I was feeling very tired, almost delirious, and my eye was struggling with the flickering projector which was on the edge of triggering a migraine. The set up of the room meant that we were all sat in rows obscured by large computer screens. I found it a weirdly hostile space for our first meeting, which made me reflect on how important these moments are and how quickly certain ‘scripts’ can get set within teaching environments. I found initially being vocal about my visual impairment meant that I felt vocal about other things and I ended up feeling like I had been quite disruptive.
I wonder about being the disruptive one.
Articulating access requirements is a kind of rupture – a refusal to participate in the way everyone else is. And this articulation is a of rejection of a status quo, which automatically sets you at loggerheads with all kinds of power dynamics. I didn’t feel like my concerns about the projector triggering a migraine were taken seriously, and this also felt like a different kind of refusal. This, in all likelihood, was not because the staff didn’t take them seriously, but because the layout of the room was so rigid as to not allow alternatives.
Rigid environments demand a certain kind of behaviour; compliance. But what happens when you can’t be compliant? I ended up wanting to sit with my back to the class because the flickering light, even in my peripheral vision, was so difficult to manage. Facing backwards felt like a pretty strong statement which I was almost forced into making, when I actually wanted to be there.
How many of our interactions with ‘difficult’ or ‘disruptive’ students are because we are forcing them to be compliant to an environment or system which they fundamentally can’t participate in?
