here. It feels like storytelling comes naturally to you.

Jeiri Flores: Yes.

Tim Villegas: So how… is that just part of your personality or did you kind of grow into that intentionally with some skills that you learned? Or how did that happen?

Jeiri Flores: I was a poet. When I was growing up as a teenager, one of the ways that I coped with everyday life was I got into spoken word. One of the reasons why I love spoken word is because while there are some poems that have rules, really, you as the writer, you make the rules. Now, I’m not telling you that I wrote haikus because I’d be lying to you. I like the free form of poetry and the space to just share your vulnerability or whatever. I grew in that space. I wrote for a really long time. And then when I grew into this advocacy space, I just took the analogies and the metaphors that I would write in my poems and threw them into stories. So it grew organically from there. I don’t write as much now unless I have a muse. Unless something happens and I’m inspired to write. But I do speak in a lot of metaphors. I create a lot of comparisons. And I’m just a firm believer in conversation. I really think that a conversation can change something. So it grew from that, but I would give it all up to me being a poet and that’s what kind of gave me the skills to do it because it’s also where I learned that I could be super vulnerable if I wanted to be. I’m not saying that I’m vulnerable in all spaces, but I think that’s really what kind of opened the door for me to do it.

Tim Villegas: It sounds like you are a really creative person. As someone who, I think I am owning that more about being a creative, I’ve noticed this about myself, that it is easier to be vulnerable in art than it is in one-on-one conversation. Is that true for you?

Jeiri Flores: Um, it depends on who I’m talking to. I’ll be honest. I think that when you’re an advocate, to be a true, genuine advocate, you have to be vulnerable. You have to have that layer of being ready and willing to be vulnerable. I think the most effective advocates are. If you think of the biggest, most life-changing advocates, they’re the ones who shared the most about themselves with you. They were the most vulnerable in front of you.

When we saw Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, they were vulnerable in that, to share that. Obviously, their vulnerability looked different ’cause they were men. But even if we think of women, like Maya Angelou, she was super vulnerable in every space that she presented herself in when she was sharing. So I think that if you are in the advocacy space, that is something you have to wear if you truly want to make a difference.

We see advocates who are not willing to be vulnerable or who limit their vulnerability in pockets. I don’t think they’re as effective. Something that makes you a really good advocate is your ability to connect with folks. So I think even one-on-one, sometimes it requires you to share a little more, depending on what you want to do with the conversation.

For me, particularly because it’s this disability space, a lot of times I’m talking to parents, and parents sometimes need that extra umph, the extra feel, because they don’t… I might look at their child differently than someone else, or I might look at the story they told in a different light because of the way my life was lived. Now, I’m not trying to pretend like I’m the greatest, but I think that one-on-one conversations, depending on the space you’re in, require that from you if you really want to make a difference as an advocate.

I think in art it is so easy to be vulnerable because it’s a forgiving place. You can be vulnerable and no one is gonna be like, “Oh, that was wrong.” This is such a space for you to grow. There’s so much grace within being a creative, and there’s so much room where people are trying to process and understand your thinking. When we look at 3D art, I’m like, “Oh, well, why did he throw the bird in there? The bird didn’t have anything to do with that weird factory that he painted.” Or when we’re looking at videos that are put together, “Why did that all of a sudden become black and white?” But we’re giving so much grace and space for folks’ expression that I think it’s so much more forgiving. So it’s the prime space to be vulnerable.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I didn’t think about that—the different context of vulnerability in art versus advocacy. It kind of bleeds together. What else was I thinking about that? I think with art, you can be expressive, right? And you can kind of do really strange and weird things and have this self-acceptance too. Whereas in advocacy, at least for me, it’s harder to have that self-acceptance because the stakes are higher. If no one likes that song I wrote, it’s fine. Or the painting I did or the poem or whatever. But when I really have passion behind an idea, like inclusion or disability rights, somebody could be like, “You’re wrong.” And that is different. That feels different.

Jeiri Flores: For sure. I think that one of the things in advocacy is that when that happens, there is such a bigger space for discourse. Versus if we were comparing it to art, I present something to you, and you can accept it or not, and we can move on to the next piece. I think in advocacy, because it’s supposed to be… a lot of people think that this is just a concept. No, this is a living, breathing thing. Because it’s living and breathing, I can control how it lives and breathes. I can control what my role is.

I’ve had to give up those big dreams of large forms of change that I can just create on my own. That’s where I think we get kind of caught up. That’s why I weigh so much on a conversation one-on-one. Because you’re right, in a bigger space, like if I’m doing advocacy work for Medicaid cuts, my idea has to be almost just right in order for it to hit the just right desk to hit the just right person so that it can continue to grow. But if I live stuck in that, wanting to do these big advocacy changes, it’s too much. That’s when it gets scary and you don’t want to be as vulnerable because why would I present this if the measure of success is so small? How could I even get there?

That’s why I weigh so much on one conversation. For me, realistically, I’ve done a lot. I would say that my catalog is big, but at the same time, can I tell you that I’ve changed huge systems? Probably not. I can’t gauge that. But I know that I have changed some students. I know that I have changed the way some doctors think. I just know that from other conversations that I have with other people or just the way I’ve seen changes in some folks. So I have to look at it that way. I think that’s what helps me stay in a place of vulnerability.

The hard part is that there is a lot of overpouring, and people don’t understand that in this advocacy space, there is a lot of overpouring. Some stories don’t hurt. Some stories I can just say off the top of my head and not even think about it. Yes, I’m still being vulnerable, but it doesn’t hurt anymore to talk about. But then there are other stories where it’s just like, no, that’s really hard to talk about. Yes, I’ll bring it up, but I also need you, as the other human who is on the other end of receiving it, to be conscious of the effort that I’m putting in so that you can understand what I’m trying to do.

Tim Villegas: No, no. I like this. I like this deeper conversation about storytelling because it does require energy, right? And as advocates, sometimes our energy is low. The baseline is low.

Jeiri Flores: It’s really hard to, especially with particular stories. For me, I like to think that my life lives in seasons. Everybody’s life lives in seasons, actually, that’s not just me. But my advocacy work also lives in seasons. There are some seasons where the theme feels so much heavier. Like when I first started talking about my womanhood, that was so heavy for me.

Because I don’t feel welcomed by other women a lot, you know? And I don’t feel like when people think of womanhood, they think of me and what that looks like for me. That feels real heavy. Even sitting with other women and talking about what my womanhood looks like or what my experience as a woman is like, it’s like I’m working so much harder to be included in this one space that’s supposed to naturally be just welcoming to me.

When that became one of the central focuses of my advocacy, it was so much because I was also going through some things with my health in relation to my womanhood. It was just building one thing after the other on top of it. Then having to explain to other women who are preaching that they love women, who are gals’ gals, it’s like, but you’re really not a gals’ gal to me.

That’s when it’s heavy. That’s when it’s like, alright, I’m being super vulnerable. Because I promise you, like three years ago, I wouldn’t have talked about this. This would’ve been just something that I might’ve said something small about and been like, “Oh, this is a problem. We should probably think about that in the future.” But I probably wouldn’t have talked about it in depth because I didn’t think that people cared or that I was willing to share enough about it.

It’s a weight that you’re sharing, you’re talking about. It’s not like trauma dumping, but it is sometimes traumatic. There are some things that happen, and a lot of folks in disability spaces, we piss on pity. We don’t want pity, but the story is sad. Sometimes it also just elicits that, like it’s just a human response. It’s such a fine line to roll or to walk in between those spaces.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yes. Is there a story that you, it’s like your favorite to tell?

Jeiri Flores: I think, yeah. When people ask me how did I grow into this advocacy thing, it started because I was translating for my mom. This random translator, my mom said something and he translated for her and it wasn’t what she said. In that moment, I was like 10 years old, but in that moment I was like, this is not gonna happen to us again. It was like a whole shift for me. I think that’s one of my favorite stories to tell because it was like when your superpowers get turned on, like, yes, alright, boom, this is it.

I can’t even tell you how I became an advocate or why this is my job or how this became just something that I’m good at. I can’t because I studied sociology. That’s what I got my undergrad degree in. In high school, I was even surprised I made it to college, to be honest with you. Not because I wasn’t a good student, but just because I didn’t have a path. I didn’t know. I just knew I liked to talk trash. I’m a trash talker. I knew I could do that.

When I sit back and reflect in retrospect, what kind of set the tone for me, my advocacy work didn’t start in disability. It started because my mom happened to be Puerto Rican. She happened to live in the States. She happened not to speak English. We happened to need a translator once, and when they didn’t say what my mom said, in my mind I was like, I can’t allow that to continue to live and happen.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. That must be… it’s like what you said about finding your superpower, it’s really… it’s like magical, right? The whole reason I’m doing this, that this is my job, that part of my job is podcasting, is because I always wanted to do a podcast as a teacher. Growing up and learning how to use audio equipment because I was in a band and learning how to edit and all that stuff, I just thought that was gonna be a hobby. It was no big deal. Then once I started to create and people responded to it, I was like, oh, okay.

Jeiri Flores: Because it feels like love. It feels like real love. You’re like, “Oh my God, I’m good. You think I’m good at that? Oh, okay.”

Tim Villegas: Right. Yeah. And it’s so surprising. It’s so surprising ’cause you just don’t… I didn’t see it coming.

Jeiri Flores: No. It’s so funny. I never think of this as a skill until I see somebody do it bad. Then I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so weird.” And then I’m like, “I really am good at this. I really put this together.”

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes.

Jeiri Flores: It always happens that way. Especially when I really went at something. That night when I told that story, I was like, “This is me. I could do this for real. I do this. Not just I could do this, I do this. I’m good at this.” It feels like such a win. It kind of just washes over you like little tickles. It just kind of comes over and you’re like, “Oh my God, I’m really good at this and this is a skill and people need to stop fronting on me.” Even if I don’t have any haters in the crowd, in my mind I’m always like, “People need to stop fronting on me because I really put that together.”

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always thought this was a personality thing. I don’t know if it’s like this for you, but I always think whatever I’m doing is not good enough.

Jeiri Flores: For sure. I have to remind myself that I’m enough all the time. That it’s good enough or, you know, because I also like the creative space or the, when you have a role as ambiguous as the one that I have, it’s hard to… how do I say? Like, it’s hard to be like, “Oh, was that good?” Because it has to be received well from someone else. Like I said, you know, I gotta do it good enough to be invited back to this class or do it well enough to be invited to present again. I always have that and I always think like, I hope that I did you justice in whatever space you invite me in. I hope I did you justice.

Because that is my intention. My intention is not for you to invite me into a space and then I half-ass it and you don’t feel like I did enough. But it’s hard to tell every time. I can’t ever be like, “Oh, for sure, that was great.” Sometimes I leave and I’m like, “That was not my best work and I don’t know what I could have done different.” I don’t leave that space thinking like, “Oh, I could have said this. I could have done this.” No, I just know, like, I leave and I’m like, “That wasn’t my best work.” But I don’t know how I could have done different. Or sometimes the people think it was great, but I feel like I didn’t do it, you know? And so then there’s that.

In this, particularly in the disability advocacy space, there’s not a lot of people that look like me. There’s not a lot of people with my same intersections. The predominant voice happens to be white. It happens to be white women. So there’s a lot of, like, sometimes you gotta be delicate in the way you say things. And when I get a little more passionate, a little more intense, I get nervous like, “Oh my God, did I become that angry woman of color in that space?” And then I hate what happens. I become apologetic. Like, “Oh, my bad. I didn’t mean to go this hard.” But it just is like, I’m also human. And so I’m also living in that moment. So, you know, I’m also listening to this white woman who you’re giving such a huge platform to say things that might not make sense or just might not be as good as what I think I’m saying or what someone else is saying, right? ‘Cause it’s not always me. It’s not always my voice that’s saying something better. Sometimes it’s another advocate of color who is saying something better and who just isn’t highlighted in the same way.

So for me, in those spaces, I really have to sit back and recognize that, no, no, I wasn’t wrong. My delivery was different, but I wasn’t wrong. I just need a moment and I need to go where I’m loved so that I can get myself back into my square. Like, no, you’re still good at this. You still should have been in that room. You still should have been at that table. But it just may be, you gotta deliver it a little different because also this is a finicky state, right? Like, I always wanna be vulnerable and I always want to be super outspoken, but that also is problematic for women that look like me. We’re not always celebrated for that. People like us because we do this, but we’re not always celebrated for that. And then people become fearful. They don’t trust what you’re gonna say. So it’s like a catch-22, if you will.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah. And I know it’s like you don’t wanna make excuses either, you know, but there’s the reality of it, you know, that’s just, like whose voices are valued and you’re like, well, that person has a really big platform. And then you look at their characteristics and you’re like, that makes sense. And I’m not trying to call anybody out about any, so I’m being very vague. I’m not…

Jeiri Flores: You know, because we could pick a handful of folks, right? There’s probably thousands of Michael Jordans out there, right? But we only know one Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan didn’t win all those championships by himself, but who do we know? We know Michael Jordan. That’s me. And I think that’s still the same premise. It doesn’t matter what arena we’re talking about. There always is a Michael Jordan. And it’s hard, but once you see it, you’re like, alright, I get it. I get why you get to be Mike. But it’s hard for someone who did all the same training camps as Mike, played in all the AAU teams as Mike, did all the things to not be at Mike’s status. It’s like, okay.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah. Like the degree of separation feels so small, but the outcomes are just super wide.

Jeiri Flores: Yes.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I hear you. I hear you.

Jeiri Flores: Like there’s some advocates who get paid, Tim, no lie, five, six Gs per thing that they do. And they’ll invite me in, offer to pay me a lot less. And this is not about money, but if this is how we gauge who is good and who’s not, right? Let’s say they’ll pay me a quarter maybe of what they paid this person. I’ll work harder than the person that they paid more and I’ll be better than the person that they paid more. And they’ll congratulate me and give me love after the event goes great. But they will never offer me those numbers that they offered the person who they think has a bigger platform than I, the person who they assume, you know. And so that’s also when you start getting into the space, like, am I enough? Like, where am I lacking?

And again, that is hard, but it doesn’t change the way I tell stories and it doesn’t change the way I decide the stories that I tell, or even the work that I do. It’s just a little frustrating. Because then the worst thing is like, well, what is it? I think that’s why I’m in therapy. I’m just trying to process like what the worst thing is.

Tim Villegas: I’m right there with you. I’m right there with you. What is our worth? And just accepting oneself for who you are with your own stories is super important. I think eventually it does become more effective. As you grow in yourself and as you begin to really be your true self, I think your stories are more effective. It’s just there’s a lot of growth that needs to happen and stuff like that. I want to connect it to people who are listening, who are educators because this is a lot of how I felt when I was a teacher and going like, how do I convince people to change? Because facts don’t always do it. In fact, if you just give them facts, that’s not what’s gonna change people.

Jeiri Flores: For sure. You need real life, right? One of my favorite things that I did, I used to work for the city of Rochester, and one of my favorite things was… well, my best friends, we all happen to work in nonprofits. It’s kind of what happens to women of color. These are the spaces that we end up in because we’re ready to save the world. I’m not sure what part of our DNA was like, “Ooh, they’re gonna save the world type.” That’s where we land. I’m not saying that white people aren’t capable of this. I’m just saying that statistically speaking, a lot of women of color work in nonprofit areas. A lot of women of color pursue degrees in helping professions. That’s just the statistics. I don’t have the exact number, but the research is there, I promise.

So my best friend at the time, she used to teach or facilitate, I don’t know, whatever you wanna call it, in a trauma space for children in high school here at the city, in the Rochester City School District. I worked at the city and I was fascinated by my job because I had never seen the city as an organization. I had never been taught about the city as an organization, as a business. I had never seen it in this way in my 20-something years of living at the time. I had never been exposed to it in the way that I was at that job.

I had city officials at my fingertips. If there was a real live issue, I could go into somebody’s office and say, “This is an issue. How do we change it? How do we fix it? Who are the right people we talk to?” I was blessed to work with this amazing woman who was always just ready to invite people into the office to learn about the city, to work with her.

We have here, we call it Parcel 5. This is a huge green space. There used to be a mall in this space, so to give you a size idea, it was huge. What she used to do was have folks come into the office and she would say, “What do you think should happen in that space?” She collected all this information and was gonna present it to the mayor because they didn’t know what to propose with this parcel.

What was originally proposed was an auditorium, but we have an auditorium already. It just wouldn’t make sense to put a new auditorium in the downtown of our city because we had a different auditorium where it was surrounded by local restaurants. It was like a whole ecosystem. The restaurants get a lot of business when there’s plays in town because they’re codependent on each other. To move the auditorium downtown, it would change all of that. It would shift the workings of it all.

She had all these people come in and they would either draw it, talk about it, all these things. When I think of my best friends and the kids that she works with, and how limited the kids in our city were in terms of sharing their thoughts on changes in our city, I was like, “What if we bring the kids to the office? What if the kids come and tell us what they think should happen with Parcel 5?”

At first, she got some pushback from the school ’cause they couldn’t understand why we would wanna do this event. In my mind, I’m like, “What do you mean? This is such a great thing! For the kids to meet city officials, for the kids to get their voices heard in this way, for their work to be presented to the mayor. This all really feels like a good idea to me at least.” Because, well, I’m not a kid educator, but as an educator, you’re teaching them direct local government how it works.

Finally, we get to the point where they’re like, “Alright, well, how about if they come to us?” So I bring my city official boss to the school, and this is one of the roughest schools in our city. We’re not talking about one of the best testing schools. We’re talking about rough. These kids are barely making graduation, barely making it to finish.

I bring my city official boss and her assistant. They come in and the kids, I promise you, they came up with some of the greatest ideas for what should happen at this parcel. I was like, “Look at this. Two girls from the hood who grew up in this hood were able to put this all together to get these kids to put a presentation together.” They all present to us, but when I’m sitting with the kids, talking to them, giving them ideas or talking about why we’re doing all of this, one of the girls, she sees one of my tattoos. It’s a semicolon and essentially it’s a mental health piece. It’s supposed to let you know you’re not finished, you have more to go. She’s like, “Let me have one too.” She shows me hers and now we’re talking back and forth about life and why I got mine, why she got hers.

Now this has nothing to do with what was happening at the city, but look at how we got to vibe. When she’s ready to share out, it’s so much bigger, so much livelier because I’m a real person to her and I really care about what she’s talking about and what she’s saying and how she envisions this. They came up with a five-story building and they wanted a daycare and they wanted it to be a workspace where people could work in this building but have daycare right in the building. They had these different sets of schools that they thought should happen all in our downtown. Where else would we have heard stuff like that?

I think she was so much more lively when she was presenting because we had that chance to vibe and to really share those stories. For me to really express to her why I thought it was important for her to understand what local government did and how it all worked out. But it came from me telling the story of this tattoo and it came from me telling my best friend the story of why I think Parcel 5 was so important for the kids to tell us what they wanted. All of this was really brought together by me just trying to put all these stories together in one and giving the kids an experience, but also me and my best friend being able to do the work that we wanna do for the kids to progress in our city.

I just thought that was such an amazing thing and I was so impressed by us doing it all, but it really stemmed from being able to tell a story in a way that really just spoke to someone. Even convincing my boss, while she was great, she had a very busy day. So I went in, I’m like, “Man, let me tell you about these kids. Let me tell you what they need.” At the end of that year, two of her students interned for me at the city. That’s amazing. You see how organically it grew, but it came from me being able to tell multiple people a story in a way that just kind of spoke to them.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m hearing a couple different things that jump out at me about storytelling. One is that it was important to you, right? You felt it was important. You felt like you were passionate about this and you advocated and said, “Hey, we should bring these kids into this process,” right? And then it brought in other voices to inform a decision about something, right? You asked for their input and stories into what they were gonna be using this land for. I just don’t think that we do that enough—ask people how best to serve them or what they need. Like, what do you need?

Jeiri Flores: I agree. But I think as educators, that’s really the best way to do this. My nieces are obsessed with me as an educator. They think I teach kids, and I think it’s hilarious. I took them to work with me like two weeks ago because they keep asking, “Well, how are your students?” I’m like, “Okay, baby. They’re good. You wanna see them?” So I bring them in and it’s all these adults, and they’re like…

One of the things that really works well again is asking, “What is it? What don’t you like? What is not happening? What doesn’t make sense? How do I get you to understand this? Or how can I show you what it is that I’m trying to get at with this conversation?” I teach a session on advocacy in the fellowship that I teach my students, and I really tie it into a lot of stories. One of my favorite things to do is to bring people in who have nothing to do with disability advocacy, who just do advocacy.

One of my favorite people to bring in on a panel is an abortion doula because that’s a rare position for someone to hold. It’s also not someone that people talk about often. When this lady first came, she has a huge role. She does a lot of body positivity stuff. Being an abortion doula is just one thing on her list of things that she does. I didn’t even know that she did this originally. When she first came, I was like, “Well, you’re body positive. This is what you talk about. You talk about inclusive sizing.” I’m like, “You’ll be a great panelist.”

She mentions being an abortion doula, and I’m like, “This is such a great conversation because let’s unpack this.” People make it seem like an abortion is just something easy and fast that people just do ’cause they can. But it’s also an emotional journey. It’s a very intimate, emotional journey that you’re going on. Here is this woman who is volunteering her time, her space, and her energies to helping you heal and travel through that with her so you don’t feel so alone. I love to bring her in front of my students so that they can see, “Look, advocacy looks different for everybody in every space, in every arena.”

I want to bring it on a humanistic level. I think that goes back to the vulnerability piece, right? The more humanistic you can be, the better. For my nieces, when they come in and see this, they don’t know anything about disability outside of “my auntie is in a wheelchair.” Even my niece calls folks in wheelchairs “wheelchair people,” and I’m like, “Baby, that’s not…” I mean, granted, she’s nine, right? She’s learning. But it’s for them to see how this all plays out in real life and real time and saying, “Okay, how can I get you to understand what it is that I do, but what it is that’s so important for folks with disabilities as we continue to grow and age?”

They didn’t get to see the advocacy session ’cause that might have been a little too grown up for them. But it really is very much so important for the other students in the room to be like, “What do you need to get to for this to make sense to you, for this to really feel real?” Even with those students in that high school, for that young woman, it was like, “Oh, okay. I’m from the same hood she’s from. We live two streets away from each other.” Yes, I came here representing the city, but I’m not someone who lives in a suburb. I’m not someone who doesn’t understand it. Shorty got shot up the street, down the street you like, there’s 16 abandoned houses. I live right here with you. We are the same.

From what I’m hearing from what you’re saying is, as an educator, the biggest piece is what you need. How do I get you here?

Tim Villegas: Exactly. Exactly.

Jeiri Flores: And I can make it more humanistic to you so that when you close your eyes, you can hear me still saying, “Oh yeah, this…” I just feel like it makes so much more sense. I know that that’s a heavy task ’cause as teachers, I’m not in… I’m just someone who facilitates. I would say I do that well. But I think for teachers, you’re not just a teacher, right? Sometimes you’re a caretaker, sometimes you’re a counselor, sometimes you’re… there’s a hundred different roles that you carry. So I think that it’s just a heavy load. But the more humanistic you can be, the better.

Tim Villegas: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m gonna ask you one more question to kind of wrap up our conversation, and then I have the mystery question, which is just like a random question that we both answer. Okay?

Jeiri Flores: Okay.

Tim Villegas: Anything that you’d want educators to walk away from this conversation with?

Jeiri Flores: I think that one thing is not to be scared to be vulnerable. I think educators think that they have to fit in a specific mold, like in a specific cutout. Because education is a hard space to live and work and breathe in. But I think that if you’re not scared, some of the best teachers that I’ve had are people who weren’t afraid to show me, like, “Look, this is it. This is my grass. I know that your grass looks like that, but this is what my grass looks like.” And I think it worked out best for me in that way. So I think you can’t be afraid of that. I think people are looking for that right now, especially. I think people are looking for that authenticity, that space of like, well, we could be human to human together. And I think even for kids that works. I think that’s why I vibe with kids. And I think even for older adults, I think for my fellows, I also like to show up for them. And I know that that’s hard because you have lots of roles.

But if my fellows are presenting their master’s thesis and I can make it, I’m showing up, right? You are my fellow for a year. So to me, that makes us family for this year. Especially for some fellows who we have who are foreign exchange students who don’t have any family. So they’re showing up to this thing by themselves with nobody. Well, no. I’m gonna clap it up for you. Even if I don’t understand any of the science you just said, like, even if I don’t. One of my fellows was studying DNA and one specific part of the DNA. I was like, “I don’t… I love you. I don’t know nothing that you talked about, but I’m here.” So I think showing up really matters or reading that article that somebody might have published and coming back and having real-life commentary. One of my fellows watched a movie that Disney recently released and they’re like, “Oh, what’d you think?” “Okay, I’ll watch it. We can have a conversation about it.” I think really just showing up for folks in education right now is a big game changer.

Tim Villegas: Yes. That human element—just let’s be humans.

Jeiri Flores: Yeah. You know, just be humans, man. And I know that educators have a lot, right? ‘Cause you have your own family and everything, but I think that if you… I’m not saying make space for everything, but I think that little things you can just try to do, you know, sprinkle them around.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah.

Jeiri Flores: I don’t show up to all my fellows’ defenses and stuff. But if there’s a handful of them that they announce like, “This is happening.” One of my fellows created an app and he was like, “I’m presenting to the dean, can you come?” Sure. I’ll show up. I’m here. Do I understand the app that he created? No, I’m not an app developer. I don’t know nothing, but I was there. So I think that’s what’s important.

Tim Villegas: You’re there. Yeah. Just to support.

Jeiri Flores: Yeah. He was so excited. He was like, “Oh, my god’s here.” Yeah. I got lost, but I’m here.

Tim Villegas: Oh my gosh. Alright. Awesome, awesome. This has been fun. For sure. Well, we’re gonna end. We end with the mystery question.

Jeiri Flores: Okay.

Tim Villegas: Boom. We don’t know. I don’t know the lottery numbers.

Jeiri Flores: Don’t know what… no. Yeah. Sorry. It’s not that kind of question, I don’t think. Alright, here we go. What are most people afraid of that doesn’t scare you?

Jeiri Flores: Public speaking.

Tim Villegas: Oh yeah, that’s a good one.

Jeiri Flores: Yeah. People be real nervous and they be like, “Oh, I don’t know what I’m gonna say.” The only thing I’d be afraid of is cussing. I’d be like, “Oh my God, please don’t let me cuss.” Because I cuss like a sailor. But that’s it. But that is not something that makes me nervous.

Tim Villegas: You don’t ever get nervous? Like, what about just like that energy because…

Jeiri Flores: So on the inside, for sure. My heart races. My heart will be racing. Like when I know I’m coming up next, like it’s my turn next, my heart is racing. And I’m, you know, I get nervous and I’m like, “Alright, don’t drop the ball on this.” But for the most part, like, I’m good. This is not something that… I just presented with a colleague of mine to some researchers on ableism, and she’s nervous. We had to drive 35 minutes and for 35 minutes she wanted us to talk about the presentation and to figure it all out. And I’m like, “We gonna be good. I’m not worried.”

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Jeiri Flores: And so it’s something that doesn’t make me scared.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I can relate to that because I don’t know how many times I’ve spoken in public, but it’s a lot. And being a teacher too, it’s like, that is your job, basically. Like it’s a small public, but you’re speaking all the time.

Jeiri Flores: I thought that I would be nervous. There was a crowd once, it was like maybe a thousand folks and I was like, “Alright, this the one. This the one that’s gonna… I’m not gonna be able to do it.” But I was fine. I was like, “Okay.” So, you know, it was cool. I really just need one person in the crowd to nod and give me the approval. Like, I’m…

Tim Villegas: You’re like, okay, at least one person.

Jeiri Flores: And then I’m good.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Along the same lines, a lot of people, they don’t like to hear their voice recorded. This happens with my kids. Sometimes I will pull out my recorder and record our conversation or whatever, and they’re like, “No, I cannot listen to my voice. I cannot listen to myself talk.” I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always loved recording my own voice and listening to it. It’s just something that I’m really comfortable with. So I have zero problem with it. The one thing that I don’t like is video, and I’m getting better at it. When I first started being officially podcasting or whatever, getting paid to podcast, I did not like video, but I am getting a little bit better at it. So that’s pretty good, I guess. I’m trying to think of anything else that doesn’t scare me. Those are really the only things. Well, I also used to play in rock bands and stuff, so that’s the other thing that prepares you for this kind of role is getting in front of a mic. Actually holding a microphone makes me feel really comfortable.

Jeiri Flores: Well see, I don’t like holding a mic. I think, I don’t mind, like, it doesn’t make me nervous just being in front of people. I think the microphone is what makes me nervous.

Tim Villegas: Oh, really? Okay.

Jeiri Flores: I think it just has to do with how I need to hold it. It might be because I’m disabled, like mics have cords. I don’t wanna break anything. I emceed a gala once, and they wanted me to read a script and hand the award. Someone who was the previous MC was like, “You should move around the stage. Don’t just sit in one spot.” And so I’m like, “Oh my God, you want me to move around, hand an award, and hold this microphone?” It just felt like so much.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, it’s a lot. That’s a lot.

Jeiri Flores: So I think microphones make me nervous. Not the ones that you put on your lapel because those I don’t even think about. But like, even when I’m on the radio, I’m like, “Oh my God, do I sound like a fat kid that loves cake?” ‘Cause you can hear me breathing. There’s all these things that I think about and I really don’t when I’m just talking. No mic, I don’t think about it at all. But as soon as you give me a mic, like even on the thing on YouTube, right? When they first handed me the mic, I was like, “Oh my God. Here we go. Me and this mic now.”

Tim Villegas: That’s funny. Yeah, it’s funny. Yeah. I love having a mic. I love it. I think it’s like a… you sound free. It’s like a mask. For me, it’s like I have a mask and that means I have a mic and it’s like a uniform. It’s like I have a mic, so therefore I can be a certain way. I feel like my personality actually comes out a little bit more. But if I don’t have a mic, then I’m a little bit… it’s a little bit more of a struggle. Just a little bit.

Jeiri Flores: I think I attribute the mic thing to me just being disabled and just always thinking that I’m gonna be like a bull in a china cabinet. Like, I’m gonna break something.

Tim Villegas: No, it’s real.

Jeiri Flores: I just think that it’s gonna happen. But I think I sound great on a mic. I think I would love to do voiceover work. To me, I feel like I sound so intelligent. The tone in my voice sounds richer. I’m just impressed with myself. I’m like, “This sounds amazing.” But it makes me nervous. But that’s just me by myself though. That’s not me in front of people. When I’m in front of people with the mic, that’s very different.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Jeiri Flores, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. This was a lot of fun.

Jeiri Flores: Thank you for having me.

Tim Villegas: That is all the time we have for this episode of Think Inclusive. Now let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I handle the writing, editing, design, mixing, and mastering. This podcast is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Our original music is by Miles Kredich, with additional tunes by melod.ie. A big shoutout to our sponsor, IXL. Check them out at ixl.com/inclusive. We truly appreciate each and every one of you who tunes in. We’d love to hear how you are using these episodes. Are they part of your teaching toolkit? Are you sharing them with school administrators? Maybe you’re sharing them with friends and family and colleagues. Drop me a line at tvillegas@mcie.org and let me know. And hey, if you’re still with us this far into the episode, it probably means that you love Think Inclusive and the work that MCIE is doing. Can I ask a small favor? Help us keep the momentum going by donating at our website mcie.org. Just click the button at the top of the site and chip in $5, $10, $20. It would mean the world to us and the children and the schools and districts we partner with. Thanks for your time and attention. And remember, inclusion always works.

Download the complete and unedited transcript here.