Title:
The Contextuality of Disability | Treasa Praino’s Global Perspective

Subtitle:
Academia & Advocacy: Insights from a Scholar on Disablement, Interdependence and Independence

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.

Let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I am Alycia Anderson, your host. We have a rockstar guest today. Her name is Treasa Praino. She is legally blind, a disability advocate. She’s a university instructor and human rights and inclusion specialist, who is currently finishing her PhD at Syracuse University in inclusive, special education and critical disability studies.

No big deal. I love that. You’re gonna be a rock star hitting the industry. We need you. Her work challenges traditional Western ideas of disability and it brings a global and intersectional perspective to the conversation. Again, something that is so needed. Her research has been shaped by years of work that she’s done in South Africa that highlights Indigenous approaches.

This is such a cool conversation. I’m so excited.

Treasa Praino: Me too.

Alycia Anderson: And she also worked in federal probation. Talk about a plot twist. Treasa, welcome to the show.

I’m so excited to see you again.

Treasa Praino: Thank you, Alycia, for having, I’m so excited to be here. I appreciate the work that you do and I’m so glad we got to connect a few months ago. And I’m really appreciative of your interest and my work, and I’m really excited to be here and chat with you.

Alycia Anderson: I’m so excited. We are soul sisters in this advocacy work for sure. We connected immediately. But you just have so many different layers and interesting lenses that you’re looking at disability inclusion specifically. And so I’m really excited for you to share your story with our community because I found it absolutely fascinating.

So thank you for being willing to share it. I think we need to start in the beginning. If you can tell us a little bit about your journey, growing up with a visual impairment, and how your relationship was with disability early on, and how that’s led you to where you are.

Treasa Praino: Yeah, definitely. So as you had mentioned, I am legally blind and I grew up always experiencing this discrimination, not because of an inability to achieve, but of course because of society’s preconceived notions of what it means to have low vision and disability more broadly. But, people really always presumed incompetence, and they were always really nervous that I was putting myself in danger just by going about my daily life. And to be quite honest, it was super annoying. I’m actually putting it quite lightly. It was fairly infuriating just the presumption of incompetence wherever I went. And initially, this might be a little bit similar to your trajectory, if I recall, but initially didn’t wanna have anything to do with the disability field because I almost felt as though people would perceive it as quote unquote path, which is, first of all, ridiculous that I was even against that.

But I wanted to prove everyone wrong, and that I wasn’t scared to be adventurous and do cool things and travel and engage in kind of dangerous endeavors or what have you. I wanted to push back against that stigma of being incapable. I studied criminal justice and psychology for undergrad. And as you mentioned, I ended up working for federal probation in two years in Manhattan. So I was in the special offender unit. I had about 80 men on my caseload, who were considered the quote unquote highest risk offenders in Manhattan and the Bronx.

So every week I interviewed these men and got to know them. First of all, I should mention importantly that 90% of them were men of color, which I noticed was problematic. As getting to know them, I realized the school systems, many of them under resourced, had really failed them. So a lot of the men on my caseload are actually labeled with disabilities or just pushed into segregated special ed settings. A lot of special ed rooms, not all, but a lot of them are really set up like institutions or incarceration settings where it’s all about reward and punishment. Whereas gen ed settings, we often consider more about learning. A lot of segregated rooms are really about reward and punishment and these men were pushed in.Young boys were pushed through the school to prison pipeline. They dropped out because of how bad these classrooms were, and they ended up on the streets and oftentimes involved in gangs. That or some of them should have actually gotten special ed services, ideally in the gen ed room, but were overlooked. And so they dropped out as well. And so I saw this kind of pattern, and I started to realize that the mainly punitive measures that we were employing in our unit were only conducive to recidivism at that point.

So I realized, I don’t feel like I’m making any kind of a difference here. I said, “Okay, I wanna become more involved with helping people.” Preventing people from ending up in the criminal justice system.

But I was lost after that. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So, on a whim, I went to South Africa. I think it was like 2015. Like I worked on a big cat rescue facility, where the animals were rescued from canned hunting and cub breeding farms. But while I was there, I learned a lot about the South African education system and the inequities stemming from colonialism and apartheid.

And I saw actually these synergies between the South African education system and US school systems, in terms of inequity. So I went back, I wanted to get my master’s in inclusive ed. Initially thought about becoming a teacher, a special or inclusive ed teacher. Again, we were required to work in these special ed settings, these segregated spaces. I come to find, I can’t do this because it was again, in these segregated rooms in a very wealthy district, where I worked predominantly white district, all the black and brown boys bussed in from Newark. They were receiving the special ed in a segregated setting, whereas the white kids with disabilities were in the gen ed room receiving special ed services. Yeah, so what was happening there was unjust in my eyes. And what was happening in those rooms, it was nothing short of abuse. Kids were physically picked up and thrown into a locked closet when they weren’t even doing anything. They just didn’t obey rules. So I said, I can’t do this either. It’s really important. We have teachers on the inside who are trying to better the system from the inside out, but I couldn’t do it. I figured out I needed to bring awareness to disability in a different way. Again, I found myself very lost, very uncomfortable because I don’t like not knowing what I’m doing with my life. I’m very goal oriented and I jump ahead of myself. But I ultimately applied for the Fulbright to South Africa. Again, I worked at Nelson Mandela University’s disability unit, where I organized accessibility initiatives. COVID happened, so the State Department evacuated us. Again, lost. And then, I was home and I’m, like, “Why don’t I apply for the PhD at Syracuse?” Because Syracuse is internationally recognized for being pretty progressive, in terms of researching and investigating disability. They’re very focused on asset perspectives regarding people with disabilities to very anti- medical deficit understandings of disability.

So that was really a lot for me to just ramble on about, but it has been a long journey. So that’s how I got to where I am.

Alycia Anderson: So there’s a few things to unpack there.

First of all, I love your journey of starting as a person who identifies with their own disability, but also when you’re younger, doesn’t wanna just be labeled as that. That’s how I was when I was younger too. We definitely connected on that and how you almost rejected it for a while, but it seems like through these paths of experiences that you had and seeing injustices happen that are severe.

Frankly, I can’t believe that some of that stuff is still happening. Like now, that sounds pretty recent that we’re putting people behind walls and treating them like that. That is institutionalization of disability. That has been a historic problem.

It was traumatic listening to it, so it had to have been traumatic seeing it, but it feels like that married to you wanting to reject your disability and then it sounds like probably through these experiences of others and then going around the world to experience disability.

You started to have a relationship with advocacy for others, which I can imagine, and I wanna hear from you what that has done for you, in your relationship now, in your space with disability. Like how has that changed from, ” No, I’m not gonna be labeled the way society is labeling me because I don’t wanna be behind those walls. I wanna be who I wanna be.” Like how has that translated to today to who you are?

Treasa Praino: Yeah, absolutely. So I am proud to be involved in a lot of different disability communities. Now I do, some work with the National Federation of the Blind and the National Federation and the Blind of New Jersey. And I’ve done some work with Syracuse University, has an inclusive U program, it’s helping include students with intellectual disabilities into the higher ed space in meaningful ways. I’m so in love with what I’m doing now, and I am proud to be someone who identifies as disabled. But what I’ve come to notice is that disability is so highly contextual. And in different spaces, I notice my disability more so than in other spaces. I wanna go into that a little bit because I find that even in different cultures, disability is understood differently. So even when I’m in a different part of the world, I experience my disability differently.

Alycia Anderson: Talk through that more. Give us an example.

Treasa Praino: Yeah. What I’ve found in my research and what a lot of disability scholars write about is that disability is really highly based on place and space and time and available resources.

So, rather than looking at disability as an inherent flaw within an individual, disability study scholars decompact that idea. What I mean by that is that anyone at any point in time, first of all, can become physically or cognitively disabled, not just from an accident or illness or aging, which does happen.

If you live long enough, you will become disabled at some point. But people can experience disablement as they are, physically and cognitively. But you can experience disablement, even in your current present context. If you move to a different context, you might be considered disabled, right?

Because it depends on what resources are available to you. It depends who is in the majority and what that majority looks like. It depends what access technologies are available. And so I’ll just give a more concrete example, based on my own blindness, just because maybe we’ll paint a better picture. So again, I’m completely blind. I don’t drive. So I grew up in New Jersey suburbs. I lived there for most of my life. But I also lived in New York City for about five years. And so living in New York City, I didn’t notice my disability as much, it was more like white noise in the background of my life. And again, I wasn’t against identifying as having a disability. But I didn’t experience disablement quite as much in New York City than New Jersey.

Alycia Anderson: Define disablement.

Treasa Praino: See, this is where it gets to be complex, because there’s so many different models of how people understand disability, right?

Through the medical model, where disability needs to be treated or fixed or cured, and it’s a problem. And then there’s the social model saying that a disability interacts with the body and mind, but it’s mostly based on barriers in society, limiting people. Whereas, in the Indigenous community, where I did some of my dissertation field work. Disability was partially conceptualized as meaningful community and reciprocal relations lost and severed, and also relationships with the environment and land and ancestors severed. It’s such a nuanced phenomenon, and I define it differently at different points in time for my own life. So, I guess I would say I notice my disablement or my disability less in New York City. Because in New York City, I wasn’t limited in terms of where I could go and when. So there’s a subway, there are cars, people walk everywhere. It was easy for me to access anything that I needed within blocks.

I also, didn’t stick out because I was in that, quote unquote, majority. So everyone gets around via cabs or subway or bus, right? So, I was outwardly presenting as, quote unquote, normal. And we can have an entirely different complex discussion surrounding deconstructing normalcy another day, because I can talk about that for hours and hours. But my point, in this instant, is saying that I didn’t experience outright discrimination or limitations based on my disability because I fit into that, quote unquote, normal category, and I could get to where I needed to go when I needed to be there. In New Jersey, though, on the other hand, the flip side, I’m extremely aware of my disability because there’s such a lack of access to reliable public transport. Nothing’s really in walking distance where I live in New Jersey. I’m here now, it’s two or three miles just to get into the center of town. Everyone has a car. So, essentially, I am more limited here, in this specific context, or disabled by this context. I have to ask people for rides, to wait on people, which it’s not always a problem. But it’s more limiting in my own life sometimes. Yeah, there are Ubers, but those are expensive. I can’t afford them all the time. And, just here, people are also really aware of my difference. And so I’ve come to learn that’s okay. But sometimes it can still be annoying, when I have to, negotiate. Do I answer these questions about my disability? Do I have to spend this time doing this right now? Do I have to explain myself? Just getting, even, annoying comments that are positioned as jokes, even from friends who are really well intentioned. But living in New Jersey, for instance, I just notice it’s less white noise.

The disability part of my life and my vision, which I wouldn’t change, but I notice it more, it’s amplified here. And in New York City, I wasn’t quite as limited. So the context matters. This could be the complete opposite, though, for someone, let’s say, who has difficulty, let’s say, self-regulating or who is overly sensory.

New York City’s sensory overload. And a lot of people might be much more limited in New York City compared to a quieter or rural context, when they have an easier time self-regulating or focusing or maintaining peace. Again, I’m proud to identify as disabled, now knowing what I know no matter where I go, but it’s such a nuanced phenomenon, disability. Place, space and time play a part. And I’m specifically elucidating here in this conversation that I don’t define disability as limitation, but disablement and limitation can be exacerbated or mitigated based on context. And I’m talking about people who don’t consider themselves to have a disability too.

A lot of able-bodied people, because of current technologies or medicines, are able-bodied because of those things. If we think about people who wear glasses, but can barely read or operate without them. I know a bunch of people who fit this category. A lot of these individuals, before the invention of glasses, would have probably been considered to have a disability.

This might be an extreme example, but back in the day in like hunter gather societies, if you couldn’t hunt because you couldn’t see or you couldn’t run fast or collect the right berries, and glasses didn’t exist, might have been labeled or positioned as something akin to having a disability. And we still see this happening in some parts of the world, where access to vision care isn’t accessible or wheelchairs aren’t available, or iPads are limited. So lack of access to healthcare can contribute to disability. If you can’t get the medications you need, that can be in itself, something that leads to disability.

Alycia Anderson: I think that’s interesting to think about because the whole theory of disablement, depending on where you are in the world, also can have, I assume, a huge impact on societal perception of what is possible for us or not. And I assume that you experience those things as you’re traveling around the world.

Where, to take your example, if you are in a country somewhere where you don’t have glasses readily available and disability shows up in a different way, maybe looking more limiting because of that, then it’s creating these societal perceptions that it’s potentially much more limiting than it would be if you are in New York City.

And that’s fascinating, right? And I think that’s a really important thing for all of us, as people who are living on this earth, to take note of. Because we just had another amazing person on this podcastVicki, who is a diplomat and she travels around the world living in different countries, and she was talking about the cultural perception of disability and how it changes depending on where you are.

Like, when she was living in Senegal, in Africa, her disability, they were in awe of her abilities within it because they had never seen it function in the way that she can show up or the way that she’s accommodated and learned over her lifetime being an American. So that whole conversation is very interesting and I think it’s a really good way for us to educate ourselves on bias, and our limited understanding, and our perceptions.

It comes from a small spot on this earth that we take up.

Treasa Praino: A hundred percent. Yeah. And even disability representation is different wherever you go. So in certain countries, people with disabilities are completely hidden away still or institutionalized. That still happens. And so disability is gonna be accommodated or not accommodated much differently than it is here in certain instances.

And media plays a role in that as well. But I think even thinking about this theoretically is useful in practice, because if you think about disability as being highly contextual, that’s why having accessible and inclusive schools and workplaces is really important because by limiting people’s access and choices about how they engage with the environment, and if the people in that space fail to value interdependent relationships, you’re really shrinking your talent pool. You’re keeping out, potentially, really innovative thinkers, who can solve problems in new ways and who can connect to clients on new levels, and with different sorts of communication abilities. And like I said before, whether able-bodied, quote unquote, people like to think about it or not. If they live long enough, they’re gonna become disabled and every single person probably knows or cares for someone with a disability. So making these spaces as much choice in how people can succeed in various spaces is so important. And oftentimes, in my work, I love theory, I love engaging with different cultural paradigms and looking at disability through different lenses. And sometimes I forget about that practical piece, and I’m really trying to engage and focus on that. Now that I’m finishing up with the dissertation and my sort of last chapter is implications for practice and policy and future research. I love the work and I’m excited to be finished, but I’m also quite sad that I’m gonna be done with this specific research project because just being able to travel and engage with these different communities has been wonderful, and I’ve pushed myself to think past categorical bounds of Western disability frameworks.

Alycia Anderson: So, what is the one thing that we can take away from that? What have you learned from challenging the Western ways and experiencing global Indigenous perspectives of inclusion? What can we learn from that?

Treasa Praino: Yeah, so, in our sort of neoliberal world, where we’re highly productivity-motivated and we’re very individualistic here. This sort of pick-yourself-up-from-your-bootstraps narrative, which by the way was initially a term to mean, quite literally, physically impossible to do. It’s false. You can’t be successful on your own. And I think the disability rights community and movements have been aware of that for so long. Interdependence is so important and valuing interdependent and meaningful reciprocal and holistic relationships is so important for combating ableism. And it’s something that is inherent to the Indigenous communities where I was studying. It’s weaved into their daily lived realities is it’s more interdependence over independence. And I think we need to just maybe focus on relationship building and presuming competence of everyone as being valuable to contributing to the larger whole of society.

Alycia Anderson: I love that idea of interdependence because the reality is I think all of us as humans to be included in any type of way, to do that independently alone, and be fully successful is just like you’re not able to be pulled up by your bootstraps. You can’t do it alone.

Like it’s literally impossible. Even if you are perceivably the most able-bodied person, there’s gonna be something that you need from somebody else to achieve a goal. And instead of looking at interdependence as a weakness, it’s actually a communal strength to lean on each other to build bigger.

Treasa Praino: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Alycia Anderson: That’s so beautiful. Oh, I love it.

Treasa Praino: Oh yeah.

Alycia Anderson: I love it.

Treasa Praino: Thank you, Alycia.

I could talk to you for hours.

Alycia Anderson: I think a lot of us get put under that lens of presuming what we can be competent in or not, and maybe there’s some advice that you could give our community that listens to this, that feels like there’s constantly people saying, “you can only do this and not that, or I assume you can only do this.” Can you talk about your journey with those two words a little bit and how you’ve overcome or combated or proved incorrect?

Treasa Praino: Yeah

Alycia Anderson: Can you talk about it?

Treasa Praino: For sure. I think we need to recognize that in order to presume competence, from the beginning in everyone, I think we need to start recognizing that normalcy is socially constructed and politically constructed, and people need to start challenging the idea of normalcy. Even in schools, curriculum usually benefits certain kinds of kids and instead of giving young kids a chance, we push them out of spaces where they can learn with their peers. Automatically, we assume, “Oh, you can’t do this. You can’t succeed in the curriculum. We’re gonna push you out into these special ed spaces or you’re gonna go to a school where you can be with people like you.” How do we do this to children? I think the normative standards we have, even in schools, are very exclusionary because people have different talents and thrive in different ways. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, but I think presuming competence means giving everyone a chance, but then also acknowledging that people’s strengths, might be different from your own, and that’s okay. Even the most able-bodied person, like you said, didn’t do it on their own, but people gave them a chance. They presumed that they were competent. And if we give everyone a chance and accommodate people where they need, you never know where people could go and how they can contribute to solving global challenges, regional challenges, local challenges. And when you presume competence and you work with people with disabilities, there’s interest convergence, right? Like things that are developed for people with disabilities help everyone else.

Even like this, you would think it’s so simple and people don’t even notice it, but those dips in the sidewalk were initially, made for people in wheelchairs, and then they help mothers with strollers and they help elderly people.

They help people with shopping carts. So working with people with disabilities, presuming that they know what they’re talking about,they are experts in their lived realities and they’re experts in something. You may not be an expert. Society may not completely value it at the time, but open up our understandings of normalcy. And people with disabilities can really contribute to solving challenges that we need to solve. And I think it’s gonna be interesting, too, with AI. I’m interested to see what’s gonna happen in terms of bridging communication gaps or bridging ways of thinking between people with disabilities and able-bodied people.

I love how you started this piece too, with tying this to education with the little ones.

Alycia Anderson: I think right now, specifically in 2025, when people are being bolder with their words. I can give you an example. Like I had somebody in my circle talking about education, especially with IEPs and all of these things under fire right now with resources. What are we cutting?

And that affects disabled kids first and all of that. And I had somebody in my circle say all of that’s fine if these children are not creating disruption, and the presumption of competency only going so far. And then if you don’t fit in this box, you need to go into a different room.

That piece alone, we need to understand that the competence that we’re expecting shouldn’t be in the five-year-old or the 10-year-old. It’s in the resources and the leaders and the education. The competence of those people to have enough resources to make sure that everybody is taken care of in the way that they need to be taken care of.

It isn’t this in-the-box situation.

Treasa Praino: Right.

Alycia Anderson: And that presumption of competency needs to have a much wider space for everyone, and looking at it through a normalcy lens, it’s fascinating. So good.

Treasa Praino: Yeah, I think it’s really hard for people who haven’t seen real inclusion happening, let’s say in education spaces, in classrooms to get it, but I’ve seen real inclusion happening. And I don’t just mean for certain types of disabilities. Oftentimes people say, “Oh, kids with intellectual disabilities, they can’t be included.” But no, they can, and I’ve seen it happen very effectively. One of the schools where I did some of my research have been recognized by various international organizations for being a model inclusive school. And they are recognized for accommodating students with all types of disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and visible disabilities.

And it’s deconstructing what school is supposed to look like. Yes, students can be disruptive, but there are ways to mitigate the chances of them being disruptive by giving them, whatever they need. The regulation breaks or this particular school had a on-school farm.

And if they were being disruptive, it was not because they were trying to be, quote unquote, bad kids. They just needed a regulation break. So they would go out, they would play with some of the animals, they would tend to the vegetable gardens. They would do a lap around, and then they would come back in, and they could bring a peer if they wanted to.

It was very focused on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, like kids can’t learn if their basic needs aren’t met. If they’re not able to focus in that moment, okay, that’s fine. Let them go and have a little five minute break if they need. Let them have their noise canceling headphones if it’s too loud in the room for a minute. And let’s talk about it. It’s okay to teach kids that kids are different. People are different. There’s human diversity, and the school did a really great job of teaching about disability and ability and what’s normal and what’s not, and why is that a problem.

And they engaged kids in these really seemingly adult conversations. But to foster this critical consciousness in the kids from a young age. And what I learned from the community was that when they went on to high school, you could immediately identify the kids who went to that school because they always stepped in when someone was getting bullied, they always went to help another kid who went to another school, who maybe had a disability who was on their own. They were the ones engaging that student to say, ” Come play with us. Come hang out with us.” You can teach kids really what we consider controversial concepts, but meet them at their level.

And when you teach about human diversity and this kid might need an aid, that’s okay. Let’s talk about it. We’re not gonna pretend like the aid’s not there. They’re invisible. No, let’s be like, “Some kids need aids. Some kids need classes.” Not a big deal. Normalize.

Alycia Anderson: Conversation

Treasa Praino: Yeah. Yeah.

Normalize conversation.

Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: That point that you just made about embracing, engaging children with this kind of content young. I just was at an event at a school district, where I spoke to all their staff, but they had me do two assemblies of 4-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this seems really young.”

But I did this whole thing on your superpower and disability and being different. And a teacher came up to me afterwards, they went back to their rooms and they did a whole whiteboarding thing. And one of the students in her class wears headphones to cancel noise. And a little girl walked up to him after the session and said, whispered to him.

She said something like, “I know the school bell is really loud for you, but guess what, it is for me too,” and it’s opening those conversations, like you’re saying, opens the door to them feeling comfortable to approach each other, disability or not. So important. So important.

Treasa Praino: Yeah, a hundred percent. We don’t give kids enough credit. I think we

Alycia Anderson: Oh.

Treasa Praino: presume kids are incompetent and we infantalize them to know tomorrow. And I think that’s a real injustice too, because then they grow up and they don’t know how to communicate or engage with people who are different. And I think that’s a big part of the problem, in terms of the divisiveness that we’re seeing, especially now, is because kids are separated based on their abilities.

We don’t talk about it. I love that example that you just gave too. Schools are practicing inclusion. Like we had nonverbal kids in one of the schools where I worked, it was a preschool, but they were learning how to usea communication software, and the speech pathologist would be in the classroom.

Alycia Anderson: I love it.

Treasa Praino: I want an iPad too. And not all schools have these resources Can I try the iPad?

Can we talk through iPads today? And it’s just really beautiful to see. And then these kids grow up with social justice oriented mindsets.

And so it trickles down and I think everything really does start from education and teaching kids about inclusion.

Alycia Anderson: It’s so important. One more quick story. I was shopping last week before an event, ’cause I wanted a cute outfit and I was going down an aisle and there was this little 4-year-old girl and she was like checking me out. We were smiling and having eye contact, and once her mom saw me, she turned around, her eyes went big and she yells, ” Watch out. She’s gonna roll you over.” And I was having this beautiful engagement of her exploring, checking me out, figuring it all out.

And that’s the opposite, I looked at the mom and I was like, ” you just gave her fear

Treasa Praino: Yes

Alycia Anderson: about disability right now, full stop.” Because she went from engaging with me to hiding behind her mom.

It was so profound and we have to be cognizant of the engagement that we’re allowing children to explore these things, like truly explore it, want to play with the iPad and learn the different technology, different communication, whatever it is, so you’re doing really important work.

Treasa Praino: Oh, thank you.

I’m sorry that happened. I feel like it’s so ubiquitous that people who’ve never been exposed to people with disabilities growing up through the school system and through work and whatever, they are fearful and don’t know what to do, and create fear in their kids, and it’s just the absolute opposite of what we want.

We want kids to explore their curiosities.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah.

Treasa Praino: I’m such an idealistic person, but you see it happen in practice, and kids being kind to each other and growing up to be kind people. What’s the vision for the future? Where are you taking all of this beautiful work you’re doing and where do you see our space? Do you mean me personally?

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, career wise and how do you see disability inclusion moving forward in our future? That’s probably a tough question right now.

Treasa Praino: No. It’s definitely a loaded one, but for me, personally, I thought about for a while, staying in higher ed, and continuing to do research. And that’s so important. There’s such a need for research that is focused on disability that’s asset based, and qualitative exploring people’s stories and teaching, let’s say, pre-service teachers about what real inclusion looks like.

However, I am thinking I wanna be more on the ground. I wanna speak, I wanna inspire people, I wanna do something similar to what you are doing. Being able to engage with different audiences directly and hear from them personally. I oftentimes feel like a lot of the research that I’ve published, and research that scholars publish really circulate scholarly spaces, and we don’t see it really connecting to what’s happening on the ground too much. And that bothers me a bit. And I wanna speak, I wanna do engagements. And I wanna inspire people directly with this and talk about what inclusion looks like and how theory, d ifferent ways of understanding disability, different ways of understanding inclusion can translate into schools, and the workplace, and to infrastructure. And I have so many ideas that I can turn into these engaging presentations, and I’m, especially excited to talk to kids about what inclusion means as well. I’m very much looking forward to continue chatting with you and learning about how you’ve really been so successful in your business. And I think our missions really align significantly.

Alycia Anderson: A hundred percent. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for you. I agree with you, the scholarly piece, which was a huge component of this conversation, does not translate as much as it should in corporate, and in events, and all of that. And I think that is a beautiful niche and so needed and so fascinating, you could go far with creating a program that is your own beautiful way of speaking about this stuff. So I would keep my foot on the pedal with that one. And if there’s anybody listening to this looking for this type of content, we’re gonna leave all of your information in the show notes, and you and I are gonna be besties and figuring out something else

Treasa Praino: Thank you, Alycia.

Alycia Anderson: Because I think you’re fascinating.

You’re so smart and you’re so eloquent, and scholarly. I love that word for you. It’s so good.

Treasa Praino: I love talking to you and you’re right. I wanna translate research into palatable talks and engage people and say, this is what the research actually says, but make it relatable and make it transferable. So thank you. I’m so excited.

Alycia Anderson: I feel like you just did that today.

Treasa Praino: Thank you.

Alycia Anderson: You’re on your way.

Treasa Praino: Thank you so much.

Alycia Anderson: Okay, so as we wrap up, I always ask for a pushing forward moment.

Treasa Praino: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: Do you have a little bit of a mantra, or advice, or anything that you can gift away to our audience, our community?

Treasa Praino: Yeah. Yeah. Number one, presume competence in people with disabilities. And number two, get involved with disability communities, stop just listening to what the politicians are saying. And we see some really harmful rhetoric going around nowadays about people with disabilities. Meanwhile, these politicians, don’t have disabilities and they’re saying really harmful things about people that are gonna materially impact people with disabilities.

So engage with people who actually experience disability in their everyday lives. Don’t be afraid, be curious. People are okay for you to be curious, as long as you’re going in with an open mind and not judgmental and presuming that competence. So, I would say that’s my number one message right now.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. Thank you so much for coming on.

This was a great, beautiful conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Treasa Praino: Me too.

Alycia Anderson: Okay.

Treasa Praino: I’m really grateful. But please, let’s keep talking.

Alycia Anderson: A hundred percent. That’s easy. That’s done. Thank you to our community for showing up again for another episode. We will be back next week. This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia, and that is literally how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next time.