by Elizabeth J. Carter

Professor Judy Juanita knew right away she was teaching a student with a disability when he showed up in her introductory English class with a computer “as big as a piece of luggage.” Recalled Juanita: “[He] made a big deal of using and hooking it up. It couldn’t help but grab our attention since he did it every class, and sometimes during class, he’d ask me to stop so he could record [or] change discs [and] plug it up again.” Although the student’s accommodation disrupted the class, it also became, in Juanita’s words, a “comic diversion.”

Juanita, who has taught part-time at California colleges for almost twenty years, has built an impressive foundation of experience teaching students with disabilities (SWDs). During her career, she has taught as many as fifteen SWDs—and these are only those whose disabilities were known to her. Although Juanita acknowledges that teaching SWDs can be more time-consuming than teaching students without, she finds reward in seeing them “become an organic part of the classroom.” Is Juanita’s experience typical? Do part-timers, with their typically frenetic schedules, dearth of office space, and transient presence on campus, face special challenges in teaching SWDs? If so, what can they do to meet those challenges?

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