By Cecile Afable (she/her); Public Legal Education Specialist, Youth Programs; West Coast LEAF

How can we facilitate learning while incorporating social justice values? What does it look like to educate through a trauma-informed lens? How can we give people honest information, so that they can choose the path that makes the most sense for them if they are in a difficult situation?

These questions have been front of mind for staff at West Coast LEAF (Legal Education and Action Fund). We are a non-profit organization that uses legal tools to advance gender justice, including offering educational workshops on legal topics for over 20 years. For the past year and a half, we have worked on evaluating and re-envisioning our public legal education programming. While our lines of inquiry were guided by the fact that we are a legal non-profit, we recognize that classroom educators cover similar topics and terrain. Facilitating learning about the law includes encouraging learners to explore topics like power, oppression, and social and cultural norms. Even for educators who don’t teach Law 12 or social studies, we know that conversations about law intersect with many of these other topics, from elementary all the way to secondary school.

As part of this work evaluating our own education programs, we’ve identified a set of wise practices to guide us during conversations that may be heavy or challenging. We use the terminology wise practices instead of best practices in recognition that there are many ways to do something well, and that context matters—what works in one situation may not in another.

Create space for many kinds of communication, including conflict and challenge

Avoiding conflict and disagreement—or suppressing them once they come up—runs the risk of silencing the voices of marginalized learners who may wish to challenge the unfairness of the status quo. Stifling dissent may let harmful misconceptions go unchallenged, like the idea that anyone can get rich through hard work in Canada, or that legal systems produce just outcomes 100% of the time.

Instead of trying to enforce a conflict-free space, we can work collaboratively with learners to create community agreements, classroom guidelines, or group values statements that help to define norms for navigating disagreement. In their guide to feminist pedagogy, Lis Valle-Ruiz and her collaborators challenge the assumption that conflict-free spaces are possible or desirable. Their vision of feminist pedagogy incorporates listening, speaking, risk-taking, respect, and repair.

Classroom guidelines can be co-created at the beginning of the term or semester, or as needed if there is an upcoming discussion that may be challenging. Once created, classroom guidelines don’t have to be set in stone: it may be useful to revisit them on a set schedule, say once a month, to see how they are working and if any modifications need to be made.

Here are some questions to help you get started creating group guidelines:

• How do you want to feel during and after class? What do you need from others in order to feel that way?
• (E.g., I want to feel engaged; for this I need different ways to participate.)
• What behaviours or words let you know that you’re being treated with respect?
• What is the difference between feeling uncomfortable and being unsafe? Knowing that discomfort is sometimes part of learning, how can we support each other when discomfort comes up?
• When disagreement comes up, how can we address that?
• If someone says something that hurts another person’s feelings, how can we address that?
• What does a good apology look and sound like?

Use trauma-informed practices

There are many ways to define trauma. We recognize both the usefulness and limitations of the Western bio-psychological definition of trauma as an experience that exceeds a person’s ability to cope, with impacts that are personal, context-dependent, and often long-term. Thanks to research by Natalie Clark, Robert Nonomura, and others, we also know that this definition often erases the reality of structural violence, and the ways that systems of oppression such as colonialism, racism, poverty, sexism, and others can also be incredibly traumatizing.

As educators, we can be mindful of the prevalence of trauma. Research suggests that almost half of youth in the US have experienced serious trauma, and rates are likely high in Canada as well. Given that communities that face oppression deal with high levels of trauma and that oppression is itself profoundly traumatic, a lack of trauma-informed practice in education can compound injustice. The following are some ways to bring trauma-informed practices into your work:

Use trigger warnings or content warnings for content that may be graphic or upsetting, such as violence or human rights violations in novels or history class. When learners know what subject matter is coming up next, they can opt in or out of engaging with it—and if they do choose to engage with it, they can do so in a way that will work for them. There may be some students who do not wish to engage with certain material. Working with them to come up with accommodations or alternative assignments affirms their agency and ability to make their own decisions. During our workshops, we provide an outline of the subject matter at the beginning of each workshop as well as providing a heads-up immediately before discussing a topic, such as sexual harassment, and encourage participants to take care of themselves in whatever way works best for them.

Avoid information overload and fast pacing that may make it harder for learners to process information, reflect, and ask questions. Setting aside time to define a short list of learning goals (or even just one or two learning goals) can be helpful, as well as intentionally creating space in the schedule to allow for debriefing and/or reflection.

Challenge stigma and victim-blaming. As educators we have a responsibility to do our best to cultivate a safer learning environment. This can mean stating clearly that no one is ever to blame for experiencing harassment, discrimination, or violence. It can also mean interrupting and correcting hurtful comments or jokes, which can be as simple as saying, “That’s not funny,” or “That kind of language is disrespectful.” It can be helpful to try to anticipate challenging comments that may come up in lessons, and script out some responses in case they do.

Offer an honest and critical perspective on the law by unpacking how legal systems actually work—not just in theory or in an ideal situation, but in reality—we can provide learners with a more nuanced and realistic understanding of the law. In our legal education programming, West Coast LEAF emphasizes that legal systems are imperfect institutions that can be transformed with time and collective effort. We acknowledge the following:                        

• Making something illegal doesn’t prevent it from happening (for example, racial discrimination in the workplace is outlawed but is unfortunately still a very common experience for many workers).
• When someone has gone through a difficult experience, going through legal processes will not necessarily always result in just outcomes, closure, or healing. Legal processes can be very lengthy, expensive, and psychologically and emotionally taxing, even retraumatizing.
• The law is not a perfectly objective system—lawyers, judges, and other people with power within the legal system can and often do have their own biases, such as racism or sexism, that influence their decisions.

We’re very grateful to the many people who illuminated the above wise practices to us over the course of working on our Re-envisioning Public Legal Education and Information project. To learn more about the project, and to read the rest of our wise practices, visit WestCoastLEAF.org.