There is an emerging emphasis on “community” in post-secondary education, with increased attention to community-engaged learning and fostering community in the classroom. However, not all students can access these versions of “community” or feel welcome in them. In particular, individualized approaches to mental health on campus that send Mad students away from community to receive treatment services and academic accommodations suggest to these students that they are not wanted in our learning “communities” as currently envisioned.
This presentation will highlight the intentional peer support community that Mad students at McMaster have been hanging out and creating since 2012, thanks to hundreds of years ofmental patient social movement organizing. In this crazy sub-community, values of accessibility, creativity, reciprocity, friendship, consent, and privacy offer different possibilities for connection and learning than traditionally found in the classroom. The co-curricular learning that occurs in the Hamilton Mad Students Collective helps protect students from inaccessible and sanist classrooms and curricula. But what if some of this community creativity spilled over into the rational/“professional” spaces of academia?
Drawing on our collective experiences as classroom and community educators, Mad(ness) Studies and Social Work Pedagogy researchers, service users, and students, this presentation will explore how neglected and subversive “fun” can open up possibilities for education. We will share how Fun Parties, blanket forts, and craftivist hallway decorations instigated by Mad students offer new ways of relating – to ourselves, to each other, to spaces, to social justice work, to academia – in the School of Social Work at McMaster University.
This short paper will address the impact of violence in the lives of students and how it affects their learning, their sense of academic potential and vision for their future. Session participants will be invited to engage with how we as teachers and administrators can collaborate to create learning environments that are responsive and flexible in addressing students' diverse learning needs.
Over the past two decases there has been an increased commitment to create safe university and college campuses and to address issues of violence in intimate or dating relationships. Yet little has been done proactively to acknowledge and address the needs of students who have experienced violence in their home. Women students and those who identify as LGBTTQ are particualrly affected by the trauma of violence in their lives. They are often not able to concentrate, complete assignments, feel confident or engage in class or co-curricular activities
Teachers are often the first people students share their experience with, yet we are not trained to response to such trauma. Responding to the harm and violence in students' lives is critical to the success of our increasingly diverse student populations - it's a new dimension to our roles in cultivating a welcoming and comprehensive learning community.
