Commitment To The Brilliance Of Black And Brown Students With Disabilities

Aliemma Kanu is a Baltimore City special educator, Special Education Liaison, and Equity Fellow whose work is rooted in disability justice and a deep commitment to the brilliance of Black and Brown students with disabilities. For Aliemma, anti-ableist teaching is not a strategy but a stance. It means refusing deficit thinking, interrogating how racism and ableism shape special education, and redesigning learning conditions so students no longer have to contort themselves to be seen as capable. Her work challenges the assumption that disability is an individual problem to be fixed; instead, she pushes educators to examine how systems, expectations, and curriculum either expand or restrict student possibility.

In her school, Aliemma builds environments where access is designed from the start. She created a STEAM lab that merges hands-on inquiry, arts integration, and inclusive design, ensuring students can demonstrate knowledge through multiple pathways—movement, building, drawing, speaking, writing, or communication systems. Her classrooms center core boards, visual routines, sensory-aligned tools, graphic organizers, translanguaging, and scaffolded writing supports that affirm students’ cultural and linguistic identities. She intentionally names student strengths, celebrates their ways of knowing, and structures learning so students experience success without having to mask, hide, or apologize for their needs.

Aliemma’s practice is shaped by DisCrit, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and the belief that the intersection of race and disability must remain at the center of conversations about equity. She has seen firsthand how Black and Brown children are disproportionately placed in special education, disciplined more harshly, and offered fewer opportunities to access meaningful, culturally responsive instruction. Her teaching actively interrupts this pattern. She works daily to dismantle harmful assumptions about behavior, ability, and worthiness, and she advocates for systems that honor student identity rather than categorize it.

A core part of her work is partnership with families. Aliemma believes families are experts and co-educators, and she designs spaces where their voices shape programming, early childhood inclusion, and IEP decision-making. Her research and forthcoming projects focus on listening to families of color in Pre-K SPED programs and creating community support spaces where caregivers, service providers, and educators learn from one another.

Beyond her classroom, Aliemma leads schoolwide and districtwide initiatives focused on access and equity. She coordinates her school’s annual STEAM Day and STEAM Night, builds professional development for teachers, and designs district training modules on restorative practices, anti-ableist approaches, confidentiality, data security, and supporting transgender students. Her leadership extends into her doctoral work, where she researches disability, early childhood inclusion, and the intersections of racism and ableism in education. She is committed to advancing scholarship that centers family voice, honors student identity, and challenges the structural forces that limit opportunity.

Aliemma wishes more educators understood that disability is not a deficit and that students’ behaviors, languages, and learning patterns often reflect cultural, sensory, or developmental needs—not shortcomings. She believes anti-ableist practice requires courage: the courage to question inherited practices, to examine one’s own assumptions, and to create classrooms where students experience belonging, dignity, and authentic learning.

Her work—across teaching, leadership, research, and community spaces—reaffirms a simple, urgent truth: every child deserves joyful, dignified, liberatory education. And she is working every day to help build it.