Essential for Some, Good for All

By Audrey Mendivil, SDCOE District Advisor, Curriculum and Instruction, Mathematics

Part of my own wellness journey means that most days I look for a small bit of sunshine to grab my sneakers and go for a walk. One of my favorite loops has a set of streets with sidewalks, followed by a dirt path, and then a small section where I hug the edge of property lines on the edge of the road. My kids have decided the sidewalk portions are their favorite, as they are usually riding scooters and the small slope in the curb cuts gives them a boost in momentum and a chance to coast.

To be honest, I’ve become a bit obsessed with curb cuts, both on my walks and in the classroom. The idea of “essential for some, good for all” has been part of designing accessible spaces for a while — curb cuts, ramps, elevators, and automatic doors can be found in lots of places thanks to the advocacy of people with disabilities. This idea is also a premise of many technological advances - text to speech, speech to text, closed captioning, automatic captioning, zoom features, and more. Each of these tools provides essential access to technology and communication for some, and many others also benefit from using them. 

So what would it take to design a math lesson so that it provided access that was essential for some and good for all? To parallel the building design process, we can start by learning about the experiences of people who are marginalized by our systems, and then we center what is essential for their success and well-being in our design. 

One group of students who are marginalized in our schools are students with disabilities. To learn about what to center in our lesson design for their success, we can look for trends and themes in Individualized Education Program (IEP) accommodations that will help our students with disabilities thrive. Two trends that I’ve noticed in IEP accommodations are extended time and use of a calculator, notes, or math tools (depending on the grade level of the student). If we center the experience of students with disabilities and design what’s essential for them, we could design our math lesson so that any student had options for extended time and the use of a calculator, notes, or math tools. Can you imagine how designing that way might be essential for some and good for all?

I know for many of our students who are marginalized in our school systems, we may not have plans that give us clues for centering their needs in our design. Don’t worry — we can still learn about what gives them access and helps them thrive: all we need to do is ask the students, their families, and their community and then center their needs in our lesson design. Without this, we’re designing math lessons like sidewalks with no curb cuts — some will have access, but our most marginalized students won’t.

This idea, along with designing with rigorous goals, expecting and planning for variability, and then reframing what’s broken, are all part of the process of Universal Design for Learning. I hope you’ll keep looking to create the curb cuts as you design your math lessons for your students, centering their strengths, valuing their identities, and fostering a sense of belonging.