{"id":590,"date":"2022-10-11T16:35:02","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T20:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/?p=590"},"modified":"2022-10-12T10:10:10","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T14:10:10","slug":"when-rigor-targets-disabled-students-by-katie-rose-guest-pryal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/teaching\/when-rigor-targets-disabled-students-by-katie-rose-guest-pryal\/","title":{"rendered":"When \u2018Rigor\u2019 Targets Disabled Students By Katie Rose Guest Pryal"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 6, 2022 Chronicle of Higher Education Article<\/a><\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/p>\n

Disabled students make up 19 percent of U.S. undergraduates<\/a>, yet some of our conventional teaching practices make their educational lives needlessly difficult.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to set those practices aside.<\/p>\n

You might not realize how embedded in your teaching some of these habits are, even if you are an excellent and beloved teacher. Many of us cling to unnecessary logistical hurdles because it\u2019s the way we were taught when we were students, and the way we were taught to teach: punitive attendance policies, strict deadlines, suspicion of disability accommodations, refusing to share class recordings and other materials.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t freak out. I\u2019m not saying you should stop taking attendance. I am saying you shouldn\u2019t punish a student for missing class, but rather use absences as a nudge to check on that student\u2019s well-being.<\/p>\n

… Kevin Gannon, an\u00a0advocate for inclusivity<\/a>\u00a0and a historian at Queens University of Charlotte, has argued convincingly that there are\u00a0two kinds of rigor<\/a>, intellectual and logistical. Intellectual rigor challenges students to explore complex ideas and refine their own thinking. Logistical rigor requires adherence to \u201cstrict policies about when and how work is produced and evaluated.\u201d An intellectually difficult course need not be logistically difficult. And it shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

… Jesse Stommel, a writing professor at the University of Denver who specializes in inclusive pedagogy, notes that\u00a0attendance policies<\/a>\u00a0don\u2019t measure students\u2019 motivation or engagement. Instead, he says, attendance functions as a \u201cproxy for the amount of difficulty a student is dealing with in their lives.\u201d That has been my experience over the years since I dropped my punitive attendance policy. All of my persistently absent students have been struggling with physical or mental disabilities: chronic stress, burnout, depression, anxiety, chronic illness, addiction, and more.\u00a0All of them.<\/i><\/p>\n

… If want to teach your students about deadlines in the real world, you must also teach your students how to ask for extensions. As Sarah J. Schendel, an academic-support specialist at Suffolk University Law School,\u00a0points out<\/a>, \u201cAddressing extensions is not about anticipating failure [or] dismissing the importance of deadlines.\u201d Instead, she says, these discussions nudge students to \u201cexplicitly examine what it will take to meet the deadline and whether they have frankly assessed both their skill and preparation.\u201d<\/p>\n

…As professors, we can choose to trust our students and have faith in them. Doing so will not dilute the intellectual richness of our classes. On the contrary, it will allow all of our students \u2014 including our disabled students \u2014 to experience, and contribute to, that richness.<\/p>\n

Toxic rigor and accessibility cannot coexist. Accessibility demands compassion, trust, and understanding, qualities that are anathema to toxic rigor. Until we prune toxic rigor from our pedagogy, disabled students will bear a heavy burden to soothe professors\u2019 need for control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 6, 2022 Chronicle of Higher Education Article Excerpt: Disabled students make up 19 percent of U.S. undergraduates, yet some of our conventional teaching practices make their educational lives needlessly difficult. It\u2019s time to set those practices aside. You might not realize how embedded in your teaching some of these habits are, even if you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-teaching"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kathryn Byrnes","author_link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/author\/kbyrnes\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}