Archive for March, 2023

Arley

My Kwantlen colleague Arley McNeney was a visionary who welcomed all manner of detail with a humbling level of attentiveness and who accepted everybody, and she made the people around her better. Such a strong good spirit.

Almost all of our interactions were via correspondence or social media, though I finally met her at The Commodore in Vancouver back in 2019. She was there for the headlining Mountain Goats, me for Lydia Loveless, who opened for them.

From our school’s announcement:

It is with profound sadness and a deep sense of loss that we share the passing of our friend and colleague, KPU instructor, Arley McNeney (Cruthers). Arley was a mother, a sister, a daughter, and a friend. She was a highly respected instructor and beloved colleague to those who were fortunate to collaborate and work alongside her. She was a decorated Paralympian and parasport athlete, a talented writer and novelist, an unending builder of community, an advocate for inclusion and disability justice, and a creative linocut artist.

Arley instructed business communications, public relations, and entrepreneurial leadership at KPU. However, her journey into becoming an educator was winding: in 2001 she joined the Canada women’s national wheelchair basketball team and won gold at the Wheelchair Basketball World Championship the next year. She was the recipient of BC’s Premier Athletic Award for New Westminster and in 2004, she was named to Team Canada’s national wheelchair basketball team to compete at the 2004 Summer Paralympics where she helped the team win bronze. In 2006, Arley was named to Team Canada for the 2006 Wheelchair Basketball World Championship. In 2014, Arley received the BC Wheelchair Basketball Society’s Coach of the Year award. ​​​​​​​

Not only was Arley a successful athlete and coach, she was a former communications/marketing/PR professional for parasports, the founder of an adaptive soccer team that uses disability justice principles, and the author of four novels. Arley’s first novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Foundation. She attended the University of Victory and earned an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Arley was an innovative leader in open education, Open Educational Resources (“OERs”), and open pedagogy. In 2019, Arley presented an open-licensed game developed by her applied communication students that focused on instructors developing compassion and empathy for students struggling with (unaffordable) textbook costs and the role OERs can play in supporting students’ well-being and success. Arley’s work was pivotal in the open education movement and the continued work in the area of Zero Textbook Costs (“ZTCs”). That same year, Arley was awarded for Excellence in Open Education by BC Campus.

In addition to being widely recognized as an advocate in the areas of open education, Arley was a tireless scholar and advocate in the areas of decolonization, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), anti-racism and anti-oppression, and disability justice. She collaborated with colleagues across KPU through her work as an Open Education Teaching Fellow, decolonization and Indigenization faculty champion, and disability justice activist. She was an early leader and mentor in developing Open Educational Resources at KPU, and published Business Writing for Everyone in 2019, an inclusive guide to writing in the workplace that has since been adopted, adapted, and remixed by KPU faculty and countless educators around the world. She was regularly consulted on questions of accessibility and UDL in course design and program review, and her expertise and the generosity with which she shared it, are irreplaceable. In recognition of her contributions to supporting social justice, in 2021, Arley was an inaugural recipient of KPU’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion awards.

Arley’s focus on supporting students in all aspects of their lives from UDL to food security was unparalleled, and her supportive, non-judgemental, and student-centred approach to teaching and focus on student success, has inspired us to do our best in our work at KPU.

Arley sought to truly understand and engage her students, co-creating empowering learning opportunities with them each semester, and often bringing food to share in the classroom. She was incredibly generous with her time and energy, supporting students and colleagues alike, and sharing her expertise and teaching resources freely.

Arley’s legacy is immeasurably rich and will continue through the inspired work of her friends and colleagues, and the thousands of students she taught. Her work and contributions embody the highest values of our university’s motto, and are something we should all aspire to: “through tireless effort, knowledge and understanding.”

The outpouring of emotion and admiration on Twitter has been really something. I am at a loss for words, mostly, or at least for the adequate ones. My colleagues have helped me out in that respect. Melissa Ashman’s thread is close to perfect:

Family in Nashville

“Prepare for mass casualties…. coming to children’s hospital” was the message that we received at work this morning. Immediately my heart stopped beating and I nearly threw up.

The thought of any harm befalling these two boys is paralyzing and all consuming. I’m shattered and completely devastated for the families in this beautiful city who hugged their own “Basil boys” for the last time.

I’m at a loss for why we continuously tell ourselves we live in “the greatest country on earth” yet we reside in the one country that routinely witnesses the slaughter of our own children for the sake of… “freedom?” It will never make sense.

Barack Obama once said our children are like our own hearts beating outside of our chests, out in this dangerous world. To the families and the victims of this atrocity, and to my colleagues and the first responders who will never be the same, my heart breaks with yours today.

– Miles Basil

home soon & joy now

On March 7 Amtrak started up its Vancouver, BC – Portland line again – the Amtrak Cascades – almost exactly three years after the pandemic shut it down. This filled me with profound joy.

The line gives me to my love & the line brings me home.

Crossing the Fraser River last night, about forty minutes from English Bay.

I hope you hear them coming

I’ve never had writer’s block, but I find it difficult *to write well* on a topic that makes me angry. Attacks on transgendered people make me angry to a staggering degree.

I am grateful for the work of Parker Molloy on this and other topics.

Brynn Tannehill, the “harbinger of doom” I noted last year, also writes about this topic in a way that keeps me up at night.