On Labels, Telling Our Own Stories, and “Special” Education

In the sense that I had a 504 plan and received accommodations from the beginning, I had the “special education” label from preschool through high school.

The phrase means different things to different people, often depending on the context. But when I personally think of the label, the first image that pops into my head is of a big wooden chair with SPED in big black letters written across the back from seventh grade. It was one of my classroom chairs, but I picture it in an isolated room where I dictated my tests.

Fourteen years of going through school and this is what my mental reflex produces.

Middle school was when I first started to feel like an outcast. I didn’t quite know why. I remember fitting in throughout elementary school.

Most of high school was a continuation of that isolation. At some point, I began to accept that some of my social difficulties probably had something to do with my disability; even if I didn’t choose or identify with the special education label, it was still printed on my back in big black letters. And the association wasn’t positive. 

Later, as a graduate student studying documentary film, I made a personal memoir about growing up with a disability. A Cerebral Game is a seven-minute film in which I attempt to grapple with my adolescent memories in an attempt to make sense of who I am today.

A Cerebral Game is with a host of other New Day Films that explore disability and are sold to schools and community organizations.

Not surprisingly, among the many areas of study I target in distributing my film is special education.

In a recent email I sent to special educators, I detailed the pain I felt being labeled as a special education student. I received an email back from one of the recipients, chastising me for using the term to describe myself.  Well, in reality, others used that label. I was recollecting.

The email said that special education was a service, not a type of student or a place.

I was stunned. I took it in. I wrote back:

There are many abstract social phenomena I detect within this interaction. I think about how even though I identify as a disabled person and find community with disabled people, I remain disgusted by the term “special education.” I think about the authority that medical and other professionals give themselves over disabled people, the people they ought to be serving. I think about the perverse ways in which that authority manifests.

What I keep coming back to, not unrelated, is the proposed erasure of my story. One of my main shticks, if you will, when I get on my filmmaking soapbox is how there are not enough disabled stories told by disabled people.

But this was different.

My story is out there and the way I described my story, my experience, my life was deemed inappropriate, theoretically faulty, hurtful, even a threat to the status quo.

Intended or not, the stark reality is that the concentrated authority in the medical and special education fields has fed the continued suppression of disabled people. Most of these professionals are obviously not bad; some even have the self-awareness to try to reform the system from within.

As I speak at physical therapy and special education conferences, I hold my perception of these professionals and they of me in constant and direct focus, offering affirmation when warranted and attempting to infiltrate when there is an opening. It is indeed a delicate relationship because these interactions run the spectrum, including the landmine detailed above.

But throughout all these interactions, I still have only one mean at my disposal: telling my story how I want it to be told. And I know that when I get some babbling status quo professional jargon in response, I know I’ve succeeded.

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Reid Davenport, Filmmaker
throughmylens.org