Teaching mindfully.

Disability, Education and Empowerment: From Silence to Finding a Voice. Students with physical, learning, or emotional disabilities often face extra challenges in completing university coursework, including integration with peers, obtaining and receiving accommodations, educating faculty about their disabilities, and receiving proper diagnosis and treatment. Both students and faculty with such disabilities struggle continually with the additional stresses of uncertainty about how their disability will affect their performance and whether or how much to disclose about a disability that is not physically obvious.

Moses, a central figure in the scriptures of the Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim spiritual traditions, provides an excellent example of this struggle. In the Koran, as in the Torah, God calls Moses to confront Pharaoh. Even after God has wrought two transforming miracles, changing Moses' staff to a serpent and back, then changing the color of the skin on Moses' hand without hurting him, Moses reminds God of his disability and asks for help:

 
   Lord, ... put courage into my heart, and make my task easy. Free my tongue 
   from its impediment, that men may understand my speech. Appoint for me a 
   counselor from among my kinsmen, Aaron my brother. Grant me strength 
   through him and let him share my task, so that we may give glory to You 
   always and remember You always. You are surely watching over us. (20:24-26) 
   [1] 

In another surah's version of this conversation, Moses expresses his anxiety about others' reaction to his disability and asks that someone seemingly more able be sent: "I fear [the people of Pharaoh] will reject me. I may become impatient and stammer in my speech. Send for Aaron." (26:12) [2] Elsewhere, he explains, "Aaron my brother is more fluent of tongue than I; send him with me that he may help me and confirm my words, for I fear they will reject me."(28:29) [3] In the Torah, Moses actually tries to argue God out or this call, starting with the question, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" (Exodus 3:11) [4] After raising several other objections, Moses attempts to draw God's attention to his chronic disability: "O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." (Exodus 4:10) [5] God pointedly reminds Moses that he is speaking with the very Creator and Empowerer of all people with disabilities. "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak." (Exodus 4:11-12) Even then, Moses asks plainly, "O my Lord, please send someone else." (Exodus 4:13) [6] Moses' lack of self-confidence angers God, who reminds him of his brother Aaron's eloquence and promises to send them together. In the Koran, God reassures him, "Have no fear .... We shall be with you and shall hear all." (26:14) God expands on this promise in another surah: "We will strengthen your arm with your brother, and will bestow such power on you both, that none shall harm you." (28:35) [7]

God reminds Moses in several places in the Koran and Torah that in spite of his own doubts about his ability and disability, God had chosen him for this prophetic task even before his birth. In the Koran, Moses is called "the Apostle of the Lord of the Universe."(7:105, 43:47). [8] He is the intercessor for his people, "a true believer," and (along with Noah, Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad) one of Islam's five prophets. (40:38; ...