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Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
48
Multiple Voices: Disability, Race, and Language Intersections in Special Education, 21(2), 2021, 48–65
Copyright 2021, Division for Culturally & Linguistically Diverse
Exceptional Learners of the Council for Exceptional Children
Exploring Listening Frequencies through
Listening for, Listening with, and Consciousness
Formation Archetypes: The Case of Relational
Inclusive Education Situatedness
ALEXIS PADILLA1, PAMELA VASILE2, KAMIL3, AND PAULO TAN 4
1University of New Mexico
2School of Education, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
3Anonymous Author
4School of Education, Johns Hopkins University
AbstrAct
The purpose of this essay is to identify and interrogate listening practices, which can restrict
and facilitate educators’ capacity to authentically care for neurodiverse students and their
families. We reconceptualize listening as integral to consciousness formation by unveiling
our own listening experiences as parents and collaborative activists. Conscious listening
opens listeners to the exploration of divergent realities, and marks a subversive shift in con-
sciousness-raising. Through counter-narrative methods, we describe our experiences related
to listening and consciousness formation in the context of meetings with educators about
children’s placements, goals, and transitions. Naming common themes across our diverse
narratives helped us ascertain the unique modes of listening required for authentic caring,
relational enactment, and continually sustained transformations in the face of unfavorable
listening environments and inclusive education policy.
In this essay, we identify and interrogate listening
practices which can restrict and facilitate educa-
tors’ capacity to authentically care for neurodiverse
students and their families. We propose a recipro-
cal causation between listening and various tex-
tures/degrees of critical consciousness formation
which evolve constantly. They mutate via attitu-
dinal modes of relationality, impacting one’s in-
stitutional and sociopolitical situatedness (Coole,
2015; Dutta, 2014). Collaborative transformation
and dialogue reconfigurations are part of this dy-
namic flow (Marková, 2016; Reddington & Price,
2018). We represent this possibilitarian ethos with
the metaphor of tuning frequencies. Based on our
experiences working with educators and families,
the listening frequencies for autistic students and
their families do not overlap with those of edu-
cators/administrators in Individualized Education
Program (IEP) meetings, as these are preempted by
specific consciousness raising contours of knowl-
edge and cultural frames external to the conver-
sation (Tan, 2017). Nevertheless, there is always
room for triggering elements within the conversa-
tion favorable to interdependence with roots in au-
thentic caring (e.g., Rector-Aranda, 2018). These
hold potential for altering to listening frequency
ranges for key actors in the process, and for there-
by creating potentially collaborative modes of
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 49
listening. This, in turn, allows for transformation-
al, equity-driven listening with and listening for
life-altering and antioppressive decision-making.
Three of us (Kamil, Pamela, and Paulo) come
from diverse racial backgrounds within the Unit-
ed States as both educators and parents of autistic
children whereas the fourth (Alexis) is a disabled
Latinx collaborative activist born and raised
outside the United States. Exclusion, isolation,
sadness, illness, and oppression have been height-
ened in our lives under COVID-19, reminding us
of the urgency of unearthing listening to autistic
children and their families. The varying exclu-
sionary and nonlistening practices we faced as
family members and/or activists were not neces-
sarily overt sequestration of dialogue possibilities
but manifested themselves in the use of normal-
izing rhetoric; that is, using a deviance from the
norm as rationale for educating students apart
from the rest. This normalizing impetus feeds
from dominant ideologies that do not view the
synergy of parents, families, disabled individuals,
organizations, and community as a necessary col-
laborative intervention to increase the capacity for
more inclusive practices. As will be exemplified
by our narratives, normalizing rhetoric also in-
volved idealizing normal or typical academic per-
formance and hegemonic modes of physical and
sensory behaviors for children in classroom and
other schooling contexts. This form of exclusion
or nonlistening also resulted from the lens of in-
stitutional cultures in which power, impressed on
the workers (in this case educators), causes them
to erect barriers to family narratives in order to
comply with the established culture of fitting in-
dividuals or families into mainstream or separate
spaces to do the work determined appropriate for
them by their institutions.
Together we examine the central role of listen-
ing with/for and critical consciousness formation
and critique: Looking at exclusionary pedagogical
practices for autistic students. Through explora-
tion of our narratives and their dynamicity, we
come to embrace the sociopolitical meaning of
rightful presence1 (Barton & Tan, 2020), which
contrasts with our lived experiences of both as-
signed sequestration for autistic children and of
inclusion granted to children on an invitation-only
basis.
Listening with/for and
CritiCaL ConsCiousness
formation
In distinguishing between listening with and
listening for, we stress that listening is not a
flat or unidirectional experiential process. We
frame listening with and listening for as modes
of consciousness formation based on Barton and
Tan’s (2020) rightful presence concept. Barton
and Tan problematize the liberal principle of
inclusion as the basis for relational equity in
classrooms by which all students “have access
and opportunities to participate in discourses
and practices central to the disciplines, in ways
tailored to their particular needs and sociocultural
locations” (p. 433). Rightful presence rejects the
guest–host relationalities inherent in the inclusion
concept. This is similar to critical justice research
on “hospitality” practices toward migrants in the
context of sanctuary cities in the United States
where hierarchical structures of power are kept
intact, leaving migrants’ presence as something
contingent to the will of those American citizens
hosting them (Squire & Darling, 2013). Inclusion
alone falls short of genuinely embracing and caring
about the political struggles of those continuously
oppressed in classrooms. Thus, concrete acts
of justice are needed to undo or even minimally
disrupt instances of “otherization, conditional
participation/belonging, and dehumanization”
(Barton & Tan, p. 433). Clearly, the presence
of autistic students in general classrooms is
questioned a priori by educators on the grounds
of presumed incapacity, lack of “readiness,”
failures to behave “appropriately,” or other deficit-
thinking and gross manifestations of othering
which obstruct listening. Thus, listening with and
listening for “[lifts] up the voices of the system’s
most vulnerable community members” (Kozleski
et al., 2020, p. 24) in order to disrupt normalcy,
racism, and ableism (Thorius et al., 2018).
Transposing issues of rightful presence to
classrooms aligns closely with our counter-
narratives. To be sure, despite being less relational
in nature, listening for is not mere patronizing.
As described below, listening for also involves
dimensions where the instrumental exploration
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
50
of certain aspects could lead to some form of
preliminary caring relationality, parallel to
Valenzuela’s (1999) concept of aesthetic caring on
the part of educators. It is a process which does
not entail a lack of caring. Yet, at the same time,
it does not get to really become authentic caring
which involves a continuous modality of listening
that leads to transformational connections in the
classroom and beyond, particularly when it comes
to interacting with families of children with
neurodiverse kinds of disabilities.
PreLiminary Considerations
on our refLexive narrative
methodoLogy
Our method for identifying and collecting counter-
narrative listening practices was to individually
journal our own experiences. We did so with
freedom to use whatever journaling protocols felt
most suitable to our own style and disciplinary
background. This was indispensable because our
scholarly and educator pathways, as well as our
parent and activist experiential portfolios being
engaged with multifaceted disability matters,
involve very different disciplinary and experiential
contexts. We were particularly interested to
keep this sense of plurivocity at the core of our
articulation of events and reflexive practices.
As an initial step, we decided not to read each
other’s journals in order to preserve our individual
voices before sharing and reflecting together. We
continued to meet virtually for more than 15 hours
between November 2019 and September 2020
to discuss and note overlapping patterns in the
listening with, listening for, and most commonly
the nonlistening life moments we had experienced
within diverse communities that purport to care
for autistic individuals. We upheld two broad
criteria: (a) elevating IEP connected dynamics
or situational dimensions which made quality
listening paramount and (b) centering exclusively
on firsthand experiences or dynamics each of us
had witnessed in a presential manner, not through
virtual or indirect means. We were also free to
bring up possible archetype items for discussion,
all of which were clustered into the categories
delineated below.
There were important frontiers of submission
and homogenizing which transgressed within our
clustered counter-narratives. This corroborates
how far minoritizing dehumanization has gone at
the institutional level, creating barriers to foster-
ing the transformative dialogue sought by families
yet often proactively resisted by institutional ed-
ucational actors within schooling contexts. Thus,
voices of dehumanized families of color or those
experiencing intersectional disability categories
in the educational system go unheard. Rather than
prompting helping actions, responses to these
voices involve unjustified punitive decisions by
institutional actors of all sorts. How can transfor-
mational listening with and listening for take place
under such a dehumanized paradigm of relational-
ity? As educators and school administrators, flex-
ibility in one’s consciousness is key to connect to
the experience of families and communities sup-
porting the disabled.
theorizing modaLities
of Listening and CritiCaL
ConsCiousness formation
Nearly a century ago, Du Bois (1924) theorized
double consciousness as a “special gift” of Black
folks derived from their unique understanding
of racialized oppressive forces and the need to
resist them. We propose the intersectional notion
of multilayered consciousness to account for
collaborative modes of consciousness raising
mechanisms that authentic caring enactments of
listening with and listening for make possible.
Through exploration of our counter-narratives,
we observed three archetypical experiences relat-
ed to listening and consciousness formation: (a)
Listening at divergent frequencies, which char-
acterizes nonlistening experiences in IEP meet-
ings; (b) Emerging consciousness, which comes
forth when we recognize historical and prevailing
social realities of families supporting disabled
children, and realize that fear of dismantling ex-
isting forms of systemic oppression can inhibit
educators’ authentic caring; and (c) Honoring
and leveraging “other” knowledges, which de-
scribes parent and teacher listening experiences.
With this third archetype, we highlight differences
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 51
educator and the ways in which listening was shut
down by endorsement of normalizing and margin-
alizing rhetoric and institutionalized practices.
SenSing Another’S VitAlity AS one’S
own VerSuS FeAr
Kamil’s connection to listening reflects the inter-
twined vitality between parent and child, paral-
leling potential educational practices that would
bring the sentipensante tenet of interdependent
well- being (Sosa-Provencio et al., 2018) to fru-
ition. Sentipensante is the embodiment of emo-
tions, and physical and neurodiversity as integral
wholes in the making of one’s sense of person-
hood. In this type of listening, families sense when
they and their children experience harmony or dis-
cord. Thus, emotional connectivity and meaning-
making between and within individuals are crucial
considerations.
KAmil
It is challenging for me to untether my listening ex-
periences as a mother and activist from those as an
educator. I struggle to conceptualize how listening
is experienced across a continuum of actors in con-
versation. How does my consciousness make mean-
ing from conversation to permit listening? What
does it look like when someone is listening to me?
Do I have an idea of what it looks like when I am not
heard? How does listening change people? I tussle
with these questions as I consider listening a two-
prong activity: listening as an actor (the conversing
actor who listens to the re-actor) and listening as the
re-actor (the agentic re-actor who listens to the actor
in a dynamic conversational process). I am drawn
to this duality because listening unfolds as a two-
way conversation: not an individualist, solipsistic
act. Embedded cultural connections play a vital role
in listening. In this instance, I reflect on a conver-
sation with my family when I think listening was
happening. I was 2 months into my pregnancy and
shared that I was going to be a first-time mother. At
the time I had no idea my child would be born with
a disability. The conversation took place in 1999, at
The Jones Annual Fourth of July Soul Picnic. I was
sitting at a table between six aunts and five uncles.
in feelings and values among parents of autistic
children and the educators who support and teach
them. Through reflexive dialogue, educators and
parents can come to sense each other’s vitality as
their own. Sensing another’s vitality as one’s own
is a departure from merely engaging in scripted,
institutionalized worker roles. Rather, it involves
courageously drawing energy and purpose from a
child and family’s health and well-being even at
the expense of having to depart from institutional-
ized and oppressive norms, knowing that in taking
this stance one may not be working precisely to
prioritize one’s individual job security, power, and
sense of belonging to a profession whose loyalty
comes at the expense of children and their fami-
lies. We believe that educators, although they are
subjected to particular power dynamics and ex-
pectations in their role as workers, must strive to
come to sense another’s vitality as their own. We
believe this is the case even when educators have
not developed a similar identity or values that take
shape in the harsh contexts often faced by family
members of autistic children. Davis’ (2016) con-
cept of intersectional justice parallels this sense
of common vitality in that solidarity is crucial to
address injustices at individual, local, and global
levels. We open and close with glimpses into more
utopian listening possibilities, whereas the central
portion of our counter-narratives reflects predomi-
nant unlistening behaviors.
Listening at divergent
frequenCies
In this section, we foreground Kamil, Alexis, and
Pamela’s stories. Each of these narratives com-
bined with our collective reflections indicate dis-
tinct forms of nonlistening practices. We open with
Kamil’s literal and biological experience of inter-
dependent well-being that begun when she was
carrying her child. As an expectant mother, Kamil
had no choice but to listen to her child whereas
other family members could choose to listen or
not listen to her experience at their convenience,
foreshadowing the unique ways that families lis-
ten to their children for interdependent well-being.
Alexis, Pamela, and Kamil’s narratives that follow
illustrate the caregivers’ searches for a listening
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
52
experience than the re-actors. I remember their
body posture, hand gestures, and words of kind-
ness and family validated my concerns; and (b)
the re-actors either have time to adjust to what
they are hearing and choose to accept the conver-
sation, or can superficially participate in listening,
meaning that nothing of substance is provided to
drive closer to resolution. My uncles, between the
ages of 75 and 92, exemplify the latter. They were
not attentive to the conversation; one even faced
another way. I wonder if they were not listening
because it wasn’t relevant to them. Listening for
them has always been explained as a matter of life
and death. They were part of the sharecropping
business and witnessed countless acts of violence,
sometimes deadly. They listened for compliance,
rather than for understanding and helping. I won-
der if listening frequencies converge/diverge
when the opportunity, the environment, and rela-
tionships are either established or not.
unListening to assign
another’s (un)beLonging
As with Kamil’s listening experiences, the follow-
ing depictions of unlistening during IEP meetings
occurred when educator and parent listening fre-
quencies interfere with one another, cancelling
out dialogue. This typically occurs due to their
roots in different paradigms, such as normalizing
ideologies versus neurodiverse ways of seeing or
experiencing the world. Specifically, unlistening
occurs through embracing versus rejecting right-
ful presence, resisting versus perpetuating posi-
tivistic, Western ideologies tethered to historically
oppressive practices such as defining another’s
“intelligence” through institutionalized airs of
normalizing superiority (e.g., White, Christian
supremacy; neurotypicality over neurodiversity).
Different paradigms also prioritize independence
at the expense of interdependence. The outcomes
are exclusion/nullification of those who by virtue
of these supremacist normalizing ideologies do
not belong (Bolt, 2021; Garland-Thomson, 1997;
Voulgarides et al., 2021). In each of the instances
we share below, embracing the dominant paradigm
resulted in oppression and exclusion.
Me: Hello everyone, it’s so nice to see you.
Aunts/Uncles: Hey niece, how’re you, how’s
school coming? You’re still in school, right?
You know education is a key to success.
Me: About that, I have some news (I took a
deep breath).
Aunts/Uncles: You do? Well, spit it out!
Me: I’m expecting.
Aunts/Uncles: Expecting what? (chuckles
and laughs)
Aunts: Congratulations! Do you know what
you’re having yet? Oh, this is exciting news!
Uncles: Wait, what’s she expecting?
Aunts: A baby crazy . . . don’t pay them no
mind.
Me: I’m so nervous. I don’t know what to do.
Aunts/Uncles: Listen, you never know what
to do. Parenting is 60% listening and 40%
action. Even when it’s quiet, you are listen-
ing. You’re listening for things to go right
and for trouble signs. You’re listening for
someone who cannot tell you when some-
thing is wrong right away—that’s what peo-
ple do. It’s a job mothers do without thinking
about it.
Me: Funny. Children don’t listen; they have
their own agendas. It’s called, feed me, hold
me, and burp me. What else is there?
Aunts/Uncles: Child, you have a lot to learn
(everyone is laughing). Having a child means
it’s your turn to listen, not to act! The role of
listening starts with listening to your unborn
child. It means listening to your body. Pay-
ing attention to what your body needs to help
your child. It’s also listening to your doctor
and understanding when there’s cause for
concern.
Me: This is a lot of information. I hope I re-
member it all.
As this conversation’s initiator or actor, two things
became clear: (a) the actor has a different listening
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 53
showed terrible biases against both their Latinx
culture and religious affiliation.
We met with two of the organization’s directors,
both White and self-declared evangelical Chris-
tians. Despite their ranking and experience, they
showed minimal concern for Blanca’s family and
engaged in rude proselytizing maneuvers that ap-
peared to make Erminia extremely uncomfortable.
Instead of centering on helping the family to secure
services, they insisted that Blanca meet month-
ly for dinner with “people of her kind” meaning
autistic young adults, suggesting that Blanca’s
friends would also have to be autistic, and imply-
ing that Blanca’s future partner would have to be
autistic. These implications exacerbated Ermin-
ia’s sense of anger. Apart from interpreting every
word, especially since the White individuals in the
organization kept ignoring Erminia, I stopped the
meeting several times to regroup with the family
and give them breathing space. I kept insisting to
the family that they did not have to yield to requests
with which they disagreed. Over many interactions
with the family, I do not remember any instance
where Erminia was firmer and clearer about her
desires than this incident. Erminia felt insulted by
the demeaning implications of this organization’s
representatives. We eventually found another or-
ganization that advocated on their behalf. Blanca
has since graduated from high school and remains
closely linked to her rich communal environment.
Billy’s family journey. I also met Billy’s mother,
Viviana, at Graciela’s office. Billy was 5 years
old and in the process of entering public school.
During the latter part of prekindergarten, Billy’s
parents had been convinced (not-so-transparently)
to have Billy psychologically evaluated. The re-
sults indicated that Billy exhibited an “extreme”
mode of nonverbal autism. Graciela strongly dis-
agreed and felt it was crucial to demonstrate the
inaccuracy of the nonverbal proclamation via ther-
apy in order to prepare the family for a second
evaluation. Indeed, in a matter of months, Billy
started verbalizing a number of words. Despite the
exclusive use of Spanish at home, the bulk of Bil-
ly’s emerging vocabulary was in English.
The family had chosen a dual-language school for
Billy. This decision derived from recommendations
AlexiS
As blind and brown Latinx, my personhood is tied
at the interactional level to being non-White and
disabled. This in turn makes me part of a direct pan-
disability experience with autistic and neurodiverse
folks. In terms of consciousness formation, my ob-
servational/listening roles as a disability advocate
impact my theoretical and existential perspectives
on disability. In the selected counter-narratives, I
embodied disability while either advocating with
or interpreting for disabled persons and their fam-
ilies. The families in these counter-narratives are
Latinx and linked therapeutically to Graciela, also
Latinx and fluently bilingual. Graciela listened to
them whereas other actors in the stories, purported-
ly working in the best interests of autistic individu-
als, sought to exile them to separate spaces.
Blanca and her mother. I met Blanca at Graciela’s
office. Blanca arrived with her mother and Gracie-
la introduced my wife and me to them. I had met
Graciela at a university where she was completing
her last counseling courses for therapy certifica-
tion and I was directing a disability program cen-
tered on persons with visual impairments. Graciela
was originally from Mexico and was a psycholo-
gist by training. In her professional role, Graciela
supported immigrant communities’ well-being.
Blanca was 17 years old and had been diag-
nosed with autism. She was verbally fluent in both
English and Spanish. When Graciela and I started
advocating with Blanca, the family, and I priori-
tized linking Blanca with the State’s Department
of Rehabilitation Services and finding a local au-
tism organization to serve Blanca and her family.
Blanca’s mother, Erminia, is the core actor for pur-
poses of consciousness formation analytics. Born
and raised in Mexico, Erminia was monolingual
and had six children. Erminia and the rest of her
family were active members of a Jehovah Witness
congregation. This fact turned out to be a signifi-
cant barrier. The oldest local autism organization
seemed to be religiously biased toward traditional
evangelical or protestant preferences, excluding
everything else. Given the age and prestige of this
organization, this is where I accompanied Blanca
and Erminia to seek help. Overall, the organization
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
54
school. Through a combination of health insurance
and private tuition, I had found her a classroom
at a university-based preschool that reserves spots
for autistic children. Based on initial conversation
with the autism program director, it seemed to me
that this particular private program’s ethos was
to embrace both an ethical conviction and a re-
search-based assertion that early childhood inclu-
sion promotes healthy social interaction for all. For
example, Pearl did not need to come in as a child
who could already sit still during circle-time. If she
did not, this goal could be approached as a work in
progress through applied behavior analysis (ABA)
in the natural classroom setting. Although it was a
great sacrifice to transport Pearl to another town
and provide private tuition, it seemed to be well
worth the effort. This was a community that wel-
comed her in spite of her divergent development
and sent daily photos of her in the mix of engaging
in school activities among peers. This was not only
an ABA center, but a school where Pearl could be
part of a class until she was old enough for public
preschool. Once Pearl turned three, it was time to
consider public school enrollment and engage in
the original evaluation process for an IEP.
During the consent for the public school to
evaluate my child, I spoke about my hopes for her
to continue in an inclusive setting. The response
was that it would depend on what Pearl requires. I
wondered why the educator used the word require
when I had just been explaining what I desired
and why. I know that humans require oxygen,
water, food, and shelter to survive, but I was not
convinced a child requires a subseparate environ-
ment in order to learn. My desires derived from
my experiences as a doctoral student, teacher,
mother, and Pearl’s previous experience in inclu-
sive settings, which she had had since the age of
5 months, yet they were not taken up. I was told
that at Pearl’s first IEP meeting the teachers would
present (and we would discuss) appropriate ser-
vices based on her evaluation results. I already
feared that what would be deemed “appropriate”
would depend not so much on the child, but on the
resources available and the particular school’s mi-
croculture (Strain, 2017).
“Readiness” for the educators on the IEP team
was the idea that students need to work on par-
ticular skills in a subseparate environment prior
from other Spanish-speaking neighbors, which felt
right to the family because Billy would not have to
move to another school. When they shared this de-
cision with the school, the special educator (a White
individual embedded in a primarily non-White con-
text) took on an antagonistic attitude aimed at dis-
suading Billy’s parents, going as far as contacting
Graciela to request her help in convincing the par-
ents to take Billy elsewhere. Eventually, this educa-
tor was removed from the school (presumably for
health reasons). In terms of agency and awareness
raising, Viviana and Graciela’s almost daily interac-
tions generated a relational bond that allowed listen-
ing and even risk-taking.
Listening distortions. Paradigmatic juxtapositions
involve linguistic and often xenophobic barriers,
even things as outrageous as religious differences
which exacerbate exclusionary practices for neu-
rodiverse students and their Latinx families; per-
haps even regarding deep communal grounding
of advocacy causes among Latinx practitioners
as “weak” or somehow alien to institutionalized
ways which operate in everyday practices. Gra-
ciela’s mediating role illustrates that this othering
tendency by institutional actors is at times met by
resistance from Latinx advocacy actors who try to
undo/disrupt dysfunctional classroom ecologies
(Annamma & Morrison, 2018). Exclusionary ra-
cialized patterns are perpetuated against disabled
Latinx students like Blanca. As a matter of fact,
Blanca’s experience regarding transitional plans
and inclusionary practices had been nonexistent
by the time she graduated from high school.
unShAred meAningS oF reAdineSS
And ProPriety
In parallel to the Latinx experiences of assigned
exclusion Alexis described, Pamela and Kamil’s
narratives below reflect a nonlistening archetype
in which educators use normalizing rhetoric to
limit and dominate conversations.
PAmelA
Pearl,2 Pamela’s child, was two at the time of her
autism diagnosis and thereby too young for public
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 55
to being “mainstreamed”; What was left out of the
conversation was whether the district community
was “ready” to include Pearl. I wondered what it
meant to be ready to join their community. Did this
mean ready to sit still for longer stretches of time?
Ready to follow directions? Ready to consistently
communicate verbally? I wondered about making
explicit the specific behaviors that grant admission
into their “inclusion,” class, that is the class for typ-
ical students and those deemed close enough to typ-
ical. Would this be implicit until the IEP meeting or
was it assumed that I would embrace the school’s
meanings of readiness and appropriateness?
The special education coordinator had intend-
ed to observe Pearl in the inclusive setting, but
the pandemic hit too soon so the only assessment
data considered was that collected in the unfamil-
iar environment of the public school. Despite my
assertions and those of the Board Certified Behav-
ior Analyst at the private program—that inclusion
benefitted Pearl while at the same time caused no
harm to other children—the educators on the IEP
team unanimously concurred that subseparate was
the “appropriate” setting in which Pearl could gain
“readiness” skills. The IEP meeting was likely more
emotional and nerve-wracking for me as a parent
than it was for the educators and I did not even think
to propose the argument that my child could offer
new types of social experiences and interactions
to the typically developing children as well. The
assignment of my child and others like her to the
subseparate group rather than the integrated group
strengthened my sense that the school was not ready
to include children like Pearl. Apparently, during
the public-school evaluation, Pearl had been invited
to sit with the other children in the inclusion room
and instead made her way to a shopping cart. Ac-
cording to the teacher, “it was hard to get her to sit.”
It appeared to me that the classroom did not have
practices in place to help children learn routines
through participation in and with the group; rather
children like Pearl were supposed to be trained out-
side of the community and brought in once they had
learned to follow simple commands (otherwise they
were not “ready”). I wondered if this experience
had been unsettling from Pearl’s perspective. She
had to have known that this was not her classroom
and that these were not her teachers. The recom-
mendation for Pearl to learn in a subseparate setting
was presented as based on her skills, but I felt that
it derived from assumptions about the level of effort
involved in inclusive practices, and staffing struc-
tures that would support Pearl’s rightful presence.
KAmil
I recall my son’s first parent–teacher meeting during
his ninth grade, the first of many high school meet-
ings. The teacher called into the hallway, “family of
Jaylen.” I remember sitting silently at the semicir-
cle table where the teacher had a file several inches
thick. She began by stating what a pleasure it was
to have Jaylen in her classroom; he is loving, pa-
tient, and other nonacademic characteristics. I recall
looking at a checklist which was presumably used
to guide progress parallel to nondisabled students.
This meeting went on for another 15 minutes before
the speech therapist joined. From there, the therapist
took another 10 minutes explaining benchmarks
using terms such as “underperforming, on target,
emerging, at risk, and not demonstrated.” These
words were so cold, unpersonal, and canonized. I
remember thinking, are they listening to themselves
at all? If so, why are they not asking if I have ques-
tions? I was visibly irritated and wrote down 15
questions I wanted to ask. But they were both so
busy talking over each other, no one asked me any-
thing. I remember looking at their body postures.
Both had physically turned their chairs away from
me, facing each other. I thought, is this common?
As I reflect on this conversation, listening as
the actor or re-actor, power always plays a role.
Turning the chairs away from me spoke volumes
in terms of listening. I realized that I could sim-
ply undergo this institutional experience by saying
nothing and listening as a distant spectator, as if I
was not in the room at all. This allowed me to be
a guest in a space where I could see and hear how
educators interact when the space is safe for them
and free of opinions and interruptions. I conclude
that power is always present in any interaction.
Second, the opportunity to listen must be pres-
ent in order for it to occur. Third, culture plays a
role in what we hear. History plays a critical role
in listening. Parts of what we hear are suppressed
whereas others are problematized. Listening is fil-
tered based on culture, power, and historic norms
linked to race, gender, and ability.
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
56
education license, I believed the other educators
in the room had an authority on the matter that I
could not yet possess. I allowed more experienced
educators at the meeting to explain why the student
was not “ready” to be mainstreamed. I think of this
mother now. I never let go of that mother’s question
and realize that it was never answered.
Gutiérrez (2012), drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa,
describes the distinction in Spanish between know-
ing as “conocer” (familiarity or personal experi-
ence with a person or notion) and “saber” (factual
knowledge). Dialoguing by using statements as if
they are objective, when in fact they are subjective,
is a means to privilege one form of knowledge over
another. Educators must acknowledge that their
“expertise” is only a familiarity with curricula, in-
stitutionalized knowledge, and the microculture of
our school. Nearly 15 years after this particular par-
ent meeting, I became aware that the subtests used
to determine a student’s “cognitive ability” in edu-
cational assessments have changed little from those
used a century ago to label particular members of
immigrant communities as “feeble-minded” and to
turn those individuals back to their countries from
Ellis Island. Moreover, eugenic logic interplayed
with the scholarship involved in creating such as-
sessments (Boake, 2002). Adopting a knowing
(saber) stance about where a child belongs based
on traditional and historically oppressive forms of
input means failing to acknowledge students and
families’ knowing (conocer). The greater the firm-
ness with which an educator grasps a word mean-
ing (i.e., “ready” or “appropriate”), the further the
educator is from confronting historically oppressive
forms of “knowing.” In the forthcoming passage,
Paulo describes this lack of flexibility as more than
blissful ignorance. Lack of flexibility can stem from
a potentially terrible fear; the fear of acknowledging
one’s complicity in oppression and violence for the
sake of personal security leads to evasion of pain, a
survival technique not unlike that initially described
by Kamil in relation to her ancestors.
PAulo
My insights embody critical scholarship with
experiences engaging with practicing and pro-
spective educators via intersecting personal and
professional roles. I assert there exists intentional
emerging ConsCiousness
We are concerned that consciousness formation is
taken for granted in inclusive education discussions
within the United States and abroad (e.g., Artiles
et al., 2011; Powell, 2011; Tomlinson, 2017). Un-
bridgeable dichotomies frame these discussions,
leaving little room for collaborative dynamicity.
We seek authentic modes of mutual understanding
across positional differences to enact inclusive equi-
ty possibilities with and for intersectionally infused
neurodiverse students and their families (Silberman,
2015; Yull & Wilson, 2018). Emerging conscious-
ness is more collectivistic. It has features from the
original version of the social model of disability (e.g.,
Oliver, 1996; see also Shakespeare & Watson, 2001
for critical assessments of this social model version)
as well as perhaps elements connected to culturally
sustaining pedagogies (Peters & Chimedza, 2000).
It nevertheless fails to achieve collaborative inter-
dependence as a mode of consciousness formation
due to listening distortions (Skrtic, 1991; Williams,
2016). For example, the fear on the part of educators
to proactively dismantle existing forms of systemic
oppression due to intrainstitutional self-perceptions
of powerlessness, lack of third space imagination
(Soja, 1989, 2010; Waitoller & Annamma, 2017),
retaliatory risks (Annamma & Morrison, 2018), or
not recognizing the need for solidarity toward inter-
sectional justice (Davis, 2016) precludes listening.
The consequences are highlighted in Pamela and
Paulo’s narratives, where power and powerlessness
are dominant IEP discourses. In Pamela’s case,
some concessions were possible within the written
language of Pearl’s IEP, yet no changes were made
to the placement.
PAmelA
Engaging in the mother’s role during the IEP pro-
cess for my daughter brought forth a memory from
15 years prior in my first year as a mathematics
teacher. I recall that one parent continued to ask
why, if her child kept getting B letter grades, she
was not ready for the general education class. The
child was in a small group with me, which consisted
of only multilingual learners (MLL), two of whom
had IEPs and were also on honor roll. Being new
to the district and school and not having a special
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 57
valid form of surfacing and verifying educational
“truths.” Families’ voices, particularly the voic-
es of those who are non-White, carry much less
power than those who speak from the role of a
professional educator. Given that the majority of
the educator work force is White, these silencing
and unlistening moves are violent acts of White
supremacy. Park’s (2020) notion of “illusive and
elusive” aptly applies to minoritized parental voice
when it comes to their children’s education. Such
illusions and elusions are intentional strategies to
evade pain, assert White supremacy, and to inject
emotional weight on families. Yet, Hooks (1994)
reminds us that pain is necessary for transforma-
tive forms of teaching.
Framing pain. By pain, I mean a constellation
of discomfort, aversion, anxiety, denial, and fear
with having to confront paternalistic, ableist, and
violent practices. In confronting and challenging
such practices, educators would effectively dele-
gitimize special education epistemological un-
derpinnings, their practices, and its existence as
a profession (Connor, 2019; Hernández-Saca &
Cannon; 2019). Paradoxically, by avoiding this
painful process, educators carry on the business as
usual of inflicting pain and violence on disabled
bodies and souls.
The infliction of pain and violence is rooted in
ways schools and schooling were conceptualized.
Popkewitz (2004) argues that historically school-
ing and thus pedagogical tools were developed to
control and monitor students’ souls. Such tools are
baked into special education. Paralleling Said’s
(1994) thesis, disabled students are constructed (or
fabricated according to Popkewitz) then controlled
(I argue it also applies to families). Contemporary
consequences include the gatekeeping of rich learn-
ing opportunities in favor of being able to show “ad-
equate progress.” To show such progress and thus
control works to educators’ “advantage,” holding
students to low expectations and drawing on out-
dated and dehumanizing learning theories (e.g.,
behaviorism) and positivists-grounded knowledge
systems. From a perusal of existing IEPs, special
education’s central artifact, one will quickly deduce
that these forms of dehumanizing practices are un-
fortunately more common than not.
unlistening to evade pain and maintain White and
able-bodied supremacy through violent acts. By
unlistening, I mean ways that educators refute
non-White and disabled folks’ claims and ideas,
while avoiding further interactions with them. As
with Kamil’s earlier point that her uncles listened
for compliance, rather than for understanding and
helping, there is a similar compliance and main-
tenance of the status quo on the educator’s part
as (un)listeners. In the paragraphs that follow, I
briefly describe key aspects of my identity, then
I situate educators’ pain, and finally describe how
evading pain reifies the status quo and violence on
disabled minoritized bodies.
I identify as male and a first generation Chi-
nese American immigrant. I am parent of an au-
tistic person, a teacher educator, an educational
researcher, and a collaborative activist for and
with marginalized groups. I hold a doctorate in
special education and served as a public-school
mathematics teacher for 10 years prior to entering
graduate school. For the past dozen years, I have
been working with, but mostly against, educators
to design and implement more inclusive and eq-
uitable education for and with students with more
significant disabilities, such as my son, Kai, are
traditionally are not thought as belonging in gen-
eral education classrooms with students that more
closely approximate “normal.”
The emotional toll and exhaustion of these 12
years are overwhelming. In general, I find that
educators dismiss my education experiences and
expertise in favor of my parental and minoritized
positionality. In other words, they unlisten to my
ideas and input that they deem as solely coming
from a “over-passionate and subjective” Asian
parent who is supposed to instead acquiesce. Kai
and my sets of knowing are erased as unimportant
to their objective and moral “know.” One White
female principal strongly stated during one of
Kai’s IEP meetings that “as a school principal, it
would be against my morals to allow Kai into gen-
eral education classrooms!” In another instance,
a White male principal erected boundaries on my
emotional expressions by firmly stating “Whoa,
whoa, whoa, let’s not become overly emotional
now!” when I reacted to a barrage of psycholog-
ical violence from other IEP members. Moreover,
these educators view positivist methods as the only
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
58
(Rector-Aranda, 2018; Valenzuela, 1999), which in
many cases supports the violent status quo on dis-
abled bodies. At the same time and to some extent,
there have been concessions made during Kai’s IEP
meetings. This happened during outlier moments
when authentic-type listening did occur (Tan, 2017).
These moments required at least one equity-mind-
ed educator who cleverly navigated going against
their educator peers and lessening their peers’ pain.
Such educators cared deeply about Kai, listened
with intention, and began to sense their own vitality
as intimately bound with mine. Perhaps they grad-
uated from a more progressive teacher preparation
program centered around antiracist and antiableist
practices. Thus, conscious formation may emerge
under different conditions. Unfortunately, when Kai
entered high school, White educators once again
enacted their will, power, dirty tactics,3 and moral
compass to reject any concessions on including him
in general education. They demanded and succeed-
ed in fully scaling back his percentage of time in
inclusion environments from 50% to zero. In what
follows, Pamela describes IEP concessions through
collaborative negotiation and inquiry-based listen-
ing possibilities.
negotiating an ieP with
sanCtioned KnowLedge
PAmelA
At the end of the IEP meeting, I knew I would re-
ject the classroom placement in favor of keeping
Pearl in her private, inclusive environment. The
public school educators were only able to recom-
mend “reverse inclusion” opportunities (i.e., where
typical peers enter the subseparate space, perhaps
for a 30-min block, at an unspecified frequency).
This felt patronizing, as if it were community ser-
vice. It does not change staffing or structure, nor
guarantee any number of inclusion minutes. I re-
jected the classroom placement portion, yet before
signing on to the speech and occupational therapy
services, I wished for the wording in the IEP to
be more humanizing (Tan et al., 2019b). Through
email correspondence I suggested alternatives to
specific passages in the IEP, all of which were
accepted. As one example, I asked that it read
“Pearl did not demonstrate frequent examples of
Unlistening to avoid/inflict pain. Listening and
taking seriously my input as a parent/teacher edu-
cator who studies equity and inclusiveness means
that educators must go against the grain (i.e.,
systemic-level forces). They must confront and
transform their paternalistic, ableist, and violent
practices. For many educators such confrontation
is overwhelming and may feel out of their control.
Thus, maintaining the status quo and unlistening
becomes a more attractive option. This is very
similar to race-based discussions where White ed-
ucators make manipulative moves such as claims
of discomfort to avoid engagement in equity work
(Blaisdell, 2018). Rather than work to build criti-
cal consciousness on disability issues (Ware, 2005)
and toward just practices, they double down on le-
gitimizing exclusion (Young, 2008). For example,
when Kai was in kindergarten, his IEP members
would rationalize excluding him from the general
education in order to have him be better prepared
to be included in an abstract future. The same ra-
tionalization occurred year in and year out among
different IEP teams, including during his ninth-
grade year when an IEP team member insisted
that he would be ready to be included in year 13.
This parallels Pamela’s experience described ear-
lier with educators weaponizing readiness to enact
harmful exclusionary and segregated practices.
Yet, rightful presence (Barton & Tan, 2020) rejects
inclusion as an extension of rights in some abstract
future; rather, it must be immediate. The seduc-
tion of familiarity, comfort, power preservation,
and epistemological monopoly (Connor, 2019) is
a monumental force for one minoritized parent/
teacher educator/researcher/activists to challenge.
Ignorance in such cases is indeed bliss. Un-
listening means keeping “other” people’s children
at a safe distance (Young, 2008), particularly those
who are not White and disabled, in a future that ab-
solves their responsibilities. Under such relational
premises, rightful presence, even at the basic level
of inclusion, becomes a platitude, a mere illusion.
The future of othered/racialized people’s children is
not and cannot be a top priority (Delpit, 1988). The
special education bureaucratic system does not fos-
ter such authentic forms of caring among those who
operate within it (e.g., as demonstrated by the high
volume of work special educators are expected to
carry). Thus, in practice, caring becomes aesthetic
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 59
beyond. Without these components, relational-
ly grounded and authentically transformational
endeavors in schooling settings are likely to go
nowhere (Argyris, 1977). The features of these
transformational efforts are aligned with So-
sa-Provencio and colleagues’ (2018) core premis-
es: (a) constructing education as political spaces;
(b) enacting schooling as a context for decoloni-
zation and collective empowerment; (c) elevating
epistemologies and multiliteracies of marginalized
groups such as intersectional disability commu-
nities; (d) fostering critical frameworks for the
collective navigation of oppression in a radical
manifestation of sentipensante solidarity; (e) en-
gaging social action pedagogy as an intrinsic part
of everyday schooling practices; and (f) engender-
ing collective spaces for hope and interdependent
well-being.
Kamil’s opening description of listening as a
process that begins during a mother’s pregnancy
provides a sense that authentic listening occurs
when our vitality with a child is one in the same.
When educators embrace and sense the student
and family’s vitality as their own, listening dis-
tortions resulting from fear or conflicting para-
digms fade and honoring and leveraging “other”
knowledges can organically surface. An educator
listens because the student’s well-being is every-
one’s well-being. This mode of embracing rightful
presence represents a ray of hope in contrast to op-
pressive paradigms focused on pathologizing any
individual who falls outside a norm. In Pamela’s
counter-narrative, educators at the inclusive, pri-
vate preschool seem attuned to Pearl’s well-being
and participation in the community.
PAmelA
Before the COVID-19 school closure, I received
daily notes home and photos of Pearl and her
classmates participating in academic activities.
I heard stories of what made my child smile that
day or how she had helped a classmate. These
were consonant with my own indicators of what
it means for Pearl to have positive experiences in
a community. The educators made a conscious ef-
fort to find her interests and provide opportunities
to engage them. Pearl’s personality, actions, and
progress toward behavioral goals were described
functional language” rather than definitively claim
that she “did not have functional language,” which
I know to be false given that she successfully con-
veys what she wants in the family setting. I contest-
ed the ableist words “appropriate” and “ready” and
worked to have them eliminated. Although I thought
any ethical arguments would be dismissed as sub-
jective, I was confident that collaborating medical
professionals’ statements might be endorsed. Med-
ical professionals affiliated with my child’s neurol-
ogist concurred that more specific and observable
language should be used and that the terms “ready”
and “appropriate” were too subjective. Rather than
having an objective of “listening appropriately,” the
IEP now states that Pearl should orient her gaze to-
ward the speaker, respond vocally when called upon,
and keep her hands in front of her or by her side.
Such adjustments made “readiness” explicit, which
could open doors to further conversation and reflec-
tion. In fact, it has made me ask new questions, such
as what is the value of orienting one’s gaze toward
the speaker in listening? Do all people listen better
when we do this? Does it have any negative effect on
those around us when we gaze at a speaker to differ-
ent degrees? To what extent is this useful and to what
extent are these Eurocentric, ableist/neurotypical
social norms? It was encouraging that my suggested
rewordings, when corroborated by professionals in
the field, were taken up, and that perhaps the IEP
team reconsidered using language that generalizes
a child based on an assessment or that exerts pow-
er via terms such as “appropriately” or “readiness”
without sharing microculture-specific definitions of
those terms with parents.
honoring and Leveraging
“other” KnowLedges
In this third archetype, honoring and leveraging
“other” knowledges, educators listen for and take-
up, rather than dismiss, family and/or student’s
knowledges which may be unfamiliar. We high-
light features of an authentic caring, sentipensante
body; the embodiment of emotions, physical and
neurodiversity as integral whole in the making
of one’s sense of personhood and combined
with the crucial enactment of soul pedagogies
(Sosa-Provencio et al., 2018) in classrooms and
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
60
authentic caring entities with a given kind of con-
sciousness, regardless of policy frameworks driv-
ing their leadership’s axiology. Consciousness is a
human attribute. It translates into collective action
or even social movement tendencies (Davis, 2016).
It operates at the microlevel and then gets collec-
tively enhanced through collaborative, culturally
responsive transformational enactments (Dutta,
2014; Paris & Alim, 2017). This gets strongly cor-
roborated by Pamela’s initial experiences at the
private university-based setting where Pearl was
welcomed into an inclusive class at age two, but
Pamela’s perspective on the institution proved to
be quixotic as her child was ultimately excluded
from the class by age four, at first due to cohort
separation protocols per the COVID-19 pandemic
and later due to her development not veering to-
ward typical after ABA therapy.
Listening with and listening for must work in
tandem with consciousness raising. Examining
them separately as mechanical parallel processes in
the interpretation of archetypes gives a partial pic-
ture of the multifaceted elements at work in a given
IEP or other type of situational interaction. The lit-
erature points to important roles in the enactment
of consciousness at the level of macrolevel trans-
formations as well. For instance, Kompridis (2018)
wonders why is “modernity so amenable to inces-
sant and, apparently, relentless change? What can
explain its readiness to submit to massive, abrupt,
deeply unsettling change?” (p. 4). Kompridis, fol-
lowing Habermas (1987), suggests that the core ex-
planation lies in the concept of time-consciousness,
which involves a unique attitude toward the future.
As Habermas (1987) puts it, modernity is “the ep-
och that lives for the future, that opens itself up to
the novelty of the future” (p. 5). This does not mean
that conservatist tendencies are dead in the context
of late modernity. Quite on the contrary, as recent
racial dynamics in the United States corroborate.
When it comes to inclusive equity, especially as it
pertains to the rightful presence of neurodiverse stu-
dents and their families, the prevailing bureaucrat-
ic attitude is one that looks to the past through the
elevation of medicalized evidence-based ways of
nonlistening, of antiinnovative collaboration, par-
ticularly when innovative ideas come from “nonex-
pert” sources (Connor, 2019; Padilla & Tan 2019;
Tan et al., 2019a; Tan et al., 2019b).
without reference to deviance from the norm. My
goals for her education were initially honored or
already embraced.
ConCLuding refLeCtions
Our counter-narratives exemplify Kamil’s notion
that listening is filtered through culture, power,
and historical and social constructs of race, gen-
der, and ability. Nonlistening is merely aesthetic
caring. Thus, it naturally perpetuates racial, gen-
dered, and ableist assumptions that drive system-
ic oppression. Our counter-narratives also align
to Paulo’s recognition that disabled students are
constructed then controlled, with lack of readiness
and academic progress used to justify exclusion.
In Kamil’s counter-narrative, we see an educator’s
stack of papers in a folder: an artillery of artifacts
used to indicate and then pathologize her child’s
difference from the norm. Indeed, both Pamela and
Alexis write of professionals in the role of serving
disabled individuals who, in violent disregard of
their rightful presence, told families where their
children belonged, despite parents having come to
them so that their children could live and thrive in
the communities of their choice.
Listening with is attitudinal and relational. It
involves linking one’s sense of metanarrative en-
gagement with that of the speaker/nonverbal in-
terlocutor (e.g., a parent or a disabled student in
an IEP meeting). Under this paradigm, educators
work to explore possibilities of inclusive equity
partnerships based on students’ desires, for exam-
ple, to be part of the general education learning
environment (Murray, 2000) and systemic change
(Zion, 2020).
Listening for is purposive, at the risk of be-
coming an orchestrated way for instrumentalist
exchanges. In the strict sense, organizations (ed-
ucational or otherwise) are not innately listen-
ing and/or double loop learning entities (Argyris
& Schon, 1996; Dutta, 2014). The authentically
caring, purposive directionality of listening must
be guided by concerned individuals intentional-
ly self-identified as change-making or catalyzing
agents (Padilla & Tan, 2019). Especially in terms
of organizational culture transformations, one
should not expect that organizations, in their ev-
eryday performative DNA, become listening or
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 61
ABA therapy. This was to ensure purity of the pods
and perhaps because Pearl could not keep a mask
on consistently. The possibility of Pearl being only
in the inclusion room and not in the ABA room
was never entertained. Six months later, Pearl was
brought back into the inclusion class for a period
of 2 months. Gradually her inclusion hours were
reduced, first under the justification that she need-
ed extra work on her communication skills which
were behind preschool state standards and then
with zero-tolerance for aggression cited after she
had pinched peers who reached for puzzle pieces
and toys she was using. At this point, Pearl was
nearly 4 years old. I wondered why I had not been
informed the first time she pinched a peer. Why did
data accumulate to count multiple incidents leading
to a decision to remove her from the classroom and
even from outdoor activities before I had known
of the first pinch or before a staff member stopped
the second pinch? I was told by the private school
director that “the things Pearl did” (which she said
she did not know the words for because she was
not an autism person) were not okay in the class-
room. I imagined she meant humming, pacing, or
arm and hand movements. In my mind, I sensed
that the same team that had welcomed Pearl into
the classroom at age two had lost patience with her
by age four because she was still presenting as au-
tistic. New criteria were suddenly erected for Pearl
to hold on to that one autism spot in the inclusion
class, a spot for which there was a waitlist. Leaving
the class would mean that Pearl would participate
in one-to-one ABA therapy for the entire day in
a separate room. Given that this type of seques-
tration in the ABA room had not proven produc-
tive or healthy for her when it was related to the
COVID-19 social distancing protocols, I took her
out of the school and accepted the IEP services at
the public school which had just reopened. Pearl
is now in a subseparate classroom in the public
school. Leadership has changed since her original
evaluation. She is now in the inclusion classroom
for meals, recess, and one hour of free play. My
priority was for her to be part of a class community.
KAmil
In 2020, my son, Jaylen, and daughter, Onya, were
diagnosed with COVID-19. Both laid unresponsive
In the same line of intersectional argumentation
for identitarian disability race and gender issues,
Obourn (2020) has recently proposed the concept
of racialized dis/gender which combines race, dis-
ability, and gender dimensions. The purpose of
enacting this intersectional notion is to go beyond
DisCrit modes of theorizing intersectionality (An-
namma et al., 2016), which till now have targeted
almost exclusively the interlocking connections
between race and disability. Furthermore, Obourn
insightfully indicates that disability studies
provides models for holding conceptual space
for both the negative and positive experiences
of our lived identities and relations to power.
Holding those experiences and affective rela-
tions in the present provides a foundation for
future imaginaries that can prompt action in
resistance to power . . . (p. 9)
This mode of theorizing is fully compatible with
the radical ethics of rightful presence and Paulo’s ref-
erence to pain in his archetypical counter-narrative.
We are convinced that pain does not have to consti-
tute a defeating component of consciousness forma-
tion. Pain and suffering, “particularly when shared
with others in similarly oppressed positions, can
create theoretical knowledges about the functioning
of power, privilege, and inequality” (Obourn, p. 9).
Through collaborative modes of authentic caring,
interdependent colearning, and emancipatory creativ-
ity of families, educators, advocates, disabled individ-
uals, and organizations, listening with and listening
for can enact powerful intersectional consciousness
raising spaces for subaltern and marginalized groups
aiming to foster inclusive equity throughout Amer-
ican and other global north schooling contexts. We
close with Pamela and Kamil’s narratives of living
within the COVID-19 context, a time where much of
our writing for this paper took place and when nu-
merous inequities surfaced and were exasperated.
PAmelA
By the time Pearl turned three, all forms of schools
had closed due to the COVID-19 crisis. At the
initial reopening of the private program 4 months
later, I was told that Pearl could not mix with the in-
clusion class and could only engage in one-to-one
Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021
62
and helpless as doctors worked feverishly to re-
store their breathing. I wanted to rush to their
bedsides, but restrictions kept me from touching,
talking, or being in the room with them. I depend-
ed on the nurse’s daily virtual dashboard notes. I
experienced loss of appetite, trouble concentrat-
ing, and extreme sadness. For 2 weeks, I couldn’t
hear, see, or speak to my children. I threw myself
into work and school activities to occupy me, but I
was truly lost without my children.
Despite having both children home now, the re-
siduals of being separated for 2 weeks shows up in
every aspect of our lives. Before COVID-19, fami-
ly dinner was filled with laughter and stories. Now
dinner time was silent and cold. Those 2 weeks
took something from my family much deeper than
illness. We had become so traumatized by listening
to our painful realities that it became more com-
fortable to remain silent. During the follow-up call
with physicians, I was asked about my experience
and how my children were recovering. I said, “my
family is traumatized beyond the scars.” The doctor
went on his tangent for about 5 min before realizing
I was crying. After experiencing 2 weeks of pain,
anger, frustration, feeling ignored and mistreated,
I had finally reached my emotional boiling point.
Once the tears started flowing, I could not stop. My
children ran to my side, hugging me, holding my
hand, and rubbing my back; it was such a sweet
moment. Jaylen walked up slowly, putting his
hands on my face and wiped my tears. I knew we
were beginning to reconnect again, but this time, it
was deeper and more powerful than ever!
notes
1Throughout this essay, we use inclusion and
inclusive interchangeably as rightful presence.
2We use pseudonyms to protect children’s
identity.
3During this time, Kai’s mother and I were di-
vorcing. In the rst 10 years of Kai’s schooling, she
rarely attended his IEP meetings, thus I was the one
making parental decisions during these meetings
and ghting to have him more fully included in
general education. Educators on the IEP team used
the divorce as a vehicle to get Kai’s mom to con-
sent to Kai’s 100% exclusion in general education.
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author bio
Alexis C. Padilla is a blind, Brown Latinx scholar/
activist and lawyer who holds a PhD in Sociology
and another PhD from the Language, Literacy, and
Sociocultural Studies department at the Univer-
sity of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Currently, an independent research affiliated with
the Department of Sociology at the University of
New Mexico. Dr. Padilla is the author of “Disabil-
ity, Intersectional Agency and Latinx Identity,” an
interdisciplinary book published by Routledge in
2021. As well as the coauthor of a volume titled
“Humanizing Disability,” published by NCTM
in 2019. His publications explore emancipatory
learning, radical agency, and intersectional dis-
ability justice/theology in the context of decolonial
Latinx theorizing and critical disability studies,
emphasizing the activist/disability advocacy van-
tage point combined with actionable dimensions
of inclusive equity research and practice. https://
orcid.org/0000-0001-9655-964X. Email: apadil-
ladiv@gmail.com
Pamela Vasile, MAT, M.Sci., is a special educa-
tion teacher who has worked in culturally and lin-
guistically diverse schools in Boston for the past
14 years. In both her professional and personal
life, she has a special interest in applying disabili-
ty studies perspectives to special education.
Kamil is a parent of two individuals with autism
spectrum disorder and a current doctoral student
in the United States. As an urban student in the
Midwest, her research interest seeks to better
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jmathb.2018.09.001
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Forging new paths. NCTM.
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in Multiple Voices. Multiple Voices for Ethnically
Diverse Exceptional Learners, 18(1), 3–21.
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inclusive education: Exploring the manufacture of
inability. Routledge.
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Zion, S. (2020). Transformative student voice: Extending
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Multiple Voices, 21(2), Fall/Winter 2021 65
connect schools and communities by examining
educational and social justice issues by uniting the
oral traditions of families to the broader collective
voice.
Dr. Paulo Tan is a Lecturer at Johns Hopkins
University School of Education’s Urban Teachers
program. He also operated in various roles and is
currently an advisory board member at the Great
Lakes Equity Center. His research focuses on
advancing intersectional justice in and through
mathematics education centering disabilities.
Before his career in higher education, he served
as a public school middle-secondary mathematics
teacher for 10 years in culturally and linguistically
diverse settings in Kansas City and Indianapolis.
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