Teachers have an important opportunity to create a space for students that is centered on health, the environment, and the community.
Possible Actions
- Make Your Course Accessible
- Practice Universal Design of Instruction.
- Ensure all pages, documents, and PDFs are legible by a screen reader; by converting with Sensus Access.
- Ensure all videos have captions using automatic and updatable captions in products like Panopto.
- Create an Inclusive Class Environment
- Ask yourself questions, such as, How do my biases and identity impact my instructional design choices?
- Diversify your curriculum, recognizing and supporting varying student identities.
- Build interactivity and flexibility into your delivery and assignments.
- Promote Mental Health
- Work to ensure student’s safety by taking a Trauma-Informed Approach to teaching.
- Refer students to on-campus student support resources.
- Develop sustainability practices, such as relationships, rituals, and reasons to help re-center yourself.
- Support Sustainable Practices
- Reduce use of printed material, utilizing an LMS such as Canvas for syllabi, assignments, and handouts.
- Use a mobile app for polling, such as ABCD Cards.
- Promote curricular sustainability in a variety of disciplines and research areas.
Okanagan Charter
WWU joined the Okanagan Charter to support the wellbeing of every member of the Western community.
The Okanagan Charter, run by the U.S. Health Promoting Campus Network, is an international invitation to colleges and universities to take active steps toward the health of their community, earth, and individual students, faculty, and staff. It proposes centering health—be it mental, emotional, environmental, or otherwise—in policy and decision making within the college or university. Key areas include sustainability, a supportive culture and community, and equitable access.
WWU is dedicated to serving as an example to encourage and spread awareness of healthy actions.
Wellbeing Collaborative
Western also works with the Okanagan Charter through the Wellbeing Collaborative, a collective of faculty, students, and staff that aims at furthering sustainability, ADEI (accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion), a culture of health and wellbeing, and innovative building design.
Resources
Accessibility
- Accessible Online Course Design, Disability Access Center, WWU
- Sensus Access – document conversion tool
- Universal Design of Instruction
- Making Classes Accessible to All Students, Teaching & Learning Cooperative, WWU
- Learn About Accessibility Features, Panopto
- 20 Tips for Teaching an Accessible Online Course, DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology)
Inclusivity
- Creating Inclusive College Classrooms, University of Michigan
- Diversifying the Curriculum, DePaul University
- Heuristic for Inclusive Instructional Design, Teaching & Learning Cooperative, WWU
- How can I be more inclusive? – University of Plymouth
- Inclusive Teaching Toolkit, Teaching Handbook, WWU
Mental Health
- Student Support Resources, Counseling, Health, and Wellness Services, WWU
- Supporting Students Mental Wellbeing: Course Design, University of Waterloo
- A Sustainability Strategy for New Teachers, Edutopia
- Trauma-Informed Teaching, Teaching & Learning Cooperative, WWU
Sustainability
- Curriculum & Research, Sustainability Engagement Institute, WWU
- ABCD Cards, WWU
Feature image: CCBY | Llisole and Gregor Cresnar | Noun Project