Disability Pride and Inclusive Schools
Disability Pride Student Clubs
This upcoming 2024-2025 school year, New York City Public Schools will be launching an initiative to support Disability Pride and Inclusion Student Clubs across every school in our city! Stay tuned for more resources, toolkits, newsletters, and support. Please click the link to the list serve sign up form(Open external link).
Annual Student Inclusion Summit
The Inclusive Education Student Summit is an annual spring event that brings together students with and without disabilities to gain new perspectives about disability rights, deepen thinking on accessibility, and create positive change through hands-on activism. Student participants listen, learn, and lead the way towards a more inclusive world. These NYC Public School leaders and their faculty advisors convene to create action plans with the goal of growing accessible and inclusive school communities. This year's event with happen on April 4, 2025.
The Summit is held once a year and offers in-person and virtual participation. Themes and topics often align to National Inclusive Schools Week(Open external link)(Open external link). The event is co-hosted by New York City Public Schools and Parents for Inclusive Education (PIE).(Open external link)
Inclusive and Interdependent Language Initiative
The words we use are critical: how we refer to people is how we think about them. Language and how we talk about people creates our social frameworks and tells us how to treat others around us. With that in mind, we created the Inclusive and Interdependent Language Glossary as a community resource
By creating a glossary of inclusive terminology that matches student preference and best practice, and implementing these language changes both internally at NYC Public Schools and externally with the families and students that we serve, we can help create an environment that is truly inclusive and interdependent at its core.
The glossary is a living document that will be updated regularly in response to stakeholder feedback, especially student feedback, via an accompanying rolling online survey: IILI Glossary Survey(Open external link), IILI survey Haitian Creole(Open external link)
If you identify as a student with a disability and you would like to contribute to our language initiative to reimagine the language we use to describe students with disabilities and special education, please submit to the survey.
Disability Pride Visual Arts Contest
Students submit visual art each spring to participate in the annual Disability Pride Visual Arts Contest(Open external link). The contest celebrates people with disabilities in their struggle for equity, access, opportunity, and inclusion. People with disabilities are proud of their identity and their accomplishments and the theme “Nothing About Us Without Us.”
The 10 finalists and one grand finalist will be invited to an event in the spring and have their artwork showcased. Recognizing that art is an invaluable means of expression and communication, teachers and families are encouraged to have meaningful conversations in their classrooms and homes around disability pride and history as they participate in the contest.
“Nothing About Us Without Us” Art competition winners have work displayed in MTA Stations and Trains on Digital Displays for Disability Pride Month(Open external link).
Students in kindergarten through 12th grade submitted individual and group artwork in line with this year’s theme, “Nothing About Us Without Us.”