Mentoring, Access, and Knowledge Making

Hi readers! A bit of a late post (if you call 4 hours late in pandemic time) because I have had a very full plate of work today. I have been working since 7am this morning and I am still about 2 tasks away from being done for the day. However, I am taking this bit of time as a moment to reflect on the week that was and specifically on the great conversations that were had at the UDLHE Digicon this week. 

Before Digicon this post was going to be inspired by the nice conversation about distributed knowledge creation and gate keeping that Alexandria Lockett brought to light in the Pedagogue Podcast this week. Pedagogue is one of those great podcasts that also has transcripts so you should check it out if you are interested in writing and composition. 

However, after Digicon I realized that this concept of knowledge making and building access would still be relevant as a topic and even more so when we bring in what Lillian Nave discussed as the her keynote at the Digicon, which is co-mentoring. So here is my brief thoughts on Digicon, mentoring, access and the need to celebrate the co-creation of knowledge.

Hannah McGregor had a good podcast episode of Secret Feminist Agenda on mentoring with Lily Cho in October. It was a conversation that has stuck with me because I think the pandemic has brought the need for mentoring and structures of mentorship that work virtually to the forefront. Academe in general has a really, at times, poorly defined structure of mentorship embedded in the graduate school process. Sometimes folk leave grad school with the kind of mentor that stays with them for their whole career. However, more often than not, that kind of mentorship is very defined in terms of race, in terms of class, in terms of gender. In other words, there are a lot of folk who have great opportunities at mentorship - but these mentors and mentees often look eerily similar. Insert elbow patch blazers here.

Enter, Lillian Nave's Keynote at Digicon which focused on the concept of the colectivo and the importance of co-mentoring. Her keynote was a really needed revisiting of PLNs for a 2021 context. She highlighted how everyone has something to add to the knowledge making opportunity, that each of us comes with our own thing that we are super passionate about (did somebody say accessibility) to the point where that passion spreads to others in the group. There were many instances where this metaphor came up at the Digicon (from rhizomes- my personal favourite way of thinking of spreading knowledge) to the discussion I helped facilitate on the intersection of UDL and trauma-aware frameworks. The trauma aware sessions had a lot of really important, grounded, and necessarily vulnerable discussion. When we think of failed graduate school mentorships and toxic environments, there is nothing that brings that all to light than the phrase: "hurt people, hurt people."

The two days of UDLHE Digicon were opportunities to share knowledge, to make new knowledge and to support each other through one of the most difficult times in our recent world history. Having the space to connect and discuss, and having different ways to connect, in true UDL fashion (from Zoom, to Twitter, to Padlet, to Mentimeter, to Google documents) built in access in a comprehensive way (as outlined by Thomas Tobin in his session). All the participants could access co-mentoring opportunities, all of the participants could access opportunities to create and share knowledge, and it is an opportunity to access that will also be shared asynchronously in many different avenues in the months and years to come. Connections were built and opportunities (noting that opportunity etymologically comes from the motion to come to port; how very appropriate in a time of TikTok Sea Shanties) will continue to bring new knowledge to an Internet port near you. 

What really made me happy about Digicon as I took a bit of Saturday time to reflect yesterday, was that there really was not any gatekeeping. There was open looking forward to possibility. Barriers were discussed and ways to revisit and tear down those barriers put in place (I am going to talk to Eric about curating all the Tweets from the Digicon and put them on the website for those not on Twitter to access). So I start the next week and move to my next task with a little bit of hope that accessing mentoring is not something for John Houseman's students in The Paper Chase only, the possibility is there in this lovely network, so as Lillian Nave says, "let's get on this Colectivo."