Preface

I’d like to begin this guide with a story about my father. My dad was born in 1944. He had a lot of adverse childhood experiences. In school, he constantly talked back, daydreamed, questioned everything, and refused to do any work that he didn’t want to do. One of his report cards from Grade 1 complains that he was failing reading because he refused to do the work, and instead just read his own book in the back of the class.

In high school, his guidance counsellor suggested that he switch from the academic stream to the technical school stream so he could go into trades. He agreed. However, my grandmother had spent her life working in mining camps and sawmills and knew that her son did not have an aptitude for the trades. She marched him back into the guidance counsellor’s office and demanded he be put back into the academic stream.

My dad graduated but did not have impressive grades. Still, he was able to sign up to attend the University of British Columbia. Today,  in order to be accepted to UBC’s website states that applicants must have an average of at least 70% (n.d.), but  for high school for the 2022-2023 school year, “the mean grade range of all courses completed in grade 12 for successful undergraduate applicants was 89–91 per cent at UBC Vancouver” (Janmohamed & Gaster, 2023, para. 7). Here, his trajectory changed. He enjoyed his classes and finally understood the “why” of what he was studying. Teachers embraced his questioning and debating, and he got involved in politics.

After almost missing the telegram that said he got into law school because he was going to Woodstock, my dad entered law school and became a lawyer. There’s no doubt he faced adverse experiences along the way. He lived in basement suites that were covered with mould. He worked as a sanitation worker in Stanley Park and drove a tugboat. At one point, he made friends with the zookeepers who took care of the bears in the Stanley Park Zoo and traded them for the industrial tins of salmon that the bears ate. He lived on that when he experienced food insecurity.

Still, housing was cheap in 1960s Vancouver, and he could easily pay his tuition by working in the summers. He still struggled with things like making appointments, paying parking tickets, etc. However, once he started working as a lawyer that didn’t matter. He had a brilliant legal secretary who coordinated his schedule and made sure the bills got paid. When he married my mom, he had someone to take care of his household tasks. He didn’t have to cook, clean, book his own doctor’s appointments, etc.

My dad was therefore able to use his gifts to focus on being an excellent lawyer. He helped others: often doing pro bono work and not worrying about making money. He did a lot of political advocacy around helmet laws for motorcyclists. He was eventually awarded a Queen’s Counsel designation.

So why am I telling you a story of my White, wealthy father who isn’t disabled? Because my father has the kind of life story that is often leveraged against disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent students. He had a tough childhood and underwent hardship to get his education. If he, a first-generation child of a single mother who worked in sawmills could make it, what excuse do the rest of us have?

Upon closer inspection, however, my dad’s story shows several features that are important to this book:

• My dad’s grades in school did not test his competence but his compliance and his ability to act in typical ways. However, once he understood the “why” of his education and had teachers who engaged him, he was able to excel. In fact, the very things he was criticized for doing (reading during class, arguing with teachers) actually helped him become an excellent lawyer.
• If my dad were applying with his grade point average to UBC now, he would not have been admitted despite being an excellent student when he got there. He also was able to take advantage of a cheap housing market and cheap tuition. The room for error for today’s students is smaller than it’s ever been.
• My dad struggles with executive functioning, but because of his profession and because he was able to become a high-income earner with a stay-at-home spouse, these struggles were accommodated. These things intersect with his race and gender.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is about designing to the margins: meeting the needs of the most vulnerable students first. This resource aggressively centres the experiences and voices of disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill students. It takes the stance that even if UDL did not offer a single benefit to typical and abled students, it would still be worth doing. Disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent students deserve access to education. The world needs their knowledge. Our universities are better for their presence.

And yet, often instructors see accommodation as a special privilege rather than a right. Many universities require a formal diagnosis (and a lot of hoop jumping) to even access accommodations. Accommodations are for disabled people, many believe.

However, there is no clear line between “disabled” and “abled.” People can slide in and out of that category throughout their life. Having a diagnosis is also a privilege. Some diagnoses cost thousands of dollars to be assessed. Others are considered rare, and doctors are reluctant to look for them. Many neurodivergent people go through their whole lives not knowing that their struggles are because of neurodivergence. In our study we found that many of the students who we interviewed received an ADHD diagnosis early into their university career when the workarounds and “hacks” that allowed them to thrive in high school no longer work. What if they didn’t have to fail before getting a diagnosis?

However, my dad’s story also shows that we all receive accommodations depending on our privilege and support networks. Many of us have our accommodations baked into society, so we don’t see them. For example, my dad’s executive functioning challenges were accommodated by being able to have a stay-at-home spouse and legal assistant. Some of our accommodations are met by our family and friends. A student who lives with their parents and gets their meals cooked for them and their laundry done will have a different experience than a student living alone for the first time. A student who breaks a leg or develops a bad case of mono and misses some classes might get notes from another student.

The higher education system also provides accommodations to some brains and bodies over others. If your brain allows you to memorize well, you will likely do well on tests, even if you forget that information the minute you walk out the door. If you’re confident and gregarious, you will likely thrive in group projects, even if you don’t understand the material well.

UDL asks us to make these accommodations visible and think about how we can structure our classes and our institutions to meet the needs of a greater range of students. It asks us to attempt to give everyone the accommodations that only a few currently enjoy.

Who is getting a good night’s sleep and who is up caring for a sick child, or working the graveyard shift, or dealing with chronic pain, or having a panic attack?

Who is confident to speak up in class and who is not quite sure of the etiquette or needs a little more time to process or has anxiety or is used to being silenced?

Who can attend class in person at 8:30 am, and who is dealing with a colitis flare-up, or doesn’t have transportation, or is in the hospital or has a kid who’s sick and home from daycare or is caring for an elderly parent? Who can’t even get in the door because there’s no ramp?

Who can watch your uncaptioned video, and who can’t hear it or can’t process spoken language easily or is an English language learner or has a broken laptop or is on the bus with no headphones?

Who is in your class? What do you know about them? What do they need to do their best work?

This resource also asks who are you? What are your educational values and how do they play out in your teaching? What accommodations do you need? The experience of a tenured professor at an R1 institution is obviously different from that of an adjunct teaching six classes a semester across three institutions or a graduate student being the instructor of record for the first time.

In this resource we will offer many stories and many strategies for implementing UDL. But UDL first and foremost requires a mindset shift. It requires you to think about what accommodations you may have received in your own education journey. It requires you to question what assumptions you’re making about your students and your course material and even what education is “supposed” to be. It requires you to drill down deep into your understanding of “rigour” and “professionalism.”

Shifting that mindset requires a lot of unlearning. It can be uncomfortable at times. However, we believe that doing so will help you have more satisfying, engaging teaching experiences.

The goal of this resource is to:

• Help you understand the “why” of UDL by centering the experiences of disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent students navigating higher education.
• Share these students’ ideas for transforming higher education to be more accessible and inclusive.
• Explore the UDL framework and learn how student stories could be impacted by wider adoption of UDL.
• Offer practical ways to implement UDL.
• Share resources to implement in university classrooms