AES Campus-Wide Disability Awareness Month
Beyond Awareness: Storying Our Community
March 2025
This year’s DAM-2025 centers around the theme of “storying”—a powerful approach to understanding and celebrating the experiences of individuals with disabilities within our community. According to Phillips and Bunda (2018), there are five key principles of storying: (1) Storying nourishes thought, body, and soul; (2) Storying claims voice in the silenced margins; (3) Storying embodies relational meaning-making; (4) Storying connects the past and present as living oral archives, and (5) Storying enacts collective ownership and authorship (p. 43). These principles are meant to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, guiding us in moving beyond mere awareness of students with disabilities. This year’s theme’s focus is reflexive of these principles to weave our student’s individual experiences into a larger narrative that includes both internal and external community partners.
The Accessible Educational Services (AES) office at IU Indianapolis aligns with the overall goals of IU University that supports student success and belonging. Our mission emphasizes fostering humanizing and collaborative practices that ensure access, advocacy, and justice, creating a more inclusive and equitable educational experience for disabled students and students with disabilities. The AES Community of Practice (AESCoP) initiative provides opportunities for students with disabilities not only during Disability Awareness Month (DAM) in March but throughout the entire year. This commitment reflects our mantra: "Our work starts with the belief that how we think about disability affects how we relate to others with disabilities." By focusing on “storying,” we invite our community to engage in meaningful conversations that shape perceptions and relationships, enriching our collective narrative.
This year's DAM events will illuminate the significance of sharing the stories of students with disabilities and their education and social interactions with others. By integrating students' “storying” practices, we engage our internal partners on the IU Indianapolis campus and across the IU system in connection with our external community partners. In doing so, we aim to enrich our internal and external community. This collaborative effort will enhance the collective narrative, moving beyond mere awareness of the disability community to fostering a “storying community” across Indianapolis, Indiana, and beyond. Thank you, Dr. Mercédès A. Cannon
