February 17, 2024 - Week 4
Tis the second week of school and I already have a new name. Upon collecting fundraising dollars for Afro Day (note: I clearly missed the memo and did not turn up to school with an Afro), one of the teachers confidently called me "Kiki". Don't ask me or her why Kiki, it's just Kiki...and by vote, it is remaining the top name for me so far.
And down to business. One project I will be working on is to assist in the Ambassador's Club - a group dedicated to advocacy and educational awareness on people with disability (including challenging biases and assumptions around disability). I thought my first step could be to interview some of the teachers who were ex-students and then conjure up a quick PowerPoint deck to headline agenda points. If I have not learned my lesson about tasks being simple from the Farmer's market, I learn it again!
How hard could interviewing the teachers be? However I soon realized, finding which teacher was which was hard work - since there is no teacher's registry, the website with teacher names was down, and some teachers were referred to with multiple names. As I walked up to Ms. Lewis, they then told me it was not them, it was the other "short, fat Ms. Lewis" and she was the "Tall Ms. Lewis" and as I found who I thought was Ms Braham, it turned out to be another lady in a wheelchair who wasn't even called Ms Braham. Needless to say, after a day I only managed to find and interview two teachers correctly.
These two teachers provided very practical advice and shared some heartfelt experiences, including the fact that discrimination against the disabled is an everyday reality: 1) Sidewalks are often non-existent or broken, they are also not wide enough for wheelchairs, leaving their only option to use the road. 2) Jamaicans are very open about their opinions, and this is all the more when one is physically disabled 3) One high school student with mobility issues was denied the ability to study at an advanced course simply because the classes were held on the second level and there were no ramps or lifts from the ground floor.
My second lesson learned began when I set up the PowerPoint. I realized I had only an inkling of how to make my deck inclusive, especially for anyone with visual impairment. This led me down a rabbit hole of researching and before long, I had ended up creating a guide summarizing suggestions for inclusive material. There are so many factors we take for granted: language, font size, font type, usage of columns, colors...
To wrap up the week, I went on a hike down (yes down, because I am not fit to go up yet...) the Blue Mountains. We had a slight detour to join a river party and met many lovely locals, one of whom kindly guided us through bushy terrain, over rocky paths, and a few narrow paths with a sharp drop on one side (yes, it's one of those where one misstep could send you down the hill).
Until next week!
