Title: Today's instructions and Zoom link
Course: FLO MicroCourse: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Your Syllabus > Section: Friday November 3: Barriers to TI teaching: Personal and Institutional

Final day of the course! Woo hoo!

For our final discussion topic, we will consider some the barriers that may get in the way of approaching teaching with compassion and flexibility.

When I think about the potential barriers that students and teachers may encounter when implementing a TI approach to syllabus creation or teaching in general, I like to break it down into a few different areas.

Individual level, are the personal barriers or reasons that an instructor may find TI teaching challenging.  Things like their position and level of authority in the PSI. Are they regularized / tenured or precariously employed? The amount of experience they have teaching and how the perspectives of their colleagues may influence their teaching practices. Perhaps some are nervous about the amount of extra work this approach to teaching may require.

Institutional level barriers are policies and procedures from the PSI that can get in the way of (or be downright antithetical to) TI teaching. Examples that come to mind here could be: punitive grading or attendance policies (mandatory), use of dated terminology in course titles (we have a course that it still called Women’s Studies as opposed to Gender Studies). At this macro-level we can also think about some of the broader experiences’ students have in post-secondary that can be re-traumatizing such as a lack of visible representation of diversity, inaccessibility including lack of gender-neutral washrooms and gender identification requests on paperwork. The physical layout of the learning environment is also worth thinking about – how much colour, natural light vs fluorescent light, and access to outdoor spaces are on campus?

Cultural level barriers can be the historical norms that PSI and education in general, function under. Some views of education remain hierarchical valuing the teacher as expert knowledge holders. Some educators knowingly or unknowingly find themselves recreating a similar education experience to the one they were put through. Relatedly, the undeniable power dynamics present in PSI certainly present a challenge for student centred teaching.

These are just a few examples that come up for me. I believe that the barriers that present themselves will be unique for each educator at each institution. Additionally, not all of these barriers can be addressed by a TI syllabus, although many can (or at the very least, acknowledging them as barriers within the syllabus).

Today’s forum post asks that you reflect and share a few barriers you may encounter in your development of a TI pedagogy. Please post your thoughts and read and consider responding a co-learner's post.

We will have our final meeting this morning at 10 am PST.

Friday Nov 3: 10 am - 11 am: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89222677640?pwd=OXAxcFBHZW5hTkJ0RWh2SkVpTmZDUT09

BCcampus will be collecting feedback on your experience.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy lives to improve the experience of your learners. You are all doing good and important work.

With gratitude,

Matty