{"id":1566,"date":"2020-08-15T18:56:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-15T23:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/autisticme\/?p=1566"},"modified":"2023-11-26T16:28:24","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T22:28:24","slug":"2017-speech-personal-teaching-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/2020\/08\/15\/2017-speech-personal-teaching-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 Speech &#8211; Personal Teaching Statement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2017, I set an older recording of my &#8220;Personal Teaching Statement&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>The intolerance of teachers is why I wanted to teach.<\/p>\n\n<!-- iframe plugin v.6.0 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GsUoCuN4wBE\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" 0=\"allowfullscreen\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\"><\/iframe>\n\n<h2>Transcript:<\/h2>\n<p>(0:06) Retard. Redneck.Trailer park trash. Slow. Disabled. Difficult. Lost cause.<\/p>\n<p>(0:16) Teachers didn\u2019t hide their disdain for my classmates or me.<\/p>\n<p>(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.<\/p>\n<p>(0:38) Verbal and emotional abuse experienced from teachers and professors compels me to seek change.<\/p>\n<p>(0:45) I am Christopher Scott Wyatt, and this is my personal statement.<\/p>\n<p>(0:52) Completing college and earning graduate degrees was an act of resistance. My rebellion. Anger became motivation.<\/p>\n<p>(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.<\/p>\n<p>(1:18) Some might dismiss my experiences as those of a child born disabled in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>(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.<\/p>\n<p>(1:46) The doctors told my father, \u201cYour son won\u2019t survive the night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(1:52) My parents didn\u2019t give up. My mother spent months moving my limbs and talking to me, providing the physical therapy the hospital would not.<\/p>\n<p>(2:01) In first grade, I overheard teachers describe my parents as \u201ctrailer park white trash.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(2:07) My grandmother was a farmworker. My father didn\u2019t know his birth father. For a short time, nine of us lived in a small house with one bathroom.<\/p>\n<p>(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.<\/p>\n<p>(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\u2019s honors program.<\/p>\n<p>(2:51) The School of Education was different. The professors said I did not belong in the classroom. I wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>(3:11) I live with left-frontal lobe incurvature, Erb\u2013Duchenne palsy, lumbar scoliosis, complex partial seizures, Jacksonian seizures, epithelial basement membrane dystrophy.<\/p>\n<p>(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.<\/p>\n<p>(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&#8230; but didn\u2019t realize it came with a price.<\/p>\n<p>(3:50) That was in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>(3:52) In 2011, a colleague at another university said, \u201cWe don\u2019t need no autistics here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(3:58) Requests for minor accommodations have gone unmet, my physical limits ignored or dismissed as inconvenient.<\/p>\n<p>(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.<\/p>\n<p>(4:24) I come from trailer parks, country music, NASCAR, pick-up trucks, cowboy boots, plaid shirts, rodeos, county fairs, fishing, and camping.<\/p>\n<p>(4:35) When my mother runs into my former teachers and they ask, \u201cHow is Scott?\u201d she can respond, \u201cHe was a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He\u2019s a playwright. He\u2019s a filmmaker. He\u2019s a success.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(4:51) To be a good teacher, be a mentor, not a judge. You might learn something while teaching.<\/p>\n<p>(4:58) Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2017, I set an older recording of my &#8220;Personal Teaching Statement&#8221; 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&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/2020\/08\/15\/2017-speech-personal-teaching-statement\/\">Continue Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">2017 Speech &#8211; Personal Teaching Statement<\/span> <i class=\"fas fa-angle-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":18,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4,5],"tags":[23,27,149,218,244,345,698,699],"class_list":["post-1566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accessibility","category-education","category-employment","tag-ableism","tag-acceptance","tag-classism","tag-disability","tag-education","tag-higher-education","tag-teachers","tag-teaching","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/12\/Podcast-HD-1920x1080-comp-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfivLC-pg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3604,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions\/3604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}