Today, guest speakers Tracy Humphreys and Kaori Lau spoke with a class about the importance of providing equitable access to education to students with disabilities and to complex learners. Tracy gave us an example using sticky notes, where the colour of the sticky note we were given determined whether or not we would be able to be accommodated in the class or not. students with sticky notes that were not pink were less accommodated. I think this was a really good example to show how often, the pressures of the school system cause students needs to be overlooked.

We talked about how education is a colonial system at its heart, and that it is important that we as teachers are ensuring that the classrooms we teach do not perpetuate any discrimination against students based on their race, gender, native language or ability.

One thing that I found really interesting was Tracy’s use of a Zoom microphone which provided close captions for her as she spoke which we could read on the projector screen. This was something i hadn’t seen before and I was really intrigued by it and would be interested in being able to implement the same technology in my classrooms. I am wondering if this could also have a translation function for international students or students without a strong handle on the English language, because this is something that I have been very interested in recently.

Photo from Unicef

We talked about the importance of removing barriers to education and how technology can play a part in making education more accessible to students of different abilities as well as the importance of reading students IEPs and getting to know them and their needs on a personal level.

My take-away from this discussion is that all though there are many pressures placed on teachers that can make it easy to overlook the needs of some students, it is important that we remain committed to making our lessons accessible to all students by incorporating elements of a universal design for learning (UDL) and by paying specific attention to the needs of all students. Technology can help to facilitate this and there are various strategies that can be implemented in order to support teachers as they work to dismantle barriers to education.