Today, as part of PRIDE week at my institution, many offices and many people worked hard to bring Meg Day, a disabilities poet, to campus. While the poetry reading is tonight at 6pm, I finagled an invitation to their classroom visit as I wouldn’t be able to attend the poetry reading tonight.
During this classroom-discussion, the ideas of co-creating spaces, and welcoming and inviting others into the co-creation, as well as ideas of presence, were themes throughout the prepared remarks, and the amazing Q&A that followed. From the very beginning, Day demonstrated inclusivity and accessibility through language – calling people who asked questions neighbors in their inquiries, inviting attendees to use the space in ways they needed.
As an online educator, the connections to and through presence resonated with me. While critiquing the medical ‘fixing’ of deafness with cochlear implants, and critiquing the denigration of linguistic heritage by prohibiting ASL in some school spaces, Day continuously referenced spaces and bodies, how people actively make presence in spaces, and then actively make presence for values and ways of knowing that carry meaning.
I began thinking about presence in online spaces – when done well – and the equitable access it can provide to so many conversations. Toward the beginning of their talk, Day mentioned the value of digital publications of poems, how students can be assigned AND access poems that have been digitally published. While in academia there is still a faction of faculty who overvalue print publications, the digital publications increase access and accessibility.
When integrated in meaningful ways to the curriculum, digital publications more effectively invite students to develop a presence and share ideas within the digital space surrounding the reading – from poems, to great works of literature, to articles on gaming, to data sets and lab reports. The fostering of presence development and play in support of idea sharing should be fundamental to online classrooms (and face-to-face classrooms). But, I don’t think it is. And I don’t want to point the finger at anyone, because, is that co-creation of space what students expect, what faculty were trained to do?
Given the tools I have access to – and I’m an OER adopter, many materials are already digital – can the tools be used to foster co-creation of presence and then learning? How much tool scaffolding would be required to support student understanding how to co-create so they can use the co-creation to support their learning needs?
Even in face-to-face classrooms, do students expect to co-create? This heavily shifts the work a student must do during the class period – is anyone ready for that to be the norm! How do we shift education culture so that level of presence fostering is expected in curricular development, and that level of presence building is expected by students? What are the possibilities for inclusion and equity AND learning?
All I really have now are questions and ideas. But I feel if we don’t start asking them as a larger educator community, we’ll continue down a path that isn’t inclusive, that isn’t as supportive as it could be.
Day delivered such an inspiring talk. When you have the chance, consider how you co-create spaces with those around you. Celebrate your linguistic heritage, and make space for the amazing linguistic diversity that exists within this country.
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