Episode 50- Trauma-Informed Accessible Pedagogy
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:33 Welcome to episode fifty. Fifty, wow, I’m not sure how that happened, but here we are. I suppose that I should be doing some sort of, I don’t know, grandiose thing for the fiftieth episode and well I had a plan about doing the first episode in January to be something like “how to start your semester well”. And honestly, I scraped that idea pretty quickly after the new year because well. And I know this is a podcast so you can’t see the hand gestures that I’m making, but think about me doing this sort of sweeping hand gesture that kind of resembles a gesture for all this meaning the world.
1:17 Because the world right now, well it’s hurting. People are hurting. And yes you will see many of those types of memes that kind of speak to sort of “I can’t believe that I still need to work through the apocalypse”. Or a Venn diagram that has like the Apocalypse on one side and Capitalism on the other and in the overlap it says us or we are here.
1:43 I know that so many folk are looking for things to support their wellness right now and they probably don’t want yet another space that reminds them of how things are pretty not great in different areas. But if you’re expecting a gloss over of the realities of the world from me, then you probably don’t know me very well.
2:03 So today for my fiftieth episode I’m going cover something that I’ve spoken about many times in the podcast, but also in my blog which is trauma-informed pedagogy, and the importance of being trauma-aware right now and trauma-informed, which are different things, and how this can support an inclusive and accessible pedagogy.
2:24 I will use some of the SAMHSA (Substance Abust and Mental Health Services Administration) principles of trauma-informed pedagogy which I will link to in the episode page and discuss what this could look like in your educational spaces in an accessible way. And though there are 6 SAMHSA principles I will collapse or reframe some of those to make them more applicable to your different pedagogical contexts. This is where I note that I will probably reference things in this episode such as war or assault, events that cause trauma and so this is where you can decide if you have the space to listen to an episode that mentions these things right now.
3:04 So before I get to the principles I think it’s important to frame here what it is that I’m talking about when I’m talking about trauma-informed and it’s not an ask for educators to be counsellors or therapists. Counsellors and therapists exist and they do an important work and it’s important to know the scope of their work. In a pedagogical space being trauma-informed starts with first being trauma aware. And being trauma aware is being aware and acknowledging that there are learners, staff, and peers who may have experienced trauma or continue to experience trauma and that can impact the ways that they can engage in our educational spaces. Trauma can be an experience that is singular or continual in nature and that can impact physicality, emotions, so on. And I’ll link to a few definitions and websites on the episode page as well.
3:58 And finally before I get to the principles I think it is very important to do a bit of positionality framing for folk so that they know why it is that I am and can talk about this. I’ve had a pretty rewarding teaching and educational career so far and one of the most rewarding experiences for me was when I taught in the Assaulted Women and Children Counsellor Advocate (AWCCA) program at George Brown. This was a feminist, anti-racist, intersectional, and trauma-informed program. All of the inclusive pedagogy and accessible pedagogy that I support in the work that I do now, is still very much informed by my experience in AWCCA. Unfortunately, the College has suspended this program due to budget cuts, but I will tell anyone who will listen to me that space really defined who I am pedagogically.
4:46 As you can see a lot of the framing that I’ve done here to get to the topic of the episode, is actually part of being aware of the need for this framing when you explore a topic like this. And though these are meant to be shorter episodes, and this one will probably be a little bit longer, it’s important to still be aware of what those who are engaging with this topic are doing and this episode needs to do that kind of work before getting to the principles.
5:12 So principle One Trust. I’ve talked a fair bit about trust in this podcast like in episode 18 which I will link to again on the episode page. Trust is an incredibly difficult thing in 2026. Especially when a lot of what we are encountering out there raises suspicions about whether or not the information that we’re receiving is trust worthy. The main thing to think about in terms of trust is that building trust in educational spaces is not one and done work. It requires showing up for learners and your peers in a way that one comes to expect a certain kind of praxis from you. Like the framing that I’ve done here in this episode so far, those who know me know that this is exactly the way that I would approach a topic like trauma.
5:57 There are so many places in educational spaces where trust can be eroded. We can see that erosion in policies that are not supportive of learning or learners. We can see that erosion in a lack of support for folk in different places. What building trust will look like for you will be very individualized, but there are probably some pedagogically contextual things you can do. One is being transparent with your course policies. The other is being clear in your communication with others. Trust doesn’t mean that you have to be on all the time 24/7, in fact what it can mean is honesty around capabilities and capacities, and if you can’t do a thing that for whatever reason. You will build more trust with learners and peers if you can be aware of your own needs and not just say yes to everything, or pretend to say yes to everything, and be conscious of what saying yes can do and implies for you as an educator or a staff member.
6:56 Principle Two Choice and Empowerment. Providing opportunities for different choices such as different topics for assignments, or different modalities in the ways that students can demonstrate their knowledge of learning is trauma-informed. This gives learners an opportunity to feel empowered in their choices and the decision making that they’re making, and you may remember this exact thing being framed in Universal Design for Learning principles in the engagement principles section. We’ve talked a lot about choice in this podcast in terms of assessment design, so the more reflection about opportunities that you build in the more meaningful choice pedagogy will have, and the more accessible it will be as well.
7:40 Principle Three Collaboration and Connection. Another principle that supports accessibility in a trauma-informed way is being very meaningful in the ways that you plan and design for collaboration opportunities and connection spaces. We talked about this in episode 19 on accessible group work, which I will also link in the episode page, but meaningful collaboration opportunities are often scaffolded across the course or task, and they have open lines of communication in terms of what can happen if someone simply cannot do collaborative work on a certain day. That scaffolding can look something like starting off folk in pairs and then moving to groups of four and then larger. And that’s a really nice accessible and trauma-informed way of doing that sort of group work scaffolding.
8:28 This is also where the trauma-aware piece needs to come in before the trauma-informed piece. So knowing about what’s going on and building the trust so that you can have the conversations with the learners openly about capacity to connect in different ways because of what can be going on is important. So maybe a close friend or family member has passed away, maybe there is socio-political strife happening in their home country, maybe their a chronic illness there’s a bad flare this week. Having the trust and choice built into the course can open opportunities for the learners to engage in ways that they can with all that’s going on for them. So collaboration and connection is not just about the learners connecting with each other in the course but also the learners can connect with you as the instructor.
9:16 And this leads to principle Four which is safety. I’ve talked a lot about safety a fair bit in the podcast and also on my blog, but the main point is that we simply cannot go around saying “this is a safe space” and take that as a given for everyone. You have no way of ever knowing if a space feels safe for someone, and that feeling of safety can also depend on day to day events of what’s happening. You can do your best no ensure that your space makes things feel safe, and to frame things with care and have different ways for folk to meaningfully engage, but there’s no way to ever know for sure that a space is safe for them to speak, to work, or simply to be. So safety is an important trauma-informed principle, and it’s important in an accessible pedagogy point of view as well because we can’t just say that a place is safe and then make it so like Jean-Luc Picard.
10:18 Finally Five Socio-Cultural and Socio-Historical Awareness. This is incredibly important and probably the most lacking in different educational spaces. The best way to describe how to become more trauma-aware in relation to this is to remember that so many folks don’t know what they don’t know. And a movement towards a more trauma-informed pedagogy means trying to find out what you don’t know in terms of keeping informed. I have talked a lot about how folk sometimes tend to do a bit of ostriching about what’s happening in the world because that is their way of protecting themselves. And yes knowing what you need to support yourself is incredibly important, and that goes to what I talked about in principles two and four above.
11:04 But a lot of people who are engaging in our educational spaces do not have the privilege of ostriching. The Farsi word for ostrich is shotormorgh, which literally means camel chicken. And when I think of the symbolism of shotormorgh I remember that it’s important to be aware that folk may have been carrying maybe so much for so long, and some days will be harder than others. And depending on what is going on for folk they may want or need things that don’t activate them further. Kindness can go a long way, not just right now, but always. And you can read Cate Denial’s book, and I’ll link that in the show notes as well. What seems to be areally big deal for you might be incredibly inconsequential to someone else who has not heard from family in days for example. So a trauma-aware and trauma-informed approach way is, like many of discussions that we’ve had about accessible pedagogy, is to keep informed as much as you can, but also understand that you may never understand, and that is okay, you can certainly empathize and demonstrate that empathy in different ways however.
12:18 So that’s it, that’s episode 50 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of trauma-informed pedagogical strategies that support accessibility and inclusion. These strategies are very important at a time where so many learners and staff are experiencing events that deeply impact their ability to engage or participate in educational spaces, spaces that reinforce normative ways of engaging and do not take into account what’s going on in the world.
12:24 Remember as well that I want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So, if there’s anything that I mentioned here in a more holistic way in the ways that you’re doing your work, please ask.
12:57 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I’ll try to include as many of these suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 50 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Azadi. Azadi.