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Closing the Gap in Civics for Students with Disabilities in Classrooms from K-12

Published on Wed, 09/08/2021

Smiling young student in wheelchair with teen by school bus.

Mind the Gap

Students gain knowledge and skills in civics and history when schools provide effective instruction and when students have opportunities to express their voice and to engage in activities like service-learning. Yet American education is falling far short–in elementary grades in particular–and especially for students with disabilities. 

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Disability, Protest, and the 504

“I Can’t Even Get To The Back of the Bus” – Disability, 504 and the Power of Protest

This lesson investigates why and how people take action to make a difference. Building from an inquiry-based RAN chart, the lesson explores the context of the 1977 protests calling on the Federal Government to actually implement 504 access legislation. Featuring a variety of primary sources, including testimony of activist Ed Roberts.   

What is our value? A look at undervalued people

What is our value? The principle that people are paid for their work does not always work as it should; many people who have been historically undervalued have contributed to American society, including many people of color, people with a disability, women, and children. Students view images and text of people whose lives may not have been adequately valued by their contemporaries. Students examine those documents, do further research, and come to their own conclusions about how those individuals should have been and should be valued, and possibly assisted.

Putting Primary Sources in Order - Text Set and Flow Map

Organizing a rich text set of primary sources requires that students analyze and make sense of several sources on a topic. In this case, they seek to answer a focused guiding question. Students sort through about a dozen images, letters, forms, and political cartoon. In practice, a teacher could offer fewer sources, though it is a valuable sometimes to require students to choose among sources. The primary sources are also give context by a secondary source narrative from the Veterans Administration. 

Wendy Harris guest post: What exactly is a disability?

Published on Tue, 09/22/2020

1916 film frame of older man with both hands signing. He wears a high collar, necktie, and coat-jacket, his hair is short and parted in the middle.
In celebration of our new course on teaching disability history in the K-12 classroom, we invited Wendy Harris, a teacher at a school for the Deaf with expertise in teaching DeafBlind students, to share her thoughts about disability with us. The topic of Deafness as a disability gives the opportunity to begin with an exploration of the conception of DISABILITY itself, and the question of what abilities and attributes should be regarded as a disadvantage or an equally valid and valuable difference in experience of the world. This is where Wendy Harris's reflections begin. 
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Disability History Primary Source Set

Disability History: From Almshouses to Civil Rights

UPDATED IN 2020. The following primary source set, created using materials from the Library of Congress, contains an array of sources focused on Disability History in the United States. Disability has been interwoven into America’s history since the country’s inception through letters, images, newspapers, diaries and other primary sources. The set provides a comprehensive look into a wide range of Library of Congress resources.

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