librarypunk - 078 - Accommodations and remote work feat. Adriana White

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

This week we’re joined by Adriana White to talk about school libraries, accommodations, and remote work. We also give the latest updates on Kirk Cameron’s book tour. Remember to be annoying and ask if that new job posted has a remote option! https://adrianaluisawhite.wordpress.com/  https://twitter.com/adriana_edu  Media mentioned Job Accommodations Network https://twitter.com/iww/status/1605600642872987652?s=20&t=wS2rP5ZIrMnmi3xbL6Lkww Stella Young's TED TALK https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m_not_your_inspiration_thank_you_very_much?language=en  https://twitter.com/SecCardona/status/1604204972920385537?s=20&t=wS2rP5ZIrMnmi3xbL6Lkww  Library Salaries List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YXCBN4gxetizJMfKWYcZWRjHHCntD42minrgiPqh-9Y/edit?usp=sharing INALJ Remote: https://inalj.com/?page_id=56476  Recommended Resources: Adaptive Umbrella workshop Accessibility in Your Library webinarResearch by J.J. Pionke Understanding Disability to Support Library Workers – Journal of Library Administration  Invisible Disabilities and an Inclusive Library Workplace – LIS Mental Health Navigating the Academic Hiring Process with Disabilities – In the Library with the Lead Pipe Job Seeking and Daily Workforce Experiences of Autistic Librarians – Amelia Anderson, Old Dominion University Libraries are for everyone! Except if you’re autistic blog post

No mommy's way. A la Vergo. Hello, I'm Justin. I'm Scholar Communications Library. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library. My pronouns are they then?

I'm Jay. I am a music library director, and my pronouns are he, him. And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Yes, my name is Adriana White, and my pronouns are she her? And I guess my job.

Woo! Would you like to also know my job. I totally left that part out. No. So I'm actually a school librarian in San Antonio, Texas at a middle school. But this year I'm also the lead librarian sort of head honcho of the library department. So I wear many hats this year. So yeah, a little bit of everything.

Yeah, way up north in San Antonio. Way up north. I'm in the valley. Oh, how nice. Yeah, I have family in Del Rio, and I used to visit there a lot. Justin just tries to get every Texan on, he's going to run out someday. I don't know. We're a pretty big.

Texas is pretty big. That's going to be what keeps us having episodes, is Justin will just find Texans and have them on. Then we'll move on to Florida. So our segment this week is Reddit Ask Reddit. Those people are dumb-dums. I, it's surprisingly active the last couple days, which I thought was weird. But this was more of a follow-up to some stuff that was going around, which is if you aren't familiar, Kirk Cameron, known from some TV show from when I was a baby, but mostly the

left behind movies and being a weird flat-eather and then becoming a Christian nationalist. I was so into the left-behind movies at middle school. that is my shame. I was so into them. I had the left behind ones for teens. Which is weird because they're not like, the adult ones aren't like a high reading level. I never read the books.

I just watched the movies. Yeah. I had the first one. I just remember like there was a girl who was like going out and smoking and doing cool stuff and I was like, yeah. She like, steal the limo and I was like, yeah. It's cool. I want to read this book.

You might have seen the news that he was going around asking libraries to, because he doesn't know how libraries work. So he, his publisher was going around being like, would you like to do programming around our book? And everyone's like, no, we choose our programming. Like, we'll reach out to you if we're going to do programming. And now he's doing a victory lap because two libraries let him rent a room, which is what he should have asked to do in the first.

place. Yeah, that is like a perfectly fine thing for him to do. And he was like, but they won't help us promote it. It's like, yeah, because it's not the library's program. Yeah. You can't get the, state to do promotion for your book for free. It's like no matter political or whatever affiliation, authors actually don't know how libraries work. They're like, yeah, libraries. And then they just like have no idea. And it's always like really funny when it's like, you just don't even know what you're talking about, do you? Whatever. I guess we'll just have to let him have this. Um, he won. He owned us. He sure created a controversy and then said, woohoo, I conquered it. I rented a room to do a thing. Like a lot of money too. I was like, wow, that's $700 out of him.

Oh, shit. But you have to pay money to rent, like to do. get a room? I think it's like a main room, like a conference room. Oh, okay. Not like a regular study quiet space room. Okay. So this is like whatever their event room might be. Yeah.

So it's actually not that expensive if it's like a big event room size. So yeah, he won. We're owned. I mean, that's the purpose of them doing that kind of thing, right? Is they actually want to be rejected so that they can go on the media train saying I was rejected and that gets more attention and then when they eventually do get someone that says yes they can be like ah up yours woke moralists right yeah like that's the whole point that's the game plan it's like i'm being censored on the dating apps because everyone keeps talking about my

weird butt this is unfair this is ideological it's like not dude you just got a weird but i don't I don't know, man. That's all it is. It's just that. People don't have the bend over backward to accommodate you for being a weirdo who wants to promote a book. So anyway, that was ready to ask credit. Those people are dumb-dums. So we want to continue our series on accommodations. And specifically this time, we're going to talk a little bit about remote work. We've talked about it several different ways. So we've talked about health communism with Beatrice Adler-Boltan. So we talked about like modern political. movements for disability justice. We talked last week with Jess Schoenberg about models of disability and accommodations in the workplace. And we've talked about, I believe we've talked several times when we're just talking about labor, where accommodations and remote work have come up.

So not as a whole episode, but as a partial one. So I was pointed to you, I want to say, by the manga librarian. Yes, Ashley Hawkins, fellow autistic. So, yeah, that'll make you our second school librarian on. We've had not enough. So you have to tag the next person. We have to interview for something. All right.

I'll have to look through my files, find someone to send y'all. Yep. I like it. So I want to know about your personal experiences. You have a note. Oh, by the way, thank you for filling out all the notes for me. So I didn't have to do anything. Yes, that is my thing.

Gosh, I just kind of like had my mental dump of here's everything I want to talk about. And I was like, here's, you know, hoping that it doesn't overwhelm them with all of my randomness. But I'm glad you appreciate it. No, this is about how long our notes usually get. All right. And I just, normally I ask the guests to just give me some links and I'll build out the notes. But you've got it all in here and all linked and everything. So we do often start out with like a personal story.

So you want to talk about the job you applied for and received accommodations and one where you worked out accommodations with your admin. Yeah, so I have a couple of different things there. So I actually was diagnosed with autism and anxiety when I was already a teacher. I was a special education teacher at elementary school. And I did that for about five years and kind of right in the middle of it is when I got diagnosed. And I went through the whole process of having a doctor fill out the accommodation form and send it to the district HR manager. And we worked out some accommodations and we talked about them. and got everything sorted out and it was lovely and wonderful. And then I left that job and came to my current job as a school librarian at another school district. And so for that one, I actually have not gone through the process yet of getting a doctor to fill out the form again and apply for this stuff again and all of that stuff. It ended up being a little bit of an issue that I was diagnosed by someone who is.

was in Houston, and I'm trying to find someone local, and especially with COVID, everyone is like swamped, and it's really hard to find access to health care right now, especially mental health care. So I was like, I'm going to wing it. Let's just see what we can do without the official stuff, you know, from HR. And so over the past three years, this is my fourth year now as a school librarian. I've had a different principal every year because my school likes to shuffle, my district likes to shuffle them around the schools for some reason. So every year I've kind of sat down with the principal and the assistant principal and talked through and said, hey, like, you know, here's me. I'm autistic. My brain works a little bit differently than you might expect. Here's

some of the things that help me. Here's some of the things that I'm going to struggle with. And, you know, here's some of the things I would like you to help me with. And so far I've been lucky in that they've all been pretty easygoing. They've all said, yeah, that's totally fine. We can accommodate and work with you. You know, legally and officially, I shouldn't have to tell them all these details. That's what all the HR stuff is for. But it's much easier and quicker to do it this way. So it's kind of given me a look at, I think, both sides of the coin of doing it the official way and kind of the unofficial way. and something else I would add to it now being in my additional role as a lead librarian person this year, I'm also trying to navigate it with other people.

Working with the other librarians, there's 15 other librarians in my district that I oversee. Some of them had COVID, and they're trying to navigate through long COVID. And all the fatigue and the brain fog that comes with that, and they're trying to learn how to accommodate for themselves. and there's also some librarians who I strongly suspect are neurodivergent and don't know it. And I'm trying to stealthily find ways to accommodate for them too. So I've had a lot of accommodations on my brain this year. A lot of things I've been thinking about between the long COVID and the neurodiversity.

So yeah, I'm just, I'm trying to learn everything I can about accommodations to try and help people out. And I hopefully can share some of what I've learned and help out others who might be curious about this kind of thing. And have you done any research on library disability and accommodations? Or is all of this what you've been doing through your job? So this is kind of what I've been doing through my job, I think, I guess is the answer there. When I was first getting into it back at my other district, I did really go in and research and see what kind of accommodations people recommend. and I went to a website, I think it's the job accommodations network. I link to that and the resources, J-A-N, they have this great kind of breakdown of lots of different

accommodations you can ask for, which was really useful and kind of got me thinking about the different ways that I could ask for things. Really, I feel like a lot of what I've learned, though, has kind of been off of social media. I think when it comes to things like disability and accommodations, so much of what I've learned has come from other people, other librarians, other disabled folks and disability advocates, because I think the institution of libraries and education as a whole are still kind of behind. They're still kind of catching up on kind of how to deal with people who aren't the norm, I guess, to put it, who don't have the typical experience. So I think I've been learning a lot from other

folks, which is awesome. Let's see. I'm trying to think what else I mentioned in my notes. A lot of the research that I've done does seem to focus primarily on how to work with like disabled patrons. And there's not a lot of stuff about what you can do as an administrator working with a disabled library worker. There's not a lot about how to deal with a colleague who might have a disability. And so I think that's where you do end up with a lot of the awkwardness in the library field. I see a lot of folks on social media saying like, hey, you know, I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to be a librarian and other people are kind of weird about it because I need accommodations. So that's something that I'm really interested in is how we can kind of help administrators and colleagues understand folks a bit more because I feel like that's a huge thing, especially with neurodivergence and also with long COVID. I think we're going to have a lot of folks who are going to need accommodations. And it's like super important that we let people know, you know, this is the kind of stuff you should ask for, and this is the kind of stuff

you should ask for, and how, you know, how they can go about making their job work for them, because I think it would be a really, you know, awful thing if we lost all of our disabled and neurodivergent librarians because of this kind of stuff. Like, this is definitely an area of high need that I think people are going to be thinking about more in the future. So I'm glad that y'all are doing multiple podcast episodes on it because it's very important. I like that you also mention that this is not just a like employer employee thing, but also colleagues. Because I remember when I was trying to go through this process, it was like my dean and me.

Or like it was, but like the way that my other, that my coworkers would be that wasn't considered. Like I couldn't put that in the ADA or something unless I explicitly had to request something from them and say that this is an accommodation. otherwise, like, why else would they want to have any reason to do it? And so I feel like that's a really good point to bring up that like this involves how your colleagues treat each other as well. Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of one thing I didn't really like about the whole applying for accommodations thing formally because, yeah, it was this kind of you have to ask for very specific things. And that's

what you get. And I did have an issue at the time with a teacher who did. didn't understand special education and disabled kids and was very much like all the kids have to do everything the exact same way. And that was a really big issue for me. And I couldn't come out and say, I have an issue with this person. Let's set up some kind of accommodation for me to deal with them. It was so like, yeah, I definitely think the colleague interaction is this really big thing that doesn't really get addressed in this kind of stuff with accommodations. And it can often be one of the biggest issues for someone because your colleagues might have weird attitudes about you, whether they know you're disabled or not. In some cases, there are, you know, some folks who are disabled or

neurodivergent and don't want to share it, don't want to disclose it. And they're just kind of the weirdo at work. And everyone kind of like treats them badly. And it, you know, feels like, this awful middle school drama situation. And it's like, yeah, how do you ask for an accommodation for that? How do you get help for that kind of thing? Like, it's so much bigger than just saying, hey, I need to take a break more often or something. It is something that folks really need to kind of think about and talk about. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a part of that visibility of difference is a big problem. Something we talked about with Jess was when accommodations processes are, centered around the physical workspace, it demarcates a person as disabled and different and getting different treatment.

And it singles them out because accommodations are done on a person by person basis. You're not building into the whole system like in the way we would for universal design for learning or something, where we anticipate everyone's going to have all these different needs and we design the curriculum in such a way that everyone has it. You could have universal design for workplaces, right, which could include scheduling, could include the fiscal space, it could include staffing levels, all kinds of things. But there's not really like a word for that, or if it is, it's not really making the rounds every day in our, our conversations. But I think if everybody has more flexibility, people get a little less nosy about what's going, what someone else is doing. So. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I know that's something that people think

about a lot when they're trying to decide whether they want to disclose that they're disabled or neurodivergent or any other kind of condition. If you're the type of person who can kind of pass, so to speak, and get by, it does become this kind of philosophical struggle to decide, like, do I tell people, especially if you've already started working that job and kind of gotten into a rhythm, do you then come out and tell them? And there's a lot of, I think, pressure for people to try and prove their worth and pass and make sure that they're not, you know, seen as inefficient or weak or lazy or any of that stuff. So if you don't disclose, you have to worry about that, that your boss might judge you as, you know, think that you're not a great worker.

Your colleagues might think you're a weirdo. But then on the other hand, if you do come and tell people that you're disabled and you get these accommodations, there's always this fear that your colleagues are going to see you as, you know, oh, you're getting special treatment and there's that fear of resentment. And, you know, and even further than that, I think also this fear that, you know, my boss isn't going to come to me and ask me to do anything additional because, you know, maybe they don't think I can handle it. And maybe you get overlooked and don't get asked to do cool projects or get promoted. There's all these things that I think kind of get tied into this beyond just accommodations and what you're asking for, a lot of it is kind of like the psychology behind it.

And then we get into all kinds of stuff that I talk about with some of the presentations I do for librarians, things about like our discomfort with the word disabled and the idea of disability and cultural views. I come from San Antonio, which is predominantly Hispanic, Latinx. We're mostly Mexican, but we also have Puerto Rican and other folks. And for people from that background, family included, it's really hard to talk about stuff like disability and mental health because there's this cultural stuff, this idea that you're being punished by God because you're bad or something and that's why you're disabled. And there's all this other stuff that I think makes asking for accommodations even harder because you don't want to look weak and we live in

this society that tells us we have to keep, you know, hustling and keep, you know, trying to do better all the time and overcome our disability and push ourselves and it just becomes this exhausting mess for people. So a bit of a tangent there, but I do feel like some of that stuff does come into play when you're thinking about accommodations and how you'll be received. I feel like getting the accommodation is like step one and then seeing like what happens when you're trying to like actually do your job with the accommodations is this whole other like terrifying experience, if that makes sense. Yeah, like we talked about last week, everything has to work on a factory model. So there's this output you have to do.

So if you need to lay down for like 30 minutes because, you know, you're adjusting your medications and you're just exhausted and like you just need to lie down. Like this is a problem I had a lot in grad school. I had to just lie down. I couldn't sit up anymore. And then you feel obligated to make that up later. And it's like you don't need to really. It can be done later. like the work will get done at a different time. I saw an old IWW poster today that said,

don't speed up, don't work longer, don't take over time, you're scabbing the unemployed. I like that. I like that idea. Yeah. That reminds me of some conversations I've had with my husband, who's also neurodivergent. He has ADHD. And we talk about how for people who are autistic or other forms of neurodivergent. We kind of have this idea that like an eight hour workday means you have to be working all eight hours nonstop. But if you talk to like a neurotypical person, you'll find like they take breaks or they go chat at the water cooler for like, you know, 30 minutes or they go do something else and chat at someone's table for 15 minutes. And I know that was something that was really hard for me to accept, you know, and kind of like realize is that

eight hours of work is not me eight hours nonstop because I can't do that. I'll burn out. And so there, I think there's something interesting there to think about this idea that when you're disabled, you might get singled out for, oh, you're taking 30 minutes to lay down. But when you get down to it, it's like how much time are other people wasting too doing other things? Like, you know, it's not like the whole thing's going to fall apart if you sit down for 15 minutes. Like you said, the work can be done later if it's important. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's busy work. You know, it'll be okay. The sky won't fall. That's definitely. It's easier to do in office jobs, but even in jobs where like labor is highly disciplined and exploited like restaurants, there's tons of different things people do to

like cool off. Like literally the, the walk-in freezer cry. Like everyone knows about it or just wiping down something but not really doing a whole lot. Like you're just like you look like are moving. Smoke breaks. You know, yeah, smoke breaks. Like 10 smoke breaks. It was a huge thing when I worked. I worked in a restaurant before I worked in libraries.

And it was like if you were a smoker and the rush ended, every smoker in the kitchen left to go have a smoke break. And all of us non-smokers were left behind to do the cleaning. And then the next rush would start and the smokers would come back. And it was like, why do you get a break? and then people would start smoking so they could go outside for that five minutes. And it was just like, oh, man, yeah. So it's not.

It was also like heat breaks too. Like if you're in the kitchen, if you're in a small kitchen and it overheats and it's like cold outside, we weren't even doing smoke breaks. We were all just running outside to stop sweating for a second before the next like few orders came in. Yeah, we used to do that because, yeah, the restaurant I worked in, I will work over a flat. top grill cooking burgers for like three hours straight and there's no air conditioning and it's you know 85 degrees outside and so like people would just crowd into the walk-in and like hope that like it didn't bring the temperature of the walk-in refrigerator up too much people coming and going out of it but yeah it's there are ways the walk-in freezers were the for the best because everything's

you're just like I'm just certain things yeah you look busy you look pretty cool all off as fast as can. Yes. So there's, I don't remember what, what it was. There, there've been a lot of studies on this, actually, people who study like work days. And it's like, you really only get like three and a half, four hours of productive work every day.

Even if you're really trying to fill every minute, it's like your brain is just going to wander eventually. Yeah, there's really no reason not to have like a four by four work week, four hour day, four day week. Because that's about how much work we get done if we can do it in those four hours. And if you can say, okay, that's the expectation, now be flexible about the timing, then now you've got a model where more people can be accommodated for their differences because, okay, I'm going to need like 10 minutes to charge up. So my whole shift might be like five hours or six hours because I'm going to take more breaks because I need more of them. Alternatives are possible.

It's just I think especially with COVID and remote work, those have really cracked open the discourse on this. So that's why we wanted to do several episodes just on COVID, remote work, and why COVID was not, why remote work was not an accommodation generally offered on a one-by-one basis. Remote work was just either we're all doing it or we're all not doing it. And then everyone went, okay, fine. And then they clearly started going to their job interviews going, give me remote work as part of my contract. And now all the job ads, because I kind of like collect job ads in my field. And now they're like, remote available. Don't worry. Remotes available. You don't have to keep asking us. We don't want 100 emails asking for remotes available.

Nice. Yeah, and I love to see that. It's definitely harder working in the public school system as a school librarian because I do feel like we're kind of more, it does feel more like I'm working retail. Because before I was a school librarian, I did do like a summer in a public library and I did a semester in a university. And I did a semester in a, university library. I love university libraries. And so I did end up here as a school librarian, but it is that nonstop school day and policing the kids and there's so much to it. I know that it's something that I probably can't do forever because I feel like eventually I will get worn out of these eight-hour non-stop days. So it does make me really happy to see that there are more of these remote positions opening up for things, especially like the university libraries and some of the special libraries because there's so much that people can do if given, you know, the opportunity

to do it. And I am excited for the future to know that that's a possibility that I could do if I need to do it at some point because libraries are awesome and I love them. But school libraries are definitely like the retail of the library world. Like it is just so much all the time. Lots of work. Yeah, very little experience in school libraries because ours was never really available. It was really hard to go to the school library during the school day or after the school day because they were like rushing off campus. The only time I really remember going in there a lot was like my senior year when I didn't have any classes on campus. And our senior class was only like 100 people because I don't know how that happened.

We had a freshman class of 2000. So our graduating class was 180. Wow. So everyone kind of knew the seniors because there's only so many of us. And we were just like wander around campus like, I got the OJS, but I don't want to leave yet. Let's go hang out in the library for a little bit. I never really knew when the library was open when we were allowed to go.

It was never clear. And professionally, I just haven't worked a whole lot of school librarians either. There was that poll the other day about how many people are school librarians in the ALA and how ALA keeps lumping them into other. Yes, on those surveys and things like that where there's no school librarian option. And I'm like, really, there's so many of us.

It's like 30% of ALA membership. Yeah, yeah. 25.30. Something. Yeah, thereabouts. And it's just, I remember staring at those surveys and being like, what am I? I guess I'm a librarian who oversees people. Like, yeah, why is there not a school librarian thing?

Depper track in library school. Yeah, exactly. It's the only specialized track in library school in most places. Yeah, yeah, at a lot of schools. So I thought that was interesting when people were talking about that social media. And I had never thought about that before. Like, yeah, why don't we have a spot on the survey? Yeah, school libraries, it's definitely this interesting, weird, other offshoot of libraries. And it does vary so much, I think, depending on what district you're at, like when I was in a more

well-off, you know, suburban district, it was the kind of thing where the librarian got to have kids come in and do all this stuff with them before and after school. Now I'm working at like a Title I campus in the city. And it's very much kind of your experience where it's like the school days over, get off campus, get out of here, you know. And we don't have that luxury of having the kids come into the library and hang out. And a bit of a bummer. And I'm like, ah, I can totally, something that I think about a lot being an autistic librarian myself who spent a lot of time in the library as a kid. I do think about my neurodivergent and disabled students and how they definitely need that space. And I want them to know the library is a space for them and a potential future

career. And I want them to spend time with me. I want to help that next generation of librarians. But let's see, to get back on the topic at hand with accommodations, I like what you said about, like, you know, you mentioned like universal design a little bit ago. And I do think that's something that I try and push on the other school librarians I talk to, this idea. that if you offer more accommodations more widely to everyone, it will help everyone. And I do try and jazz it up and say like, yeah, your neurodivergent kids need more signage. And that's great because it'll also help your English language learners, you know, if you have more visuals. And I do think that's something that I talk a lot about the students. But again, I don't get to talk about a lot the, you know, how to deal with your colleagues who are disabled, how to deal with your colleagues who are neurodivergent. And that's definitely something I want to think about going forward is how can I talk to more like library leadership folks and say like, hey, these are conversations we need to have about how do we make libraries more accessible for these folks and how do we offer more remote work options for folks? Because it is something that, like I said earlier, we are definitely going to need as we go forward in time with everything else we're doing. You have a note here called The Intersection of Vocational Aw and Inspiration Porn.

And you've got a link to Stella Young's TED Talk. Yes, I love that TED Talk. Yep, I'll put it at the very top. What's that talk about? Where did you want to go with that? Okay. So, yeah, I think y'all have talked about vocational awe before I saw on one of your episodes. You kind of talked about it, I think, from a religious angle, which I thought was super interesting.

And I'll have to go back and listen to that episode. for it as well. But yeah, vocational awe, you know, the whole thing with librarians and especially teachers that, you know, it's not a job, it's a calling and you need to be willing to sacrifice everything to do stuff for the kids because think of the children. And so there's that attitude that is kind of permeating everything with being a librarian and a school librarian. And then on the other hand, I look at this stuff for like Stella Young's TED Talk. It was called I'm Not Your Inspiration. Thank you very much. And she coined this term inspiration porn to talk about how we only see disabled people in the news and in the media when we're hearing these happy stories about how they worked really hard at their job at McDonald's and overcame great adversity and got like a raise of a dollar or something. something like really dehumanizing. Or you get the stories about the kid with Down syndrome who gets

asked to prom. And it's always this stuff about disabled people being like, it's like the non-disabled person comes down from on high to slum it with the disabled people, basically. And so what I was kind of thinking about, I think with the intersection of these two ideas, is that people will look at disabled librarians and be like, oh, y'all should just be, you know, happy that you're here and you should work really hard to overcome your disability and be as good as the rest of us. And you too should work for the children to be the best you can be. And I think it, for me, as someone with anxiety, it kind of comes together to make me feel like I need to be constantly overachieving in order to earn my place.

and I need to be really great because if I'm not great, people won't want to accommodate my weirdness. And so I think it kind of comes down to this message that I hear from disability advocates and from autism advocates that you don't have to be great or special in order to earn your accommodations. You don't have to, you know, sacrifice your soul or do something heartwarming, you know, all the time. You don't have to earn any of this stuff, you know, and I'm sure y'all probably talk about this and some of the other things you talk about with labor and trying to not have society be so capitalism focused. But that's definitely something that I'm thinking about and trying to think about how to maybe word in a more succinct way.

But that is kind of my thought as I look at that TED talk and I look at these pieces on vocational awe. I'm just thinking about how many young disabled librarians there are who just feel like they have to be awesome in order to ask for stuff. And that's not the case. Like your accommodations, you know, you should have those. And, you know, even if you don't have the legal, you know, paperwork from HR, you should have an accommodating workplace that's going to let you take a break. Dang it. You know, like that's kind of my thing. So that's my little soapbox about that.

which yeah like it shouldn't it shouldn't be a trade-off it shouldn't be i get this accommodation so therefore i you know stay later or work harder in this particular way and i've definitely caught myself up in that trap too as well you know like uh with my ADHD it's like i had brain fog this whole day and didn't really get anything done and i'm worried that my ADHD. my boss noticed. And so the next day when I'm feeling better, I overshoot that goal and just like do everything all at once. But then I start missing stuff.

And I'm lucky in the fact that my boss also has ADHD. In fact, half of my department has ADHD. That was a really interesting conversation. But yeah, no, I see what you mean, how that intersects with the vocational awe. And like, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be doing it just because we're getting paid. We also should be overshooting and doing all this extra stuff because we're in a calling. And that requires more sacrifice for a neurotypical person. So it requires double sacrifice for, you know, somebody who's disabled.

So, yeah, I see, I see where you're trying to get those two things to get me, see my hands. Yeah. And I think it also combines with that moral model of disability. that has a lot of Christian undertones to it because if something, if you have done something wrong, if there's some sort of sin that needs to be expurged, causing your disability, suffering is redemptive in Christianity. It's a very major theme is that by suffering, you redeem yourself. And this is pretty, I mean, it's pretty unique in the way that Christianity does it, but it's deeply ingrained in the way we think. And I think saying, like, you will overcome this by suffering more.

rather than saying, I want to eliminate your suffering, right? Or reduce it. I don't know if you all have been watching the Secretary of Education going off on Twitter. He's just been doing like whippets and tweeting. I want to do whippets and tweets. Sounds like a time. I don't think he's that cool. But he had one banger that was,

teaching isn't a job you hold. It's an extension of your life's purpose. And it's him in a suit sitting in a library in front of a bunch of kids, two of whom are wearing masks. He's been cranking out bangers like this all week. He's really been on one. And everyone's just like, well, we didn't know who you were before, but we know who you are now. And we're going to just keep dunking on you. But yeah, this is very common.

It doesn't matter which parties. In fact, I feel like the Democrats are kind of worse about this. In some ways, they articulate vocational awe better. They both believe in it. I think both major parties believe in it, but I think Democrats articulate it better, and that makes it kind of worse. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think it's this really awkward, hard thing, because, yeah, I don't know what kind of leadership training like folks go through, but I do feel like, yeah, like we kind of joke about this in the education field that you'll get a lot of teachers, usually men who will teach something like history for like two years or whatever the bare minimum is, get their principal certification. and get their, you know, administrator certification, go off and become a leader and start spouting off all this stuff about doing it for the kids, vocational awe, yada y'a. And it's all on the back of these women who they're, you know, trying to work hard and just kind of making everything

awful. And, you know, it's kind of frustrating to be like, how can I have a conversation with someone, a superintendent or even a director, about these kinds of. of daily life accommodation type things when they barely know what teaching looks like or they barely know what a daily, you know, library shift looks like. It's so hard, I think, to kind of have these conversations with people who are, like, they're so removed from our daily stuff. It's hard to talk about what we need and how to get it. And I feel like that's another kind of obstacle for disabled librarians to deal with is kind of this, yeah, a little bit of the vocational awe, and then a little bit of having things dictated by people who don't really know what your job entails,

which I guess is kind of true of a lot of fields, education, public libraries, universities, everything. We've already kind of touched on it, but for accommodations and remote work, since we do have this same accommodation model, we talked about how workplaces are hesitant to give individual remote work accommodations as accommodations. But do you have any advice for how to ask for accommodations, what barriers to expect, and which accommodations to ask for? All right.

Oh, man. So, yeah, this is like the big thing. I think, yeah, there are lots of barriers to look out for. The first is even like getting a diagnosis, which can be super hard again if a person doesn't have access to health care or good insurance or even access to a practitioner who can diagnose stuff, that's like the first thing is getting someone to put it on paper that you have something. And that's anything from someone who has autism like myself or if you have something like POTS, something that doctors don't really understand and they're not really familiar with.

That can be hard to get a diagnosis for. So that's kind of the first barrier. And then you have to figure out, you know, navigate the paperwork stuff, you know. And as someone, like, I just have autism. Like, my husband is ADHD. Like, I can't imagine having ADHD and trying to navigate this labyrinthian process of applying for, I see y'all nodding, applying for these accommodations, you know, because it's so much having to figure out, okay, what's the paperwork? It's like 20 pages long. What parts do I fill out? What part does the doctor fill out? What do I do? You get to that page that says, what accommodations do you want? And you're just like, oh, my God.

And so that is, I think, the point where my general advice comes in to definitely look at things like that job accommodation network, the JAN as a starting point to kind of get you thinking about stuff. Because I do like the way they break it down where they say, you know, I was told that was too broad when I did. Yeah. I was like, it's too broad. Oh, my gosh. It's something more specific. I was going to say, I like the way the J.A.N. breaks it down. Like, here's the stuff, you know, for your environment and here's the stuff, you know, with breaks. But I can definitely see that how someone would

say, yeah, it's not specific enough. So that would be, I think, part two of my advice to be like, talk to other disabled librarians and be like, what have you asked for? How has it worked out? It's so hard, though, because all of us are kind of siloed in our own library spaces, and it really varies depending on who your boss is. You can have a really understanding boss who's willing to be flexible and help you out, especially if they share

the condition that you have, like in Sadie's case, if they also know your struggles on a personal level. But then on the other end of the spectrum, you have people who just like don't get it and think you're looking for excuses or you're just trying to like cause trouble. So that can be definitely an obstacle

is your administrator. And on a personal level this year, I was helping one of my librarians who had a really difficult administrator. And I was trying to figure out a way to help them ask for accommodations without going through the whole HR process because it would take too long. And it was really difficult. And there's not really a good way to get around having a bad administrator, unfortunately. In this case, the administrator left in the middle of the year, which was nice. So he got a new boss. But that's not always the case for us, unfortunately.

We kind of have to stick through it. I do think the answer to a lot of this is, again, the community, you know, talking to other people, seeing what worked, hearing their stories, and getting some concrete examples of what you can ask for and what you can do in your library and, you know, what you can ask for. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think what other advice I have. So, Justin, I'll let you go ahead and talk while I think for a moment. Yeah, what I've been thinking of this whole time, the thoughts come to me a couple different times, is you don't go to a class that explains, like, how to live with your autism.

And I thought about this. The first time when you said all these people are dealing with long COVID and brain fog, and it's like, yeah, there are things you can do to deal with brain fog, but where are the long COVID trainers? Where are the people who are going to come help you redesign your house around your new disability? If you have very severe disabilities, that's usually when something like that happens. It'll be noticed in primary school. You'll get an individualized education plan.

Or if you're someone like my aunt who can't really live alone, someone will come and help build your living space in such a way that you will live with a caretaker. But here are some things that are going to help you move along. You're really only going to find that barring some massive social spending through like skill shares with other disabled people. So I think some of the stuff we've talked about, like, private knowledge management, figuring out what accommodations other people use at work, figuring out a job is just going to work for you because the field or industry is just not going to accommodate you in any way. And obviously, it depends by workplace to workplace. But that's what's been on my mind is, you know, maybe there are some skill shares out there.

We could look up. And if anyone wants to send them in, you can send them in to Library PumpPod at Gmail. And we'll share them out with everyone. Justin, you just made me think about how, like, people get discouraged to talk about, like, how much they get paid, even though it's perfectly legal and, in some cases, backed by a union on knowing what people's pay is. And it hasn't been my experience because I have never formally asked for accommodations, but I'm wondering if there's, like, a way you could get that built into, like, a union contract, like, make HR create a list of previous accommodations. that they have granted. So people who are looking for accommodations can go, okay, well, this suits my circumstance. You know, so it's not just like a whisper network of people being like, I have ADD, you have autism,

what works for you, what works for me, what can, and can't we tell our boss, you know, or across state lines, you know, I don't know, just something, some sort of disability protection like that would be a good formal way. I don't know. I say that violates hippo. And they're not going to tell you. No, no, my wife's hippo. I would know.

My uncle's a hippo. You don't know what that is. Oh, my goodness. I do like that idea, though, because, yeah, like, I do feel like just the whole way that this is set up. And I know I saw a tweet on it recently talking about the college level that it's just so unfair that we put the pressure on young college students to like go and figure out how accommodations work and how to ask for them and stuff, you know, it would be awesome, you know, for for that to be a thing where you could just have the professors say, here's some accommodations I offered in the past. Let me know if you need

any of them or like you said in the library world. Here's stuff we've done before in the past. Let's try that. Like that would be awesome. And I do wonder if this ties into all this stuff, you know, with the way we as a society don't talk about disability. unless we're talking about overcoming it heroically and majestically. But, you know, yeah, we don't have these discussions about how to kind of live with this disability. And like Justin, you were saying, you know, we don't get a class on how to live with a disability. We don't get training on how to live with long COVID. And I, you know, we definitely should.

Like, it is definitely a thing that we need. Like, I'm trying to think if anyone could offer a resource like that. That would be amazing for librarians to be able to look and say, like, yeah, here's a list of things I can ask for, and here's what I can do, and here's how I can live like this, because it's going to be something, like I keep saying, it's going to be something we're going to have to think about in the future because brain fog is just, like, it's something that's just knocking so many people, you know, off their routine. And it's definitely something that folks are going to have to start thinking about and be more flexible, be more open to letting people do things a little bit differently. You know, it might go back to our Puritan roots of, you know, how work is supposed to work. But we have these ideas about we've always done things this way and we're going to keep doing them this way because that's the way to do it and it's the easiest way to do it. And we're missing out on so much talent, I think. because of this inflexibility from these folks.

So, yeah, I really love that idea of doing more, like you said, knowledge sharing, skill sharing, just, you know, all of that stuff. Like, we need to talk about it more the same way we're encouraging people to talk more about their pay. Like, it's something we need to share and be able to talk about and help each other. Yeah, how do we take this and turn it into some form of collective action? Yeah, definitely. I have reposted the library salaries Google Doc in the notes. So go in there.

And if you've never added your info before, go ahead and add it. If you need to update it, go ahead and do that. That will let you know library workers of all levels and where they are and how much they get paid. So you can use that in salary negotiations if it helps. It might also help you know where to look for a job, things like that. I did a quick Google search for disability Skillshare. I didn't find much because there's a company called Skillshare now, which seems like it shouldn't be allowed because it's like that's a common word. But they've they've trademarked it or whatever.

So that's annoying. We'll have to come up with another word to distinguish from the company Skillshare now. But you have this link to INALJ remote. Was that something you want to talk about? Yeah, I just wanted I wanted to find some examples of remote work, especially for libraries. I-N-A-L-J is just I need a library job. I didn't know until I started looking that they actually have a page devoted to remote work opportunities. Usually there's not a lot on there, but I love that they have it, and they're kind of keeping an eye on that kind of thing and helping to promote that stuff.

If you've never looked at the INALJ site before, it can be a little confusing at first, but you will find a part on there under new jobs that says all individual jobs are found at this link. usually you click on that and get a PDF and it should hopefully, if it works right, it should bring you to somewhere where you can see those jobs all together in a list. So yeah, now they put it in all one more giant PDF of like 18 pages and it's broken down by state. But if you keep searching, I think it's near the top, there will be a part that says telework remote. And they'll talk about a few different opportunities. looking at it now, I see things for like a library services engineer, things like that. So that's somewhere you can start looking if you're looking for a remote position.

And I love that they're doing that and I hope they keep doing that because it's really hard to find like legit remote work opportunities unless you know who to ask if you're just looking on the internet. I do like that y'all shared with the, at least with the college level that people are sharing in the job posting now that remote work is a possible. I do think that's awesome. Yeah, I was going to say, keep emailing every time we see a job opening, email them is their remote option if it's not listed? Because that keeps the pressure on for them to one go, oh, yeah, people are going to ask this.

And maybe when they relist it, they'll relist it with remote, which is what happened for a job that I badgered a universe. This is when Jay was job hunting. And the metadata librarian job came up in Texas. And so I started badgering them. I was like, is they remote? and they're like, well, it's flexible. I'm like, what does flexible mean? And so I kept emailing them again.

And this person knew me. So, like, they knew they couldn't get rid of me because I know who they are. I know they're personally email. And no one hired for that job. And guess what? It showed up again later. Remote available. Nice.

Yeah, I have a friend and I really want to get her on the pod to talk about her job. Her job is completely remote. I think she has to go on, like, once a month for, like, a big meeting, you know, like that kind of thing. and she does like doing like accessibility for instructional design for librarians. So like librarians doing like instruction. She looks over like the materials and whatnot and like, you know, integration in the course stuff to make sure it's accessible.

And she gets to do that completely remote. Like basically 100% except for that one big meeting like once a month or whatever that she has to go on campus. But like they're out there and it's like that's the perfect kind of job. to be remote is where you're like looking over like stuff or like metadata librarians if you aren't working with physical materials get you know that can be done remote also like vendors if you want to go that direction that's true yeah vendors offer remote work and they probably pay better some of them aren't evil a lot of them are though got to watch out for that. But yes. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely, yeah, there are lots of things out there to look for. Yeah,

metadata, definitely, all that cataloging stuff. It's a little bit different coming to it from the school library side because so much of our stuff is based, you know, in a house. But I do know that some of the bigger school districts will have that cataloging department. And that's definitely something that I would go to and ask and say, like, hey, literally just working, on Mark records. Can I do that from home, at least, you know, part of the time? And there's probably going to be some resistance because, again, school districts, we're going to keep doing things the way we've always done it. But I do like your advice of just, you know, just ask and just keep pushing for it and say, like, there's no reason why this can't be done. And especially, I think, with the way the market is now,

where we've had a lot of retirements and unfortunately a lot of people dying of COVID, it's really hard for school libraries departments to find replacement librarians right now. So that might be something you can use to your advantage. If you're on that side of the field, you can definitely push for that kind of stuff and say like, yeah, let me catalog from home. Let me do, you know, resource stuff from home. There's so many things that don't need to be done in an office. I know, you know, a lot of office work is just people wanted to keep an eye on you just because and it doesn't really need to be in an office. So, yeah. Foucault. It's just discipline and surveillance.

Yes. Everything's a prison. Libraries are prisons. So we've been pretty action-oriented and practical this whole time, but we like to wrap up with like an action-oriented question. So what advice would you give to people? I think in this case we'll do people who are disabled a short list of how they should start looking for accommodations. Like what do they need to do? Just a short bullet list for them.

so it doesn't feel so overwhelming, I think would be a good way to close out. Gosh, so let's see. First and foremost, again, you know, find that community of people. You know, find other people online and social media that you can talk to who you can share stories with, get advice from them. I definitely think disabled, you know, community is awesome. And that's something that'll be a great resource for anyone. They can give you strategies and tips.

They understand your struggles. So find your people. What else? Definitely. in events, definitely push libraries to do more stuff, hybrid stuff. That's something, you know, I guess it's not necessarily job related, but it's something that I like to tell people to do, especially now that we're coming out of COVID. I like to tell people to at least ask if there's hybrid options for things like workshops and conferences, because it's so important

to offer that for folks who are disabled and can't gather in those physical spaces. What else would I recommend, I think just, gosh, I feel like it's kind of reiterating the community side of it, but to really go and search out other people's stories, if that makes sense, like read about, you know, what other people have done, what they've been through with this kind of thing, just finding ideas and information, going back to that idea of what has worked for other people and try and learn what you can from everyone else's experiences. I feel like those are my two biggest things. If I had to boil it down to like a simple bullet list,

my suggestions would be find other people to talk to, read their stories and ask questions to everyone, the people you're trying to work for, the people you do work for, ask questions, and just have those conversations about what can we do, even, you know, and especially if it's outside the usual, thing of going through HR to get accommodations. Just, you know, see what you can do more casually because sometimes that's easier and faster.

And if you're lucky, it'll work out with your administrators and bosses. So it's worth a shot. Is there anything you want to plug any work you have coming out or presentations coming out or where people can find you if they want to contact you for whatever reason? Oh, yeah, yeah. So I have a website. It's adriana l.white.com. I'm also, well, I used to be on Twitter a lot. It's like just practice for me to say that I'm on Twitter a lot. We'll see if I'm on there more if the

leadership changes. But I am on Twitter for Adriana underscore EDU. If you want to follow me there, I do a lot of speaking stuff at library conferences, but I don't have anything happening in the immediate future. Stuff might be happening in the spring in Texas, but that's about it. I would also recommend as just a general resource to check out the adaptive umbrella library workshop. That was something I participated in last fall. And they do awesome disability and library programming. And they have great panels where people will come and talk about their experiences. So that's something you definitely should keep an eye out for for next year because I learn so much from them every time I go there. And yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, visit my website. I have lots

of stuff. Most of what I talk about is representation of disability in kids' books and how to make libraries more autism and disability friendly. So that is, you know, if that's something you're looking for, that is my jam. Come and ask questions. I love answering questions. And I'll do what I can to help you all out. Great. Thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great meeting you all and having this conversation. And I love the topics that y'all talk about on your podcast.

So yay for what you do and keep it up because y'all talk about so many great and important topics on your podcast. I love it. Thank you. And good night.