31. The doors we open & close
Reflections on access, inclusion & doors
There are several doors leading into my son’s elementary school.
When we drop Seamus off each morning, he enters the school from a set of doors located at the front side of the school.
Meanwhile, most of his peers enter the building from the back of the school, nearby the playing fields and playground. Each day, hundreds of students from kindergarten to 5th-grade file into and leave their classrooms through a separate set of doors from Seamus.
Seamus is part of a small group of neurodiverse students who were identified by a series of assessments to spend a % of their day in specialized classrooms. His disability does not impact his mobility and is not visible until he speaks or tries to express himself.
The two classes are situated on the first floor of the school.
It has never been clear to me, beyond convenience and proximity to the street & bus lines, why Seamus is expected to enter the school through another door.
It’s just the way it has been since he started attending this school three years ago.
Opening a big door
In 1975, Congress and President Ford enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142). This landmark law became the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, in a 1990 reauthorization.
At its core, IDEA is a civil rights law aimed at increasing equal access. It was created to protect rights and improve results for infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities and their families.
IDEA also emerged from the Disability Rights movement and mirrored the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. It arose as deinstitutionalization was occurring in the US closing hundreds of state psychiatric hospitals and moving people with disabilities and mental illnesses back out into the community.
Before 1975, U.S. public schools were not required to educate children with disabilities. Children with disabilities stayed home or were cared for within institutions.
IDEA required public schools to integrate, educate, and support students with disabilities.
The law’s passage opened some big doors for students and families previously excluded from accessing public education.
Closing a door
Three years ago, we decided to change Seamus’ school placement from a general education setting to something called a “self-contained” special education classroom.
In our district, this decision required moving him to a new school where services were offered in a smaller classroom setting that included higher teacher-to-student ratios and tailored instruction.
I remember the day we decided to move Seamus to a new school & classroom. It was influenced, in part, by witnessing first-hand Seamus’ academic skills atrophy in our basement “classroom” as months turned into years of remote learning. He lost his foothold and fell far behind academically and socially as COVID-19 spread.
Saying goodbye to budding friendships and a familiar setting was not an easy choice.
From kindergarten to grade 2, Seamus navigated classroom lessons, routines, and transitions each day alongside his peers. He entered and exited the school through the same door as everyone else.
Different doors
As we approach the 50th anniversary of IDEA (2025) and prepare to celebrate the 94th birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. this Monday, I have reflected a lot on doors as a metaphor for accessibility & inclusion.
Doors allow people in and keep others out.
Doors can be hard or easy to open.
Doors can lead to opportunities or make them seem out of reach.
Doors can reveal a lot about us, our values & our implicit and explicit beliefs.
When some doors close they can be hard to reopen.
Historic doors
This past year, I participated in a walk to honor Ruby Bridges.
Ruby, a six-year-old, advanced the cause of civil rights in November 1960 when she became the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South.
Ruby and her mother were escorted by four federal marshals to school every day that year. She needed to walk past crowds screaming vicious slurs to enter the front door of her elementary school.
She later said she only became frightened when she saw a woman holding a black baby doll in a coffin. While some families supported her bravery—and some northerners sent money to aid her family—others protested throughout the city.
Invisible doors
I have found that accessibility is a dynamic, complex, and challenging principle.
When Seamus entered his new “placement” three years ago, I did not question why he was going through another door into the school. He needed access to more support and my wife and I knew he would be able to obtain more individualized assistance.
But, as the years passed, we began to see that by opening one door, Seamus was closed off from entering other doors.
We had traded increased support for a type of social segregation.
It was an unfortunate trade-off on many levels.
For example, he has missed out on making connections with his 5th-grade peers & they have missed out on learning from his many gifts and talents. His classmates have also lost out on the opportunity to gain empathy, understanding, and tolerance from learning alongside him.
I suspect many students & parents at his school are unaware that a small group of students enter and exit the building through another door because they don’t see them.
Making spaces and services in places like schools, businesses, and recreation centers more accessible and inclusive is challenging work and can be hard to accomplish — Ruby Bridges or Martin Luther King Jr. faced countless barriers in their efforts to open doors.
Symbolic doors
Becoming more aware of the doors students enter and exit in a school building is only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
But it matters.
“When our institutions and services are inaccessible, it is often because we approach accessibility as a willingness rather than a prerogative. In other words, we think making a space accessible requires being merely receptive to making single accommodations or retrofitting when asked rather than proactively planning for universal design”
- source
Being willing to open doors for others is not the same as ensuring what’s behind the door is accessible and inclusive from the start.
Who we allow through doors matters a great deal.
Doors are highly symbolic and can tell us a lot about how we treat, include, and welcome others into different spaces.
New doors
Our family spent the past few weeks advocating to have Seamus enter and leave the school from the doors in the back of the building with other 5th graders.
It has felt like a lot of effort for a small, step forward.
It hasn’t been easy.
He has refused multiple times to get out of the car to go through the back doors of the school. He’s resistant to giving up a familiar routine he has followed every day for three years.
He also told me he felt scared to try something new.
But, a few mornings ago, when I drove Seamus to school, a familiar staff member from his classroom was waiting for him on the sidewalk in the rain by the corner of the building.
She had a packet of gummies and a reassuring smile to help encourage him.
When Seamus saw her, he froze, and pointed back toward the front door, reluctant to move. But then, with enough support in place, he gradually shifted his stance and walked down a path leading to the playing fields.
For the first time in three years, he joined a mix of students entering the school through the back doors of the building.
He looked back at me momentarily, smiled, and then grabbed his backpack.
What seemed like a small, insignificant act, suddenly felt like a huge step forward as a new door opened for him.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ve had a wonderful start to the new year.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with others who may be exploring how to open doors for others in their communities, neighborhoods, or workplaces.
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Thanks for reading.
Until next time please be well and stay curious.
Eoin
Thanks, much appreciate your feedback!
Thank you for this powerful article Eoin, I am sharing it with many friends and colleagues here in Australia, who, are also slowly but surely opening 'doors' for all.