Community Reflections: National Disability Awareness Month, Reflection 1

Personal Disability: The Problem with Public Perception
Garet Libbey, chief talent officer

“You don’t have a disability. If someone is disabled, they are unable to do something. When has that ever been the case for you?”

That was my husband’s response when I told him that I would be writing for the DEIJ blog about how my disability has shaped my personal and professional identity. He’s right in one sense: There’s very little that having just one hand prevents me from doing. I have always said that I have a physical disability but that I don’t consider myself disabled. For me, that label suggests that I am limited in some way. That is not how I see myself and has never been how I have seen myself.

But in another sense, he’s very wrong. Wrong because of course there are a few things I can’t do. But that is just a small part.

The real reason why he is wrong is not because of the things I can or cannot do. He’s wrong because people see me and, influenced by their perceptions and experiences, assign me this label: “disabled.”

For as long as I can remember, I have had to reckon with how to confront those who suggest that I am unable to do something based only on how I appear to them. Or how to absorb others’ surprise and elation when they realize I am “just as good” at something that challenges their own perceptions.

When I was just 4, a classmate asked me, “What’s wrong with your arm?” That was the first time I had heard I was different, that there was something wrong with me. (My response to him, by the way, has become something of family legend: “What’s wrong with your head?!?”)

Though that was the first time I heard I was different, it was not the last.

Time and again, others tried to tell me I was not enough or that something was wrong with me. Too often these were people in positions of power in institutions that should be there to care and support us all—like hospitals and schools. Doctors would unthinkingly ask me the same question my 4-year-old classmate asked, showing me that years of training and deep medical knowledge alone don’t make one free from bias. Referees penalized my team when I threw a ball in during a soccer game. The reason? You need both hands on the ball in a throw-in.

Other times they are random strangers who want to place me in some narrative they have created, like the woman who told me after yoga class that I am “an inspiration.” Or the man in my neighborhood who stopped me to recommend the artificial limb company he’s an investor in.

The stories are endless, and I share them not because I am angry or because I want to embarrass anyone. I share them because they are important for those who do not share my differences to hear. My struggle is with the perceptions of disability by others and by society, not with my own differences. These perceptions create barriers and develop into biases, and it is only when we become aware of our biases that we can work to counter and change them.

That is why I became a teacher. Not because I had teachers that made such a difference in my life that I wanted to emulate them - though I absolutely did have some of those. Rather, it was because of the powerful sense that I never should have had those awful parts of my school experience. It was a belief that despite my experiences, that is not how it had to be for others. That which was a source of struggle for me could actually be a source of hope and change moving forward. And that through my experiences, I could help to make school better for others.

In my classroom across the past twenty years, we spent time building community, sharing our stories, and listening deeply to others’ experiences. I shared who I was - my interests, my challenges, stories of when I made mistakes - as a way to build trust and model vulnerability. I shared my experiences as a person with a visible difference and the important lesson it taught me: that while our society suggests that there is one right way to be or one perfect person to become, no one way is ever right, and no person is ever perfect. That’s not a thing! And besides, “right” and “perfect” are just so boring! We are all just working to be a better version of ourselves by taking risks, making mistakes, learning, and growing.

Now as Hawken’s Chief Talent Officer, my job is to design an experience for current and future faculty and staff that allows them to become a better version of themselves. It is to help everyone know that they are valued and that they belong at Hawken, not in spite of their differences but because of them.

One of the joys of my job is getting to figure out what makes each member of our community unique and special and then help them find ways to share those qualities in a way that builds their skills and our community at the same time. I believe that if teachers and staff feel valued and seen, they will in turn value and honor that which is different, in a good way, about each of their students and colleagues.

This is my way of living Hawken’s motto: “That the better self shall prevail and each generation introduce its successor to a higher plane of life.”
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Early Childhood, Lower, and Middle Schools, 5000 Clubside Rd, Lyndhurst, OH 44124
Birchwood School of Hawken, 4400 West 140th Street, Cleveland, OH 44135 

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