UW allies; i am running my activism class today - but changed tactics to offering a practical trauma-informed mutual aid seminar. i'll share the slides i made here with you after class & give you a quick crash course in showing up for others in crisis circumstances 🤍 #UWaterloo LONG THREAD - MUTUAL AID + CRISIS CARE (BASIC)

okay @UWaterloo i promised you my mutual aid mini-seminar from my activism class!
i'll give you practical advice & how to think about mutual aid, healing justice in crisis circumstances, aftercare for #UWaterloo stabbing yesterday.

[small thread - universities]

it has never been a hotter time to voice your disenfranchisement with academia: campus protests, union-forming, legislative redrafts, collective direct actions. it is no longer radical to "not like" being a professor, or see massive moral harm in it but i can't help but notice the co-optation of this mass-market derision to re-recruit these demoralized professors back into the harm matrix: we used stories about "how smart you are, no one can do this job but you" to recruit you to the institution. we give you accolades/awards

[teaching theory thread]

i'm chatting virtually today @ 10-11AM EST about teaching strategies for student mental health and neurodivergence for DEDI 2023!

⭐️ ZOOM ROOM (live vers.): yorku.zoom.us/j/96758261089?…
💛 will recap in this thread
⭐️ will record video playback the whole conference program (free attendance, hyflex/virtual proceedings) is here: canva.com/design/DAFftz6…

and i'm so lucky that @jvorster81 thought of me for a keynote on equitable teaching practices. i'll be sharing as much advice as i can in 60 minutes, then it's your turn!

[ disability theory thread 🌻]

hi!! i am your academic apothecary.
let's talk about the mad manifesto: my ✨newly passed✨ dissertation that goes to great lengths to accessibly prove that:
1) we are failing mentally ill students, and
2) UDL has been co-opted by unis for profit. you know me fam, if you've been taking my online disability studies courses last year/this year you know i fuckin' love a timechecked agenda (and so do your neurodivergent students!!)

i'll go over what i did, and if you're intrigued, i will link the PDF of the diss at the end :)

[teaching theory+resources megathread 🌻🥰]

okay it's finally here, i've got the ENTIRE FIRST YEAR WRITING/COMMS COURSE uploaded for you to remix, revise and make better for your kaleidoscopic context. this thread will go over the highlights of what's in this drive for you!! 🤍 THIS IS THE DRIVE WITH ALL COMPONENTS (except for the open-access readings / every reading on this course is available FOR FREE online to reduce course cost!!): drive.google.com/drive/folders/…

The folder is sub-sorted by weeks. This is a 12 week course with one week break between #6-7.

[disability theory, udl theory, higher ed techniques thread 🌻]

it's wednesday! that means i'm teaching DS2210 Education Policy + Disability Studies, but i also post all my content on twitter open-access for anyone who can't take cds courses! 💛

this week is MADNESS + TEACHING i've spent most of this course covering disclosed disability and its relationship to K-8, 9-12, and higher ed classrooms and access policies. but now we have enough theory that i can add a more complicated conversation to the mix: what about undisclosed disability + mad students?

@daniellelorenz IT'S ALWAYS A GOOD TIME TO LINK THE NON-TENURED CDS SCHOLARSHIP DOC @TheCJDS

it's also always a good time to cite non-professoriate activists, FOR EXAMPLE @AnnGagne @brennacgray @karenraycosta @ScopicEngineer @tamar_whyte @kwardvancouver
THAT'S JUST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD @daniellelorenz @TheCJDS @AnnGagne @brennacgray @karenraycosta @ScopicEngineer @tamar_whyte @kwardvancouver hold on i'll even give you graduate cds/mad researchers with BETTER, **CURRENT** WORK: @helenrottier @disabledphd @banville_morgan @millieh27 @LariisaStewart @PhDisability @CavarSarah @MarttinenLee Cindy Jiang Sarah Redikopp @melissanpj

I CAN KEEP GOING, PLEASE

anyway, this week's Disability Studies & Education Policy lecture is about intersectionality and K-12 IEP implementation!

the policies we design often reveal our biases about how we picture "normal" classes, or "how things should be".
i'll upload a public video this weekend!❤️ i borrow from some of my favourite beloved community luminaries to design a super-simple introduction to intersectional practice, including @esmewang @doctora_nature @AsaoBInoue @smhumphreys @Katja_Thieme @seoyoung_chu @madeleinethien and @thisisEJKoh ! thank you for your love!

[teaching theory thread 🌿🥰]

hi, many of you have been asking about the cds education videos (thank you!) - i'm behind on CC recordings!
BUT i'll give you a thread breakdown of last week's disability lecture: "Absolute Intro to UDL"

my full slide deck: docs.google.com/presentation/d… meta methods: i like to give an agenda (with approx times) and leave upcoming slides VISIBLE for mad students who like to know the whole situation. they can see what slides are coming (and how many), they're not being surprised by anything, it's very anti-anxiety and grounding.

[classroom activism thread 2 of 2 🌿]

the other major activist project my first years did this term was the Access Manifesto: we learned about (physical/mental) laboratory access, UDL and mobilizing advocacy.
i'll show you how & i'll give you materials for you to remix!! 💜🥰 this one requires you to do a primer lecture if your group has never seriously considered disability or accessibility, which is a strong possibility in 1Y classes. i have a 1Y Biochem class, so i focused on tying critical thinking to laboratories they use every week already.

[methods thread - classroom wellness 🌿]

can we share space together for a moment? i know you want your students to be more resilient, more open, more willing to ask for help. i have a few ways into that as a baby instructor, and i have the "why" it pays off. let's talk? 💜 2/ first, it's important to say "it's not your fault". and i think that's true - i think we are acculturated in a system that relies so heavily on teaching deservingness every day, for as long as you were in the system: 8 years, 10 years, 15 years. it's hard to disagree with

[cw: suicide]
we're in a new wave of unaware academics discovering what the university does to suicidal and seriously mentally ill students (the policy is to fast-track them to expulsion).

i used to do a lecture about this policy pattern, recorded here: and you might be thinking "well that's unfair, it happened to you so you're not objective"

okay, how about @GaetaAmy 's article about a very similar pattern in "mh services"?: sparkactivism.com/no-good-studen…

[thread: teaching methods / participation]

i see a lot of content this term about lack of/no participation, inactive engagement, silent classes... etc. my class is here to show you some alternate ways into participation that are multimodal, disability friendly and udl designed. okay so i'll start with "there are SO MANY REASONS for quiet classes, including apocalypse time/covid time/tragedies happening literally constantly". so this is NOT A FOR-ALL METHOD and these will not work EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME. i'm not magic, i'm just a grad student lmao, SO:

[teaching(theory) thread🧵]

okay i promised i would explain a little bit slower my thinking around why rubrics in general aren't great marking tools and definitely not udl framed -- all rubrics, not just badly designed rubrics, which we all know are an issue. ready? lets go🥰 /2 so first it's helpful to remind ourselves the difference between "equality" and "equity". equality is everyone getting the same thing at the same time. equity takes into account intersectional considerations and adjusts what you receive. this already sounds unfair, doesn't it?

[thread on disability + teaching🧵🤍]

if you missed the live version of "udl in apocalypse time" that's okay, because i also publish passionate disability rants infrequently lol

i'll summarize it in this thread: what's wrong with access for everybody?

journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/6-1-2-issue-cu… 1/ okay, so i have a theory about how your university, my university, everyone's university made ridiculous amounts of money when the pandemic kicked off. my theory is simple: how they defined "access" was IMMENSELY profitable. and there's a lot of word-twisting going on here.

[online teaching thread 💜🧵]

i'm going to share some experiments i did this term in online pandemic learning that were oriented toward teaching character over teaching content.

i had great attendance and ALL exams handed in on time, so it worked for me and you can remix it! 2/ the theme of the course was "community-first" and i have other annoying threads about that if you want to know more.

so they were put in teams on Discord and there was an over-arching tripartite structure: writespace, writer's workshop and read-around. 20% / 20% / 20%

[ disability classroom megathread 💛🧵]

this winter i taught an upper-level course in Disability Policy @ UWO.
for beloved community, i made all course lectures & materials FREE online so anyone can take my course!

syllabus + thread of EVERY class: docs.google.com/document/d/1uu… WEEK ONE: ABSOLUTE INTRO TO POLICY IN DISABILITY STUDIES 💛

my facilitation style, disability visibility, policy accessibility and Ontario's AODA.

featuring @SFdirewolf @djnontario Liz Weintraub!

[ online community pedagogy thread 🤍🧵]

hi, i ran a fully-online first year writing course this term and managed to get 70-80% of my class to show up ALL TERM for synchronous sessions.

i'll show you how i did that in this thread.

here's my syllabus: docs.google.com/document/d/1Y1… the theme of the course was "community" and i did a lot of experimenting re: how to engage, evaluate and energize communities to self-care and care for others in a pandemic semester where nobody wants to do that but everybody really needs people who can do that.

promised my disability students i would do a demo on article notation bc i get SO many questions about it.

i can share the demonstration pdf with anyone who doesn't want to to this work.

we take "what's worth highlighting" for granted, bigtime. explaining when & why is hard! 1/ 2/ obviously i'm being a bit comical with some of these examples, but it's fucking hard to sit here and come up with "why i know this is the 'good shit' in this article" -- we develop that over YEARS, not semesters.

then we expect them to intuit these decade-breaking skills. 3/

caremongering in crisis thread 🤍🧵

i've been checking in with a lot of you in beloved community and i think a thread about small, achievable ways to show up for others may help your own valid anxieties, worries and freezing-in-place. let's talk community care inroads: 1/ first, you do not have to be in an active warzone to feel in crisis, disordered, or frazzled. this is not an oppression olympics. your feelings are valid, and you can validate the worries of others by withdrawing comparisons from the conversation. they just want to be heard.

[discord synchronous workshop demo thread 🧵]

back on my bullshit talking about discord + accessible compassionate pedagogy. i have been fine-tuning SYNCHRONOUS STUDENT WORKSHOPS and i'll show you how i pulled it off in pandemic learning. 💜 2/ the screencap above shows the server classroom, with the Voice Channel active on left-panel (me + students), my powerpoint centered in the live feed broadcast, and my video feed + student listeners on the right hand panel. they can see me, my slides, and each other's avatars.