Pod Access: How Disabled Creators Are Changing Podcasting ~ 1017

Tim Villegas
From MCIE. Inclusionists, here is some advice: listen to more podcasts by disabled podcasters. And I’ve got two I want to introduce to you right now. My name is Tim Villegas from the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, and you are listening to Think Inclusive, a show where with every conversation, we try to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world. You can learn more about who we are and what we do at MCIE.org.

For this episode, I speak with Cheryl Green and Thomas Reid, both fantastic podcasters. Cheryl Green has worked as an access artist making creative and immersive captions for 10 years and audio description for five years. She brings her lived experience of chronic illness and invisible disabilities to her access work with independent content creators and disability-focused organizations including Superfest International Disability Film Festival, Disability Visibility Project, and Kinetic Light. She has made several documentary films and produces and transcribes her podcast Pigeonhole.

Shortly after becoming blind in 2004, Thomas Reid decided to reignite a dormant interest in audio production. After years of combining his interest in audio with advocacy, he was selected as an Association of Independence in Radio New Voice Scholar in 2014. During that same time, he began to produce his podcast, Reid My Mind Radio, featuring compelling people impacted by all degrees of blindness and disability. Occasionally, he shares stories from his own experience as a man adjusting to becoming blind as an adult.

Thank you so much for listening. And now, my interview with Cheryl Green and Thomas Reid. I don’t know who wants to go first—Cheryl, Thomas—but Cheryl? Tell our audience about your podcast. What is it about? And why is it important for you to produce it?

Cheryl Green
My mic was muted. Otherwise, I was going to say Thomas is going to say, “I want to go first.” That’s what I get for muting my mic. My podcast is called Pigeonhole. I started doing a streaming radio interview show many years ago—unedited, just automatically uploaded. Now Pigeonhole is much more focused and edited. The name came from the idea of how people in the disability community are pigeonholed by the mainstream non-disabled community and told who we are and what roles we should serve.

It’s a commentary on that. I’ve got some interviews—mostly re-edits and refinements of earlier episodes—but it’s a lot of storytelling, not so much straight interviews. I try to keep the episodes super short. Sometimes it’s musings on something I’m going through and want to chat about or make jokes about. But it’s primarily storytelling. I don’t have non-disabled guests on the show.

Tim Villegas
All right, Thomas, you’re up.

Thomas Reid
I’m up. My podcast, Reid My Mind Radio, actually started with my blog, reidmymind.com. I was doing a lot of audio work with an advocacy organization. At one point, I was introduced to someone who told me there were opportunities to create new pieces of audio for an existing radio reading service.

If you don’t know, a radio reading service is specifically for those who are blind and print-disabled. Usually, they have readers who read newspapers and magazines, and it’s sent on a radio signal. You need a specialized radio. They wanted to make new pieces—new stories—and this was Gateway Radio in New York City.

I started making pieces for them, but no one I knew could hear them because no one I knew used the service. So I decided to put them on my blog and called it Reid My Mind Radio because it sounded better than “Reid My Mind Audio.” At first, I wasn’t interested in creating a podcast, but as I continued making stories, I thought, “Let me make this into a podcast.”

The podcast features compelling people impacted by all degrees of blindness and disability. Occasionally, I share my own experiences as a man adjusting to becoming blind as an adult. I’ve branched out and now focus on certain topics seasonally. I’m known for covering audio description a lot.

Cheryl Green
Can I jump in here? When I started, I didn’t want to do any personal stories—it was all interviews. It was actually Thomas who inspired me to do some personal stories because on his show, he started occasionally doing that. He’d say, “I don’t usually talk about myself, but I wanted to share this story.” I found them as compelling as the interviews. That made me think, “Maybe I could do that too.”

When I felt too embarrassed to do it, I’d tell Thomas, and he’d say, “That sounds interesting. You should put that story out there.” Thank you for that. You don’t know how much of an impact that had on me. You modeled how to have a show that’s primarily interviews but sometimes just you. And you always find unique ways to relate your personal story to your guests when it makes sense. You don’t take over their stories—you share when it’s genuine. It’s great.

Thomas Reid
Thank you so much. I never knew that. That’s really cool that I influenced you.

Cheryl Green
You should start some kind of project where you mentor podcasters.

Tim Villegas
I’m raising my hand. I’ll be your first mentee. I appreciate that.

Tim Villegas
I’m pleased to talk about podcasting and storytelling podcasts. There are around 5 million podcasts right now. It’s not 5 million storytelling podcasts, though. It’s mostly chat shows and YouTube shows that end up being called podcasts. I have a bias against video, so I almost refuse to call a YouTube show a podcast, but it’s certainly legitimate.

With storytelling, it can be vulnerable to talk about yourself. When you were creating your podcast, is there a particular story about yourself that you were trying to communicate?

Thomas Reid
Who’s going first?

Cheryl Green
You said first.

Thomas Reid
There’s my answer. Yes. I like that question because I think when I was creating mine, I had a target audience in mind—those adjusting to becoming blind. That’s my story. I wanted to reach out and share some of the experiences I had with meeting other people who became blind—whether as an adult or as a child.

What helped me was people. I talk about the power of people. Bringing that and sharing those experiences with people who may not have access to that was important, because a lot of people don’t have access to what I had. Specifically, I became involved in advocacy and met a great bunch of people from so many places with different experiences they were willing to share. I wanted to bring that to others.

The story my podcast tells about me is an adjustment story—my adjustment. Since starting the podcast, the way I view disability and blindness changed. Even the language changed. In the beginning, I probably said “vision loss” because people responded to that before they responded to “blind.” People are scared of that word. I didn’t want to shut them down. By the time I started the podcast, I accepted “blind,” but reaching out to them, I used “vision loss.” That changed. I use the word “blind” because folks need to get there.

Then I reached beyond blindness to other disabilities. I didn’t want to just think about blindness. I see the importance of and relationship between disabilities—the shared experiences. If you tracked the episodes, they tie closely to my adjustment: what became important to me, what I started to understand, the people I met, and being exposed to thinking differently about disability.

In the beginning, I probably thought, “The world needs to see us like this.” Now I don’t really care about what they think. I’m talking to—and centering—people with disabilities. That’s where I’m comfortable. That’s important to me. The podcast follows that journey.

Cheryl Green
I didn’t know “journey” was a suspect word.

Thomas Reid
It’s apparently overused. I know I overuse it.

Tim Villegas
So yeah.

Cheryl Green
I enjoyed listening to that. The story I wanted to tell is: disability stories are best when they are made by and come from disability community. When stories are about disability culture or the personal experience of adjusting to disability, they’re better when the producer or journalist is a disabled person. I’m not saying I do it the best, but when I’ve heard disability stories told by non-disabled mainstream shows—including when I was a guest on a mainstream non-disabled show—it didn’t go well. It doesn’t sound good.

Often you get the host or producer being welcoming, but then slipping in microaggressions and passive-aggressive disbelief of the guest they invited. A lot of it is subtle. I’ve talked to non-disabled people who don’t recognize it—don’t hear what was troubling about it.

It’s not different from other communities: when someone inside the community is collecting and shaping the story, it can have subtlety and sweetness that you don’t get from the disbelieving outsider parachute journalist. One story I wanted to tell was: could I have space to share some of these stories?

In terms of my own story: I never hide that I have disability experiences and have had other disability experiences I don’t have anymore. That’s always at the forefront. I don’t hide that. But my narrative doesn’t have to be shaped around the medical stuff. Many people seem to want that most from me and others in the brain injury community: How did it happen? When did it happen? What were your impairments? What was rehab like? I am not needed in that arena. Enough people already do that and like to tell those stories. I go so far in the other direction and refuse to tell those stories most of the time.

I have shared people on my podcast when they share those stories—because that’s meaningful and useful to them. Sometimes I’ll edit some of it out because I don’t want to put that out there, but not always. In terms of my own story: if you want to hear me shut down, that’s the quickest way—ask “How did it happen?” I’m out. I wanted to put out a show that was unabashedly focused on disability, but you don’t get a list of diagnoses and impairments, the names of my rehab clinicians, and no, you will not hear how it happened. The end. That is what I wanted to share about my story.

Thomas Reid
Let me say: Cheryl helped me articulate that years ago when we met. I didn’t get deep into diagnosis, but I noticed that—especially with blindness—folks are ready to tell you everything about how they lost their sight if they lost it as an adult. I don’t find that with folks who are congenitally blind. It never felt right to me, but I didn’t know how to articulate it. When we started talking, it clicked: that feeling.

Usually, when I would invite folks on the podcast, it’s like, okay, I want to know because people want to know, and usually guests want to share it. The reason is that someone can relate to a diagnosis. Obviously, another blind person will relate to experiences, but once they hear “Oh, I had RP” or another condition, they get drawn to it. But I don’t want to go into, “You had 15 surgeries,” all that. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t even live in Maryland, so that M.D. is not on the end of my name.

So why should I get into that conversation? Cheryl helped me get better at how I thought about this. Shout out to you, Cheryl.

Cheryl Green
That’s so cool. Our friend and colleague Nefertiti Matos Olivares has a role on America’s Test Kitchen: Mystery Recipe. It’s a kids’ cooking and food science show, which I’ll admit I didn’t listen to before. Now that she’s on it, I’m listening. It’s great. I learned so many facts about water. It’s for kids, but there’s a lot of learning.

She’s a new character, and her character—like she—is blind. I listened yesterday when the episode came out. I was crying. When she’s introduced, they don’t objectify her at all. She comes in and the characters give her a verbal description of the room and offer, “Would you like to take my arm? I’ll show you where your microphone is.” They had verbal description and self-description. They had accessibility baked into the script without objectifying or going into medical stuff and diagnosis from the beginning, and I started crying. It was beautiful.

Then, because it’s a mainstream non-disabled-focused podcast, they go into the medical stuff, and Maggie Eggy—she’s an egg timer—actually gives the diagnosis and discusses some experiences around vision. I was like, sad trombones. But then Nefertiti—this was incredible—at one point the oven mitt (maybe Mitzi) starts, “I’ve got to write this down,” and Maggie Eggy says, “You don’t have to write this down. Listeners, you don’t have to take notes either. You don’t have to worry about remembering the medical stuff. You just need to know what my experience is and how I get around in the kitchen.” I started crying again.

Nefertiti weighed in on the script. They wrote it, and she came in and said, “With my personal experience of blindness and being someone who does a lot of cooking, let me tell you how this egg timer would really talk about these things. Let me tell you a good way to represent this story and character.” I can’t imagine what the script was like before. They still had Maggie Eggy get medical, but she came right back to accessibility and to her access needs, what she can do, and what kinds of assistance would be useful. Being in that world together and not having to objectify the egg timer—it was phenomenal. I don’t think they have a transcript—sad trombones.

Tim Villegas
More sad trombone.

Cheryl Green
I think Nefertiti did a beautiful job with her voice acting and bringing that character to life. I appreciate the control she took over it and that they let her have, because usually those non-disabled-led shows do not let you tell your disability story in your words and from your perspective. When I was on a major podcast, I got into a fight with the guy. I am not going to tell you how I got my brain injury. He starts lecturing me about how his audience needs this and that. I know what you think your audience needs. That is why I’m not telling this story.

They cut most of it out except the part where I sound really angry. You hear me randomly raising my voice, even though you don’t hear what instigated it. Then they brought on a fact-checker—a non-disabled guy who trains people to work with people with disabilities—to verify what I had said about my own experience.

Tim Villegas
In the show—like as a part of the episode?

Cheryl Green
They brought on this other guy who confirmed everything I said was true. I’m like, because it’s literally my story. A non-disabled person.

Tim Villegas
Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Cheryl Green
So that’s my pigeonhole. But hopefully you will edit most of that.

Tim Villegas
We’ll edit it. Or maybe I’ll just leave it in. Let me reflect on what you’re saying. I don’t think I’ve heard this perspective put so succinctly—about disability stories, the perspectives from a disabled person, and honoring, and not assuming that a person even wants to tell the “how it happened” story.

I’m reflecting for people who are diagnosed late with autism spectrum disorder. A lot of times, I just had somebody on my show who wanted to tell that story. Of course I let them, but also not to assume that a person wants to explain that. Letting them, and that’s totally fine. You tell your story how you want to tell your story.

Cheryl Green
That’s how it is. And you train audiences to broaden their expectations. Everybody’s like, “Autism spectrum—how old were you when you were diagnosed? Did you talk?” People have set expectations. “Blind—can you see anything? Do you have a dog?” People have expectations based on their life experience. We keep giving them the same thing over and over. Go find—just Google “Brain Injury documentary,” click the first thing, and tell me how long it takes before you either get the injury date, hospital footage, or pictures of a car wreck. Not long.

One of our roles—me, Thomas, and other content creators—is to offer this gift to audiences to broaden their expectations, which will help broaden their knowledge base about things. Even if they already knew a lot, they hadn’t thought about it this way. No—you’re going to have to trust me and listen to the story without knowing my diagnosis. Just trust the things that I say. Or in the case of your guest, it was important to that person to share that diagnosis story. Great—then share it. Whatever story doesn’t serve you to tell—you should not be a sideshow character who has to tell it to entertain audiences just because audiences expect it.

Thomas Reid
There are only a few types of stories folks are used to hearing around disability. The one the media and folks seem to love: “They overcame their disability.” It makes people happy, but it becomes not about the individual—it’s about the person watching. It makes you feel better about yourself. You’re not dealing with the person’s experience; it’s just that they overcame the disability.

When people tell me, “You overcame your blindness,” I’m like, no. I wake up every day blind. I didn’t overcome anything. I live with my blindness. Taking ownership of your stories is so important.

Tim Villegas
I listened to your latest episode, Cheryl.

Cheryl Green
I don’t remember what that was.

Tim Villegas
I’m not going to remember the name of the guest.

Thomas Reid
You said a specific—Carmen. Carmen.

Tim Villegas
Yes, Carmen. I was literally rubbing my eyes while he was doing that immersive experience. You didn’t tell the audience to do that, but I guarantee people are doing that. What I was going to say was how you celebrated the experience—both you and Carmen. You shared a story of an experience. I think you said at the very beginning of the episode, “visual disturbances.”

Cheryl Green
Disturbances.

Tim Villegas
Then the rest of the episode, you’re celebrating these wonderful things you’re both seeing. It was refreshing and wonderful and made me jealous that I’m not experiencing that. Although when you rub your eyes, you do see things. Of course. It was wonderful, and I’m pleased I got a chance to listen to that.

Thomas, I was scrolling through your feed and caught a 2015 episode. I went all the way down. There was a three-minute—

Thomas Reid
If I want you to go on back that far—

Tim Villegas
This one was good. I want your perspective if you remember this one. It’s a three-minute episode telling a story of going to eat with your sister, and a little girl gave you a quarter because you’re blind.

Thomas Reid
Yeah, I remember that one. I remember the experience. That was part of the many things that happened around that perception of blindness. It was nothing for the little girl—it was really the mother, who seemed to force that on her. It seemed to be a lesson. It wasn’t about me.

For the record, I was looking good. I had a nice pair of boots on, a nice sweater—I was looking good. The mother wanted to give a lesson to her daughter. She told her to give me a quarter. She wanted to put it in my hand. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel her mother looking like, “Go ahead, do it. You’re doing good for the world.”

I knew there were some video games in the corner. I’m like, no—go play the video game. There was nothing about me that said I needed your quarter. I wasn’t offended; I was pissed off. Again, it’s that thing about disability—what folks see when they see blindness. They don’t see me; they see blindness and whatever they think about blindness. That was an example of that. But again, for the record, I was looking good.

Tim Villegas
Let’s talk about Pod Access. That’s how I was first introduced to Cheryl and Thomas—through my friend and former colleague Danielle, who connected us. Very happy that Danielle did that. Whoever wants to go—tell our audience about Pod Access, what it is, and what you’re hoping to accomplish.

Cheryl Green
Thomas wants to do that one because he can be succinct and I can’t.

Thomas Reid
I don’t know if I can be succinct, but I’ll give it a shot. Pod Access is a project we’re working on. Shout out to the Disability Visibility Project and Alice Wong—we have funding through that to do this project where we want to bring disabled podcasters and content creators together with listeners and content consumers—those interested in podcasts related to disability content or produced by disabled folks.

We started with a survey because we want to find out what would be helpful for everyone. If we’re going to bring you together, what do you all need? The survey helps us figure out what people wanted. We’re creating a portal—a website—to facilitate bringing people together. It will be a place for resources that help people start their podcast, continue their podcast, and grow their podcast. If you’re trying to go from a day job and doing the podcast at night to doing a podcast full time, what are the things you need to know? We want to provide those resources.

We have to have a podcast, too. We’ll produce a podcast to help facilitate some of this—providing resources, talking about them, talking to other disabled podcasters who are in different positions: on the fence, thinking about starting, those who started and abandoned it—what happened, what made you stop—and those in the midst of it right now. We want varying experiences and to bring them together in an entertaining way to help other disabled content providers.

Going forward, there’s a lot we can do. You mentioned 5 million podcasts. I don’t know the percentage, but it’s a very small percentage created by folks with disabilities.

Tim Villegas
I would venture a guess—yeah.

Tim Villegas
Cheryl, how did Thomas do?

Cheryl Green
So great. I want to sign up for your newsletter. That was awesome. I will be helping you write that newsletter—because we’re working on this together. One thing Thomas and I have both done separately is people have come to us and said, “Can I get some advice on starting my podcast?” Thomas has worked with different people on accessible audio editing using a screen reader. We’ve both talked people through the steps to getting a podcast up and running.

When Alice presented this opportunity—“I’ve got funding—would you like to start this?”—we said yes, because we have been doing this and it’s enjoyable. It is fun to have these conversations with folks and hear their enthusiasm: “I want to put my ideas out there and had no idea how to start. I don’t know how to get into Apple Podcasts. What’s the metadata you add? How do you edit? How do you get a transcript made? Microphones? Recording?”

The learning goes both ways. I worked with two folks who use AAC to run their podcasts—alternative and augmentative communication. They are both non-speaking or primarily non-speaking. We talked about microphones and how to position the microphone next to your AAC device. We talked about putting the podcast together, and they got their podcast out—AAC Town. It’s really good.

Halfway through, one emailed me: “I have a better idea. I realized I could do a screen recording and then, as my AAC device outputs speech, it’s recording on the device rather than putting a microphone in front of the device. It sounds better.” My head exploded—yes! Because we were having these conversations, I gave them an idea; they improved upon it. Now I’ve used that as well. I don’t use AAC, but I’ve built on that idea of recording your screen instead of holding a microphone up and recording in the air.

We’ve enjoyed talking to people as they get started, and it’s exciting to formalize it. A good week is when I get to have three meetings with Thomas. The sad weeks are when we only have one meeting, but that happens. This is our second meeting this week, and we’re doing a thing on Twitter on Friday, so that’s good. It’s wonderful and exciting.

Tim Villegas
How long have you known each other?

Thomas Reid
2018. Yeah.

Cheryl Green
We used to talk on the phone once a year.

Thomas Reid
That’s right. That was when we first met.

Cheryl Green
We talked once in 2019 and maybe once or twice in 2020. We would talk about podcasting.

Tim Villegas
Podcast—I’m sorry to interrupt you.

Cheryl Green
It was podcasting and audio description, but I think we were primarily talking about podcasting. Then it grew into audio description. Then we were on each other’s podcasts talking about podcasting and audio description. We also talked about my cat. We don’t only talk about podcasting and audio description.

Thomas Reid
That’s right. And that episode was good because I had a big fail when we were recording. I was recording in my closet. I set it up now as a studio, but back then it was pieced together. When we were recording, everything fell. Cheryl didn’t have a weird response—she just laughed because I was laughing, and I was like, okay, she’s cool. Then she took that and ran with it. That was cool.

Cheryl Green
Yes, I kept it in the episode. I think you had your iPhone hanging in a coat pocket and it fell out, and I think your microphone fell over a couple of times too. I feel this pain because I was also sitting in a closet—clothes up against the back of my head and clothes right in front of the microphone. It was completely delightful.

Tim Villegas
You’re like podcast besties.

Well, Thomas, you said something about people coming into Pod Access—whatever it ends up being with the website and the podcast—looking to move beyond podcasting as a side gig. I’m wondering, is podcasting a side gig for you all, or do you also have a day job?

Thomas Reid
Yes—side-casting. A new thing—side-casting.

Tim Villegas
That should be a podcast.

Thomas Reid
It should. I want credit.

Tim Villegas
You got it. You heard it first.

Thomas Reid
That’s right. You heard it first. It’s definitely a side gig—a side hustle that I’ve been thinking about. But it’s a side hustle that has led to other things for me. One of those is audio description narration. It was a big part in helping me move into that field. That’s a big piece of what I do now—audio description narration and some other voiceover work as well—thanks to the podcast. Also some consultation and audio production. That’s the main stuff.

When we talk about podcasting and full-time work, I don’t hear enough about how the podcast can help. It can be that side thing that doesn’t generate funds directly, but it can help get access to things that do generate funds—if that’s your goal. That’s what it has done for me. Hopefully, there will be a time I’m doing podcasting full time. There are things on the horizon that could be a cool opportunity. Stay tuned, y’all.

Cheryl Green
That’s exciting. I have a bad memory. I get excited about stuff and then I’m like, did I already know that? I cannot tell you how many conversations I have with people and they’re like, “I already told you this,” and I say, “Was I this excited the first three times?” They’re like, yes, you were this excited every time. It is what it is. It’s a fresh day and everything is new and fun. Not really.

Side project—it’s a side project. I don’t earn a dime from it. I don’t even remember to do it. This morning I realized I don’t have an episode for October. I don’t have the confidence to go out and promote and push my podcast to build my audience and then have an audience big enough to bring advertising or sponsorship. I just don’t have it. It’s fun for me. It’s on the side. This past year or two, I’m not as consistent. It used to be one or two episodes every month, and now it has had to take the back burner while I’ve worked on other stuff. It’s not going away. If either of you have ideas for my episode this month, let me know.

Tim Villegas
Let me say, Cheryl, you are a fantastic podcaster. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t feel proud of your work and content, and people who listen would signal-boost your stuff. I’m happy to have both of you on—exceptional, creative people—to share your podcasts with our audience. This is the beginning of our friendship.

This podcast, Think Inclusive, was a side gig when I started in 2012. One year I only produced one episode. Then the next year it was three, then two, then five, then eight, then 12. In 2020 it was pretty much monthly. Then I got my job with the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, which is how I know Danielle, and now it’s my job. Podcasting is part of my job; it’s not actually my job, although sometimes it feels like it because of the effort—and I know you know exactly what I mean.

As far as podcasters go, whatever genre you’re in or wherever you’re coming from, we all need a little encouragement to keep going. Keep going, Cheryl. You’re great at it.

Cheryl Green
I’ll keep going. Let me know if you have an idea for this month because I’ve got nothing.

Thomas Reid
I think it should all be about Ruru. It should be all about Ruru.

Tim Villegas
Is that—?

Cheryl Green
An office manager who is accountable? Yes. One of my clients has started calling him the regional manager, and I didn’t have the heart to correct them. Now I’m kind of into rubbing that in—not just the office manager, but the regional manager.

Thomas Reid
Why does that stick? Can they actually give the promotion? I think you have to give him a promotion. And does he get a raise? What’s the salary change?

Cheryl Green
Oh yeah. He got a raise. He gets more tuna fish on his food than he had been.

Thomas Reid
Nice. Go ahead, Ruru.

Tim Villegas
Well deserved.

We’re almost to an hour, folks. This is too easy. Before we go, is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you wanted to make sure we covered?

Cheryl Green
I’m going to jump in rather than wait for Thomas to answer, because I loved your question about messages for educators.

Tim Villegas
Let’s do it. What do you want to tell educators?

Cheryl Green
If I had a message for educators, it would be this: I was practicing this answer earlier, which is an illustration of the answer—I should have written notes. It’s important for educators, when you have students of any age who have chronic illness and invisible disabilities, to recognize that educators-in-training often don’t get enough training in this.

First, I want to acknowledge that you may get your teaching degree and license, do the practicum, get your own classroom, and you didn’t get enough information on working with students with invisible disabilities. I honor that, especially for teachers who are not special education teachers. But even special ed teachers don’t get a lot of training in invisible disabilities, especially traumatic brain injury.

If I had a message, it would be to really follow the lead of the student and believe the student. We change every day. Some days I need something, and the next day I don’t. But I’m going to need it again. You can’t take it away. You can’t think I was faking just because I needed it yesterday and I don’t today. Some days I’m too tired to even move, but I sound the same, and I smile just as much when I talk. You might not believe that I’m in pain and too fatigued to move.

I’d encourage educators to broaden your expectations of people and really follow the lead of students, including when the student can’t articulate what they’re feeling or needing and just says, “I don’t know. This is hard. I can’t do it. I feel stupid.” A lot of times people want a bright side and say, “You’re not stupid.” But follow their lead: “Okay, I hear you saying you feel stupid today. I hear you saying you feel like you can’t do it.” Work with them—following their lead. I haven’t gotten enough of that, and I know teachers are trained in how to do that. I would love for teachers to have the confidence, especially if you didn’t get enough training, to know that so much of this is inside the student with a disability—and you can work together to pull it out and collaboratively meet needs.

Thomas Reid
I’m going to jump on what Cheryl was talking about and tell a quick story. I’ll use any chance I get to talk about this particular teacher. It’s important because teachers may not realize: when they think about their legacy, this teacher will live on for me, but not in a good way.

She was an art teacher I had in third or fourth grade. I was having vision issues—depth perception things. It was really hard for me to stay within the lines when doing artwork, and threading needles, and tasks requiring vision. She did not care for me. She taught me—until I was in college—that I was not a creative person.

I learned in college that was not true. But that will always be her legacy: she tried to get me to believe I wasn’t creative. Creativity is the process of letting things flow—there’s a way of thinking there. That can be damaging. I urge teachers—educators, whatever your position—to think about that. You have a young mind in your care and some control there. Thankfully, that did not stick with me, but her legacy with me will always be what I just told you. Thankfully, it did not stick. Think about that.

Tim Villegas
Cheryl Green and Thomas Reid, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast. We appreciate your time.

Thomas Reid
Thank you. Appreciate you inviting us.

Cheryl Green
Thank you.

Tim Villegas
Think Inclusive is written, edited, and sound designed by Tim Villegas and is a production of MCIE. Original music by Miles Credit. If you enjoyed today’s episode, here is one way that you can help our podcast grow: become a patron and get access to ad-free episodes, behind-the-scenes posts, and a preview of MCIE’s new podcast series, Inclusion Stories.

Speaking of patrons, special thanks to our patrons Melissa H., Sonia A., Pamela P., Mark C., Kathy B., Kathleen T., Jarrett T., Gabby M., Aaron P., and Paula W. for their support of Think Inclusive.

For more information about inclusive education, or to learn how MCIE can partner with you and your school or district, visit MCIE.org. Thanks so much for your time and attention. And remember, inclusion always works.