AGSEM: Examining the Classroom: Attending to Microaggressions Before, During, and After they Occur

The tension in the remote classroom is heavy. A few students appear to be typing privately amongst themselves in the chat, and one student left the class session abruptly. Three students whose cameras were on before have now turned them off. A student has just made a racial microaggression (a demeaning comment or behaviour that reflects prejudice towards students of colour).

Everyone is looking to you, the instructor, to see how you are going to respond... What do you notice is happening in your body? Where do you feel the tension? How is your breathing? Is your heart racing? And what about the bodies of the racialized students and faculty who are most impacted by the microaggression? Are the students who made the microaggressions aware of what just happened? What might be happening for them, when you or another student calls them out?

You may be familiar with the flight-fight-freeze response, the body’s natural responses to stress, present when microaggressions happen in the classroom. Microaggressions happen so quickly, whether they be racial, gender-based, about sexual orientation, ableism, or another form of cultural oppression. The subsequent impacts of microaggressions disrupt the learning and safety of our classrooms.

This workshop will look at how Theatre of the Oppressed methods can help slow things, helping us educators to increase our awareness of underattended aspects of microaggressions, our nervous systems. All analysis will be explored through the power dynamics of representation, absence and invisibility.

Learning objectives:

- To understand different forms of microagressions
- To identify important tensions present post-microaggression
- To begin developing frameworks that support addressing microaggressions

Register here!

*NOTE: Only first-time TAs will be paid for participating in the following training sessions and are eligible for a maximum of 3 hours of paid training.