Description:

• Comfy Cozy Community (CCC) teaching and learning is connected to disability justice tenet #10 of COLLECTIVE LIBERATION: No body or mind can be left behind – only moving together can we accomplish the revolution we require.

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Prior knowledge reflection:

• How do schools forget or push out certain students and communities within our own lives?

• How and why do everyday people forget or push out certain people and communities within our own lives?

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Essential questions:

• How can CCC teaching and learning ensure students and communities are not left behind, pushed out, and/or forgotten?

• How can educators continuously educate themselves and each other in co-creating CCC teaching and learning spaces where all are taken care of, instead of pushed out and/or forgotten?

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Objectives:

• Naming ways educators can cultivate CCC teaching and learning spaces where students and communities are not left behind, pushed out, and/or forgotten.

• Identifying ways educators can continuously educate themselves and each other in co-creating CCC teaching and learning spaces attentive to and affirming of all students and communities, especially those multiply marginalized.

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Content:

• Anti-ableism, resisting systemic discrimination against disabled people, is intricately connected to anti-capitalism, resisting systemic discrimination which keeps the masses over-worked, under-worked, poor and/or in destructive consumerist cultures which disregard the wholeness and interconnectedness of our bodyminds to ourselves, each other, and nature. Black disabled scholar-activist, TL Lewis, describes ableism as “a system of assigning value to people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This systemic oppression that leads to people and society determining people's value based on their culture, age, language, appearance, religion, birth or living place, "health/wellness", and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce, "excel" and "behave." You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism. working definition by @TalilaLewis, updated January 2022, developed in community with disabled Black/negatively racialized folk, especially @NotThreeFifths. Read more: bit.ly/ableism2022.” To support a CCC teaching and learning space, educators are to enact an anti-ableist praxis ensuring all students and communities feel welcome and belonging and are not left behind in their classroom through affirming and validating representation of multiply marginalized communities within curriculums and through facilitating a pedagogy attentive to diverse learners. To learn more, read TL Lewis.

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Effective classroom strategies:

• Educators, staff, students, and community members can co-create anti-ableist CCC teaching and learning spaces which ensure students and communities are not left behind through the learning, teaching, and enactment of how there is no superior to inferior hierarchies of bodyminds. The respect and dignity of each student and community are centered through affirming curriculum representation and pedagogies validating the diverse learning styles of each student. Pedagogies include ensuring student communities and interests are represented with a variety of kinesthetic, art, nature, and more learning activities outside of and/or complementing traditional reading, writing, math, and science procedure based learning activities.

• Educators can continuously educate themselves in cultivating a CCC teaching and learning space through researching, teaching, and enacting proactive anti-ableist practices led by multiply marginalized disabled wisdom meaning makers such as TL Lewis.

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References:

• Lewis, TL. The Birth of Resistance: Courageous Dreams, Powerful Nobodies, & Revolutionary Madness. In Wong, Alice (Ed.) Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People. San Francisco: Disability Visibility, 2017.