Welcome to Episode 136 of the Think UDL podcast: Centering Disability with Katie Grennell. Dr. Katie Grennell completed her PhD in American Studies from the University at Buffalo in 2016. Her dissertation, entitled The Making of the ‘Fame Monster’: Disability Aesthetics, Bodily Deviance and Celebrity Culture delved into the distinctions between deviance and normativity by analyzing representations of disability, bodily difference, and deviance in American popular music and popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st century. She has worked as an adjunct in the disciplines of history, American Studies, American popular music, and disability studies for 17 years at multiple institutions throughout Western New York. She currently works as an Accessibility Strategist at Anthology, supporting institutions using Ally. Her first book, Disability and Accessibility in the Music Classroom: An Instructor’s Guide (Routledge) was published September 1, 2022. Dr. Grennell identifies as disabled, having both visible and non-apparent disabilities, and uses her lived experiences and positionality to challenge ableist notions of disability both in and outside of her work. In this conversation, I ask Dr. Katie Grennell about UDL in performance-based classrooms and how disability access has shaped her teaching. In addition, we discuss what disability culture teaches all of us and what her vision is for the future of inclusive education.
Resources
Find Katie Grennell on LinkedIn
Disability Visibility: first Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong (collection of stories from disabled people)
A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielson
One without the Other: Stories of Unity through Diversity and Inclusion by Dr. Shelley Moore. Dr. Moore focuses more on k-12 but so much of her work extends to higher ed as well. She also has a Youtube channel!
Transcript
Lillian Nave 0:02
Welcome to Think UDL, the universal design for learning podcast where we hear from the people who are designing and implementing strategies with learner variability in mind. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I’m interested in not just what you’re teaching, learning, guiding and facilitating, but how you design and implement it, and why it even matters.
Welcome to Episode 136 of the think UDL podcast centering disability with Katie Grennell. Dr, Katie Grennell completed her PhD in American Studies from the University at Buffalo in 2016 her dissertation entitled The making of the fame monster, disability, esthetics, bodily deviance and celebrity culture. Delved into the distinctions between deviance and normativity by analyzing representations of disability, bodily difference and deviance in American popular music and popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st century. She’s worked as an adjunct in the disciplines of history, American Studies, American popular music and disability studies for 17 years at multiple institutions throughout western New York in the USA. She currently works as an accessibility strategist at anthology supporting institutions using ally her first book, disability and accessibility in the music classroom and instructor’s guide was published in September of 2022 in this conversation, I asked her about Udo in performance based classrooms and how disability access has shaped her teaching. In addition, we discuss what disability culture teaches all of us and what her vision is for the future of inclusive education. Thank you for listening to this affirming conversation of the think UDL podcast. Thank you to our sponsor text help a global technology company helping people all over the world to understand and to be understood. It has led the way in creating innovative technology for the workplace and education sectors, including K 12 right through to higher education for the last three decades. Discover their impact at text, dot, help forward, slash, learn more. That’s L, E, A, R, N, M, O, R, E, okay. And I wanted to say, welcome Katie Grennell, thanks for coming on the think UDL podcast.
Katie Grennell 2:52
Thank you for having me, happy to be here.
Lillian Nave 2:55
I am so glad to talk to you. I’ve been looking forward to this. And I wanted to start out with my usual first question, which is, what makes you a different kind of learner?
Katie Grennell 3:07
I love this question number one because, well, one of the first reasons why it made me dig a little bit, I had to go back and really think about my experiences as a student. And you know, for me, I was in history, right? So I have a bachelor’s in history, a master’s in history, and that was really where I started my love of teaching and learning and just looking at things from a different perspective. But it didn’t come naturally to me. I was always a hard worker, but I had to work hard to really do well in school, it was always something that required more effort. So it took me a little bit, really, to kind of figure out the way that I needed to do this, but by the time I got to, like, my second year of college, I had it kind of figured out. I really needed to listen to the lectures, I needed to read the material a couple times, then I needed to take notes, then I needed to rewrite my notes and have them more condensed, and then I needed to be able to vocalize the like succinctly and summarize what was happening. And what I found is that, I mean, this was, yes, a very tedious process. It took me a long time, but I couldn’t name it at the time, but now, in looking back, I really just needed to be able to own what the material was, and not in a self centered type of way, right? I needed to look at it like a story and make it a narrative, and that way, it just helped my brain understand the larger implications. Or, you know, if we’re just looking at the main event, if we take something like the French Revolution, okay, the core dates, who was involved, where did it happen? But then all of the additional influences and the, you know, external factors and the long term causes. The short term causes, those things helped me put it together as a story. So it took a long time. I mean, I would go through so many of those yellow legal Yes, rewriting my notes. And this is what I did for my master’s thesis, too. I mean, I wrote everything out and it but it had to be done a couple times, and if I didn’t do that, Lillian, I really, I really did struggle. But the clincher for all of it was really that at the end of going through the notes and synthesizing and summarizing, I had to say it out loud. So I remember very distinctly in college, a couple of my friends would always just let me kind of read through my notes, or they would sort of quiz me, but they would have note cards, and they would say, Okay, tell me about, you know, the Boston Tea Party. And then I would go off on my spiel, right? And a lot of times I would add humor into it, because it made it so that it was mine, right? I’m not changing the events of history, but I made it so that I could fully understand it, and it made it more kind of enjoyable for me. And I have found that, you know, in looking back and thinking of all of the different professors I’ve had, I had a couple that were just phenomenal storytellers. They were some of the hardest professors I’ve ever had, right in terms of grading, but i You’re mesmerized so much to the point where I had a hard time focusing because I wanted to take notes, but I didn’t want to miss anything at the same time. And it those types of experiences really helped to instill the love, right, of learning. But it’s taken a long time for me to figure this part out, and even now, as a trainer in my full time role and delivering, you know, these different types of educational services, I have to do the exact same thing. So I’m not changing the services and the way that they’ve historically been delivered, but I have to make it my own right, and not from a position of being self centered. It’s not the Katie show it is, how can I, how can I position it so that I get it, and if I understand it, then I can help other people understand so it’s, it’s an interesting process, especially now as a parent. And you you know, really seen how different everybody is in terms of how they learn, and still trying to figure that out. And, you know, I might think retrospectively, like, oh, sure, that’s the type of learner that I am, but I also have not been a student for quite some time, so the thought of that even gives me a little bit of heart if I had to go back to school. So, yeah, it’s, it’s been interesting, but I loved this question because it really made me think about that really intentionally and thinking about it, and I just immediately had the memories, you know, ingrained in my brain of sitting on my, you know, dorm bed and sharing all of the things that I thought would be helpful to contextualize these, you know, topics that I needed to learn for my for my courses. So wow, it’s, yeah,
Lillian Nave 8:08
yeah. That’s you’ve really done a good reflective exercise, yeah, to know what makes you the expert learner, you know, or how you best learn and and, and, in fact, there’s a lot of your story that rings true for me, because especially I remember the hardest classes are the ones that I also most enjoyed, right? Yes, when you could take it with other friends, or, you know, you could get to know the other students. I remember when we would study together the same kind of thing, like quizzing each other or acting something out. And, yeah, you made me think when you said you’re very humorous, or infuse it with humor. I mean, it just made it so much more fun, more authentic. Yeah, really,
Katie Grennell 8:53
exactly. It’s a story, right? I mean, so you’re Yeah, I know thinking of Yeah, you totally understand, yeah, you need the context, you need the narrative. It’s really, it’s not just the event, it’s all of the other things around it, right? So it’s, it’s just a more, it’s like narrative pedagogy. But I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, right? So I’ve learned a lot more since then, naturally. And I think some disciplines are just more suited. Yeah, you know history Well, it is a story, right? And, yes, there’s different perspectives, of course, but, but yeah, it’s this was I really did enjoy this question. It was a really good reflective exercise, and I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. It almost made me, Lillian, almost want to pull out my notebook. I still have it with all of my notes from my masters.
Lillian Nave 9:44
Oh, my I can’t throw it away.
Katie Grennell 9:46
I know I can’t either. I My mom used to tease me for it. You know, when I moved out, she’s like, you might have moved out, but most of your stuff had not. I know. I just there’s something about it. I can’t get rid of it. I still have the floppy disk. Which I don’t even have a way to raise it. I still have the floppy disk that’s, I’m aging myself. That’s what my actual thesis. Oh, yeah,
Lillian Nave 10:07
fine, too. We could make a lamp, maybe, lamp out of it during grad school. I, you know, had I made my own slides? So you had to learn how to make it. And because you had actual projectors with those, you know, carousels of slides and stuff. You know, young listeners have no clue maybe what, what all that was, and I was, I’ve seen people make bags out of all of their old like art history sides like that that becomes the fabric, or the side of a bag is like, Okay,
Katie Grennell 10:38
make a bag
Lillian Nave 10:40
out of my older Yeah. So I have those sitting somewhere. I don’t have a a anywhere to project or, you know, have a projector, but I have all of like, hundreds of these slides that I made and I masked and you had to cut out with an exacto knife, like that was part of being an art historian. Just was making these tedious and color coding and all of that sort of stuff anyway. And I do remember, in I loved these memories in college as a sophomore taking art history, 101, and we would act out the sculptures and and, yeah, like Bernini sculptures, they’re very expressive. And then, and trying to do these, like Italian contortions, really, of the body, that was the best part. But it did, right? I
Katie Grennell 11:28
mean, it’s similar to, like, what is it? Pneumonic devices, it’s different ways of helping you learn. And I think that’s, that’s like a perfect manifestation of UDL, right? When you think about it, in some ways. So I love that. I love when people share those stories. I mean, my kids, they’re young, they’re still in elementary school, but they come home with a lot of those little acronyms, the new mnemonic devices and things like that, to help them learn. And I love that. I think that’s great that the teachers use that, and if it encourages students to do that on their own too, like maybe that’s helpful in a different context, or in different classroom. I think it’s great. Oh, that’s
Lillian Nave 12:04
great. Yeah. So I actually, I didn’t know you had this history background, because you’ve written a book that I wanted to ask you about, and I thought your background was on the the music side. So I’m really interested about this, because can you? Can you tell me about the book you wrote disability and accessibility in the music classroom and instructor’s guide? So what brought you to write that book?
Katie Grennell 12:30
So in I think this was 2019 I think it was like spring of 2019 I was asked by one of my dissertation mentors, James Davis, he is a musicologist. He works at SUNY Fredonia. He was one of my he was one of the storytellers that I mentioned. So I did. I did my undergrad at Fredonia, and he taught American popular music. And I, I loved his classes, but he was also a a kind and genuine human being, very approachable. Just really made the excitement of the stories behind American pop music palpable, like I wanted to be a part of that. And so I had always thought that I was going to go for straight history, like more traditional American history, but music is a huge part of my family, and I found this as a different way to explore these big themes and, you know, cultural moments and social events and things like that throughout history. So I kind of gravitated towards American popular music. And by the time I finished my PhD, which took a long time, but Jim was one of my most ardent supporters and helped me. And I was finishing my PhD at the University at Buffalo, but he was still helping me, even though he was in Fredonia. It’s only about an hour away, but still, he asked me if I would be willing to write this book. So he was the editor for a series called teaching music history. So he was trying to look at different elements that would, you know, kind of complement the series at large. And you know, UDL is one of them, but looking also at gender and looking at race. So a lot of these kind of like social constructs throughout history. And I remember I went up to Fredonia in February. Luckily, there was no snowstorm, and I gave a guest lecture on my dissertation, and right before we met the presentation, we had dinner. It was an evening class, and he asked me, I’ll never forget it. Lillian was one of those moments like, is this? Is this? Yeah, is this real life? And he asked me to write the book, and he said, I can’t think of anybody else better to do this. You’ve been doing this. You know, you’ve been incorporating accessibility into your American pop music courses for as long as I’ve known you, Katie, like this was your dissertation, but also you do this in the classroom. And I mean, I just remember calling my mom on the. And crying. I was so excited, wow, because this was such a milestone for me. Like it. The whole process of getting the PhD was very long. I had a lot of complications. The dream was always I thought it was going to change the world through my not nave, yeah, right during we all not nave at all. And so I was just so excited. And, you know, the book took a lot longer than I thought it would. My dad passed later on in 2019 so that, you know, was a complicated layer. But what I learned too, was that in order to take, or in order, I should say, to be more accepted within the musicology space. I needed to have a co author. I’m not a musicologist, and that is a very specific discipline. And in many ways, My academic background is kind of it’s very diverse, right? It’s very interdisciplinary, which is not bad, but I did need more credibility when it came to Musicology, and I had no problem admitting that. And Jim helped me. And together, excuse me, we found just the most phenomenal musicologist. Her name is Alexandra Carrico. I just call her Alex. She is a, I think she’s an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina. She’s phenomenal. And she has always had accessibility and disability as this kind of undercurrent theme to her work. And so she was really the the yin to my Yang, or whatever you want to call that. And what she really helped with is providing case studies on certain musicians and artists throughout history that have, either I that we do know that they are disabled or have been disabled, or they somehow, you know, convey that and include that in their music. And we did this together. And the book, really, it was, it was a long, a really long process, but I learned so much from it. And what I found, I think, most importantly, is, you know, the beauty of collaboration, right? And the fact that Alex and I just hit it off and had very similar personalities. But the best part was that her commitment to accessibility and inclusion is just so genuine and real. It wasn’t performative. It was. It was the real good stuff. And so working with her was amazing. And, you know, we we worked together in a really good, just a very strong way, we just complimented each other. So that’s really how the book came about. But it what’s interesting is, again, even in like looking back and thinking about it, I think for myself particularly, I found that there really was a need to have more explicit conversations and communication education, about educational theories, about pedagogy, about Universal Design for Learning. And that was something that I I felt was missing from my graduate experiences, right? That that pedagogy instruction wasn’t always, you know, at the forefront of what we were doing, I went to an r1 institution, right? So that it’s really more focused on research, which is important as well. But I found that this was something that I wish had been more prominent in my graduate education and undergraduate education as well, and found that I I wanted to be able to really articulate this in a way that made sense for others that teach music. And it doesn’t have to be like you don’t have to be a musicologist to read this book and get something from it. It is, I would argue that you know a history instructor, history professor, could easily find things that would be helpful from there to use that. So it was, it was a really interesting process. Alex and I still have a great relationship, so Jim and I as well. And I loved, I loved doing it. But I’m also happy to say that
Lillian Nave 19:20
it’s done. Yeah,
Katie Grennell 19:21
I did it. But it was, it was a big dream of mine. And so finishing that was just, it’s hard to put into words what that
Lillian Nave 19:29
meant. Wow, I’m I’m seeing throughout all of your answers so far, so much of your teaching and learning is all about relationships. Yeah, yeah, that it’s with your peers as you’re learning. It’s with your family, it’s with your colleagues. It’s so important, and I would definitely see that you’re putting people first, and that’s why the book disability and accessibility. Quality in the music classroom. Would it sounds perfect for someone like you who puts people first yes and sees how important that is, yeah, yeah. So let’s, let’s think about that. I mean, I’m really interested in in fact, I’ve gotten some questions. I get questions from listeners and folks who are like, Yeah, but how does UDL work in x, in nursing, in, you know, in the in a STEM classroom in and I got this one in music, and I was like, Wait a second, I’m not exactly sure, because I don’t teach music performance or musicology. Not exactly sure if I know what exactly that is, although I have a very good friend who’s a musicologist, and I love her, and she’s amazing. And so how, how do instructors use UDL in music, in musicology, in history of music? Tell me about that.
Katie Grennell 21:01
I think that’s a great question, and I understand the need to even ask a question like that. And admittedly, I don’t think that I could have articulated this 10 years ago. I might have just been doing the things, but not really knowing exactly what it was that I was doing. But I think first and foremost, and I say this, when it comes to UDL, when it comes to accessibility, do not overthink it. I think we have a tendency to do that, myself included, right in terms of thinking of, how do we do this? And it becomes so overwhelming that it’s like, I’m gonna put this in this messy, you know, ball, and I’m gonna put it over there, and I’m not gonna deal with it right now, because I don’t know where to begin, and that I understand the anxiety behind that, that’s that can be very overwhelming. So I think number one always, I always say, Don’t overthink it. I think the other component to Lillian is a lot of people are probably already doing it, and they don’t necessarily realize it, right? So I think when it comes to more like performance based disciplines or things that are a little different, right? So in terms of music, it is, so you have your you know, your traditional music history, but in terms of performance or musicology or things like that, you need to demonstrate your skill. So that’s your that would be a student’s way of demonstrating their learning. So for instructors, what that really means is being willing to think a little outside of the box, right? So especially when it comes to, you know, music performance, and you know, the more classic types of trainings. I think it’s often very much so, like steeped in these very traditional modes of performance, and you have a recital at the end of the semester, and you need to perform this aria, and it needs to be done this way. What I’m seeing as far as musicologists, and, you know, music professors, we’re starting to see a lot more variety and diversity in the way they approach the classroom curriculum in the first place, so which makes sense and is in tandem with UDL, right? If we’re thinking of universal design for learning as more of a proactive framework, that’s something that you were instilling into your course before you actually set foot in the classroom, whether that’s face to face or digitally. So I think it’s, you know, in the way I see it, Universal Design for Learning extends to a lot of these different areas. It might be selecting works of different, diverse authors, right? It might mean that the final project is the choice that the student gets a choice of what they do. It’s infusing flexibility into the actual discipline and into the classroom. It is not doing the same thing over and over and over, because this is what people usually do in this field, right? It’s not doing straight lectures. It’s really being willing to be flexible and explore other areas, and also keep in mind a lot of the like this is one of the good things I think about when it comes to music, is that the folks that go into musicology and music performance and things like that, their love for music is paramount, right? It is that is at the core of everything that they do. So if they want their students to succeed, a lot of that is still about that relationship to to their love of music, right? And then honoring the fact that the way that they demonstrate that, or how they convey that is going to be different, because it should right. So we often hear about music being this like universal language, and a lot of a lot of academics don’t necessarily like that, because it makes it sound as though we all speak the same language. And I think it’s more you. I would say music is more of like a universal communication method. It’s a different way to communicate, but we all do that differently, right? So that could be in different languages, it could be in different genres, you know, different types of performances. You know, there’s so many different ways that you can go there. So, I mean, I think again, a lot of it has to do with being willing to be flexible and considering different options, diversifying your assignments, bringing in guest lectures. You know, can you take students out and take them to a concert on campus? Like, are there those types of things that can be done? I think that they can. I genuinely think that they can and again, it’s not, it’s not as difficult as we might think it is, and that that doesn’t mean to minimize anyone’s anxiety over anything like this. Lillian, it’s more I think a lot of people are already doing this, but they might not be aware that it is universal design for learning, and they’re already implementing these types of best practices into their courses and things like that. And students, I find really appreciate that, because at the end of the day for a music a music major, it’s really about musical communication, like that’s the core of that. So they need to be able to communicate musically themselves, right if they’re going for performance. So that’s by their what’s their instrument? Is it their their voice? Is it, you know, piano, things like that. But they also need to be able to contextualize the history and understand the connection so that other people get it. And that’s whether or not they go into teaching or they go into and they’re going into performance. It’s really about that relationship of musical communication. So I think if you know for music professors and instructors, in case there’s any concern of, where do I even begin? I think first and foremost, it’s Don’t overthink it. But remember, right? Remember your love for music. You want your students to experience that too. It’s just going to be different than yours, because it should be right. It should be a little
Lillian Nave 27:07
different. It sounds like this is such a core UDL principle to me, which is to really know what your goals are, what define your goal, and then multiple ways to get there, right? And I mean, I, I didn’t take any music college music classes in college, I was but grew up in a very musical kind of life, singing and playing instruments and things like that, but never had The actual college part and but my, my impression of that was that the always the end goal was some live performance, like, that’s what the you had to do. And in the last 10 years, I’ve seen in my understanding of UDL that that’s not necessarily what has to happen, like music and jobs in music afterwards, like, well, what are you gonna do in the real world? That’s usually like, what people say. It’s like, well, you know, there’s so few people that actually make a living as a performance musician, right? Yeah, live music, that there’s so many other ways like that final project could be a recording, like, how, yes, how much I would think I listened to, of all the music and things I listened to, 99% of it is recorded music that I’ve, you know, that was either in a studio or from a performance or whatever. I am not listening to live music all the time, right? So, yeah, so having lots of ways that this. It’s it’s not, this is what I hear. It’s like, well, it’s a criticism of UDL, which is not true about, well, you’re changing or dumbing down or reducing the rigor, right? No, you’re still doing all of the things. You’re just really clear on what those things are, and coming up with multiple ways to demonstrate that, right? So giving options, yeah, so it doesn’t have to be, here’s the end recital. It could be that that each student has made a film or a recording or something podcast, right? Their
Katie Grennell 29:19
own original composition. There’s so many, there’s a lot of different options that are that, are there absolutely, yeah, and I like your your point, it really is about like, what is the end goal? Is the end goal to continue doing something the same way, because that’s how it’s always been done. But is that really? Will that benefit that student or this group of students as they progress in their career. I mean, right, really, what’s the harm in changing things so that they might have a little more autonomy in that experience?
Lillian Nave 29:47
Absolutely, autonomy and authenticity. Two are my favorite things that make students engage with the material and with their peers. Love it. Okay? So. Yeah, so it seems like there are, like, so, just so many more options that, really, 30 years ago, even we didn’t have, you didn’t have even the opportunity to have, almost, you know, a handheld device, the way we have our phones, that we could make exactly, I’ve seen music professors do stitching like a tick tock, you know, and kind of sending it back to students, and they have to duet, I think, is what they call it anyway, that that sort of thing, like we just didn’t even have that before. So there’s so many more options to have. Okay, all right, so this is so interesting to me, super exciting. So I’m also interested to know about how your knowledge of disability access, you know, has, has shaped your teaching in general. I know you do a lot more than the book that you wrote and what you’re doing now.
Katie Grennell 30:58
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is a good question. And you know, when I was thinking about this and preparation for this, I I think the first thing that popped to my mind is that whether or not I like it, it’s always shaped my teaching. And so what I mean by that is I am disabled. I identify as disabled. I have both physical and then non apparent or invisible disabilities. And I’ve had a lot, it’s been a long, complicated relationship, right? That identity and grappling with the identity, embracing it, figuring out what to do with it, how to channel it, all of those things. And it’s, it’s not a one and done, right? It’s not as though, now in my age, now that I feel as though I’ve figured it all out I have absolutely not. I will continue to make mistakes and learn and grow. But I think that when I started teaching it in 2007 so I’ll just give a little bit of a backstory here. So I started my PhD program in American Studies at the University of Buffalo. That was in 2007 and I got a teaching assistantship. So what I was teaching was world civilization, so I was leading these recitation sections. So the lectures themselves had like 300 rights, and they were typically led by one professor in our department. And UB is a really big school, so there’s, there’s just so many students, there’s lots of sections of these. So the professor, the lead professor, would lead the lecture, and then the teaching assistants, so as myself and two other people would do these recitation sessions. So we had three of them that we would meet with, and I had no idea what I was doing at all. Lillian, absolutely no idea. Now, my mom was a teacher. That doesn’t mean I knew how to teach, right? I I worked as a nanny. Some of those skills that I developed as a nanny absolutely helped me, but I had apps. I really was, I have no idea what. There’s
Lillian Nave 33:01
no, there’s no teaching classes in there is no,
Katie Grennell 33:05
there’s not. And I was younger. I’m a female. I mean, I I’m disabled, like, it was just a lot of right to figure out a lot of things at the same time. Um, and so it was interesting too, because I came from history, VA, history, Ma. And the plan was always to continue and do American popular music, history like that was my plan. And then I thought with, with a feel like American Studies, it gave me the flexibility to to look at that and choose a different, you know, social construct, so race in particular, and have that be kind of the the focal application for my research and my teaching. But I fell in love with teaching, even though I had no idea what I was doing, and students said some super interesting things, but I fell in love with it, and I really found that I was like I spent a lot of my time on my teaching, not that I didn’t on my schoolwork. I mean, everything was all about school and teaching, but it, it just my heart kept gravitating more towards the teaching. So what happened, though, like, how I started to even acknowledge disability and accessibility, because I was masking at the time, I mean you so I wear an AFO. I wear a brace on my on my leg, on my left leg, so I have like, a foot drop. So if I wasn’t wearing my brace, which I can do, but for short periods of time, you could see a more pronounced foot drop if I was wearing pants. You know, you can’t always. Sometimes people can. Other times they can. So I was masking, but I had all sorts of other issues that also complicated just existing and trying to go to graduate school. So in 2008 early 2008 I learned about the field of disability studies, Lillian. I didn’t know that it existed. I had never heard of it. I didn’t even know that was a thing. And. Mean, I came from traditional history, and then, you know, in American Studies, lots of it’s just so many theories, and a lot of it was so overwhelming to me, and I never fully felt like I grasped it. And then I found out about disability studies, and immediately gravitated towards it, and slowly shifted everything over to that, and that’s where my my focal point, that was my research. But it took a long time, and as I did that, I was also going through a bit of a transition myself, like I was learning to be more of a vocal advocate for disability. I was talking about it more. I was identifying as being disabled, and that that was a game changer for me, and I have worked since then to I just continue to talk about it all the time, right? And part of the reason for that is I want to make it more of a comfortable topic like this isn’t something we need to hush and not talk about this is the lived experiences of being disabled, and what does that mean in teaching. What does that mean in academia right and now in my, in my full time career at anthology, what does that mean? But it took a long time, but I will credit learning about disability studies as helping me do that. So not only did it help me find a different path to continue to teach history, which I loved and really center the human experience, but it also helped me figure it out on my own. And so I slowly started to talk about it. I slowly in my classes. I slowly started to identify as disabled. I slowly started to infuse more, you know, topics of disability history into my into my classroom topics and our lectures and things like that, more, just just really trying to center it more. And it helped me in so many ways, where it helped me with my my own lecture and things like that, but it really just, it made a big difference. So that’s, that’s really how I kind of got on this path. But it took a long time. I mean, I remember, I’ll just share this. I remember in college, my stepmom, who was just always has just been such an ardent supporter and vocal supporter of me and me being an advocate for myself, right? She encouraged me to go and get a handicap parking pass. And I was like, Yeah, I’m not, I’m not doing that. I mean, like, and it was really just me being proud and and then I realized, like, well, this is silly, because then I got it, and I never had an issue parking on campus again, and it made things so much easier for me, like, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but yet, here I had my own internal ableism steeped into that, and it just, it took a while. It still is. It’s like relearning you know how to do something, so I’m constantly having to like shift and go back to that. And so that’s really the knowledge of disability. That is how it has shaped it. And now the more I learn about pedagogy and things like that, I learned that this is very much like narrative pedagogy. This is what Bell Hooks would call Disability pedagogy, right? You’re centering that lived experience, and then it infuses into all the different aspects of your teaching, whether that’s me being more open and accessible to students, or including an accessibility statement in my syllabus, or identifying as disabled and hoping that it helps to decrease the stigma. And then maybe, if somebody needs to talk about something, they they feel comfortable, right? They don’t have to hide, they don’t have to disclose. So it’s, it’s been helpful. And I think, too, I’m lucky in that my, my original field is history, so there are so many moments to be able to infuse different types of, you know, either authors or the disability rights movement or, I mean, it’s an extremely dark period, but eugenics, when we talk about 20th century European history, which I’ve taught that course multiple times, or American, you know, history from reconstruction on, right? So like 1865 on, there’s a lot, there’s a lot there that needs to be discussed, and what are the implications now? So I think I’ve always been doing this. I just didn’t really, I didn’t realize that there was more of a specific name for it until, you know, until I got a little older and learned more about education.
Lillian Nave 39:36
Wow. Okay, there again in your answer. So much about relationships, yeah, and so much about the people that you’re teaching. And yeah, I would say you’re teaching people. You’re not teaching a subject, you’re teaching people.
Katie Grennell 39:55
And that’s what it’s all about, right? That’s what UDL is all about. That’s what accessibility. Is all about, it’s, it’s centering the human
Lillian Nave 40:03
experience. Yeah, it really is. And yeah, things that reflection is such a huge, important part of it. And, yeah, realizing what in that reflection, you can realize, was I teaching people, or was I teaching a subject like or what? What were those things that made the difference? Or, yeah, what can I change? Or, right? That’s the only time when we can really move forward, is when we take that time to really take stock about Yes, how it came about.
Katie Grennell 40:35
Yes, even if we don’t want Yes exactly, we might need to. Oh, yeah, right, I didn’t want to in the beginning, but I I did. I did. I’m glad I did. It was not easy. It’s, you know, it’s hard work, but it’s important work.
Lillian Nave 40:50
So yeah, I will continue to do that. I was also interested by just one of the comments you made about your internalized ableism. And yeah, I meaning like you didn’t want to think that about yourself, because that would mean you were less than a, I don’t know, normal, whatever that is, acceptable, person, that sort of thing. And in the academic world, you know, I think of Jay dolmages book, academic, yeah, academic, ableism,
Katie Grennell 41:23
yeah. On my, on my book
Lillian Nave 41:26
that in academics, it is just like so much more in focus about the academic is supposed to be this, you know, Ubermensch and superhuman and and it’s about merit, and I’m now going to use air quotes, but merit and that, yeah, that the fact like, you just have to deny parts of yourself if you’re going to succeed in academia. Yes, and
Katie Grennell 41:57
I, I abhor that. I really do. I don’t. I love learning. I loved going to school. I it was a dream of mine. It was really difficult and and I think everybody you know would likely say at some point there they had a difficult part right of of their schooling experience. But the biggest issue for me wasn’t even so much my my physical disability that didn’t impede me getting to and from school. I was lucky in that sense. It didn’t make it more difficult for me. The other issue is, in 2008 early 2009 I started getting chronic migraine and vestibular vertigo, and I’m not sure if you’ve ever experienced anything like that. I hope you haven’t, but sometimes your words don’t come out right. You don’t sound professional, you don’t sound academic. So not only did I not understand half of this jargon that people were using and I felt I had to use. I couldn’t sometimes put the words together and it it was not an environment in which I could thrive. So I ended up leaving. I left, and then I eventually came back, because I knew that I would never be happy if I didn’t finish it, even if I don’t do anything necessarily with it. But it made it really, really difficult, and it’s in moments like that, you know, you have specific mentors and professors that really helped shape that experience and make it a positive one for me. But it was, it’s, it’s just not really the best environment for that, right? And it is frustrating, particularly in American Studies or in history, when so many people focus on the histories of marginalized identities, right? But yet we can’t, you know, have a more supportive and inclusive environment for them in to go and forth and do the work and made it It made it very difficult.
Lillian Nave 43:55
Yeah, and, and there we are again with the relationships that brought you back. Yeah? So important. Wow. So, I mean, I, I think I’ve heard you answer this like a million times already, but my next question is, why? Maybe I should add, how are you an advocate for accessible education?
Katie Grennell 44:18
Well, the first I’ll answer the the why, right? I mean, I firmly believe it is a, it’s a basic human right that everybody has a right to education. You have to have access to it, right in order to actually be able to enjoy it and benefit from it and engage with it. So it is that, in my opinion, it is like there’s no doubt that that access should be granted. That is a part of it, right? It’s not so much to have these educational institutions and and teachers and things like that if certain students can’t access that. So I do believe that. But I think a lot of it too is there’s just so much power in knowledge and not. Like self aggrandizing power, but power in learning the historical context. So when I’m talking to my students about why, here’s an example, Britney Spears, why? I always like to use more examples. Oh, I’m excited a lot of times. Yeah, they don’t know what I’m talking about. But if you talk about Britney Spears, and you talk about mental health, right? And you talk about the free Brittany movement, right, where it was a lot of people were publicly trying to or they were advocating for her to be, you know, kind of broken away from that concerns her ship, which really had very strict rules over her autonomy, her bodily autonomy as well. So, I think, you know, using examples like that to to talk about it and use it as a different way to make to make sense, if that, if that helps at all, it’s really about bringing it back to, we all have that basic right. And there is power in knowledge. So again, when we’re thinking of, why would I even bring up Britney Spears? Well, it’s helpful to think about the mental health aspects of celebrities, right? What did that do for her career? What did that do for the way that society looks at her? How do we how are we involved in that? So it’s important because that context matters, that power in that knowledge is there, right? So we can help to contextualize that, to think moving forward. If this happens again, Oh, do you remember this? This is what happened. This is why it’s problematic, right? So there’s those narratives are just ever present, and those historical narratives are ever present everything that we do. But I think too, how you know, we can be an advocate for Accessible Education. I’m very privileged in my day to day work at anthology as an accessibility strategist. I actually, and this is the first time I’ve ever really been able to say this. I actually get to use what I learned in graduate school in my day to day, right? So it and I’ve been with the company for a long time in this role, it’s been over two years, and it’s been just the most amazing experience, because in that I work with Ally. So Ally is a tool that it’s a digital accessibility tool. It is embedded within, you know, your learning management system, and it provides, you know, education to instructors and how to make their digital course content more accessible. But where, I think one of the best ways that it shines is it offers alternative formats. So let’s say you are taking a course, your instructor uploads a Word document file that’s an article that you need to read to, you know, write a paper, you would prefer to have that as an audio file. Or maybe you would like to access that as an HTML file, because you’re using your phone, and that way it’s responsive and you don’t have to zoom and pinch and things like that. Or perhaps you need a Braille ready file format. Ally does that and does that without asking any questions. So it goes back to autonomy. Their students don’t need to have accommodations. Students don’t need to have a disclosed disability. Any student can access that the instructors can as well. So I think in some ways, that also helps to kind of push back on that internal academic ableism, right? But I think it’s it’s just how to be an advocate for accessible education. You find every specific spot you can to talk about it, right? And you don’t necessarily need to be so explicit. But for me, it’s encouraging, you know, folks to consider the alternative formats, how to talk to students about that. So that might be what I do in my day to day, right? But also the materials that I make, I want to make sure that I have different versions of them, and it doesn’t really take me that much more time, and at the end of the day, if it makes the learning experience better for somebody, that’s what matters, right? There is autonomy, and there is power in that. And I think especially when it comes to disabilities, and speaking from experience, it’s very rare to have autonomy included in those lived experiences, or empowerment. So much of what we do with our disabled lived experiences is kind of dependent on other people’s maybe that’s, you know, doctors, medical professionals, the accommodations we get at work or we don’t get at work, right? There’s so many factors anywhere we can have autonomy that’s really important, that needs to happen. So I think the why and the how are they’re very much kind of ingrained together. Yes,
Lillian Nave 49:43
I’m putting my fingers together, weaving them together. Yes,
Katie Grennell 49:47
yes, mutual relationship. But I think too another thing that I really try to do, and I do this in my everyday work and then teaching on the side as well, is I openly identify. Very frequently as being disabled, and I do that. It’s not about it’s not about me. Again, like I mentioned, it’s not the Katie story or the Katie show. I want people to feel in, you know, inclusive, right? Or I want the environment to feel inclusive and there’s a sense of belonging,
Lillian Nave 50:15
absolutely again, those relationships and making it safe for those relationships, and, yeah, I appreciate that ally takes away the friction, right? That’s the that’s the big difference I’ve, I’ve been thinking about in the last year or two, is, you know, the debate about rigor in in college classes and and the difference between a logistical rigor and an academic rigor. And, yeah, so if we can reduce the friction of the, you know, the format, let’s say, of getting those resources, then you are actually increasing the rigor, the academic rigor, because now the student has more easy access to get to whatever they need to do right before class, so they can actually discuss it, they can digest it in a way that works for them. And then you’re actually going to have students that have done the reading, whether it’s a listening or a reading or, you know, whatever it is, they’ve actually done it because it’s the friction, you know, has the wheels have been greased and they’re able to get to it. And even that decision fatigue, that, like, how do I even start? Or, how do I even get to this? It’s behind a password, and it’s locked up and it’s and, and five different professors have five different ways that you have to do this. Yes, of course. So the more we can reduce that friction, the they can get to that information, and then we have a better experience. I think, yes, I
Katie Grennell 51:52
concur wholeheartedly, yeah.
Lillian Nave 51:54
So what then my last question is about looking forward, because we’ve been talking a lot about just the amazing, like last 1020 years of of your working and thinking about all of this. What’s your vision, then, for the future of inclusive education?
Katie Grennell 52:16
So this is of all the questions. I think this is probably the toughest, but in a good way, right? I think what I’d like is it for it to be one that positions accessibility and equity and inclusion as the foundation, and not so much as an add on, if that makes sense, like it just needs to be so, you know, interwoven and just part and parcel of education that it almost doesn’t need to be explicitly called out and discussed. And I think part of that too is really about like, shifting the narrative or or the emphasis, and even the application of inclusion and accessibility to again, just making it it’s just baked in, and it’s so integral that it’s almost like, why even point out the obvious? Because it’s there and it’s a part of everything that we do in terms of education and the theories that we practice and and different types of pedagogies and best practices and things like that. I would like to see that, you know, and maybe that starts with even some of the language that we use around education, like special education. I know that, as you know, in terms of language and etymology, we’re seeing changes in that, which is one of the beautiful things I think about movements like disability rights, you know, they’re ongoing, but also continuing to look at things from a different perspective and then advocate for something that might be better. I think, I think what also needs to happen Elaine, is that we see this extend to higher education. So what I mean by that is that there’s more pedagogy ingrained in the curriculum in a PhD program, regardless, it doesn’t matter what your discipline is. I think that ideally, I would love to see that just naturally shift, instead of being completely separate because we aren’t equipped to to really know enough about all of these different pedagogical, you know, best practices and how to do things in the theories and how people learn and and UDL, I kind of, I luckily fell into it me too, because I was doing disability, right, yeah, but I wish that it was something that had been I mean, I just how many more students could have I have helped if I had known a little more about these things earlier on, how would that have changed how I taught? You know, what other opportunities would have been there for me? And so I’d like to see that even in, you know, more rigorous research institutions. I’d like to see that as. You know, a requirement, but it’s also a privilege, right? I think, too it helps to kind of think like the fact that I get to teach to students about disability history, or, right now I’m teaching a course on women’s history. That is a privilege. It doesn’t mean it goes without its challenges, but it’s a privilege, and I want to center that human experience again, and I just, I do wish that there was more that I could have taken away from graduate school in terms of how to do that and really naming things and not having this distinction between focusing too much on teaching and focusing too much on research, right? That’s kind of where I think I struggled a little bit in graduate school, because, as I mentioned, I fell in love with teaching, not that I didn’t find my research important, but I learned quickly that I was a stronger teacher than I was a researcher. I’m okay to say that, but I didn’t. I wasn’t in an environment that really, and this isn’t a not necessarily against my program. It’s just how kind of how the way it is right. I wasn’t in an environment to to change that too much, so I grappled with that a lot, but I think in some ways it pushed me to learn more about teaching and things like that. But I really would like to see it extend and again, have that not be a separate siloed topic, but interleave into the curriculum, right, regardless of
Lillian Nave 56:28
discipline, yeah, and that’s it’s so counter cultural. It’s because how do you advance it as a instructor, as a professor, is through your research is at an r1 right? There’s, you don’t get points for being a great teacher. In in almost every university, it’s a great you know, it’s a side quest. You know, if you’re interested for yourself, that’s great. And if you’re like a horrendous teacher, that may be a problem, but not really, not really. So, yeah, it’s just absolutely uh backwards in what we do. It really is,
Katie Grennell 57:15
you know, it’s very much so, like, it just emphasizes this assumption that just because people can pursue a PhD, it means that they’ll know how to teach. And those are not, like, exactly right? So false and and it’s just, I think we’re setting people up for failure by assuming that right? Like, that’s such an unfair thing to put on a person that’s never done anything in terms of of teaching. How can we make that assumption? And I think it’s like, well, if you’re smart enough to get a PhD, and it’s like, I don’t, I don’t know if getting a PhD is really about this is going to sound terrible about being extremely smart. I think that. I think it’s about, you have to persevere, and you have to work really, really hard, and you have to put yourself out there. So I mean, I again, I did well, but I did not. I was not a 4.0 student ever. I didn’t do well on my SATs. I did terrible at standardized tests. I would get anxious during, you know, multiple choice tests and things like that. But I could write and I could talk, well, I have no so, um, you know, I just think there’s, that’s another that’s UDL, right? Like there are, we have to remember and honor and celebrate that people learn differently and then demonstrate they’re learning differently. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s just, that is, that’s just
Lillian Nave 58:37
Yeah, exactly, yeah. And standardized tests do not capture that at all. No, not at all. So, wow, no, oh, I really like your vision for the future of education. Thank you. Sure. Yeah,
Katie Grennell 58:51
I hope, I hope it pans out. I
Unknown Speaker 58:53
really do.
Katie Grennell 58:54
I’ve got, you know, not just for my children, but just for everybody. I really, I think that we have, we’re in a there’s a cultural moment where I think it could continue that way. And I see some of this, and some of the more you know, are the next generation of instructors. I do think there is an opportunity, and I hope, I hope it
Lillian Nave 59:13
continues. I think so, and I think the movement is gaining more and more momentum. So with people like people like you, and a lot of the people I get to talk to. So I’m so excited. Yeah, I’m so I am. I’m excited for that future. So, yeah, well, thank you. I can’t believe that I got to spend an hour talking to you, not quite, and that we got to talk about this, about really centering disability and accessibility in our teaching. And I just want to say, thank you so much, Katie. I really appreciate your time.
Katie Grennell 59:50
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. This is a great conversation. Thanks so much
Lillian Nave 59:59
you can follow. Follow the think UDL podcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find out when new episodes will be released, and also see transcripts and additional materials at the think udl.org website. Thank you again to our sponsor, text help. Text help is focused on helping all people learn, understand and communicate through the use of digital education and accessibility tools, text help and its people are working towards a world where difference disability and language are no longer barriers to learning and succeeding. With over 50 million users worldwide, the text help suite of products includes read and write equatio and orbit note they work alongside existing platforms such as Microsoft Office and G Suite and enable them to be integrated quickly into any classroom or workspace with ease. Text help has changed the lives of millions worldwide and strives to impact the literacy and understanding of 1 billion people by 2030 visit text, dot help forward. Slash, learn more. That’s L, E, A, R, N, M, O, R, E, to unlock unlimited learner potential. The music on the podcast was performed by the Oddyssey quartet, comprised of Rex Shepard, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez and I am your host. Lillian Nave, thank you for joining us on The think UDL podcast.