Work

Ever since I was ten, I thought I might be a teacher of the deaf. My teachers would send me to other classes to help teach their students. I felt I had a natural teaching power within me. One day I was interviewed by a teacher and she asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. I said, I want to be a teacher like you. She said I couldn’t be a teacher, no deaf person could be a teacher. My world fell on me. Not until college at Gallaudet did I learn I could teach.

I was the first deaf teacher in San Francisco . I spent fourteen years teaching in many different schools from the pre-school level to junior high.
– Joanne, deaf

I sing to let the world know I’m alive. I love street work. I love to sing, I love to hear the cup shake, I love to hear people talking as they’re going by. I love it when they stop and talk to me. I like their perfume and the brush of their fur coats. I like to feel the flap of other kinds of coats as they go by.
– Baybie, street singer, blind

I think I am a good teacher. Even with my handicap, I felt I was better than some teachers with all their faculties. I never doubted my ability.
– Chris, spinal cord injury

One day we had this great lesson. Everybody was sitting on the floor reading a story. One o f the kids raised his hand to ask a question, and when I called on him he asked, “How do you go to the bathroom? “I really wanted to laugh, and I did a little, because I thought the lesson was involving the whole class and here this boy wasn’t thinking about the lesson at all. I answered the question for him, and then we went on. I think it’s important for the students to know that if they have a question about my disability it’s okay for them to ask it, and they will receive an answer.
– Judy, post polio

There’s no difference in being a celebrity and disabled except when they roll out the red carpet for me, they tape it down so I won’t trip.

But it’s just a matter of time before they realize that I’m just like other comics and we’re all just like each other. Comics have a drive to make people laugh; I have that drive. It’s not the cerebral palsy that’s the basis for my comedy; that’s just a gimmick.
– Geri, comic, cerebral palsy

Of course, I can’t be in an all-singing and all-dancing musical, but acting is as much spiritual as physical and the wheelchair doesn’t bother me a bit. The fact I can’t use all my body doesn’t make my acting any better or any worse. It’s just different.
– Lisa, actress, spinal cord injury