Finding Space Podcast

EMILY NUSBAUM: I think a lot about and believe very strongly that accessibility is a relational endeavor, and it requires relationships between people, because without relationship, we would not see the need, and without relationship, accessibility becomes the legally mandated accommodations. TRACIE ALLEN: Right. Right. EMILY NUSBAUM: Right? Accessibility goes so far beyond that. TRACIE ALLEN: You're listening to Finding Space, a podcast where UC Berkeley students, educators, and staff from the disability community tell their stories and call the campus community in on acts of advocacy and disability justice. Hey, everyone. I'm Tracie Allen, the Access and Innovation Strategist at Research, Teaching, and Learning. Thank you for listening to Finding Space, a project close to my heart, created to amplify disability justice and reimagine what access, equity, and belonging can look like in higher ed. In today's episode, we're talking about collective access, not as a checklist or a legal requirement, but as something relational, shared, and deeply human. My guest, Emily Nusbaum, is a core instructor in UC Berkeley's Disability Studies minor and teaches the Introduction to Disability Studies course. In her classroom, access isn't something that students quietly request on the side. It's something they co-create together, from shared note taking and open Zoom rooms to rethinking participation and assessment. Emily invites students to help shape the space so more people can say, I actually felt cared for in this class. We'll talk about what collective access looks like in practice, how small shifts like slowing down, sharing responsibility, and naming our own support needs can transform the learning environment and how faculty can start with one simple change tomorrow. So let's dive in. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, there. My name is Tracie Allen, and I'm the Access and Innovation Strategist at the Center for Teaching and Learning. And today, I have Emily here, and I would love for you to introduce yourself and share a little bit about your background. EMILY NUSBAUM: Great. Thanks, Tracie. My name is Emily Nusbaum. I am one of the core instructors in the disability studies minor here at UC Berkeley. I've had the honor and pleasure of teaching in the Disability Studies minor. This is my fifth fall. I teach the one required course in the minor, Introduction to Disability Studies. I got my PhD here at Berkeley in the School of Education in 2009, and in the years before I came here, I held tenure track positions, both large state universities and small private colleges and schools of education. My background is really focused on inclusive access for all learners in K-12 and post-secondary education, and I've previously taught courses related to things like accessible pedagogy, disability centered curriculum development, and preparing K-12 teachers to support all students in general education environments. TRACIE ALLEN: Thank you so much for that introduction. For the listeners who may not be familiar, I would love to hear what you would define as collective access and why you think it's so central to disability justice. EMILY NUSBAUM: I think about collective access as being everything from making sure the physical space is arranged so that everybody can participate in the way that they need, the ways in which everybody in the classroom space can both contribute to better access for everyone, but also really think about their own support needs and the ways that their own support needs as students might be variable over the course of a semester. Related to things like competing priorities with other courses, students who are caregivers for family members, students who have to work, all of those kinds of things that influence students' abilities, and the way those might vary. In my courses here at Berkeley, we center collective access and often spend a week or two at the start of every semester defining what that means for us as a group of learners. And I know that that can be something that's difficult in a really large auditorium setting, in classes that are super full. I teach classes of about 60 to 65 students, and my classes are very disability centered not just in content, but in that a lot of students who identify as disabled or multiply marginalized take my classes. TRACIE ALLEN: What strikes me from what you just shared is that you take two weeks at the beginning of your class to involve the students in that conversation, and it's almost like it's a self-reflection period before you even jump into the curriculum piece. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah, absolutely. And we revisit it, the document we created at the start of the semester to talk about what's working, what's not working, what do we need to rethink. And so, for example, last fall semester, we had to do a lot of work with physical space because I had two students in the class with service animals and I had four students in the class that used large power wheelchairs. And I had another student in the class who needed to be able to sit up against a wall that could support their body. So it was just a discussion about what people's bodies needed in the space, and it was put out there to the whole class. Not that people had to sign up and say, I'm going to do this, but it became a practice in that people who got to the room early, or people who arrived right when class started, just arranged chairs to create the spaces that were necessary. TRACIE ALLEN: Right. So just by having those conversations, you normalized where people are now looking instead of just self needs, they're looking at the outward needs of others. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. TRACIE ALLEN: What I'm hearing is that you're cultivating something, which is what I desire, a campus culture shift within the classroom. EMILY NUSBAUM: Sure, yeah. TRACIE ALLEN: Where we only have so much time in a semester, and so there's a lot of curriculum, but it would be interesting to see that with this embedded in it at the beginning and actually taking the time, because I think it also builds trust. You're building the trust that I can be vulnerable with Emily, because I've told her that this is something that I need. She knows about it, and then I start feeling cared for. It just bleeds out of that, right? EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. That phrase, cared for, is an interesting one. And so when I teach the Intro to Disability Studies in the summer, it's a bit different because international students visiting campus are here, non-matriculated students. But I had a young woman who was here from Pakistan for the summer, and she got COVID as soon as she got here. And even though technically it's an in-person class, one of my access practices is to always have a Zoom room open for accessibility. And when she was feeling up to it during that time, and then when she was still testing positive but better, she attended on Zoom. And she sent me an email after the summer session ended and she said, I've never actually felt cared for by a professor in a class in the way that you sent me emails to remind me that the Zoom space was there. I don't open it up the first week of class until we've had a chance to collectively discuss it, and, as a group, establish the norms for use of the space. I've also had students who have an official remote attendance accommodation, so through the disability services on campus. And so of course, for them, the Zoom space needs to be available so that they can be connected and actively engaged and participating. I will share, though, Tracie, that each of those students that I've had with the official remote attendance accommodation, each of them has told me that I was the only instructor so far during their undergraduate time at Berkeley that actually created that for them. And that otherwise, their accommodation was honored by having instructors record class sessions and then, at home, they watch the recorded sessions. And so I just thought, what tremendous missed opportunity for other students in their courses that never got an opportunity to meet these people and learn from and with them, and what a limited educational experience they had, then, primarily as undergrads at Berkeley, sitting at home alone, watching recorded lectures. TRACIE ALLEN: Right. It's like they lost the richness of being able to interact with others, and it becomes this isolated learning environment, versus an active learning environment where you can actually learn from each other. EMILY NUSBAUM: Absolutely, absolutely. And I would like to also offer the caveat. I'm far from perfect, but I think when we talk about things like collective access, it then lessens the pressure to be, quote, "perfect," which none of us are. And it also means that everybody is a part of it. So if I forget to turn on captions, which I always have captions on on Zoom, students remind me, hey, turn on the captions. I always have either my GSR or one or two students be co-hosts to let people into the Zoom space after class has started. I ask at the beginning of every class for a volunteer to read out the chat, because putting information in the chat is one of the modalities with which students can participate, rather than always having to speak. And so someone always takes responsibility for reading the chat out at regular intervals. I also, at the start of class, ask somebody on Zoom to take our collaborative note taking document and drop it in the chat. So it just becomes-- TRACIE ALLEN: Shared responsibility. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. A sort of habit of shared responsibility. TRACIE ALLEN: Yeah. I love that, because what comes to mind for me is that it kind of breaks down all of that hierarchy within a classroom that students automatically are thinking already, I'm at Berkeley. This faculty member, they're up here and I'm down here. And what you've done is you've brought it so that now it's this collaboration and we're doing it as a team. And so then it almost also relieves all of the pressures that we know faculty members already have, where now you're sharing it with the students. And so they get to interact in that learning and take responsibility, which is what I would think we would want for the future outside of Berkeley, teaching them to care for people in a way that we can work together, and we can produce something way better together than thinking, oh, I'm all on my own having to do this. So I just, I love that environment that you're creating. EMILY NUSBAUM: And like I said, I'm far from perfect. The more time I spend here, the more resources, people resources and technology resources to help support access. Depending on the physical setup of the room and actually the shape of the classroom. I have used an owl camera in the past. So I use a camera that moves around when people in the room are speaking. When students in the room speak, we pass a microphone around. I always teach using a microphone. And again, these are practices that, if I forget on any given day, someone just gives me a reminder. I also have started on either the first or second class, when I'm introducing myself, I have a couple of slides on that slide deck related to what my own access support needs are as someone who identifies as having non-apparent disability. And I think that helps equalize the kind of hierarchy that you're talking about when I model for them what my support needs are and ways that I need feedback and support as the person guiding their learning. TRACIE ALLEN: Yeah, it makes you human. It shows them that you're more than just this professor or instructor or teacher. It now puts it that I'm just like you, a human with needs as well. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. TRACIE ALLEN: Now, the one thing that comes to mind about this is that I love that you have put this into your classroom. What would you say for an instructor who has an auditorium full of hundreds of students where, I mean, I'm sure they're thinking, well, how can I do that? There's too many students. But is there maybe one or two tips that you can think about? Because to me, it's just those small changes that impacts the direction that we go. So even if we think it's not a big deal, it does shift the road. EMILY NUSBAUM: Absolutely. I'm sure that many, many, many faculty do this, and it's a good reminder that whatever you're going to be teaching from in a given class session, whether it's a slide deck or video that you're using, that it's always available to students. I've had students ask me if I can post stuff the day before, and I let them know I can try, but that given my life and my schedule, that what I can guarantee is at least an hour before class, everything's available to them. And it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it really is for students, not just that have that as an accommodation, like access to class notes or slide decks. It's really important and potentially supportive for all kinds of learners. So giving access to slide decks, and again, videos, video clips that you might be teaching from, ensuring those are always captioned, not using any that are not captioned, which can sometimes require people find new content. But super important for accessibility. And because I've never taught an auditorium sized class with hundreds of students, I don't know if this is possible, but I could imagine that those faculty have opportunities to meet with GSIs for the smaller sections. And so even creating opportunity for a couple discussions before and during the semester between a faculty member and GSIs around accessibility practices in those smaller sections, because those smaller sections might be the place where you can build in things like shared note taking, et cetera. And this also brings me to something that I think a lot about and believe very strongly, is that accessibility is a relational endeavor, and it requires relationships between people, because without relationship, we would not see the need. We get caught up in our individual needs, our individual learning, our individual performance in a class. And so that relational space, I also really try to facilitate because without relationship, accessibility becomes the legally mandated accommodations. Accessibility goes so far beyond that. TRACIE ALLEN: I like that. We need to be in connection in order for it to work. EMILY NUSBAUM: Absolutely. TRACIE ALLEN: Yeah. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. TRACIE ALLEN: I'd like to ask, can you share a story from your classroom where collective access really came alive, maybe through student collaboration, creativity, or community support? EMILY NUSBAUM: I don't have participation points on my syllabus because I find that the way that those are crafted are fairly ableist and really privilege certain kinds and ways of being in a class, like the ability to speak, the ability to craft an answer verbally, to have it be robust very quickly when a question gets posed in class, comfort with speaking verbally in a whole group. So I don't have participation points on it, but I do have a graded activity in which students have to rate their own participation and engagement and describe to me what that looks like and what the number of points they should get. If I, say, put 20 points aside for it. And so midway through the semester, we, together, start crafting a document about what participation and engagement looks like. And again, that's something in which I take a back seat. I have student facilitators. I have students working in a Google Doc that's up on a screen. It was a very interesting dialogue I got to listen to, because some students said, you have to speak out loud to the whole group three times during the semester. And then other students were like, what? So as a collective, they kind of negotiated what should the expectations be. And then I actually, as they've gotten to know me, got to pose a question to them. I said, OK. So if you decide that everyone has to speak three times in the semester, I said, do you think that that will appeal to my strengths as an instructor to keep a tally sheet of who's speaking and when? And they kind of laughed because they know that doesn't appeal to my strengths. So anyway, that's another example of how I see collective access emerging, that when I turn it over to them as a group, they're able to sort through and craft a set of standards, so to speak, of what does participation and engagement look like in this space. TRACIE ALLEN: Well, and I think that as you look at everybody's education and what they're used to when you do see participation, there usually is an attachment to, well, you got to speak up. And like you said, that does perpetuate ableism, because we're looking at values of what we think the person who is able-bodied can do, and is whatever is normal. EMILY NUSBAUM: Like what a good student does, right? TRACIE ALLEN: Right. It's more about getting the grade than it is about learning something. Yeah. EMILY NUSBAUM: That's why I talk with them a lot about engagement. And I let them know, I can tell who comes. I know who's in the classroom regularly, who's on the Zoom space. And I said to them, I can also tell who's engaging with our content based on how robust our discussions are and how specific they are. And so I really reinforce throughout the semester, especially tied to my learning outcomes, the ways that engagement and allowing themselves to encounter new ideas and think in new ways and reflect on lived experience, et cetera, is important. And I understand that's not the case for all courses. But in courses where we think about that engagement as being really essential to learning outcomes, I find that there are just all kinds of ways to get more buy in from students, and what that looks like. TRACIE ALLEN: So what do the students share in terms of when you talk about the engagement and what do they say that is, or what does that look like in a classroom? EMILY NUSBAUM: When we started making the document that they'll end up using to self-evaluate at the end of the semester, it talked about having varied opportunities, which I'm sure a lot of instructors do, but really important to keep in mind varied opportunities that are individual, are small group, are whole group. Varied modalities. So not always speaking, using chat. Also, I've learned a lot from some students I've had recently, and it came out of a discussion that was led by a student who is non-speaking and uses a voice output device or an app on an iPad to communicate. And when I met with that student at the start of the course, I said, what can I do differently or better? You've been in a couple sessions with me. What can I do a little differently to facilitate your engagement in the class? And what the student told me was to actually have more pauses, because for them, it has to do with having the time to type, to think about a question or a reflection. Something gets posed, have the time to type an answer. And then we came up with a set of norms to indicate you have a response so that the student could engage in those norms. And I took it back to the class as we were building our collective access practices. What a couple students dropped in the chat, students who were on Zoom, is that they don't speak English as a first language, and that that's actually so important for them as well. So to support engagement, I actually take more pauses now. So if I have a question that I think is really important that I'm posing, I pose it. I set a timer for three minutes, and then I have them turn to someone next to them if they want to, briefly share what they thought about for those three minutes, and then we come back as a whole class. TRACIE ALLEN: Right. So by slowing down, you're able to have that space to be able to self-reflect and come out with more thought into what it is that you're asking. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. TRACIE ALLEN: Yeah. EMILY NUSBAUM: And I talk quickly and I talk a lot, and so that was a good reminder for me just about my own ableist practices. TRACIE ALLEN: We're constantly in this urgency environment. And so it's easy for us to get caught in that. And then before we know, we don't even realize that we're enabling it. EMILY NUSBAUM: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it just really highlighted for me of like, oh, wow, that really is an ableist expectation to pose this question that as the course instructor you think is important and so meaty, and put it out there and then say, what are people's thoughts about that? Like, that's a very ableist expectation to think you're going to get responses like that. TRACIE ALLEN: But that happens all the time. We're in meetings, and they're asking you questions like, hey, tell me what you think. And I've talked to friends who-- they're like, I can't really say at the moment. I need some time to sit and think on this, and then I'll give you some feedback. But we don't leave enough room for that. I like how you recognized and are showing us that you had one student with a disability come to you, and you started slowing down how you talk in your class and giving time for that. And then what came up from that not only did they benefit, but now you have students who are international students who English is a second language, and now they're benefiting, and they're being able to engage more in the class because you've done something for this one student here. And I think that that's something to be a reminder for faculty, is that when you make these changes for students who do have accommodations, that at the end of the day, others will benefit from that. That one small shift changes the trajectory of how this course is going to be running. You know what I mean? And it's easy to say, change your pedagogy. And when you think about it, it's kind of overwhelming. That's why I keep coming back to this one little thing at a time, and eventually, those one little things accumulate to a big shift in your classroom as a whole. EMILY NUSBAUM: Absolutely. I will say, this mention of one little thing, I have spent a lot of time teaching about with teachers and using in my classes the principles of universal design for learning, again, something I'm far from perfect at. But the one thing I started with when I first started learning about universal design for learning and talking with faculty at other universities about it. For me, the one thing I focused on was assessment practices and really returning to the purpose of assessment as not being about the grade, but really thinking about the way assessment should drive instruction. And I think that we sometimes forget that. And so for me, at the time, I went back and reviewed in every course all of my learning outcomes and then looked at graded activities for the course and restructured things to really map graded activities onto learning outcomes very clearly and then also to remove barriers in the ways that students could demonstrate knowledge. For example, I don't require academic writing because I don't have any learning outcomes associated with academic writing. So I allow students to complete different kinds of graded activities in a range of modalities. They could record a video of themselves and submit a transcript. I've had students use creativity, things like letters to themselves, poetry, collage, to demonstrate engagement and learning in the course. And again, we talk about, what would that look like? How can I look at a collage and think that a collage represents a three to five page response to a prompt? And so I share exemplars with students from previous semesters. I share examples of submitted work that kind of miss the mark, and we talk about why. So that's my current practice. And I also really look at the weight of various graded activities, because in looking at formative and summative kinds of assessment, I also don't ever want to have any kind of summative assessment that's weighted so heavily it could really take down the grade of a student who's been present, engaged, and doing good work previously in a semester. TRACIE ALLEN: Right. For instructors who want to start, what's one simple practice that they can bring into their teaching tomorrow that reflects collective access? EMILY NUSBAUM: Shared note taking is a really simple practice that I'm sure a lot of folks use, but building it in and really modeling for students what that looks like. And for me, that means a reminder of, can someone put that in the Zoom chat? Or, if you didn't have a Zoom space open, starting off class with reminding them where the collaboration tool is in your bCourse site. TRACIE ALLEN: So in your bCourse site, you have one place where they collectively put all of their notes? EMILY NUSBAUM: No, I set it up so that in the Collaborations tool on bCourse, so there is a Google Doc for each module. And then within that, it lists the dates of each course session associated with that module. Each document has a reminder at the top-- please use 14 point or larger font for accessibility. And in the past, I've had students with low vision or vision impairment, and they've had specific font type requests. And so if there's ever any font type request, I put it there. Reminder, use this font. And I just give reminders to students. They actually take notes in real time in class in it. TRACIE ALLEN: OK, so then what they can do is, at the end, they just cut and paste, and then they can use that collaboration space where you can put the notes? EMILY NUSBAUM: Yes. TRACIE ALLEN: That's pretty great. Especially if somebody is missing class-- EMILY NUSBAUM: Absolutely-- TRACIE ALLEN: And then they can see from different perspectives what people received in the class in terms of learning what you're teaching on. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. And again, I don't make it-- you don't have to sign up for a date. We talk about the fact that Google Doc contributions in real time are challenging for some people. Like, I visually don't like to work in a Google Doc that has five other people working in it. Because visually, for me, it's too much happening with all the cursors. TRACIE ALLEN: Yeah. EMILY NUSBAUM: Some people are really good at it. So we talk about that. And so what I talk about too, is for some people, this might be really helpful to take notes. And for some of you, it is not. And so it's sort of, again, this collective idea. If it's something that suits you, that helps you, use that to be able to contribute to and support other students. Yeah. TRACIEALLEN: And I mean, we're assuming that a student is doing it in a Google Doc. But for me, I like to do things where I handwrite. But the collaboration space would still work because I could always just take a picture, upload it into that document, and then still be able to share. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. TRACIE ALLEN: So I do like this whole shared model about it becomes not just my individual learning, but it's another student sharing how they're learning. And I think that's wonderful because then you can actually use it as a study as well, where you can review things within that note taking document, and it becomes where it's repeated for you to be able to learn more. Looking ahead, what's your vision for how faculty and universities can deepen their commitment to collective access and disability justice? EMILY NUSBAUM: That's a good question. First, I would like to offer a small caution about universities or institutions and doing the work of "disability justice," quote, unquote. And we talk about this in my class about the difference between the grassroots movement that created the principles of disability justice, versus the academic field of disability studies, versus the history of disability rights and activism. And I really try to think about those as distinct areas that have important connections and each make important contributions. And I want to offer a caution, and it only is because of my deep respect for the scholar activists who developed the principles of disability justice and developed them in the community. They were not developed for institutions. And we talk a lot about these 10 principles in my class, and we talk about the tension of saying we do disability justice work at Berkeley, especially when you think with principles like anti-capitalism, sustainability, et cetera. And what I say to them-- and we actually do this at the end of the semester, we revisit them. And what we try to think about are those spaces where we can truthfully enact those principles and places where we have to acknowledge the tensions. And so I think that that's really important, because I don't want those disability justice principles to become a checklist where people say, we're doing principles one, three, and four, because that's not, quote, "doing disability justice." So I think, as an institution, finding spaces where we can be in community with one another to create the experiences, whatever those are. This podcast. Events, say, at the Disability Cultural Center. But to create these places where we can come together and really envision with those principles. So I think that kind of creation and imagination is so important. And then in terms of collective access, I think that it's just something I would really encourage people to think about, not just faculty and instructors, but really thinking about it in a lot of the spaces where we come together and meeting spaces, et cetera, and really talking about accessibility as highlighting it as something important, because what I found is that often accessibility is very limited by thinking about that individual accommodation. It's often required. It often is the labor of disabled people, mostly marginalized disabled people especially, that have to do the work for accessibility. I say to people all the time, really, that disability is everywhere, and it really is for everybody. And so if we can try to get comfortable with that and think about, what could that mean for me? TRACIE ALLEN: I really like that you brought the caution in about disability justice because for me, I finally really understand that it's not a us thing, all of us are doing it. I think that it starts with us individually, being a part of it. And I think that that's why I think in the disability community, something that always, always shows up is advocacy work. And I think that disability justice is that. It is us advocating for that kind of space, creating that space for people, and including the ones who are within the disability community. It's not just people saying here, this is what you need to do, and then we're going to check mark and we're doing the principles. But it's actually something where you were talking about engagement. It's relational. All of those are included to create that space for students to be able to be in a learning environment, to be able to have independence. Because at the end of the day, if we provide for the needs of others, it empowers them to be able to thrive into a future that they desire. EMILY NUSBAUM: Absolutely. TRACIE ALLEN: Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. I am just honored that you took this much time to be able to be a part of this and to share with other faculty members, and I just, I love that you gave some simple, small little things that they can do that really can help to push us into being an environment that we're cultivating collective access and disability justice. EMILY NUSBAUM: Yeah. Thank you, Tracy. TRACIE ALLEN: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much to Emily for the work she's doing in and beyond the classroom, and for modeling what it looks like to treat access as a shared responsibility rather than a solo task for one instructor or one student. I'm struck by how many of these practices started with one student, one need, or one small change, and then opened the door for more students to engage, feel seen, and feel cared for. From shared notes and open Zoom rooms to access statements on the syllabi, these are concrete practices that any instructor can begin to adapt in their own context. In the show notes, you'll find a sample of Emily's access statement that you can use as an inspiration for your own syllabus. Thank you for listening to Finding Space, where students with disabilities thrive. If this conversation was helpful, please share it with a colleague and continue the work of building classrooms where access, care, and learning are truly collective. Finding Space was produced by Tracy Allen in Research, Teaching, and Learning, or RTL, with production support from Melanie Green, Betsy Greer, Laura Hart, Robert Hold, and Stephanie Mackley in RTL Communications and Media. Our theme song is "Golden Grass" by Blue Dot Sessions. If you're inspired to share your story in a future episode, email us. We're at findingspace@berkeley.edu. Please tune in next time for a brand new episode. [MUSIC PLAYING]