Partnering with Students with Disabilities
Fridays, October 14 to November 4, 9:00-10:00, on Zoom.
In 2017, the faculty seminar “Disability, Accommodation, and Universal Design” (reading list available on this page) was the site of important conversations about accessible teaching in the Writing Program. In the wake of a global pandemic that has brought issues of illness, trauma, and accommodation in higher ed to the forefront, we feel an urgency to continue those conversations this fall in a seminar titled “Partnering with Students with Disabilities.” We’ll begin where the last seminar ended, with an overview of BU’s disability and access resources and Universal Design for Learning, but our intention for this seminar is to go further. In light of new scholarship in disability studies and inclusive pedagogy, we’ll explore the potential for improving our teaching practices; we will also address the limitations inherent in higher ed’s typical approach to accessible pedagogy. The stresses of the ongoing pandemic have revealed breaking points in the system, both in terms of the pervasive ableism encountered by students and in terms of the seemingly unending labor and sacrifice demanded of instructors—many of whom are disabled and/or traumatized themselves. How can we best work with our students to meet their diverse learning needs? How can we determine the limits of accommodation individual instructors can reasonably offer, taking into account our curricular requirements, institutional context, and the boundaries we should be setting around our own labor?
Session 1: Setting the Stage: Universal Design and Disability & Access Services
Session 2: Being Disabled in Academia
Rowlands, “‘Dismissive’ and ‘unempathetic’: Students claim unjust treatment from BU Disability and Access Services director Lorre Wolf” (Daily Free Press, Jan 2022)
Finesilver et al, “Invisible Disability, Unacknowledged Diversity” (from Ableism in Academia, 2020; 15 pages) JSTOR link (open access)
Supiano, “The Attendance Conundrum” (Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan 2022)
Hassell, “To Be There or Not to Be There” (Blog post, Dec 2018)
(OPTIONAL/RECOMMENDED) Dolmage, “Disability Studies Pedagogy, Usability and Universal Design.” (Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 4, 2005)
(OPTIONAL/RECOMMENDED) Wood, “Cripping Time in the College Composition Classroom” (CCC, vol. 69, no. 2, 2017) JSTOR link (BU login required)
Session 3: Navigating Institutions in the New Normal
- Krebs, “A sour taste of sick chronicity: pandemic time and the violence of “returning to normal”” (2022; 6 pages)
- Furst, “Universities Have Returned in Person, But Some Disabled Students Don’t Want to Go Back” (Wall Street Journal, May 2022)
- Berg and Seeber, “Pedagogy and Pleasure” (from The Slow Professor, 2016; 19 pages) EBSCO link (BU login required)
- Vidra, “Quiet Quitting Isn’t the Solution for Burnout” (Inside Higher Ed, Aug 2022)
- (OPTIONAL/RECOMMENDED) Culbert, “When This Is All Over, Keep Recording Your Lectures” (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 2021)
Session 4: Trauma-Informed Pedagogy
- A trio of recent pieces from Inside Higher Ed:
- Carrasco, “Variants Fuel Decline in Student Mental Health” (Jan 2022)
- Sarraf, “Beyond Gatekeepers” (Oct 2021)
- Warner, “Doing More Will Not Solve the Mental Health Crisis” (April 2021)
- Kent, “Trauma-Informed Practices in the Age of COVID-19” (BU Lightning Talk, 2020)
- Day, Trauma-Informed Approach to Writing Pedagogy, pp. 3-32 (2019, 30 pages; PDF will be provided to registered participants)
- (OPTIONAL/RECOMMENDED) Lipsom et al, The Role of Faculty in Student Mental Health (BU School of Public Health Report, 2022)
- (OPTIONAL/RECOMMENDED) “Difficult Knowledges, Trauma Informed Pedagogy and Safe-ish Spaces” (panel discussion at UC Berkeley, 2019; scroll down to “Recommendations for Instructors” and this set of takeaways)
