Applying Anti-Racist Pedagogies in the Classroom

Overview: Understanding and Responding to Racial Trauma in the Classroom, a Conversation on Sustaining Culture and Race in Pedagogical Practices

What is AA-RPC?

The Applying Anti-Racist Pedagogy in the Classroom program is a cohort-based program where educators will explore anti-racist approaches and practices to teaching and learning. In this installation of AA-RPC programming, we will ground our conversations within the body of work of race-based traumatic stress, anti-racism pedagogies, specifically culturally sustaining pedagogy, and trauma informed teaching and learning, with a focus on building teaching and learning practices that grapple with the often messy yet realistic intersections and nuance of cultural strength and trauma in the classroom.

In this program, participants will critically examine the principles of trauma informed teaching, culturally sustaining practices to teaching and translate theory into concrete teaching and learning strategies that respond to race-based traumatic stress that may present itself in the classroom, proactively and reactively, better equipping participants with supporting and elevating the languages, literacies, and cultural practices of students and communities of colour.

Program Outcomes:

By the end of this program, we expect participants will:

• apply principles and practices of anti-racism, solidarity, trauma informed practice, and cultural sustaining pedagogy to their teaching practice;
• develop critical analytic skills which leverage a deeper understanding of the differences between cultivating an ethical classroom climate and trauma-informed learning space;
• feel empowered to take risks and explore pushing anti-racist pedagogies into the arena of transformative, decolonial and transformative methods of teaching;
• be equipped to apply proactive and reactive trauma informed practices to create learning environments and caring classrooms that support the funds of knowledge, cultural modeling, language, cultural practice, and literacy of IBPOC students and scholars;
• build connections to a community of educators engage in progressive anti-racist work;
  inspire one another to be hopeful and motivated for the future of this work.

Program Format:

The AA-RPC program is a hybrid program, meaning it requires both in-person participation and time spent on asynchronous (individual) learning. The program will be delivered over a three-day period. There are three mandatory in person sessions, 3 hours each, plus an expectation that participants will complete assigned homework and/or reflections, prior to each session. Consultation time with facilitators are offered, on a per-need basis.

Participants should expect to commit their afternoons, after each day, to completing approximately 1 hour of asynchronous work. The in-person sessions are designed to be conversational, experiential and interactive, requiring participants to engage in both small group and large group discussions on the integration, progressions, and tensions of trauma informed teaching and learning, positionality and power, decolonial and transformative methods to teaching and learning. The in-person learning will support your own highly reflective application of these concepts to your own teaching context. The asynchronous activities are designed to help participants build a collection of teaching and learning strategies that they can practice integrating into their own course materials such as syllabi, learning activities, reading lists, citational politics as well as grapple with how to implement in their classroom climate, mitigation approaches, and other elements of course design.

It is important to note that participants will come from a range of lived experiences and social identities related to race and other oppressed histories. We kindly ask each of you to help create an atmosphere of mutual respect, attentiveness and mindfulness. All learning materials are designed/used for the purposes of critical reflection, careful dialogues, and further collective transformation

Who is it for?

This cohort program is designed for faculty, post- doctoral candidates, early career scholars, sessional lecturers, post-doctoral candidates, and Teaching Assistants who teach and/or assist with academic for-credit courses at UBC. AA-RPC will best serve participants who already possess a foundational understanding of how racism operates (for example understanding concepts such as power and privilege, positionality, the ongoing impacts of colonization, systems of oppression, etc.). In this program we will explore the application and complexities of anti-racism, cultural humility, abolitionist teaching, and trauma-informed approaches within the classroom space, rather than building foundational understandings of these concepts.

Interested participants will be asked to reflect on their previous exposure to anti-racist teaching and learning theory and methods as well as their future goals and motivations as part of the application survey. This is a chance for you to reflect on how we can work together to best support your application of this learning into individual teaching practice.

Are you just starting out on your anti-racist journey and not sure if this program is for you? There are many resources out there to help start you on your journey. Please see the A-RTL Ecosystem page for some recommended resources and workshops for new learners. For any inquiries about this program please contact Renata Hall at renata.hall@ubc.ca.

Applications close on October 13, 2026 at 11:59 pm.

Please register to secure your spot.
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