“As a little girl, I often played ‘teacher,’ recalls Johanna Johnson, 33, of Vancouver. “In high school, there were a lot of other careers I gave possibility to, but when in University, I knew I wanted to teach. I felt the only things that made life at all difficult while becoming a teacher and being a teacher were people who doubted my ability because of my disability.”

Johanna was born, raised and schooled in Vancouver. She attended the last 12 years of her education with a wheelchair and ventilator—her physical legacy from a catastrophic car accident at age 12 that left her with C2-3 quadriplegia.

Her life changed the summer between grade seven and eight while visiting relatives in Sacramento, California. She was struck by a car while crossing the street with her four-year-old cousin. Johanna survived. Her cousin didn’t.

“I went back to school as fast as I could at Point Grey High School, which was totally accessible, so I lucked out,” she says. “At Langara College, I tried a bit of everything. It was very accessible, and they had a good accommodation set-up for people with disabilities. I knew I needed to get more upper-level courses, so I transferred to UBC which by then had set up its disability resource centre.”

She completed her undergrad degree in Arts, majoring in Mathematics. Johanna then enrolled in the one-year teaching degree program in the Faculty of Education. She encountered barriers in perception that had to be negotiated, or her teaching career would be over before it began.

Her studies had gone well. Her practicum placement did not.

“It was an intense program. My fellow students were great and I made a lot of friends, though my practicum supervisor was skeptical whether I could make it as a teacher. It’s a roll of the dice where you get placed to practice teaching, and it wasn’t going very well. I asked myself, ‘Is it me; am I crazy?’ It was basically their write-ups of the lessons I taught.”

“I had done everything they had asked of me to improve, and in my subsequent write-ups they acknowledged that I had made corrections, but I had a very bad feeling, and sensed that they did not have faith in my abilities. So I stopped and asked my advisor, “Are you going to fail me?” She said, “Yes.” “So when were you going to tell me this,” I said, “because I don’t think you have just cause.”

After soul-searching and becoming clear that it was not “something wrong with her”, but rather a systemic barrier she was facing, Johanna went to the Dean of Education.

The Dean observed her teaching, and made a deal. She would not be failed, but to graduate she must do another practicum with a different teacher. Johanna agreed, because she knew if she stopped with just the passing grade, she would have “too bad a taste in my mouth; too many negative feelings.”

Her next practicum went very well and she graduated in 1997 with her classmates. Then Johanna went to get a job.

“Everyone has to ‘sub’ for awhile, the average being a couple of years,” she relates. “I tried in Vancouver and had another political thing there. I pretty much was the Vancouver poster child for inclusivity as a child…they had used me a lot in their movies when integration was really becoming a big thing in the late 80’s. But I came up against an associate superintendent who did not like change or trying something new.”

There were no job offers for Johanna in Vancouver.

With the help of the BC Coalition of Persons with Disabilities, Johanna filed a Human Rights complaint against the Vancouver School Board that went on for two years. In the meantime, the Delta School District offered her a substitute teaching position.

While ‘subbing’ in Delta—and while the Human Rights case slogged on—Johanna undertook another teaching qualification: a Diploma in Special Education. She completed this by taking night classes and summer sessions at UBC, and eventually squeezing the practicum into her full schedule.

“I did most of my work in learning assistance, working with kids who had difficulties in school; people with different learning disabilities, kids with cognitive difficulties, kids with behavior problems, the whole realm, and some ESL. I loved teaching all of those kids.”

Eventually, a new associate supervisor for schools was hired in Vancouver and Johanna’s case was re-examined. She was given a written apology and a job. She worked on call, teaching anything from kindergarten to grade seven. Then came regular work at Nootka Elementary as a part-time kindergarten teacher, a position she still holds and loves.

“One of the things I love about kids, especially the really little ones, is their questions. I explain why I am in a power wheelchair and those kinds of things. They know they can ask me anything. Once that is out of the way, I am just Ms. Johnson. It’s like the chair is not even there. They are very accommodating. They are considerate enough to move things out the way. It’s not the teacher in the wheelchair, it’s “there’s our teacher.” I have been really fortunate with the administration. They have their questions, but once we get through that, I am just another teacher. They pretty quickly see that I am a good teacher, and I have really good experience.”

Johanna advises, “If you think teaching might be a passion, go for it! It can be very rewarding. Be patient, trust yourself, and don’t be afraid to seek out help. You get that feeling that you have to prove you can do it without any accommodations. But it’s not that. When you need help, it is usually because someone is putting up a barrier for you.”

Johanna Johnson paved the way through barriers, showing that a wheelchair is just a chair with wheels, but a dedicated teacher of children is priceless.

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