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Pedagogy of the Pause Podcast Episode: Building Trusting Relationships

Emily Nusbaum and Tracie Allen
January 2026 | University of California, Berkeley, Center for Teaching and Learning

This ~30-minute podcast episode from Finding Space Podcast, an initiative of the Research, Teaching and Learning (RTL) Center at UC Berkeley, features Professor of Disability Studies Emily Nusbaum and her work on building trusting relationships with students to better accommodate learners’ various needs. The podcast episode explores students’ experiences of feeling that their learning needs cannot be accommodated in higher education spaces. Addressing such issues is critical in educator preparation spaces, as instructors often model practices for teacher candidates. The podcast episode shares the ways in which higher education faculty members can shift the physical space and content to create spaces for collaboration between faculty and students, such as shared note-taking, hybrid instruction with Zoom, and a statement of access on one’s syllabus. This podcast provides concrete strategies that educator preparation faculty may choose to implement in their own classrooms to challenge ableist instruction and provide multiple points of accessible learning to all students.

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