Diana Pastora Carson:
This episode is proudly sponsored by Ability Magazine, the leading magazine for health, disability, and human potential that strives to shatter myths and stereotypes that surround disabilities.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Welcome to the Beyond Awareness, disability Awareness That Matters podcast. I'm your host, Diana Pastora Carson. Here you'll find a safe space to learn and grow with leaders in education, disability studies, disability advocacy, and diversity, equity and inclusion conversations. Specifically, we look at how disability fits into diversity, equity, inclusion, access and belonging, and how to frame disability awareness in the context of educating K through 12 communities. This show serves educators, parents, and community members who strive to learn and or teach about disability in a research-based and respectful way, moving beyond simple awareness and diving into inclusive and socially responsive conversations. Now let's go beyond awareness.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Beyond Awareness, disability Awareness That Matters. Today, I have the distinct pleasure of introducing you to Dr. Allison Brenneise. I had the good fortune of meeting Dr. Brenneise at a conference a couple weekends ago, and I had heard about her from a mutual friend, and I was very excited to get to know her more. And then we met in a hotel lobby at this conference, and it was, love it for sight. We had to talk on the podcast. So welcome Allison. It's so good to have you here. Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. Thank you. So, Dr. Brenneise is an expert in disability and communication studies. Her research interests focus on helping others develop their disability literacies in and outside of higher education. She studies the ways in which pedagogies assessment practices and mentorship can be more inclusive of traditionally marginalized communicators. I love that. And at some point I want you to clarify communication pedagogy and what that means for our listeners, Allison. But Allison has received multiple awards for her scholarship from national and regional professional communication associations. Her research has been published in communication education, and in a variety of book chapters. So, again, welcome.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Thanks so much. It's such an honor to be here. Thank
Diana Pastora Carson:
You. So, yeah, can you dive into unpack what communication pedagogy means? I'm not certain or sure, because when I hear that, I think of, you know, language, speech and hearing communication professionals. And as an, as an educator, you know, in elementary schools, I'm really not sure what it is you're talking about. And I wanna make sure that our, our listeners are very clear in what your area of expertise and passion is in.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Thank you. Communication, education. So communication, pedagogy, teaching communication happens a lot of ways. And in my field there are three basic strands of communication pedagogies. There's the kind of communication pedagogy that is useful to everyone teaching anything, and that's called instructional communication. It's about the communication behaviors. Anybody who's teaching anything, a sales person to a client, a teacher teaching social studies in elementary school, a presenter at a conference, right? That there are certain behaviors that we know help students learn information. And so it might be a fit like affinity, being close distance to your audience so they can connect with you, right? It could be there. It's all about behaviors. Then there's another strand of communication pedagogy that's called communication education. And that is straight delivering communication content to an audience. And you would think about that, but like any kind of communication professor teaching in context, or if you're teaching communication concepts to an audience and you're a presenter, you might be doing comm education. And then there's this thing that I'm really interested in, and it's called critical communication pedagogy. And that really looks at the power that's inherent in teaching. And so it looks at culture and it looks at power, and it's based on the work of Paulo Frere. I would argue it would go back to John Dewey, but it's really, really about meeting students where they are and learning from them as much as they learn from you. So that's where my interest in pedagogy stems, and from there I've taken it a little further.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Wow, that's fascinating. Thank you for clarifying. And that'll be the springboard for the rest of the conversation. So I'm really curious how you got into this. What, what is your why? What, how did it all begin?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
It really started when I had kids, and pretty early on we knew that both kids had something going on. When my youngest, he's given me permission to talk about him, I've written about him with his permission. So when my youngest was two, he had had a number of things going on, and we saw a developmental pediatrician. And at two he said this person is significantly impaired. He should, you should put him in an institution and you should focus on your then 4-year-old who will be able to serve you when you are older. Oh. And that was the beginning of a lot of hard messages about if my youngest child belonged in society and if he deserved a place in a school, if they had to use the resources to teach him. So my why started there. And once he was finally in a educational placement public school, that was appropriate for him, I was able to go back to school. And I knew I had to make a difference in the land of disability acceptance disability education, and communication studies and sociology were the vehicles for that.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Wow. Oh, I so resonate with all of that. Thank you for sharing. So you talk about this concept called disability literacy as part of your making a difference in the land of all that you mentioned. What is disability literacy?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Disability is this, ra disability literacy is a radical concept that people are able to talk in and about and through and around disability. Like you can talk about anything else. Disability is not a taboo subject. And in 2008 in his book, Disability Theory, Tobin Siebers wrote, the disability literacy of the general population is so low as to be non-existent. And I didn't, I saw that I had an opportunity to share a message that people could be disability literate in and through my teaching and in and through my research, right? I could make voices of people who would never be heard in the academy, heard through my research. And so that's what I endeavored to do.
Diana Pastora Carson:
What was that quote again? By Toby
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Disability or disability literacy is so low as to be non-existent.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. Wow. Thank you. All right. So I talk a lot about going beyond disability awareness. We have, so I, as an elementary educator, I'm not sure how familiar you, how familiar you are with what is done in schools. I mean, you can go to teachers, pay teachers, and you can get these cute little lesson plans that, that I do
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
.
Diana Pastora Carson:
You do. And so many of them, well, pretty much all of them really miss the mark of what it is we need to be saying to our kids about disability because there's no concept of societal ableism and the barriers that society puts in, in the way of people having a great life. And, and so I just wonder what you think about moving beyond awareness. Do you have any suggestions or ideas that you would like to share with educators or just fellow community members?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
All the people. I mean, I think we're all educators, right? Like some are in more formal roles and others are out in the world educating, and they might not even know it. Mm-Hmm. . So there are a couple things that I think moving beyond awareness means. And I'd like to talk a little bit about universal design for learning. And I'd also like to talk about Universal Design for Learning.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yay, I love that topic, .
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
And I'd also like to talk about our responsibility. And when I say our responsibility, I mean people who can navigate language rather easily. Thinking differently about the communication attempts with people who you might suspect don't use language typically, or I might say not the, they use it nonnormatively, not the way, not aligned with the way we expect it to come across. And so some of my research looked at, I wanted to hear from young adults with an autism spectrum diagnosis. See, there's a way that we can talk about autism being a diagnosis and not a disorder. Right? Even though we may have people that are significantly impacted by their autism, they're still not disordered people. They're people in there. Yeah. And I think we forget about people being in there. So I wanted to know what young adults with an ASD they were about 18 years old to 35 years old.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
I wanted to know what they thought about their communication interactions in the world. And what they told me was overwhelmingly they were misunderstood. They told me that they felt dismissed by people, they felt unrecognized as human beings or as humans with disabilities. They said that people misunderstood the purposes of their behaviors. So if someone fidgets with a pen right, to keep their focus, that was always seen as a distraction or someone who processes so slowly it looks like they didn't hear you. So I, I wanted to know like, what ways could we, who can, could we read those behaviors differently and change the opinion of what is a competent communicator or what is an effective communicator? I think we need to expand what we think is good speech, what is competent speech. And in my field, we have a really narrow definite definition of it. It's motivation, it's performance, and it's cognition, which all align with UDL, right? UDL has the motivation component, it has the action and expression or skill component, and it has the recognition of cognition. And so those things,
Diana Pastora Carson:
UDL for our listeners who may not be familiar, stands for Universal
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Universal Design for Learning.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Thank you. Yeah. Great. And so
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
One of the things that when we're thinking about moving beyond awareness is how are we reading the communication of other people? How are we,
Diana Pastora Carson:
How are we what?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Reading, reading what we see or hear. Yeah. So there was a study done by McGregor or Canary McGregor in 2008, and they looked at what made an ideal student and what made a less than ideal student. And so I think this is really relevant to elementary school educators. Mm-Hmm. . And they came up...
Diana Pastora Carson:
And middle and high school.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Yeah. All the people, right? All the people and all the people with not just autism, right? Like anybody who's communicating differently, thinking about my stepmom that had Alzheimer's. Yeah. Thinking about people with strokes, thinking with people with cerebral palsy, right? Like big span of disability. Right. Canary McGregor came up with 24 behaviors that fit into 24 criteria that fit into five behaviors. And the behaviors were intellectually stimulated. They were participative, they were absent. Like you weren't there. They were confrontational and they were silent. And I looked back at, so once I had talked to a number of people with these young adults to find out what was going on in their communication, I did a rhetorical analysis of our interview to see what was going on in their communication that could be misunderstood, and that might be read as ideal or non-ideal in a classroom.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
And what came up was that some participants used off topic analogies and non sequiturs. Like they'd say something didn't seem remotely related. And if I didn't stop and ask, Hey, could you tell me more about that? Or how does that connect to this? I would've never known, but teachers could read that negatively. Mm-Hmm. And think that that that those were not attempts at intellectual stimulation or motivation, right? Mm-Hmm. if, if it just was a non sequitur, sometimes they're non sequiturs, other times they're really related, but they don't have the language to make the connection easily, like we would expect from people who communicate in a different way. Or we think about people that are slow processors, right. They could be read as remaining silent, which might be seen as challenging teacher authority or being uncooperative with the teacher's lesson. So I, my work is really about can we reframe what we think is negative communication or not appropriate communication to a way that it is acceptable and that we can be more inclusive of human beings in the world.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Hmm. Yeah. And what would that mean to that child sitting in a classroom full of other children that they're comparing themselves to and reading the teacher's responses to everybody else versus the responses to them and what that makes it mean inside for them for so many years. Like one minute can, can mean something for the rest of their lives.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
It can. Yeah, it can. And to your point, that's the conclusion of the paper, right? Yeah. That a lot of times teachers are looking for students to conform and, you know, here's the critical communicator in me. We're looking for students to conform and be a particular way in a classroom. Right. Because we need them to, to be able to do what we need to do. But we rarely look at what the teacher needs to do to be ready to have the people in the room and whatever people they get. Right. And I just think about we need to students see what the teacher does, and they model their behavior after that. And so if teachers can be more inclusive of things that might not look typical, but if they can make it seem like that's spot on, right. That there is, oh, you told so and so about my lesson. You know, you told your mom, or you logged into our chat and wrote about how you see this working in the world, even though it's outside the timeframe of school. Right. That's a way of making awareness happen, right? Yeah. That's a way of being inclusive beyond the simulation.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. And the other 25 or 30 students in the class see that.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Yes. And then they learn how to behave. They do.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yes. They watch that. Wow. It's such a powerful lesson within that lesson. And it reminds me of my friend Joaquin's and my friend Peyton Goddard. I don't know if you've, I
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Know Peyton, her book. I've met Peyton.
Diana Pastora Carson:
You've met her. Oh, she is. We love her. She's a dear friend to us. And she wrote a book called I Am Intelligent and lovely book. But one of the things before she wrote the book, I've always held her quote in my heart, everywhere I go, esteeming each person as vastly valuable seeds, their peaceful self, Ugh. Treating a person as worthless seeds, an irritated errored self. And so the power of that educator in that room can either have that child, that student feel vastly valuable and have a peaceful self, or they can feel like they're just wrong. That they, that they're not meant to exist and that they don't belong, that they're damaged. Right. And so, I just love everything you're saying, and it's so directly related to the actions and the mindset of the educators, and not, not from a judgment. You know, we get, I I, I've been that teacher in the classroom and I've only got 30 minutes for this lesson, and I've had so and so just had to, you know, peed their pants.
Diana Pastora Carson:
And we, you know, we had a fire drill and we, I gotta get this in because dynamic, we're gonna have standardized tests coming up, and these kids have to get this information. And then you have a child who seems to be so far out and in another world, while you're giving this lesson and says the most, sometimes seemingly bizarre things. But if we can just pause and know what you're talking about and find creative ways and compassionate ways to honor that child and their processing, and what a valuable statement that's gonna be to that child and to the rest of the children, that's gonna make a difference for years to come.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Well, let's also think of adults in presentations, right? Like, so you get roped into having to go to a presentation, or you want to you wanna be at the presentation or you're the presenter. Some things that you can do to move beyond awareness are take the microphone that's offered to you. Stop saying the thing like, I can use my teacher voice, or I have a loud voice. I don't need a microphone. You never know who's in the room, who needs to hear the message. And I could tell you a story about teaching in a large lecture hall Me, the one who's saying, use the microphone, not knowing there was a microphone, the drawer right next to me. And four weeks in, I checked with my class, how's it going? Blah, blah, blah. And somebody in the back said, we can't really hear you. And I'm like, four weeks have gone by and we can't hear you. Oh my God. And so the next day I found that there was a microphone, I put it on and do you know what happened?
Diana Pastora Carson:
What?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
People in the front row said, we can hear you so much better. And people who said, I played in the band and my hearing is not great, and I can hear you so much better. Right. So I think there's a lot of times where we think we can compensate for the use of technology and don't, you know, if somebody gives you a microphone, take it. Yes. or ask for it. Be proactive, right? Yeah. You wanna move beyond awareness, be proactive, ask for the microphone. Another thing that that's easy to do is to change your PDFs. If they're not already using optical character recognition, OCR, that can be read in a screen reader in a full version of Adobe Acrobat, or in one of those free versions that you can download on the internet. Like Foxy Reader, you can, if you have a PDF, you can have it read it with optical OCR turned on or optical character recognition.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
And you can make mundane materials accessible to screen readers. And I'll tell you, I read with a screen reader, even though I do not have a print disability, right. I read everything with the, the visual there and having somebody read to me, because sometimes I need help with my motivation. So that's a simple thing we can do to make materials accessible. Another thing we can do, which is my favorite thing, and I learned it from teaching in classrooms with students with visual impairments, is narrate our PowerPoint slides. Tell the people what's on them. Right. If you have an, i I taught in the large lecture class, I was asked to teach using somebody else's materials, which was a disaster. I had a student with a visual impairment in the room, and he had an aide, but I didn't know if the aide was gonna do what I wanted the student to get.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
So I, it was really important to me to make sure that if there were images on the slide, I described the images. The problem was I didn't pick the images and I couldn't always connect the dots. Like why was, you know, the, the slide that got me was, we were talking about some calm theory deal, and I think it was a, and it was a, a picture of a couple standing on a beach. They were looking lovingly at each other. And I thought, what does lovingly look to like to a student who hasn't seen faces or love that way? Like, how do I describe that? I don't know. Like, and I worked really hard to figure out how to describe, well, in that moment, I realized I'd never use images that I didn't know what they meant. Right.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Right.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Like that if they were decorative, I'd say they're decorative. But honestly, I just gave a TED-like talk in Las Vegas, and we narrated, narrated our slides, and we told the people ahead of time that we were going to do that because we didn't know who would be accessing our materials. Those are easy things to do.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Wow. Thank you. I had not heard of or thought of the PDF, the OCR optical character recognition feature. And I may have been using it by default, but I don't know. I have to look into that now. Thank you.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
If you scan something from like print, it usually can't be recognized unless you tell it. So if you scan a book chapter or you scan a couple pages you wanna share with somebody, just turn on the optical character recognition. And it it's so much easier to say OCR, turn it on and run it through so it can recognize it. Then it recognizes the words and people have access.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Right. Great. Great ideas that most people don't think about. You know, we just get so wrapped up in our own existence and forget about ensuring access for others. And I know that I do it unconsciously, you know, so often. But the more that we learn, the more that we can be more considerate and empowering
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
And the more the, when you know better, you do better, right?
Diana Pastora Carson:
Exactly. Just like Maya Angelou said. Right. Right. So I like to, when people ask me about disability awareness, I like to frame it in the context of DEI or D-E-I-A-B: diversity, equity, inclusion, access and belonging. I know that you've done a lot of work around Universal Design for learning. Why is it so important if we care about DEI that we're, that we're remembering that we're, that we're implementing Universal Design for Learning?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
In every space we can implement it, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's really important that we, if we care about diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and belonging it's really important that we think about the message of teaching to people on the margins. And UDL, universal Design for Learning used to be very focused on disability, and it's starting to lose that focus. Mm-Hmm. , right? It's really now being used in general ed classrooms in response to intervention. Right. And, and the people that I wanted to see getting UDL where people in separate classrooms, right? Like really having access. But when we start to think about DEI, teaching to the margins means thinking about how black people come to education. Did they have equitable education on the way up? What might they need that is unique to their population? Brown people, sometimes we think of Hispanic learners needing needing more time for family, or having to work lots of jobs to be able to support families here and afar, right?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
So they might have unique needs that we have to account for in classrooms. We think about indigenous people and how they have been traumatized in by institutions of learning, right? Higher ed included. We think about where our universities are on what land. We need to be thinking about LGBTQIA plus people, right? They have really unique needs that I'm getting better at identifying and figuring out what are the accommodations or what are the supports they need in the classroom. And what I love about UDL, right? What I love about it is that it kind of, even though we teach and aggregate, we can still bring the feeling of individual education supporting people where they need supporting scaffolding assignments or lessons so that we're checking in and making sure people are coming along. And, you know, Shelly Moore has a really good talk about what I call decriminalizing accommodations, right?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
They talk about how we might drink coffee in the morning to make us wake up, or some of us have to use an alarm clock to wake our, you know, to get outta bed. Right? Those are all accommodations. And when we start thinking about accommodating human beings and meeting people where they really are, universal design for learning is really critical in helping us meet tons of different kinds of needs, right? We just, I think we need to, I think we still need disability accommodations that are formal and real, but I think that when our pedagogy is such that peoples get their needs met, we treat everybody the same way. We catch people who might be the person in the, who was in the band and can't hear as well, right? That don't see themselves as disabled, or that don't see themselves as, as being able to ask for help. And all of these black, brown, indigenous people with mental health disabilities, LGBTQIA plus, right? They might not come from places where it's okay to advocate for their needs. So what's it like to be meet met by a teacher who's planned for them and know those needs are coming? That's why we have to do it.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
That's why we have to make time to do it.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. And that takes a commitment.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
It does.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
So if you were gonna ask me about my pet peeves
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
It would be my colleagues.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Well, yeah. Yeah. I was gonna, so my next question was about pet peeves. And that leads me too, you know, when I say that takes a commitment so what are your pet peeves about our education system when it comes to students with disabilities and the will to accommodate everybody the will to design in a universal inclusive way?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
It's often my colleagues that do not think they have to, that they are, they feel like they're burdened to do this labor. And, you know, higher ed is changing and COVD changed everything. Mm-Hmm. . And so we are starting to see students coming as first generation students. We're starting to see students who have never shown up in our classrooms before. And a lot of my colleagues, I mean, you can go to the professors feed on Reddit and read about how people don't think that our students belong there. Mm-Hmm. or, you know, it's really changing the hallowed how halls of the ivory tower. And so a lot of people don't feel obligated to meet the needs of students. They just wanna do it the old way. And, you know, we all have to come to the fact that the world has changed and people's needs are different. And that's where we're where we are. So I would like it if people would get on board. I'd like to go to a training where someone mentions Universal Design for learning and people don't go, yeah, yeah, yeah. We know it. 'cause I guarantee they don't.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. Yeah. And they don't want to. So how do we change this? You know? Is there hope? You know,
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
There is hope. I mean, there is hope. There are people like me. I am publishing, I am influencing people. I mean, I'm not the only person in the world. There are lots of people. Beth Holler is a person. Jim Cherney is a person. There are a lot of people that care about disability and making higher education accessible and changing the world with the small things like narrating PowerPoint slides. And you know, I just encourage your listeners, if they're giving a presentation somewhere to think about who might be in their audience and what barriers they might have to hearing their message. Not just hearing it, but seeing their message and getting the message to their bodies. Right. and think about, you know, is there something, am I using these materials, expecting people to make connections that maybe they won't be able to make?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
So, you know, it could feel awkward the first time you do anything. It could feel awkward, the thousandth time you do anything. But, you know, you could say, I'm going to narrate my slides for accessibility purposes at the beginning of your talk and just do it right. And, and you'll get better. And I promise you people, someone will come up to you and say, wow, like, I understood what you were saying because you explained how that picture worked. And that's UDL, right? It's helping get the content that we're learning into the recognition center in a different way. And so just expecting people to be able to look at a picture. Some people can't see it, some people can't make the quick leap. All people make the leaps. You want them to know. Can I tell you a dumb story?
Diana Pastora Carson:
Do
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
I was on an airplane the other day and there was a woman. We were all the, all the flights were delayed and we were all needing to get to a connecting flights. Many of us were Uhhuh . And this woman was stood up really fast when the plane barely touched down and she was trying to get to the front of the plane. 'cause She knew she was, had a tight connection and people weren't letting her through. And she didn't know what to do. And I kept telling her, just say what you need. Say what you need. Tell them why you're pushing. And then she's like, I have a tight connection. And people would let her go. And you know, it's, people will help you if they know that they can. And what my message is in improving your disability literacy is we can help human beings, especially when we know what their needs are. Yeah. And so just thinking about the needs of people helps us be more able to communicate our willingness to help.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. Oh, I, it brings me to tears. I love that. It reminds me of another, and by the way, that was a brilliant story. Thank you for . I remember I was picking up my aunt and and her grandson who is autistic, and they were getting off a plane. And my aunt called, and she was crying because he had had a flare up on the airplane. And people were, he was probably nine or 10 years old, and she was stressing out, and he, people were getting up to get off the airplane and she was stuck in the middle of the plane. And a gentleman stood up, military guy and yelled to everybody, sit down, let this woman off the plane with her child. And she got off that plane first and they brought a wheelchair for him. And he came out just smiling When we got, when we got, he was just so relieved to be there. And I just went up to that man. My, my aunt pointed him out. I went up to him, thank you so much. You know, people did wanna help, but people don't know exactly what to do unless we let them know. And sometimes it's in a take charge kind of way. But yeah, thank you for sharing. And that does bring some hope, you know?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
It does. There, there's lots of hope and there are ways, you know, I've thought about universal design takes a lot of effort. It does. It takes a lot of pre-planning. I taught I was a coordinator for many sections, and so I was teaching graduate students and building the course on a foundation of UDL so that it, students in my class didn't just get it right, that it was trying to be reiterated everywhere else. But I really think that, you know, we could use, you know, I know that schools are changing and I know that special educators are being used in unique ways, and we could utilize people that are like co-teaching or resource people that have been transitioned in other ways. We could use their expertise on how do we do this better? How do we accommodate the readings? How do we modify materials or accommodate materials so that people with, you know, how do we do it towards universal design so that everybody is benefiting from the lesson. Like what I love about UDL is it's a get rid of the idea that there's a C student. There isn't, everybody learns as differently as their fingertips and so, or their fingerprints. Mm-Hmm. And so you know, we have to do that. That's the world I wanna live in.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Yeah. Beautiful. All right. You ready for fun?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Yeah.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Okay. Airplane or train?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Airplane.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Okay. Jump rope or hopscotch?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Both
Diana Pastora Carson:
,
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Hopscotch.
Diana Pastora Carson:
dancing or singing?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Dancing.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Coffee or tea?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Tea.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Your favorite teacher,
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Lori from Mid Pen in Palo Alto.
Diana Pastora Carson:
And why?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Because she saw me as a person.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Hmm.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
And she made me read a terrible book that it took me 30 years to read. I never read it for her, but you know what it was called? How to Win Friends and Influence Others. And I was driving to a job interview and I thought, oh, listen to the book. And then I emailed her and said, I finally did it.
Diana Pastora Carson:
What was the
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Book? And she was awesome. How Dale Carnegie Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence Others.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Awesome. Awesome. I
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Was so 16-year-old. Me was so offended that she suggested I read that book and she told me what, you know, 50-year-old me called her. She said, she said she was offended when somebody had told her to read that book. . Oh
Diana Pastora Carson:
Oh my gosh. I've been, I need to read that. I have not read it, but I've heard. Great.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
It's not that offensive.
Diana Pastora Carson:
No, I'm sure I would love it. One thing you would say to today's students in our modern classrooms, if you have one piece of advice for somebody who sits in our classrooms day to day disabled or not, what's one thing you would say to them?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
You know, something I said to them every day was I checked in with them on their social emotional wellbeing. And so I'd asked them what was their intention in that room today? What do you wanna do? And set your intention and you'll be aware to it. You'll hear it come up.
Diana Pastora Carson:
How can people find you, Alison?
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
You can find me on LinkedIn and you, I think I gave you a link to me directly if you want to start a conversation.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Awesome. yeah, you, you gave me a link to your dot card and I will put that in the show notes.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
That'll get you to my LinkedIn and I'm working on New Business Venture, so hopefully I have a website coming soon.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Awesome. Dr. Allison Brenneise, thank you so much for this time. I appreciate all the work that you're doing.
Dr. Allison Brenneise:
Thank you, Diana.
Diana Pastora Carson:
Thank you for tuning into this episode of Beyond Awareness Disability AThank you for tuning in to this episode of Beyond Awareness Disability Awareness That Matters. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review this show on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, or Spotify. You can also follow me, Diana on Instagram at Diana pastora Carson and at facebook.com/go beyond awareness. Or go to my website for more information at www.dianapastoracarson.com. Links to my books, my blog, my digital beyond awareness basics course, as well as my handy tri-fold laminated Beyond Disability Awareness guide, and other resources can be found at DianaPastoraCarson.com. For your free Beyond awareness resource called How to Talk About Disability with Kids, simply go to DianaPastoraCarson.com/talk. Podcast transcription and podcast guest information can be found in the show notes, intro and outro music provided courtesy of my son Emmanuel Castro. Thank you again. Be well, be a lifelong learner and let's be inclusive. See you next time.
