Why Disabled WAs Have Skills Everyone Should Want
written by Naomi Horn and Neil Steinglass
Disability is stigmatized both on campuses and in society at large. These stigmas are so pervasive that many people don’t recognize the extent of their discomfort with disability. We talked about how many vision-impaired people who wear glasses would never associate wearing glasses with being disabled, because glasses are so unstigmatized in our society. But definitionally, vision impairment is a disability! Other types of disability, including both physical and mental disabilities, carry much more stigma and shame in our cultural vernacular.
Although disabled people should absolutely be allowed to have whatever relationships feel appropriate for them with their disabilities, disability itself should not be framed as inherently negative. Some aspects of disability are disruptive to someone’s quality of life no matter what: For example, Naomi has had chronic migraines for many years, and does not feel the need to engage in toxic positivity and pretend to be a better person because of them. However, many other aspects of disability are very situational. Specifically, the norms of both schooling and capitalism can exacerbate the impact of many types of disabilities.
In the Writing Center, it is useful to have WAs that are familiar with navigating these norms through the framework of disability, because it helps everyone who comes into the Center–– disability justice benefits nondisabled people, too. In general, disabled people are familiar with strategies for asking for help, coming up with different ways of approaching things, and developing coping strategies, all of which can be very useful when working with any WAee. Oftentimes, writers come in because an approach they’ve used in the past is no longer working. When WAs are familiar with that experience, they are able to both provide tangible suggestions for alternative approaches and support students in the process of pivoting.
Although disabled WAs bring many unique strengths to the Writing Center, we do not want to erase the unique challenges that they face. We appreciated that the author of this reading talked about how his disability influenced his WAing from a nuanced perspective. He highlighted that he had to change his workflow to accommodate some of his own needs, which is an important thing for WAs to know how to do. Our goal as WAs is to help students, but we do so by communicating and building relationships, and our own needs have to be met in order to do this productively. He mentioned that sometimes he worried that there was tension between his own needs and his WAee’s needs. Writing Centers need to be aware of this and have active conversations about this issue.
If the WA Program recognizes disability as another kind of diversity rather than something that students just need to overcome, we will be better off. So much of the research and literature surrounding disability and Writing Centers focuses on writers with learning disabilities, but we should expand this framework to include writers and WAs with many types of disabilities.