Equity Roundtable: Inclusivity, Mental Health, and the Pedagogy of Care

Facilitator: Kosha Bramesfeld, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Social Psychology,  Psychology Department, University of Toronto Scarborough

Student co-presenters:
Anuijan Chandran
Ilakkiah Chandran
Aiman Moeen
Maduomethaa Pathmaraj
Denise Silva

As Maha Bali (2015) has noted, “Sometimes, the most valuable thing we can offer our students is genuine care for them, their well-being, their happiness. Not just their grades. Not just their learning. But their whole selves.” 

In this Equity Roundtable discussion, Kosha Bramesfeld and undergraduate student members of the Authentic Learning Lab (ALL) will engage roundtable participants in a discussion about the intersection between inclusivity, mental health, and the pedagogy of care. In the process, we will ask participants to ponder the answers to questions like:

• What can we do to ensure that students from a variety of backgrounds see themselves as valued, accepted, and celebrated members of a discipline?
• What can we do to create classroom environments in which students feel as if they can bring their whole selves into the learning space?
• What can we do to acknowledge that students have lives and pressures outside of the classroom, and to recognize, honour, and accommodate these complexities?
• How do we recognize, honour, and accommodate the complexities of students’ lives, while also instilling in students a sense of independence, responsibility, and consequences?
• What can we do as educators to offer students care, accommodation, and referrals without sacrificing our own sense of self, identity, boundaries, mental health, and well-being in the process?