The Wayne State University School of Social Work and Social Work Doctoral Program invites you to join them for the Dissertation Defense by Kathryn Wright "Exclusion and Education: Disability and Personhood in Public School". Wright will present a 10-month ethnographic study of self-contained middle school classrooms with a study sample of 41 (32 youth, nine adults). Findings focus on three aspects: first, that exclusion from the larger school was felt keenly by the students, but at the same time they formed social relations with each other that contributed to their personhood. Second, that spatial practices in the school reinforced the division between disabled and able-bodied personhoods at the same time as it reified the school as a White space. Finally, that classroom practices revealed sociocultural impressions of disabled youth as future failed adults. These three aspects are amenable to change through school policies and practices. Implications center on the potential role of school social workers in leading that change.