Description:

• Comfy Cozy Community (CCC) teaching and learning is connected to disability justice tenet #9 of COLLECTIVE ACCESS: As brown, black and queer-bodied disabled people, we bring flexibility and creative nuance that go beyond able-bodied/minded normativity, to be in community with each other.

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Prior knowledge reflection:

• How is traditional teaching and learning inaccessible to people of diverse race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability backgrounds?

• What makes a teaching and learning system accessible to all?

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Essential questions:

• How can educators facilitate a built in and automatic collective access classroom proactively supporting a CCC teaching and learning culture of belonging for people of diverse race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability backgrounds?

• How can educators continue to educate themselves and each other to better implement collective access within their classrooms and lives?

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Objectives:

• To identify concrete ways educators can implement collective access for and with multiply marginalized communities within their CCC teaching and learning.

• To name strategies educators can use to continuously learn about collective access for and with multiply marginalized communities.

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Content:

• Autistic, queer, nonbinary, and femme multi-racial Asian American activist and artist, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, describes the future as disabled when disabled people are everywhere with increasing climate change, social injustices, and re-occurring apocalypses predominantly impacting sick, neurodivergent, disabled, transgender, nonbinary, queer, femme, and low to no income BIPOC communities. When all begin to plan for a disabled future where disabled people are cared for, instead of neglected, more will begin to thrive in a world of collective access for all. More will educate themselves and become patient and learn to be in solidarity with all as we need to build systems and a future world where we take care of each other and our planet in order to survive and thrive. To learn more, read The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

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Effective classroom strategies:

• Collective access can take place when facilitating CCC teaching and learning where students and communities of multiply marginalized race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability backgrounds are proactively enmeshed in a community of belonging. Collective access can be supported through a curriculum which showcases contributions from diverse leaders and communities and a pedagogy which is affirming to diverse learners and their communities.

  • For example, educators can ensure classroom supplies, textbooks, and activities are affirming to people of diverse backgrounds through representation and accessibility. Knowledge learned will be applicable to their everyday lives and interests.

• Educators, staff, students, and communities can proactively learn about and teach the criticality of honoring a disabled future of collective access through implementing collective access for and with multiply marginalized communities. Educators can educate themselves and others to center and enact collective access by researching the backgrounds, histories, and cultural practices of their students and communities. Educators can invite students to contribute wisdom from their lived experiences, dynamic perspectives, and diverse communities.

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References:

• Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs. Vancouver: Arsenal Press, 2022.