Description:

• Comfy Cozy Community (CCC) teaching and learning is connected to disability justice tenet #5 of RECOGNIZING WHOLENESS: People have inherent worth outside of commodity relations and capitalist notions of productivity. Each person is full of history and life experience.

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Prior knowledge reflection:

• Who, where, when, what makes you feel most whole, affirmed, and validated for all of you?

• Do K-12 spaces support the wholeness of each person? If yes, how so? If not, how so?

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Essential questions:

• How can educators affirm the wholeness of each student and their communities?

• How can educators continuously educate themselves and others in the pursuit of cultivating spaces which validate the wholeness of each person?

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Objectives:

• To learn the ways in which educators can encourage wholeness, connectedness, and rootedness of all students

• To identify the ways educators can continuously educate themselves and others to cultivate CCC teaching and learning which affirms and validates all.

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Content:

• Within her book, Crip Kinship, queer crip mad Iranian feminist, Shayda Kafai, locates the Sins Invalid led disability justice movement to be rooted in sick, neurodivergent, mad, disabled, transgender, queer, femme, and BIPOC led politics of supporting wholeness through the co-facilitation of crip centric liberated zones which include co-cultivating spaces and cultures nourishing of our whole, interconnected, and interdependent bodyminds. To learn more, read Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai.

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Effective classroom strategies:

• Educators and learners can practice radical self and community learning and love for our wholeness when re-naming our unknown, messy, and imperfect parts of ourselves and each other to be integral to our whole selves constantly changing and evolving. Educators can model this radical vulnerability and share with students this opportunity to discuss self and community learning and love of our whole, messy, and imperfect selves.

• Educators, staff, students, and communities can proactively educate themselves and others to cultivate CCC teaching and learning spaces portraying the wholeness of our communities with diverse race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability backgrounds and cultures featured within classroom decors, curriculum, and pedagogical practices.

  • For example, classrooms can display multiply marginalized wisdom meaning makers and educators can facilitate pedagogies friendly to all bodyminds such as encouraging students to engage in calming corners, fidget toys, comfy sofas, high to low lighting, emotional support plushies supportive of intersectional sick, neurodivergent, and disabled communities.

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References:

• Kafai, Shayda. Crip Kinship. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021.