Teaching for Inclusion
Teachers impart knowledge to the world’s youth, provide mentorship, learning opportunities, and growth. Think about it - without them, where would any of us be?
International Day of Education, January 24th, 2024, is a day recognized by the United Nations (UN) to celebrate the role of education for peace and development internationally.
Education allows for greater access and inclusion for all youth across the nation. This is critical to ensure that not only do youth have the opportunity to attend school but they also must feel safe, welcomed, and included. They have to be provided with opportunities and experiences to participate fully in life where they live, work, learn and play regardless of their abilities.
This year the International Day of Education theme is ‘learning for lasting peace.’ Mr. Angelo Tocco, a Special Education teacher at Dante Alighieri Academy, located in Toronto, Ontario, embodies these principles in his teaching practices.
Teaching with a Disability
As an educator living with profound hearing loss, Angelo has faced many accessibility barriers and obstacles along his teaching journey. These barriers have impacted Angelo’s ability to fully participate and contribute meaningfully to the teaching profession, which motivates him to ensure his students are fully able to participate.
“Accessibility is for everybody, not just people with disabilities,” Angelo said. “The students are the leaders of today and tomorrow. They can take the lessons learned in the classroom and move forward.”
Educators play an important role in supporting our youth. Diverse learners need access to accessible, inclusive, equitable opportunities and experiences to thrive.
“The reality is that schools were not designed for people living with a wide range of disabilities and/or accessibility needs from the outset, including me,” Angelo indicates.
Angelo believes that one part of the solution to help achieve a barrier-free educational experience for all learners requires the educational community to make a commitment to working together and prioritize their shared responsibility in promoting a culture of accessibility and inclusion in schools.
Often, this may begin at the individual level by educating one person at a time, starting with the individual in front of you – anyone from a student, a colleague, to a director of education. This can result in a positive ripple effect, teaching others as the message spreads.
Building a Culture of Accessibility and Inclusion
Through his teaching, mentoring and sharing of his journey, Angelo strives to be a role model to others to highlight the power in modelling accessibility and inclusion. This goes beyond talking about inclusion, and requires doing the necessary work to educate others and see change in their community.
In May 2023, a group of seven students at Dante Alighieri Academy, were awarded the Rick Hansen Foundation School Program (RHFSP) Difference Maker of the Year Award.
A total of seven students worked closely with Angelo, to develop an educational video to raise awareness around accessibility, inclusion and belonging. They called themselves the Dante Accessibility Team.
“What was so inspiring for me was how the students put in such an effort to help make communication more accessible and more inclusive,” Angelo commented.
After discussing it as a group, the students and Angelo thought, “What if we go on this journey to educate the whole staff and student population?”
This was the start of their journey to creating an educational video called ‘Exploring Speech to Text, Inclusion and Belonging.’ The video they created focused on addressing information and communication barriers, technological barriers, and attitudinal barriers that people with disabilities face, using the speech-to-text app and Angelo’s hearing loss as an example of lived experience in disability in their own community.
“Accessibility to me means everyone being given the proper resources in order to reach their full potential,” Victoria Andrade, one of the members of the Dante Accessibility Team said. “It means living in a world in which everyone and their own needs are considered no matter who, what, where or when.”
The students were able to produce and show the video to their whole school and share their knowledge.
Taking Lessons Forward
Through this accessible and inclusive experience Angelo hopes his students continue to learn, grow and share their voices to create ongoing awareness as well as to empower others to become future accessibility leaders and difference makers.
Angelo recently received the 2023 Carol McGregor CLC Disability Rights Award, which highlights an individual for their disability rights activism in the community. This emphasizes Angelo’s commitment to advance accessibility, inclusion, and belonging. It requires a commitment to having meaningful conversations where all voices are equally valued.
Throughout his 25-year teaching journey, Angelo shares with us one of the most valuable lessons he has learned to date:
“It makes an incredible difference to devote our time, energy and talents in creating accessible, inclusive, diverse, equitable opportunities and experiences for our youth. Prioritizing these actions plays an instrumental role in elevating the ‘student voice’ and their unique lived experiences to empower our youth to become agents of change and agents of peace in their respective communities”.
