The Teaching and Learning Innovation Digest - May 2023

FACULTY SUMMIT HIGHLIGHTS
re/WORK
HOW DO WE re/TURN
TO CAMPUS
With a trauma-informed lens?
Dr. Delon Omrow
Global Citizenship and Equity Learning Advisor
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We need to make more humanistic
connections: showing vulnerability
and sharing with students will
build closeness.
Engagement and participation
didn’t go quite so well; not knowing
if student present or able to gauge
whether or not students understand
what is being taught.
We wish we had more time for
building connections with students
personally and professionally.
Communicating with students
through multiple channels
(engagement strategies,
accessibility, eCentennial course
shell functionality, and Kahoot).
Online strategies that worked:
icebreakers, presence (e.g.
face-to-face presentations).
The return to campus was inevitable, albeit
cautionary for those educators and learners
who witnessed the toll that the COVID-19
pandemic exacted upon us. For some, the
pandemic derailed lives and aspirations
—best laid plans went astray and dreams
were deferred. There was, however, another
long-standing pandemic: the wicked problem
of racism. For almost two years, students
“zoomed” into their classes while racial justice
waned during the COVID-19 pandemic with
the death of George Floyd; an Indigenous
community in Kamloops, British Columbia
unearthing the remains of 215 children
on the grounds of a former residential
school; and Asian communities witnessing
anti-Asian racism and xenophobia as the
rest of the world tried to lay blame for the
spread of the COVID-19 virus. As educators,
we need to re-engage with each other
on campus; reassembling, reconnecting,
reworking, reimagining, and rethinking our
pedagogies. In what follows, I unpack the
potential of a new, and innovative, iteration
of Universal Design for Learning designed by
Andratesha Fitzgerald (2020): A+UDL. This new
approach synthesizes anti-racism (A) with
Universal Design for Learning (UDL), adapting
multiple means of representation, engagement,
and action and expression to “safety checks”
as a way to ensure we uphold trauma-informed
approaches to education.
Trauma-informed approaches to teaching entail
developing an understanding of strategies to
best respond to and support those affected
by interpersonal violence and structural
violence (Portell, 2019). How can we possibly
expect students to return nonchalantly to
in-person, synchronous classes without
exercising agility and adaptability in course
design and delivery—especially surrounding
the various shades of racism on campus?
This is where an anti-oppressive lens must be
invoked, acknowledging our social location,
power, and privilege as educators, and the
role we play in creating psychologically
safe and inclusive environments. This, I
fervently believe, can be achieved by using
A+UDL in the classroom. Some faculty are
apprehensive about learning more about UDL
and its putative connections to anti-racism,
fearing that such interconnections are difficult
to navigate. However, as two disparate
pedagogical frameworks designed to address
student differences, both UDL and anti-racism
consider ways in which traditional pedagogies
result in barriers to learning for Black,
Indigenous, and racialized students (Kieran
and Anderson, 2019).
The Centre for Applied Special Technology
(CAST) has laid the framework for
supporting learner variability, inspiring
educators to adopt culturally responsive
teaching strategies. I, for one, have always
believed that content that is not engaging
is not accessible. Thus, when we re/TURN
to campus, it must be with the intention
of curating resources and content which
speaks to our students’ values, lifestyles,
approaches, and world views. This will, first
of all, recruit student interest and honour
their lived experiences. Consider how the
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