My background facilitating 2S/LGBTQIA+ support spaces, teaching high school, and co-researching with IBPOC, disabled, queer, trans and femme educational advocates informs my current teaching in postsecondary contexts. I see my participatory, arts-based, and dream-mapping approach to research as interconnected with my trauma-informed, creative, and pleasure-oriented approach to teaching. Specifically four principles shape how I design curricula, create my syllabi, generate assignments, assess students, facilitate participation, and connect with local contexts. Those principles are: (1) care, love, and softness are radical acts; (2) resistance goes hand in hand with joy; (3) embodiment supports healing and expanding growth edges; and (4) land is our first teacher.

CARE, LOVE & SOFTNESS ARE RADICAL ACTS: bell hooks reminds us that love is an action that is embodied through care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, and open communication. I listen to hooks and other Black womanists/feminists, Indigenous feminists, and disabled queer and trans of colour femme-inists who define love as a politic that fosters reciprocal relationships, coalitions, being accountable to oneself and communities, and seeing everyone as if they have inherent value. 

Some ways I enact care, love and softness in my instruction includes: (1) asking all students, often and in different ways (e.g., surveys, mid-term class check-ins) about their access needs and adjusting my instruction accordingly; (2) co-constructing a community contract at the beginning of the course; (3) and finding ways for students to share their gifts, by ensuring there are different modes of participation (e.g. speaking sometimes, writing, creating art etc.). In regards to co-creating a community contract, I continue to adapt a community contract activity that invites students to learn about the Dish with One Spoon treaty. Following this, students in my Sexuality, Desire & Disability class are prompted to brainstorm ways to embody values of Sins Invalid’s disability justice principles along the Dish with One Spoon treaty principles in our class. We then discuss our ideas in a larger class, which I later synthesize into a class agreement statement that I post in our course shell. This activity enables students to share accountability for supporting the wellness and growth of everyone in our class to disrupt the idea that learning is an individual activity. 

RESISTANCE GOES HAND IN HAND WITH JOY: Audre Lorde tells us that the erotic–the power that flows out of our innermost desires–is essential to liberation. adrienne maree brown likewise teaches us that pleasure is a radical act of reclaiming joy in the face of ongoing violence. I see schools (both K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions) as a paradoxical site for both violence and liberation. I aim to help students identify and resist logics of the following interlocking oppressive systems: whiteness, cognitive imperialism/coloniality, cisheteropatriarchy, femmephobia, anthropocentrism, sanism, ableism, classism, and capitalism. For example, in my Sexuality, Power & Pleasure intensive course, I get students to do a photo scavenger hunt through Toronto’s Gay Village, where they both reflect on how this can be a site for belonging for some (e.g. white gay men) and exclusive for others. I invite students to pay attention to accessibility, representation in visuals, the language used in signs, and the assumed audience of various buildings. Following this activity, students are then invited to re-imagine the village in a way that would make space for 2S/LGBTQIA+ community members who are not currently well represented. In this activity, I am inviting students to both deconstruct oppressive logics and reconstruct new possibilities, as a practice of hopework. Because I recognize that learning about oppression can generate deep grief, such as that expressed by Nicci, I seek to create as many different opportunities as possible for learners to imagine different futures. 

“I would just like to state again that [Sexuality: Power & Pleasure] was the best course I have ever taken throughout my time at [Toronto Metropolitan University]. After having so many jaded professors (who I am sure are dealing with their own struggles within the institution), I was becoming jaded myself and did not think having such a knowledgeable, passionate, and intentional professor was possible. Beyond the wonderful information that was taught in the course, you have inspired me to rethink the ways I show up as a leader and challenged me to not become discouraged by the broken systems I see around me. I know everyone in our class is better off after having taken this course. Sincerely, I will never forget seeing how much of a difference just one person can make.” – Unsolicited feedback from a student in Sexuality: Power & Pleasure

EMBODIMENT SUPPORTS HEALING AND EXPANDS GROWTH EDGES: Because I see learning about oppression as an emotionally difficult process, I also try to create opportunities for mindfulness, quiet reflection, and mistakes. One way I do this is by integrating grounding exercises in everyday lessons, such as inviting students to close their eyes and do a body scan. I also infuse quiet reflections where students can relate the material to their personal life, but are not going to be asked to share in front of others. I avoid having students share personal reflections about privilege/marginality in front of others because I do not want students from justice-seeking groups to feel they need to use their life as a teaching tool for others. I also do not want privileged students taking up too much space processing emotions like guilt and disbelief. In all my syllabi and introductory classes, I emphasize that we will be critical of systems, but compassionate towards people. I have learned through polyvagal theory that people, especially those who have experienced trauma, are often operating from a perpetual fight, freeze, flight, or fawn state. Discomfort is key to deep learning but it has to be done with embodied considerations. For students who experience oppression in their day to day life, learning about oppression can be retraumatizing if there is no space for them to opt in and out of activities. In comparison, for students with a great deal of privilege, discomfort can lead to some learners going into shut-down, appeasement, or resistance mode. To support a mixed cohort of students learning about oppressive systems, I seek to cultivate embodied safety, or what some trauma specialists call helping people stay in their “window of tolerance,” so learners are not operating from a reactive, shame, or triggered lens. I provide a great deal of resources in my syllabus related to mental health and always tell students to take care of themselves throughout our course. If students say or do something harmful, I also interrupt them and have a private follow-up with them to further unpack their thought process.

LAND IS OUR FIRST TEACHER: Finally, I try to create moments of connection to land in my teaching by inviting students to reflect on what land, water, and non-human animals can teach us. For instance, in various OISE courses I have TA-ed for, instead of doing a generic territory acknowledgement, I take students to a nearby park called Taddle Creek, where I tell them what I have learned about the story of this place from local Indigenous communities: that a creek runs underneath the park and the entire University of Toronto. I explain that this creek represented an important meeting place for the Annishaabe and Haudenosaunee and teach them about the Dish with One Spoon treaty, reflecting on how the story of this buried, polluted creek tells us how this important treaty is not being honoured. In my high school teaching days, I worked collaboratively with Knowledge Keepers to take students out on to the land for a moose hunting trip, a trap line excursion, a photo scavenger hunt to observe wildlife and patterns in nature that related to concepts they were learning about in class, and to create an interactive art installation. Overall, I see teaching as an honour and responsibility that takes seriously love, resistance, joy, healing, embodiment, and connection to humans, the land, waters, and more-than-human world.