The Teaching and Learning Innovation Digest - May 2023

Of course, most of us recognize and
understand the diverse needs of our students,
and we try to be accommodating as educators,
exercising empathy and care towards our
students. But as many faculty will know from
their own experiences, empathy and care
are very demanding, often adding a layer
of emotional labour to the work of teaching
and learning. Seeking to address the always
pressing and diverse needs of our students
one by one can lead to feelings of exhaustion
and burn out. Accommodating the needs of our
students individually, whether through a formal
accommodations process or by way of our
care and support as educators, is ultimately
untenable. Ableism is systemic and requires a
systemic response.
Many faculty I know at Centennial are vocal
advocates for Universal Design for Learning
(UDL), (please refer to CAST website for more
information) and have used this moment of
post-pandemic teaching and learning to amplify
their work in UDL. Providing students with
multiple means of engagement, representation,
and action and expression builds flexibility
and optionality into curriculum and learning
experiences. Some means include using
many of the technological interventions
and strategies that were put in place during
the pandemic. For many students, those
interventions also minimize or forestall the
need to disclose their disabilities or personal
situations, which can feel embarrassing and
stigmatizing, and request accommodations
for their specific needs. Integration of UDL is
the kind of systemic change that’s needed,
although it’s only one change and many more
are also needed. UDL helps to level the playing
field, making learning conditions more equal
for all, but equality is not the same as equity
and justice.
So beyond taking up our call to UDL, how
can we push a little further to reveal, address,
and undo the harms of ableism? How can
we redesign our learning environments and
experiences in ways that centre disability and
recognize its intersectionality? How might we
shift from a model of disability that sees it as
a condition, something that is exceptional,
needing to be accommodated and deserving
of our empathy and care, to a model in which
disability is positively valued and celebrated
as a way of being in the world and that
brings with it knowledge and experience
that strengthen and enrich our teaching and
learning environments?
Centennial College is an incredible
organization and is full of so many wonderfully
knowledgeable and exceptional faculty and
support staff. I know that collectively we live
our commitments to education for our diverse
community of students every day. After three
years of a global pandemic, it has been
exciting this year to get back to doing what we
do best—fostering communities of learning
across our dynamic campuses and learning
environments and providing students with the
means to thrive in their learning journeys. But recalling Dionne Brand, who asks us to think about
what “normal” means—the violence of normal—for Black, Indigenous, racial minority, gender and
sexually diverse, and disabled communities, I invite you to linger a little while longer in the discomfort
and uneasiness of “returning to normal” and to work together to use this movement of returning to
refuse normal, to instead seek to realize genuine equity and justice in our teaching and learning
practices and environments.
References
A conversation with Pam Palmater on COVID, racism, and Indigenous communities. (2020).
Women of Influence. https://www.womenofinfluence.ca/2020/06/22/a-conversation-with-pampalmater-on-covid-racism-and-indigenous-communities/
Betasamosake Simpson, Leanne. (2020). May 2021 be the year land is once again refuge for
Indigenous people. MacLean’s. https://macleans.ca/opinion/may-2021-be-the-year-land-is-onceagain-refuge-for-indigenous-people/
Brand, Dionne. (2022). Dionne Brand: On narrative, reckoning and the calculus of living and dying.
Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2020/07/04/dionne-brand-onnarrative-reckoning-and-the-calculus-of-living-and-dying.html
Dolmage, Jay Timothy. (2017). Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. Ann Arbor,
Michigan: University of Michigan Press. https://www.press.umich.edu/9708722/academic_
ableism/?s=description
Loeppky, John. (2022). With the shift to online learning, students with disabilities face new barriers.
MacLean’s. https://education.macleans.ca/feature/with-the-shift-to-online-learning-studentswith-disabilities-face-new-barriers/
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