There were many “firsts” this past May 2022 at the Centre for Teaching and Learning’s annual Festival of Teaching and Learning (FoTL). The most never-before-been-done of which, perhaps, was our decision to forego bringing in an external Keynote Speaker to anchor and undergird this year’s festival and to instead give over that oh-so-hallowed stage to none other than our very own University of Alberta students.
Led by bell hooks’ call “to imagine ways that teaching and the learning experience could be different” when facing the stress and apathy of systemic oppression in higher education, we imagined something different with the FoTL Keynote this year. Through the lens of Accommodation and Proactive Design in teaching and learning, we hosted two Keynote Conversations, to open and close this year’s Festival, by our very own U of A students who chose us, chose to study with us, chose to come here and live and grow and stay with us for this step on their journeys as young professionals and as brilliant leaders.
It was an incredible experience to listen-in on these robust, raw, authentic and truly powerful conversations our students were having in real time and right in front of the U of A teaching and learning community. I myself am humbled and grateful that our students so generously gifted us their time, their stories, their lived experiences and (true to FoTL 2022’s theme) their own (re)imaginings of post-pandemic pedagogies here at the U of A.
Toward active and empathetic listening, so that we could meaningfully engage our students to learn about their contexts, learning experiences and ideas as well as to centre their voices as active agents within the U of A teaching and learning community, we did not record these conversations on Zoom. A promise was made, however, that there would be a “reflective debrief report” (of sorts) capturing the spirit, energy, and wisdom of these conversations. On our CTL website, you will now find my CTL Executive Director’s Reflective Debrief Report - Student Keynote Conversations: “Accommodation and Proactive Design” as part of our FoTL 2022 archives. This report is my attempt to capture, to honour and to share back out with the U of A community what our students so wonderfully and powerfully gave to us.
I furiously scribbled down every word, every gem, all the energy and gusto I could from our students as they spoke with each other. I have identified the twelve questions that guided conversations with our students, and to make my 25-pages of notes reader-friendly and (I hope) accessible and useful to our U of A community, I have two nested “blurbs” under each question. The first, Tommy’s “10-second Takeaways” from Our Students, is a quick but not exhaustive high-level overview/abstract of the more robust conversation that our students engaged in at the festival; the second, More Insights from Our Students, is a deeper exploration with more nuance, more examples, and more reflections from our students. In the More Insights subsections I have attempted as best I can to capture our students’ authentic voices and to re-create the incredible energy and spirit of these conversations our students held for us.
A desired outcome of the first-ever Student Keynote Conversations at this year’s FoTL was that we as a community, in re-imagining our post-pandemic pedagogies at the U of A, can work toward more proactive design in our teaching and learning with our real students' voices in mind. I invite you now, dear readers, to (re)visit and to (re)engage in this as active readers now embracing the gift that our U of A students gave to us by way of their time, their lived experiences across a variety of our classrooms, and these conversations they held. And I encourage you to do this through active and empathetic reading, with curiosity and with an open mind, and as a partner in our continued learning, unlearning, and relearning as the U of A community.
About Tommy
Tommy Mayberry (he/she/they) is a raced-white, queer and trans-, settler-scholar and academic drag queen, and they are the executive director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning. Tommy grew up on the Haldimand Tract in what is now called southwestern Ontario and is the partner of experimental digital media artist Tommy Bourque (yes, together they're "The Tommies"). Their family is complete with their soon-to-be 17-year-old Pekingese Chihuahua, Sam.