Last updated on November 26, 2023
In 2017, I set an older recording of my “Personal Teaching Statement” to kinetic text, an animated abridged transcript of sorts. The speech was more about my community than me, as I wanted to capture the classism, racism, and ableism I observed as a student.
The intolerance of teachers is why I wanted to teach.
Transcript:
(0:06) Retard. Redneck.Trailer park trash. Slow. Disabled. Difficult. Lost cause.
(0:16) Teachers didn’t hide their disdain for my classmates or me.
(0:21) Teachers told us that without them, we would be nothing. Overhearing teachers insult my parents, my friends, and my community became normal. I grew accustomed to teachers telling me I was stupid, lazy, and a lost cause.
(0:38) Verbal and emotional abuse experienced from teachers and professors compels me to seek change.
(0:45) I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, and this is my personal statement.
(0:52) Completing college and earning graduate degrees was an act of resistance. My rebellion. Anger became motivation.
(1:02) Schools labeled me by my neighborhood, my zip code, my appearance, and my test scores. I was in and out of special education, special supports, gifted education, and normal classrooms.
(1:18) Some might dismiss my experiences as those of a child born disabled in the 1960s.
(1:26) The doctor was intoxicated. I was a breech birth. He used forceps. The injuries included skull and facial fractures; a brachial plexus injury to the right shoulder; partial paralysis of my right side; spinal trauma; a broken left arm; a partially collapsed lung.
(1:46) The doctors told my father, “Your son won’t survive the night.”
(1:52) My parents didn’t give up. My mother spent months moving my limbs and talking to me, providing the physical therapy the hospital would not.
(2:01) In first grade, I overheard teachers describe my parents as “trailer park white trash.”
(2:07) My grandmother was a farmworker. My father didn’t know his birth father. For a short time, nine of us lived in a small house with one bathroom.
(2:18) Ivanhoe, California is home. The elementary school is 98% Hispanic; 42% of adult residents were born in Latin America; a third of residents live in poverty. Only 3.2% have a college degree.
(2:36) I graduated from high school with honors. The University of Southern California offered me an academic scholarship. At USC, I earned degrees in English and Journalism, completing the university’s honors program.
(2:51) The School of Education was different. The professors said I did not belong in the classroom. I wasn’t sufficiently charming. I was disabled. I would not be good for students. In 1990, prejudices ran deep in education. Mind and body were considered connected.
(3:11) I live with left-frontal lobe incurvature, Erb–Duchenne palsy, lumbar scoliosis, complex partial seizures, Jacksonian seizures, epithelial basement membrane dystrophy.
(3:27) I assumed attitudes would be better years later when I decided to become a professor. I attended a major land-grant research university.
(3:36) I had a seizure in graduate school. A professor tried to have me expelled as a risk to myself and others. Another professor told me they knew I was gifted… but didn’t realize it came with a price.
(3:50) That was in 2008.
(3:52) In 2011, a colleague at another university said, “We don’t need no autistics here.”
(3:58) Requests for minor accommodations have gone unmet, my physical limits ignored or dismissed as inconvenient.
(4:07) Worse than the hostility I have encountered is the attitude towards the working class. Those ignorant, uneducated fools. My colleagues in higher education insult people like my friends, my family, and my community.
(4:24) I come from trailer parks, country music, NASCAR, pick-up trucks, cowboy boots, plaid shirts, rodeos, county fairs, fishing, and camping.
(4:35) When my mother runs into my former teachers and they ask, “How is Scott?” she can respond, “He was a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He’s a playwright. He’s a filmmaker. He’s a success.”
(4:51) To be a good teacher, be a mentor, not a judge. You might learn something while teaching.
(4:58) Thank you.