Preparing Teachers in Freedom Struggles for and with Disabled Youth

While many disabled youth spend most of their school day in education settings with non-disabled peers, research indicates that teachers report feeling underprepared to support disabled youth. Teacher education is an area of improving teacher preparedness to better support the full range of human expressions that exists in classrooms In this essay, we argue that preparing teachers in solidarity struggles with disabled youth requires that teacher educators approach this work as part of the broader struggle toward freedom while underscoring the central role of freedom dreaming. We propose radically rethinking general education teacher preparation by unpacking two overlapping issues: (a) teacher education’s role in promoting the status quo; and (b) general education teachers’ centrality in maintaining the status quo. In response, we synthesize disability solidarity concepts as well as tenets of rightful presence to propose a conceptual framework for teacher education, particularly in the area of preparing general education teachers to engage in imaginative labor with disabled youth to transform future classrooms, schools, and communities. Such synthesis is rooted on key values of pandisability, interdependence, authentic care, reciprocity, and anti-oppression. We intend such a conceptual framework to inform to justice-oriented teacher education programs within and beyond the U.S., thereby contributing to global conversations.