The Latest: What’s Brewing This Summer ☕ 🤩 👩🏻‍💻 🌀

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This month’s newsletter is 782 words — a 3-4 minute read — and is also posted on my blog.

☕️ Good Things are Brewing

I am teaching my first summer course in a while, an intensive version of the Culture of Disability in Education — only five weeks, so it will fly by! The same key concepts serve as a foundation: ableism, disability, accessibility, transitions, identity, and relationships.

• I already see our awesome Longhorns forming a supportive community and digging deeper into course topics. 🤘

👉 The Main Takeaway: YouTube (With Captions!) Is Where It’s At

• My SXSW EDU 2022 presentation is now on YouTube! The Tyranny of Low Expectations unpacks the concept of #AbleismInEducation — and is also my first solo session for SXSW EDU. I am grateful to SXSW for the spotlight!

• In the Equity & Justice track, my Future20 talk is in ASL with English voiceovers and captions. It was a TEAM effort to get there, and I am so thrilled it is now viewable (and shareable) by the public and anyone who can incorporate this 19-minute presentation into their classes or training.

• Did you know YouTube has more than 1.7 billion unique monthly visitors? I recently started my own YouTube channel and — as they like to say on the platform — “hit that subscribe button!” 

🤩 Student Spotlight: Ana Guadalupe Vielma

We need a HUGE spotlight to cover all the wonderful things that Ana is up to! She is a rising fourth-year doctoral student in the HDCLS program in Ed Psych at UT Austin. 

• Ana’s passion is first-generation students and how institutions can support their success. 

• She has written guest blog posts on my website about being first-gen during the pandemic, her first AERA in 2021, and tips for how higher ed can better support first-gen students.

• Ana is also leading two funded initiatives: Project CORE and Graduate Student Resources for Inclusive Pedagogy. Both are learning communities that focus on bolstering the quality of higher education for ALL students.

• She is also just about the coolest person you’ll ever know. Check out her website!

👩🏻‍💻 Time for a Data Deep-Dive

We just wrapped up the pilot for the Microsoft-funded Collaborative on Access and Equity. Our dynamic teams spent the last 8 months planning, unpacking, implementing, and now reflecting on their experiences. We have a treasure trove of interviews, classroom observations, and dialogs to analyze! 

• This is part of the deep work of research to practice, bringing the stories to life. Like Brene Brown says, it’s part of the value of honoring a meaningful space between stimulus and response — or S( )R, in formula form.

🌀 The Wrap-Up

💔 The continued mass shootings around the US leave us all reeling and furious. Uvalde, Texas, is close to home for many of us here at UT Austin. While there are no words to fully capture our grief, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman tweeted this soon after the shooting.

🌟 Keep watch on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which is the foundation of many access services for students with disabilities. The US Department of Education is now undertaking a review of these guidelines. It is my hope this review will clarify eligibility and allow for improved access for students from marginalized communities. 

📚 Congratulations to Sara Novic, author of True Biz — a Reese Witherspoon book club selection and soon to be a TV series! I loved her previous novel, Girl at War, and am so excited to see such a wildly successful launch for this wonderful book about life as a young deaf person.

🕊 And Finally…

A quick trip to England last month to finally see family soon became something quite different. I came down with COVID-19 upon my arrival, and with a long series of delays, repeated testing, online doctors, and some luck, I was finally able to go home 17 days later. I’m okay, just tired and trying to get back on track.

I spent a lot of time in the Marriott at Heathrow, and this picture hung on the wall. I love it. I want to soar. I love maps. I know we all have both sunlight and shadow. This print kept me smiling through some lonely days and nights. 

Thank you, art. Thank you, birds. Thank you to all those who kept my spirits up. You know who you are.

Many warm wishes to all of you who may have been away from family for a long time. For those out on the road, may your travels be safe and surrounded by love. And when we have to go to plan B — or even plan C, D, or E — as my late grandfather would say, just “give it a go.”