K-12 education staff play an essential role in nurturing students’ wellbeing and academic success, yet they also experience high rates of stress and burnout. Low levels of educator wellbeing lead to decreased morale and staffing-related challenges. It also has negative ripple effects on the wellbeing and success of students.
This article explores the value of the Guarding Minds at Work (“Guarding Minds”) survey tool in facilitating meaningful improvements to workplace wellbeing in Canadian school districts. Guarding Minds assesses psychological health and safety – the workplace factors that affect wellbeing. The survey findings can support meaningful conversations with employees that lead to a more supportive and psychologically safe environment for working and learning.
Many school districts want to support their staff’s wellbeing- so they provide mindfulness apps, free yoga classes and wellness tips. These can be helpful for some. Other districts develop in-house surveys with self-assessments of wellbeing and feedback on district-led plans.
The first step in making significant and lasting improvements is Identifying the underlying issues affecting employee wellness. Guarding Minds hones in on the workplace issues and conditions affecting wellbeing, providing a window into educators’ feelings and perceptions about how their work environment affects their wellbeing.
The survey’s evidence-based psychological health and safety factors help pinpoint aspects of the workplace that warrant specific attention. Each element includes sub-statements that help make the issues more tangible and provide clues to how to take targeted action. For example, the Involvement and Influence factor includes the statements “My suggestions are considered at work” and “I am informed about important changes at work in a timely manner.” If a survey result comes back with “significant” results for those statements, then the district has a concrete area of action to improve employee wellbeing.
Employee Group Segmentation
School districts include a wide range of employees. A teacher’s challenges are very different from those of a custodian. While it’s helpful to know that 55% of employees have problems balancing work and personal life, knowing 72% of teachers are struggling allows districts to focus on solutions tailored to teachers rather than more generic ones.
” Segmenting” district data by employee group can provide more nuanced insights into what’s happening on the ground. School districts have found this segmentation extremely valuable. It has helped them tailor strategies to address the needs of specific groups. However, this segmentation multiplies the volume of Guarding Minds reports that must be analyzed. Well at Work‘s advisors’ team has developed specific tools and resources that support districts to make sense of their Guarding Minds data and move to action.
Guarding Minds identifies areas of strength and where action is needed to improve workplace wellbeing. By highlighting crucial issues such as bullying, harassment or discrimination, Guarding Minds helps leaders take swift action and avoid risks to employees and the organization. Guarding Minds considers a comprehensive array of factors that influence workplace wellbeing. It assesses critical issues, including burnout, trauma, stress, and inclusion. By encompassing these vital areas, Guarding Minds helps school districts foster an inclusive work environment that supports employees’ wellbeing and diverse needs.
Guarding Minds reports also link education leaders to evidence-based strategies for specific areas of concern.
The powerful data and evidence-based strategies enable leaders to take informed action and initiate positive changes to enhance workplace wellbeing.
Many Canadian school districts have found Guarding Minds indispensable in enhancing workplace wellbeing. Its alignment with leading standards, focus on actionable areas of improvement, and evidence-based strategies make it essential to understanding an organization’s current state of wellbeing. The first step to making a change is to understand the current state of wellbeing: Guarding Minds is an excellent place to start.
Photo: Getty Images Pro
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
MEDICINE HAT PUBLIC School Division (MHPSD) is a medium-sized public-school jurisdiction in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Serving 850+ employees and 7,000 students, the division delivers inclusive education to 18 schools, all within the city limits. It is the division’s belief that fostering a culture of wellness will lead to increased staff engagement and positive student outcomes. In 2017, MHPSD Superintendent Mark Davidson requested that a wellness committee be created to support this work. Executive leadership and the Board of Trustees adopted “fostering a culture of wellness” as one of four universal division goals. Superintendent Mark Davidson explains:
“Our system has been very intentional in our focus on wellness as one of four ‘universal’ system goals. This decision flows from our understanding that all who form our learning community come to school, work, or their family relationships with individual needs in terms of health. Mental health has, for too long, been treated as if it was something to avoid discussing, or to be ashamed of. We, at Medicine Hat Public School Division, understand that proactive action to support the health of our community creates safer and healthier learning environments for all.”
Human Resources and Student Services collaborated to create the Be Well, Employee Wellness Program. Initially, the work was siloed into “staff” and “student” categories with assigned champions for each. Wellness Champions were assigned to staff wellbeing and Health Champions were assigned to student wellbeing. An employee engagement survey was sent out to all staff and received 416 responses, about a 50 percent response rate. The survey indicated that most respondents (71 percent) were not aware of any supports or resources offered by the division to assist in their health and wellbeing, and the majority (73 percent) had experienced significant work-related negative stress at some point in the previous six months. Just over half (55 percent) of respondents rated their wellbeing as “good” or “great” and ten percent identified as significantly struggling. When asked what employees would like to see as a support or resource from their employer, the top answers received were on-site or division-sponsored yoga and fitness classes, mindfulness and meditation resources, healthy sleep supports, and on-site influenza vaccination clinics.
The Be Well, Employee Wellness Committee created four pillars for the 2018–2019 school year with these categories as the focus. Wellness Champions were assigned an initiative to promote throughout a designated time frame during that school year (e.g. on-site influenza clinics were held September to November). In October 2018, I started with the division as the Health and Wellness Manager, Human Resources. As a registered nurse with a background in disability management and passion for positive health outcomes, I brought a different perspective to wellbeing in K–12 education. My role as the Health and Wellness Manager is to oversee the division’s employee wellness, disability management, and attendance support programs.
The division recognized that wellness was much more than yoga and meditation, though these can be important factors in maintaining personal wellness. Equally, if not more, important was identifying the cause of absenteeism and addressing how the division could support staff when they were unwell. As the Chair of the employee wellness committee, I support schools with connections to community resources, small amounts of designated wellness funding, and division-wide communications to promote initiatives. In addition to the wellness work, one of my first deliverables as the Health and Wellness Manager was the creation and implementation of an Attendance Support Program and Disability Management Program. The goal of these programs is to help employees who require accommodation(s) at work and to create sustainable plans for those who have high amounts of casual sick leave. Absenteeism for medical-related leaves had steadily risen between 2015 and 2018, with the number of workdays missed increasing by 52 percent in that time. Directly associated with that were rising financial costs to the division and increased workload for those remaining at work.
Disability Management is a proactive workplace process that allows employers to support employees with physical and mental health issues while they are at work; or, if they require a leave of absence, it also promotes an employee’s early and safe return to work, with a primary focus on minimizing the impact of injuries or illnesses on employees, employers, and society as a whole. The division recognized that, regardless of the cause of an employee illness or injury, facilitating a supportive and early return to work was essential for employees to sustain their working relationship and continue to provide quality, consistent services to students and families. In the first year of implementing these programs, the division saw an eight-and-a-half percent reduction in medical–related leaves, and numerous other employees received accommodations and supports, such as reduced work hours or a temporary change in work duties, to maintain their wellbeing and sustain regular employment. The 2019–2020 school year saw additional challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic; however, MHPSD staff demonstrated high levels of resilience, and absenteeism levels decreased by another ten percent including COVID-19 related leaves. Data from 2020–2022 is skewed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and cannot be considered reliable.
In May 2019, a follow-up employee engagement survey received 325 responses, about a 40 percent response rate. In this survey, 68 percent of respondents indicated they knew of the supports and resources available to them through the division; however, many expressed they were less familiar with the proactive health solutions available, such as nutritional coaching or stress management through the Employee and Family Assistance Program. The results also showed a 38 percent increase in the culture of wellness across the division; 87 percent of respondents felt the division placed a high value on wellness, compared to 63 percent in 2017.
However, when asked about feelings of negative stress, 37 percent of respondents stated they had missed work at least once in the previous 12 months due to work-related stress, and 48 percent of respondents stated they experienced stress or burnout to a point where they had considered quitting their job. The top–cited reasons for this were job demands and student behaviours, followed by struggles with work-life balance.
I met with the Associate Superintendent of Student Services, Tracy Hensel, and together we reviewed both the quantitative and qualitative data. We identified student behaviour as an indicator of staff wellness (and vice versa). Similarly, staff requests for professional development and training to assist in managing diverse and complex needs, also showed a relationship between staff wellness and student behaviours. It was a bit like the chicken or egg debate – what came first? Were student behaviour issues a cause or contributor to decreased staff wellness, or was decreased staff wellness a cause or contributor to student behaviour issues? Regardless, there is a direct relationship between employee wellness and student wellness. It was evident that the “one-size-fits-all” wellness committee approach was not working, and that the system could not separate “employee wellness” from “student wellness.”
The focus, we decided, should be on Comprehensive School Health; an internationally recognized framework to support the whole school community including staff, students, and families (Alberta Health Services, 2023), and individualized health and wellness planning for each school (see Figure 1).
Alberta Health Services. (2023). Process for building healthy school communities using the components of Comprehensive School Health. Government of Alberta.
Comprehensive School Health Teams (CHST) have been created at every work site. These teams consist of:
Teams meet every six weeks with discussions focused on their school-specific needs, and ideas or initiatives to promote health and wellbeing for all. Some of the initiatives align with division events such as anti-bullying awareness, mental health week, or Pride month, however, many initiatives are a direct response to themes or trends being noticed in the schools. These include such topics as staff connection and recognition ideas, student leadership and belonging initiatives, or connecting parent councils with school leaders or community professionals to discuss topics brought forth by families such as social media use, youth mental health, and nutrition. Administrators record and send their meeting minutes to the Health and Wellness Manager, and I review them to identify any additional resources or supports that could be offered from the division level.
In 2022, I partnered with a local School Health Promotion Facilitator from Alberta Health Services. Together we arranged meetings with each Comprehensive School Health Team to complete the Canadian Healthy School Standards (Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance, 2021) survey and obtain baseline school data. Executive leadership also attended these meetings to show support for this work. During these survey sessions, it was evident that every school had their own needs, cultures, and values, and the survey sparked excellent conversation between stakeholders. Once completed, survey results showed that 76 percent of MHPSD schools are “Mastering” the Healthy School Standards, 12 percent are “Accomplishing” and another 12 percent are “Developing.” Overall, Comprehensive School Health Teams felt that strong community partnerships are in place, staff are engaged in being wellness leaders, individual schools feel they have autonomy to make decisions pertinent to them, and all stakeholders understand the importance of a whole-school approach.
The process also identified areas for growth. These were:
Looking forward, all schools will complete the Healthy School Standards survey each spring as part of their Comprehensive School Health planning. The division has also committed to review and implement a formal Psychological Health and Safety plan, with Executive Leadership, Comprehensive School Health Teams, and the Joint Health and Safety Committee being key stakeholders in pursuing this work.
MHPSD has intentionally invested time, human resources, and funding to foster a culture of wellness for all of its members. The creation of Comprehensive School Health Teams, onboarding of a Health and Wellness Manager, implementation of programs to address wellness, and collaborative partnerships with community groups are just a few ways in which they have chosen to support their wellness goal.
“Medicine Hat Public School Division is proud of the efforts we have made, and will continue to make, in support of the health of our learning community. While it is hard to disaggregate the impact of this work from all of the other steps we have taken, we are convinced that our efforts have had a positive impact on staff efficacy and student learning.” – Superintendent Mark Davidson, MHPSD
Fostering a culture of wellness requires more than creating a single wellness committee or providing staff with a wellness PD Day; it is a culmination of efforts from all stakeholders to create a safe and inclusive environment and to tackle the hard and uncomfortable tasks head on. The division’s wellness plan is fluid and constantly evolving to meet the needs of its communities. It is unknown what tomorrow will bring, but MHPSD will continue to be all-in to support the wellbeing of their staff, students, and community members.
*This is part of Well at Work’s Stories of Success Webinar Series, which profiles the many ways that school districts across Canada are fostering workplace wellbeing.
Alberta Health Services. (2022). The CSH framework. Government of Alberta. https://schools.healthiertogether.ca/en/learn/the-csh-framework
Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance. (2021). Canadian Healthy School Standards.
www.healthyschoolsalliance.ca/ca-healthy-school-standards
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
On behalf of the Association of Canadian Deans of Education (ACDE)
We are living in a time of uncertainty, stress, and exhaustion. Our world is facing literal and metaphorical fires, encompassing environmental crises, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of political and religious extremism, escalating violence and war, fragile economies and rising inflation, famine, poverty, and food insecurity.
Education is in the midst of its own profound “crisis of climate.” Teaching and learning cannot flourish in an alienating and inhospitable landscape. Canada and other world partners have set an ambitious goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 to tackle the global environmental climate crisis. What ambitious goals are addressing the climate crisis in education for Education 2050 and beyond? Arguing that the “current disruption has changed education forever,” the Association of Canadian Deans of Education met to signal “educational priorities… and where investment is needed in teacher education, teachers and research as a recovery strategy” (2020, p. 3).
Schools are ecosystems where children bring their own histories, knowledge, and experiences. These ecosystems have distinct cultures, structures, and access to resources. The wellbeing of children depends upon having consistent “attuned, non-stressed and emotionally reliable caregivers” (Maté & Maté, 2000, p. 101). However, in the present context, many children, families, and teachers are struggling.
Beista, Priestley et al., (2015) have been studying educational ecosystems for many years. Their interest stems from the fact that as global policies have been adopted, teachers have been positioned as agents of change. However, rather than seeing agency simply as the individual capacity that teachers may or may not possess, they understand meaningful agency as a part of the ecology of the school systems within which teachers practise. Embedding agency within an existing ecosystem clarifies that we are all complicit in the conditions we create for teaching and learning to thrive – or to wither.
An educational ecosystem is far more than a collection of physical spaces, policies, and curriculum documents. To empower teachers and bring about positive change, a clear vision is necessary. This involves meaningful engagement with parents, community members, school psychologists, healthcare providers, educational assistants, teacher education students, and teacher education providers. Recognizing the critical role each of these stakeholders plays is necessary for the wellbeing of students’ physical, social-emotional, intellectual, and mental health.
A critical habitat is essential for children to thrive. Recognizing the lasting impact of the current disruption on education, a thriving environment ensures safety, support, and equitable access to resources like technology and the internet. It upholds the rights of the children (UN General Assembly, 1989) and honours the provisions for francophone and minority language education (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982). It responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action. Educators play a vital role in the recovery, but without strategic and sustainable investment, they face additional risks.
Globalization has led to an emphasis on competition, excellence, and individualism in education. Despite well-documented disparities, the focus on “recovery” is trained narrowly on “learning gaps” and concern about “falling behind.” Ignoring the critical habitat effectively undermines efforts to close those gaps or achieve higher test scores. The needs of historically marginalized students and families have too often been debated, thwarted, or ignored.
Treating the educational system as a “market” undermines educational ecosystems, prioritizing shareholders over stakeholders. Government involvement in seeking market solutions to public policy problems diverts financial resources to for-profit businesses from schools. An emphasis on testing, for example, driven by the financial interests of publishing companies, devalues educators’ ongoing assessments. The shift redirects efforts toward test scores and global reputation over holistic growth.
When changes in education are subject to short-term, politically driven reactions, the gaze is fixed on the desires of electors with special interests, over the concrete needs of children and educators. Policies emerging from such a limited view can destabilize progress and can entrench traumatizing social conditions, leaving teachers without the agency, autonomy, purpose, and sense of meaning that leads to wellness and motivation. As key resources in the ecosystem, educators and teacher education providers must play a vital role in policy and curriculum planning and decisions.
Many parts of the world, with Canada now among them, have been crippled by a teacher shortage. When the environment in schools is neglected, and calls for support, resources, and safety measures are ignored (or promised but never realized), it can lead to despondence, positioning educators as disseminators of decisions made elsewhere (Hibbert & Iannacci, 2005). When teachers feel ignored, under-resourced, or undervalued, they leave the profession (Bryant et al., 2023).
For example, educators are the front-line witnesses to systemic racism and equity. The crisis of climate in education has revealed new depths of inequity. Interpersonal and structural violence became more evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building safe and trusting relationships is critical as we re-orient students to being in community, developing social-emotional capacity and recovering from their experiences over the past few years. The mental health needs of both teachers and students must be supported.
To build a safe and more sustainable educational ecosystem, we must prioritize the physical spaces, culture, and climate of schools. Schools ought to model advanced standards in air and water quality, as these factors impact students’ health, concentration, and comfort in learning. Implementing energy efficient and accessible technologies should be a basic requirement to demonstrate care for students and responsible use of resources. All curricula should incorporate cultural safety and human rights principles. By learning in schools that exemplify these shared goals, students can better connect what they learn with what they observe in a safe and sustainable world.
Cree scholar Dwayne Donald argues that “ethical relationality is an ecological understanding of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather seeks to more deeply understand how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other” (2009, p. 6). Bringing a compassionate curiosity that positions us all as part of an interconnected whole – where one cannot thrive without the other – holds promise for developing the trauma consciousness that is so desperately needed to move beyond the damage sustained from years of neglect. The core vision and commitments cannot be subject to change with each new government. Rather, they must address a “security of place” (Neef et al., 2018) that prioritizes a healthier, sustainable and long-term vision and investment in our Canadian educational future – and the futures of all children who participate in these systems.
Refugees, migrants, and immigrants are choosing Canada as a safe place to educate their children. One need only read the news to see that that “safety” can be disingenuous for some populations. We know that “students’ relationships with their teachers are vital to their academic learning and psychosocial development” (Smith & Whitely, 2023, p. 96). Those relationships are made more fragile when the teacher’s own needs are not being met.
“How do we help children achieve and develop to the limits of their potential, particularly those who struggle most in an industrialized system of education that struggles to accommodate individual needs and challenges?” (p. 101). This process begins by establishing a caring relationship between educators and students. However, it is crucial for educators to operate within a caring environment and a system that genuinely values the education and wellbeing of children beyond their future economic contributions. Achieving this requires intellectual humility, collaboration, and investment as education is prioritized and valued for the significant role it plays in all our social futures.
Association of Canadian Deans of Education. (2020). Teaching and teacher education: Preparing for a flourishing post-pandemic Canada. ACDE.
Biesta, Priestley, M., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: an ecological approach. Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc. doi.org/10.5040/9781474219426
Bryant, J., Ram, S., et al. (2023). K-12 teachers are quitting. What would make them stay? McKinsey & Company.
www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/k-12-teachers-are-quitting-what-would-make-them-stay
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html
Donald, D. (2009). Forts, curriculum, and Indigenous Métissage: Imagining decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian relations in educational contexts. First Nations Perspectives, 2(1), 1–24.
Government of Canada, (n.d.). Net-zero emissions by 2050.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/climate-plan/net-zero-emissions-2050.html
Hibbert, K., & Iannacci, L. (2005). From Dissemination to discernment: The commodification of literacy instruction and the fostering of “good teacher consumerism.” The Reading Teacher, 58(8), 716–727.
doi.org/10.1598/RT.58.8.2
Maté, G., & Maté, D. (2022). The myth of normal: trauma, illness and healing in a toxic culture. Alfred A. Knopf Canada.
Neef, A., Benge., L., et al. (2018). Climate adaptation strategies in Fiji: the role of social norms and cultural values. World Development, 107, 125-137.
Smith, J. D. & Whitley, J. (2023). Teaching with acceptance and commitment: Building teachers’ social-emotional competencies for teaching effectiveness. The Educational Forum, 87(1), 90–104. doi: 10.1080/00131725.2022.2053620
UN General Assembly. (1989). Convention on the rights of the child. Treaty Series, 1577, 3. United Nations.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000101215
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
The pandemic changed a lot about our lives. For better or worse, we spent more time with our families, we picked up new hobbies and caught up on television and movies. We also spent a lot more time talking about an often overlooked or unspoken subject: our mental health. Let’s carry that forward – it’s a positive change.
Mental health encompasses a range of experiences from mental illness to mental wellness. Mental illness is an abnormal and typically continual negative state driven by issues in the brain. Wellness, on the other hand, is the condition in which you have resiliency skills, an ability to manage how you feel, and experiences of both positive and negative feelings on a regular basis.
I have been surrounded by educators for much of my life. My mother is a teacher. I hold a Master’s in Education and my principal’s certificates, and I started my career in the public education system. I led a national education charity and had the privilege of working with educators and education leaders daily. The environment is familiar to me – however, I acknowledge much has changed.
Our work at Mental Health Research Canada is to understand how Canadians are experiencing the vast range of mental health. We have completed multiple studies on mental health indicators and we have dug into our national data to explore various population and employee groups, such as educators.
What do we know from our research? Before the pandemic, K–12 educators’ self-reported day-to-day mental health indicators looked average compared to other sectors, including the level of diagnosis of some of the most common mental illnesses – anxiety and depression. Self-rated levels of anxiety were slightly below average and depression indicators were well below average. This is not particularly surprising, since despite the challenges the job may present, it seems reasonable to assume most people who select teaching as a profession would be aware of the nature of the work and only choose this profession if they feel they are suited to it and able to overcome these challenges on a regular basis. Also, teachers came into the pandemic with an additional layer of mental health protection – they are, on the whole, engaged in and proud of their work.
However, the pandemic was very difficult for K–12 educators. This profession showed the second-highest increase in levels of average anxiety – after nurses – with scores peaking in August each year and as new variants emerged. At some points, one in three teachers were self-reporting high levels of anxiety. Given all that we went through, this is likely not surprising to anyone. Our data showed it was especially hard for educators with dual roles as a caregiver or parent; they were supporting their family members while also managing new roles as virtual teachers. In places where teachers went back to in-person school, they also had increased concerns about catching and spreading COVID-19 to family members.
This situation often manifested as burnout. In the depths of the pandemic, 38 percent of educators self-reported burnout. This was slightly above the average of 35 percent for employed Canadians. We had expected higher burnout rates, but as this typically correlates with longer-term anxiety or depression indicators, it is possible that the protective factors and relative strengths going into the pandemic helped keep this lower than the incredibly high burnout rates seen among nurses and mental-health care workers.
In the post-pandemic recovery period, our most recent study on workplace mental health indicators showed some interesting new data. During the pandemic and in the recovery phase, health-care workers reported some of the highest rates of burnout. While we now see some improvement on levels of burnout among the health-care sector, we have not seen the same in the education sector. The two sectors are now experiencing the same levels of burnout. We were curious about what was happening in these high-burnout sectors, so we began conducting interviews with educators. These respondents were recruited from our large data collection and had self-reported some degree of mental distress during the pandemic or more recently.
As one would expect, we received a number of explanations, but they broadly fit into a few categories. During the pandemic, stress was driven by:
Once school returned to in-person learning, stress was driven by:
Improving these indicators is a collective responsibility. Parents and students have a role to play in understanding that teachers are usually doing the best they can with the resources they have. Leadership in schools, school boards, and unions can implement stronger policies to support mental health. Governments can better fund the system to address the academic and social gaps that arose for students during the pandemic, without losing sight of the need for additional mental health supports for staff. As well, educators have a responsibility to increase their understanding of mental health, including when and how to get help.
The basic tenets of workplace mental health generally are the following four pillars:
We have the great fortune to collect a huge national sample of data from employed Canadians as part of the Guarding Minds evaluation. This evaluation monitors 13 multi-faceted factors that create and support psychologically safe workplaces. The factors are Balance, Civility and Respect, Clear Leadership and Expectations, Engagement, Growth and Development, Involvement and Influence, Organizational Culture, Protection of Physical Safety, Psychological and Social Support, Psychological Competencies and Demands, Psychological Protection, Recognition and Reward, and Workload Management. In self-reporting, educators score below average on all these factors, with the exception of Engagement and Psychological Protection. There are many areas that deserve attention.
On the positive, educators score well (average) on Engagement because they often contribute extra time voluntarily and feel like they belong to a community. They score well in Psychological Protection because they are part of and invested in that community, and they have comparatively low rates of workplace discrimination, bullying, and harassment.
However, there are enormous challenges that educators are facing. Educators scored significantly below the average (10 percent below) in Balance, Clear Leadership and Expectations, Involvement and Influence, Organizational Culture, Protection of Physical Safety, Psychological and Social Support, and Recognition and Reward.
Reviewing and summarizing the biggest gaps between the average employed Canadian and educators reveals:
The inherent challenge, of course, is that change and cultural shifts are difficult to achieve in big institutional systems. Many of these struggles seem baked into the structure of public education in Canada – governments, school boards, and collective bargaining.
But we can make progress.
Strive for individual balance. This can be the archenemy of high engagement. Teachers care deeply about students and don’t want to let them down. This often results in conflicting priorities with personal time. I would encourage educators to define their personal boundaries of time, as difficult as that is, to support better life balance and strive for discipline to adhere to the boundaries they set for themselves. This is not easy to do. But educators have to take responsibility for setting their own personal limits. There is a necessary tension between commitment and life balance.
While recognition and achievement can be challenging in a structured pay environment, multiple studies have shown that many people are highly motivated beyond financial incentives. School environments can be set up to celebrate achievements. We do it well with students. Can students share impact stories of how a teacher affected their life? Can we better celebrate progress in working with students who were struggling? Can unions celebrate and promote great teaching and the significant contribution of educators to society? Can system leaders recognize school-wide improvements on key broad initiatives? This is the responsibility of the principal of each school, and superintendents overseeing families of schools. Sometimes, it is as simple as saying thank you and appreciating someone you know is working very hard, doing their best, and bringing their best self to work every day.
Really, the above examples apply to most workplaces. If we can come to work, do our best, support and appreciate each other, set our work-life balance priorities without apology or guilt, stamp out stigma and show empathy for one another without judgment, our work environments would all be better places.
Read more about the work of Mental Health Research Canada, including reports and data on the mental health of Canadians, on our website at www.mhrc.ca.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
On behalf of the Ontario Principals’ Council
Most initiatives in education begin with the introduction of a new word. Think “wellbeing,” “equity,” or “reconciliation.” Each term serves as a beacon illuminating new layers of complexity in education, revealing deeper student needs or system requirements, inspiring more meaningful goals, and pointing the way to better teaching and leadership practices.
And yet, as each word is systemically blended into the daily parlance of education, its unique brightness begins to dim. Its disruptive power and innovative potential fades. Terms that once challenged educators to think with greater pedagogical breadth and depth are used so frequently – and, at times, so casually – that their meaning becomes diminished. Ironically, words meant to capture our attention, create a sense of urgency, and sensitize us to the complexities of human experience, often risk simply becoming yet another education buzzword among many.
Arguably, the word “trauma”1 is one such word. Having entered the fringes of education less than two decades ago, the term – along with its associated “trauma-informed” and “trauma-sensitive” – is now mainstream. Spurred on by the pandemic, the idea that schools are not only places of learning, but should also be places of “healing,” is now a widespread educational aspiration.
But how are we actually doing when it comes to genuinely supporting students who experience trauma? How are educators feeling about their understanding of trauma, and their ability to effectively address the complications that trauma often brings to the classroom? The Ontario Principals’ Council (OPC) recently undertook an online survey and qualitative interview study of school administrators across Ontario to better understand this question. In all, 652 principals and vice principals completed the survey, representing both elementary and secondary schools in 25 English public boards throughout the province. The complete report can be found online at www.principals.ca/RPR.
Administrators were first asked to estimate the percentage of students in their schools impacted by trauma, both prior to the pandemic and following it. Almost one-third of administrators estimated that 10 percent or fewer of their student population was impacted by trauma prior to the pandemic. However, estimates grew significantly when school administrators were asked to consider their students within the context of the pandemic. Almost one in four administrators believed that 20–30 percent of their students were impacted by trauma. The number of administrators who believed that 30–50 percent of their students were impacted by trauma doubled when considering the pandemic.
When asked to rate the degree to which they believe trauma is negatively affecting student performance on a scale of 1 (low impact) to 10 (high impact), administrators indicated a strong conviction that trauma is significantly impacting academics, behaviour, and other student issues such as attendance or overall attitude toward school (See Figure 1). For example, more than one-quarter of administrators rated the impact of trauma on academic performance as 10/10. One-third of administrators rated trauma’s impact on behaviour as 10/10. More than one-quarter of administrators rated the impact of trauma on attendance or overall attitude toward school as 10/10.
Figure 1: Overall, what impact do you believe the effects of trauma have on your students’ academic performance, behaviour, and other student issues such as attendance or attitude toward school?
Given the prevalence of trauma, administrators reported that a significant amount of teaching time is spent dealing with issues connected to student trauma. For example, half of the administrators estimated that their staff spend 10–30 percent of their teaching time dealing with issues related to student trauma. One in ten administrators estimated that 40–60 percent of teaching time is spent dealing with student trauma-related concerns.
Student trauma also impacts educators. For example, on a scale of 1 (no impact) to 10 (high impact), 80 percent of administrators rated the negative impact of dealing with student trauma on educator wellbeing as 7/10 or higher. One-third of administrators rated the impact as 9/10 or higher. School administrators also reported experiencing the effects of dealing with student trauma on their own wellbeing. Almost three-quarters of administrators rated the impact as 7/10 or higher. Close to 1 in 5 administrators reported the impact as 10/10 (See Figure 2).
Figure 2: To what degree does dealing with student trauma negatively impact your staff’s wellbeing, or your wellbeing?
Consistent with their concern about the prevalence of trauma in their students and its impact on school success, administrators were strongly in favour of adopting a trauma-sensitive approach in education, with over half rating the necessity as 10/10. A total of 85 percent of administrators rated the necessity as 8/10 or higher.
However, administrators tended to rate their schools’ present ability to support students affected by trauma as moderate. On a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent), almost 1 in 10 administrators rated their school as 2 or lower, while less than 2 percent of administrators rated their school as 9/10 or better. Just over half of administrators rated their school’s ability as 5/10 or poorer.
Given their struggles to more effectively support student trauma, administrators were asked to indicate the barriers that their staff face in more fully practising a trauma-sensitive approach. The most prevalent barrier, identified by 86 percent of administrators, was educator stress and burnout. This was closely followed by lack of staff training, lack of staff time, and curriculum pressures (See Figure 3).
Figure 3: What, if anything, gets in the way of your staff’s ability to consistently adopt a trauma-sensitive approach? (Check all that apply)
Administrators also reported facing significant barriers when it came to leading a school-wide trauma-sensitive approach. The most frequently reported barrier, identified by three-quarters of administrators, were the competing demands of other administrative duties. Two-thirds of administrators identified stress and burnout as a barrier. This was closely followed by an overall lack of time. Half of the administrators also identified lack of training as a barrier, followed by lack of system support.
From the interviews with individual administrators, it was clear that they and their staff view student trauma as an important priority in education. However, it was also clear that most educators are struggling to address trauma effectively. They want to do better, but they find themselves exhausted by existing demands and often overwhelmed by the prospect of taking on more, especially something that often feels beyond their level of expertise.
Sometimes when there is so much going on, with trauma, behaviours from students, staff anxiety and stress, it is a lot of stress put on administration. This is starting to burn me out – as well as colleagues that I speak to about this.
I am finding it more and more difficult to approach problems with staff and students with the level of empathy and patience that I feel that I should have. I am feeling very “done”… if that makes sense. The wearing fatigue plays a huge role in mustering the resilience, by the end of the week, to fully and deeply engage in problem-solving. The cumulative effects of trauma are what I am attempting to navigate – and I think many of my colleagues are as well. Quite frankly, there are too many items that are affecting our role as leaders. We are NOT health experts, trauma experts and the board really has no foundations on this either. Nor do they know how to support people on the front lines. Schools are flailing, as is morale. Let us lead without all these other unexpected expectations that affect schools! I’ve become hyper aware of the relationship between trauma (or perceived trauma) and behaviour of students. I am increasingly aware that my expertise in identifying trauma and dealing with behaviour resulting from trauma is insufficient on a daily basis. It has, however, created a strong team bond at our school in order to, every day, try to meet the needs of all students. |
Childhood trauma is first and foremost a fundamental violation of the safety and security of relationships with adults. Therefore, safety and security can only be restored through relationships with adults. And yet, while healing must happen through adults, such healing is rarely easy or straightforward, especially in the classroom.
Supporting students who have suffered trauma is often challenging. The experience of each student is vastly different and the ways in which trauma affects them is wide-ranging and complex. Some students may be oppositional, others overly compliant, while still others are utterly disengaged. Students often require a lot of time and support, progress is slow, and solutions are found through trial and error. Boundaries are tested, core beliefs are challenged, and personal emotional hot buttons are often pushed.
Educators have a critical role to play in helping students heal from the effects of trauma. However, becoming trauma-informed involves more than simply adding “trauma-sensitive” practices to the existing work of educators. While it includes providing educators with practical classroom tools, it also requires a widening of the wellbeing lens toward a greater awareness of the many pressures already on educators. It requires changes on a system level to relieve some of those pressures and the strengthening of organizational structures to more effectively support educator wellbeing. This includes the creation of workplace cultures that genuinely allow educators to be vulnerable and to share both their successes and failures without judgment. It involves moving away from simply reminding educators to practise self-care, to a greater organizational commitment to mutual care. It means ensuring that educators don’t feel alone in the classroom. Above all, it means remembering that of all the teaching strategies, the “strategy” that matters the most is the educator themselves.
[1] Trauma is the lasting emotional response that often results from living through a distressing event. Experiencing a traumatic event can harm a person’s sense of safety, sense of self and ability to regulate emotions and navigate relationships. Long after the traumatic event occurs, people with trauma can often feel shame, helplessness, powerlessness and intense fear. (The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health)
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
Image caption: Cover detail from the 2010 ACDE Accord on Indigenous Education, which is now being renewed.
On behalf of the Association of Canadian Deans of Education (ACDE)
AS A COLONIAL NATION, Canada is founded on the theft of Indigenous lands through settler invasion, which must be understood as a structure rather than an historical event. What this means is that colonialism is not a thing of the past; it continues to shape economic, political, and social structures through its intent to displace and disempower Indigenous peoples. Tuck and Yang (2012) argue that at its core, colonialism and its need to ensure “settler futurity” is about control over the land. Education has been an instrument of colonialism, therefore complicit in the dispossession of Indigenous people from their lands, languages, and livelihoods. As part of the “civilizing” and assimilating agendas of Canadian society, schooling was designed to harm Indigenous people, particularly through the erasure of Indigenous ways of knowing and by disrupting family and community systems. The imperative for Canadians to understand and recognize this foundational context of colonialism has been part of educational directives for some time. This includes the 1996 Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which called for inclusion of Aboriginal perspective, traditions, and worldviews in the school curriculum and programs to address stereotypes and anti-Indigenous racism as educational priorities for improving educational outcomes for Indigenous learners and setting directions for Indigenous-settler relations in this country.
In 2010, under the leadership of Indigenous scholars Jo-ann Archibald and Lorna Williams, and Education Deans Cecilia Reynolds and John Lundy, the Association of Canadian Deans of Education (ACDE) launched the Accord on Indigenous Education. This marked the end of a three-year process of pan-Canadian consultation, engagement, and feedback at a time of limited understanding of the realities of settler colonialism in the consciousness of most Canadians. The Accord aimed to address this through a series of objectives meant to inform and transform both teacher education and K–12 classrooms. The Accord states that “the processes of colonization have either outlawed or suppressed Indigenous knowledge systems, especially language and culture, and have contributed significantly to the low levels of educational attainment and high rates of social issues such as suicide, incarceration, unemployment, and family or community separation” among Indigenous peoples in Canada (p. 2).
The key principles of the Accord include supporting a more socially just society for Indigenous peoples; respectful, collaborative, and consultative processes with Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge holders; promoting partnerships among educational and Indigenous communities; and valuing the diversity of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing and learning. These principles guide the Accord and its overarching vision that “Indigenous identities, cultures, languages, values, ways of knowing, and knowledge systems will flourish in all Canadian learning settings” (p.4). To achieve this vision, the Accord lays out a series of goals, including respectful and welcoming learning environments, curriculum inclusive of Indigenous knowledge systems, culturally responsive pedagogies and assessment practices, mechanisms for promoting and valuing Indigeneity in education, affirmation and revitalization of Indigenous languages, Indigenous education leadership, and culturally respectful Indigenous leadership.
Many deans of education have looked to the Accord to advance changes in teacher education, including the creation of mandatory Indigenous education classes in some programs and the intentional weaving of Indigenous knowledges, content, and perspectives into education courses in other BEd programs. The Accord has been used to advocate for revisions to provincial curricula across the country, especially when the curriculum was silent or only superficially inclusive of the historical and contemporary voices and experiences of Indigenous peoples. The influence of the Accord can also be traced to the creation of First Nations education frameworks in several provinces, the creation of teacher competencies or professional standards, efforts by school divisions to improve the experiences of Indigenous learners in classrooms and school communities, and the implementation of policies at local and provincial levels that aim to improve the experiences of Indigenous learners. In Alberta, the Teacher Quality Standards outline a requirement for teachers to have foundational knowledge of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples, and in British Columbia, the First People’s Principles of Learning build on the aims of the Accord by centring Indigenous knowledge in education. In addition to policies, principles, and standards for education, the Accord has been cited numerous times by academics whose work challenges settler colonialism, influencing the growing body of research and scholarship in Indigenous and anti-colonial education.
In the years since the Accord was launched, many more efforts to recognize the truth of Canada’s history and improve Indigenous-settler relations have unfolded. One of the most significant is the work of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the resulting 94 Calls to Actions. Reconciliation as a framework for education has inspired Faculties of Education to create reconciliation advisories, hire Indigenous faculty, develop strategic plans, revise and enhance Indigenous offerings in curriculum, and provide professional development for staff and faculty to deepen their understanding of colonialism and Indigenous perspectives and knowledges. As it takes hold in educational spaces, we can all appreciate the way reconciliation facilitates decolonization, equity, and more recently, Indigenization. However, reconciliation has also been subject to critique, especially in light of the growing anti-Indigenous racism, illegal incursion on Indigenous lands, denial of Indigenous rights, and the heightened inequities within Indigenous communities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic (Styres & Kempf, 2022).
Further orienting Faculties of Education to Indigenous education priorities has been the emergence of the Idle No More movement, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls and Women (MMIGW), and the Federal Government of Canada’s commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). For example, in B.C., UNDRIP became legislation through the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and an Action Plan that specifies Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination as a core element of Indigenous-settler relations, including Indigenous people’s right to education in their languages and cultures. Given these emerging policy directives and social and political movements, the time was right to renew the Accord on Indigenous Education. This was precisely the request made to ACDE by the executive members of the Canadian Association for Studies in Indigenous Education in 2019.
The process of renewal that is underway draws inspiration from Cree Elder and scholar-educator, Dr. Verna Kirkness’s (2013) leadership approach that asks us to consider the following questions: Where have we been, where are going, how do we get there, and how do we know when we are there? Pan-consultation and feedback sessions are being held by deans of education from across Canada over the coming year, who will “listen and lift” the voices and perspectives from early learning, K–12, teacher education, and communities. The process of consultation and the work of the deans emphasize responsibilities and actions that help learners understand their entanglements in settler-colonialism, draw from the diverse and rich Indigenous knowledge traditions in their lives, and advance Indigenous rights and priorities through anti-racist, decolonial, and sovereign approaches. A revised Accord on Indigenous Education will seek to align its goals with the rights acknowledged in UNDRIP, the TRC Calls to Action, and the MMIGW Calls for Justice. Given all that has unfolded since the Accord was first launched, there is an imperative to move from a language rooted in the politics of respect to the politics of rights, creating new opportunities for educators to deepen and expand their understanding and their practice in ways that actively confront the colonial relations of Canada, moving us into an Indigenous-settler future in ethically relational ways (Donald, 2009).
Association of Canadian Deans of Education. (2010). Accord on Indigenous education. https://csse-scee.ca/acde/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/08/Accord-on-Indigenous-Education.pdf
Donald, D. (2009). Forts, curriculum, and Indigenous métissage: Imagining decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian relations in educational contexts. First Nations Perspectives, 2(1), 1–24.
Kirkness, V. (2013). Creating space: My life and work in Indigenous education. University of Manitoba Press.
Styres, S. D, & Kempf, A. (2022). Troubling Truth and Reconciliation in Canadian education: Critical perspectives. University of Alberta Press.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Honouring the truth, reconciling for the future: Summary of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education& Society, 1(1), 1–40.
UN General Assembly, United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples: Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, 2 October 2007, A/RES/61/295. https://www.refworld.org/docid/471355a82.html
Caption for banner image at top:
Cover detail from the 2010 ACDE Accord on Indigenous Education, which is now being renewed.
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
Photo caption: Pickleball events helped build a sense of community and connection after the isolation of the COVID years.
Student and staff wellness was on the radar of the board of trustees of the Black Gold School Division (BGSD) in Alberta even prior to COVID-19. Black Gold now adheres to three strong priorities that direct the work done with our staff and students: Success, Wellness, and Engagement & Partnerships. With a relatively small increase in the monetary investment in the Wellness pillar, we have been able to create momentum and change that is altering the trajectory of our division and snowballing in its impact. Our journey, while unique to our division, contains takeaways that can be applied in other contexts across the country to support staff wellbeing.
When the board and our senior administrators were discussing what our priorities should be in 2019, wellness was brought forward as an option, but focused mainly on students at that point. COVID-19, however, amplified the need for wellness support for our adults as well, as we started to hear that our employees weren’t doing “well” (a rather ambiguous term at this point). With this new priority and focus in place, we began to move forward with the wellness support for our staff members. To begin, an internal Employee Health, Wellness, and Safety Feedback survey was administered, and the big takeaway from it was that people in all positions were feeling a lack of time to do their jobs well.
It was at this point that our Division Principal, Jon Ganton, started to look for ways to dig a little deeper into our employee experience so that our next moves were headed in the right direction, rather than just being based on his interpretation of the in-house survey. He was drawn to the EdCan Network’s Well at Work Advisors program because the Advisors were all formerly involved in education and he felt this was vital. Schools are a different type of “business,” and we craved feedback from a perspective that would honour all the intricacies involved with that. When a partnership with the College of Alberta School Superintendents was offered, which cut the cost in half, Jon jumped on it, and in 2022 our connection with Caroline Picard, our advisor, began.
In order to understand our school division’s context and identify strategies and goals to move toward supporting staff wellbeing, our Well at Work Advisor began by reviewing the existing workplace wellbeing data and organizing interviews with a cross-section of employees.
Caroline conducted a series of eight interviews with pairs of employees that represented all of our union and worker groups in Black Gold. These took place over Zoom at a predetermined time that worked for each employee. Often, participants were paired with someone from a different union or role, which made for some really interesting connections and comparisons across groups of employees and buildings.
The questions Caroline posed centred around the perception and availability of wellness support from the employer, and also developed a context for each interviewee to share their personal experiences, concerns, and suggestions for improvement.
From the rich foundational review and recommendations that Caroline created, we put some suggestions immediately into practice, and continue to implement suggestions to this day. Three major pieces that have impacted staff wellness at BGSD are:
Our support staff members were feeling left out and isolated because they weren’t always at the table for important school-based conversations and professional development (PD). This was mainly due to how many hours we were paying them to work each day, which conflicted with when our staff meetings and professional development opportunities were happening. In the 2022-2023 school year we completely changed our PD model to support the feedback from our teachers and administrators that they were feeling rushed and exhausted when meetings were on early-out days, and instead incorporated a model where a full day each month is devoted to PD at the school, division, and Alberta Teachers Association levels. With this change we have also offered to pay for half-days on our PD days for our support staff members so they can be present. We are excited that in our upcoming school year, this model has morphed further into providing pay for four full days of PD in conjunction with teachers and administrators, and the option for additional paid half-days.
Inclusion of our support staff remains an issue at the forefront of our minds, as many continue to feel isolated from their colleagues or underappreciated in their buildings. Having this brought to our attention allows us to continually move forward in our decision-making with this as a priority.
In 2021, we introduced funding for a 0.1 FTE Wellness Instructional Teacher (WIST) in each building to support Wellness initiatives for two years. These amazing teachers use data collected in their buildings to inform their wellness focuses for the year. We truly believe that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work when it comes to wellness, especially as our district has a huge variation of school populations, from large urban high schools to small rural schools.
The WISTs record their action plan and the ensuing results throughout the year, and these are stored in a repository that everyone has access to. This sharing of best practices and strategies (and the ones that weren’t as effective) allows other WISTs who are new to the role, or who have identified a new area of focus, to learn from the work of others and hit the ground running.
Our board has witnessed the power these positions have had to impact culture and overall wellbeing in each building, and has decided to continue funding for the upcoming 2023-2024 school year.
A full-time Division Wellness Teacher position was created for the 2022-2023 school year, and I was the lucky candidate who was awarded the job. At first, I was unsure of the direction to head in, so our Well at Work Advisor’s feedback was invaluable, as was the Well at Work K–12 Leadership Course online. They became my roadmap.
I quickly realized how to segment my work (individual, community, and systemic supports and changes), and how to streamline my communication surrounding the definition of wellness in Black Gold. My ultimate goal, right off the hop, was to ensure that the position was visible and had a measurable and immediate impact (that low-hanging fruit we often hear described). For us, this amounted to the golden oldie of bi-monthly Wellbeing Newsletters going out to everyone, and within that, individual challenges for the month. September, for example, was a step challenge, as it coincided beautifully with the Terry Fox Walk/Run that all of our schools participate in. The goal of the newsletter is always to provide information, research, and conversation surrounding best wellness practices in a way that is easy to incorporate into a busy life. The feedback I got from people was supportive, as one teacher wrote, “Your newsletter has been super useful, and I am really appreciating that it has things (recipes, challenges, etc.) that I can actually use/do. I like the tangible aspect of it, and the fact that it doesn’t feel like it’s just adding one more thing to my plate.” Ensuring that I wasn’t adding to the plate was vital and I feel like my own experience as a teacher allowed me to balance on the fine line between challenge/fun and creating extra work. Even with this goal at the forefront of my mind, I did have two people ask to opt out of my newsletters because they felt they were reminders of all of the things they “should” be doing. Of course I honoured their requests, and also remain cognizant of the number of times I am communicating with everyone each week.
The purpose behind the challenges was two-fold. In our Well at Work report, it was very clear that people were experiencing a sense of a loss or minimization of community (due to both COVID-19 and the siloing that occurs when workload intensifies), both at their own schools, and between schools and departments. Each monthly challenge has a team prize; the school or department with the highest percentage of participation wins a prize for everyone. I was hopeful that this shared incentive, and conversations around the competition and wellness practices, would re-engage people with one another.
Another community prong of support I offer is professional development. Each month I lead a 90-minute virtual session that coincides with the wellness focus of the month. These happen during designated time on our PD days. By allowing teachers the opportunity to log in virtually from their own buildings we minimize commuting stress. We anticipated that having wellness sessions run congruently with curriculum-based PD, especially with new curriculum currently being implemented in Alberta, would be challenging, but my sessions have had high attendance rates, which demonstrates the need educators feel for wellness-based learning.
I also work closely with administrators to create sessions for their staff-specific needs. Usually this begins with a conversation about what they are noticing, or what is worrisome for them about the wellbeing of their staff. In any form of PD I deliver I adopt a workshop model, where people are conversing and working through ideas together and individually to find ways to increase their own individual wellness capacity, and elevate the wellness of the community within their building. This work creates a common language and series of shared expectations between staff members, and also allows administrators to feel supported in their quest to support their own staff.
As suggested in our Workplace Wellbeing Review and Recommendations, I also looked for any opportunity I could to create fun and bring people from various locations together. As we all have experienced, going through COVID-19 has created a sense of separation and isolation. To bridge that, I created a BGSD Challenge, which is a smaller-scale corporate challenge-style event. This allows everyone’s talents to shine as they earn points for their school or department, and also hosts three in-person events (pickleball, yoga, and a softball tournament) for people to meet at.
Additionally, we hosted a half-day in-person Wellness PD day, complete with food trucks, massages, and amazing personal wellness sessions. This day provided us with an opportunity to reach out to in-house presenters to share their passions and wellbeing habits. One teacher, who was asked to present a fly-fishing session, commented that he “never considered doing any sort of PD presentation and enjoyed the experience immensely.” We found that the uptake on wellness sessions wasn’t as high during this day, when we were meeting in-person, as it is when our sessions are delivered online.
My work at the systemic level took a little longer to nail down, because I needed to get a sense of how all of the pieces and people interacted before I could begin to identify which direction to head in. At the Pan-Canadian Summit on K–12 Workplace Wellbeing, I had my lightbulb moment (actually, a teeny tiny little spark that eventually grew to a lightbulb a few weeks later). Dr. Vidya Shah gave a keynote address on “Wellbeing for Whom?” and that question, and subsequent information, stuck with me. It quickly became apparent that we needed to learn about the Black Gold experience from everyone, including members of our staff from traditionally marginalized groups. Our journey into Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion began there, and while it is still in its infancy, it has already begun to spark vital conversation and change. We have administered a survey to all staff members, and the data collected and amalgamated from that has been analyzed first by senior administrators, our administration association, and our board of trustees. I have also developed a process that principals will take back to work through the data with their own staff.
One quick, instantly visible piece of this section of the work was creating and marketing Black Gold Pride shirts for our staff to wear. This movement grew legs, and we were able to benefit our in-school GSAs with a portion of the proceeds from each sale. As one teacher commented, “I just wanted to say I loved seeing a pride shirt order form in the newsletter today! I’ve always gotten my own shirts like that to show my support because the division has never put out their own shirts or even had emails regarding where to buy them. This is huge! And to have money donated back to school GSAs is awesome too! One step at a time to getting Black Gold more inclusive across the division.” An action that felt small was actually very big for many, as one of our trustees let me know that wearing her shirt not only got her a bunch of comments and kudos at a meeting she was at, but also opened up a really personal conversation with a young cashier scanning her groceries. She was moved by the impact something so small could have.
With Wellness listed as one of the three priorities of our division, it has been vital that we incorporate a wellness focus into all of our decision-making and meetings. I lead leadership-specific PD at each Administration Association meeting, and alternate between personal wellness for leaders, and ways to support staff with their wellness. I went into these sessions hyper-cognizant of the workload our administrators feel, and was very conscious of ensuring that my work with them was quick and beneficial, but as time has gone on, I have received lots of feedback that our work together is both appreciated, and a change from the usual flow of the meeting.
Our senior administration was encouraged, through our Workplace Wellbeing Review and Recommendations, to visit schools to increase visibility and remove perceived barriers in communication that were identified. They have been following this suggestion and have been present at schools more frequently.
Our board has also incorporated wellness discussions into their meetings, constantly ensuring their decisions align with Black Gold’s priorities. Our forward-thinking trustees have led the charge in this realm and we are extremely grateful for their commitment of funding and their willingness to converse about the employee experience at Black Gold.
I do not have a finalized roadmap moving forward into our next steps, as they need to be flexible and responsive to needs that are identified along the way. But I do know that providing psychological health and safety to all of our employees is at the forefront of our minds at Black Gold. I have three major questions I will be focusing on in the upcoming school year:
We are treading slowly, carefully, and in the right direction to best serve our employees. What I do know, without a doubt, is that focusing on staff wellbeing is powerful and important, as encapsulated by a teacher in our division: “I just wanted to express how grateful I am for all that you have done this year to encourage me, and all the staff, to take care of ourselves. It has been a tremendous gift to be given permission to practice self-care in real and many practical ways. You are a blessing!”
Our work with EdCan and our Well at Work advisor has kick-started a lot of phenomenal conversation, change, support, and growth already in our division, and it is exciting to consider where we might be a few years in the future. Our financial investment (0.1 FTE in 31 schools and 1.6 FTE at Division Office), coupled with the investment in the Well at Work Advisors foundational analysis, has been minimal in comparison to the insight and momentum gained. The impact at this point is immeasurable and multi-faceted, and we are so grateful to have had this opportunity to increase the wellbeing of all of our employees.
*This is part of Well at Work’s Stories of Success Webinar Series, which profiles the many ways that school districts across Canada are fostering workplace wellbeing.
Photo: Courtesy Black Gold School Division
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
Dr. Gabor Maté (2022) argues that within the medical world, treating individual health symptoms, without considering wider systems within which individuals exist, ignores multiple factors that contribute to sickness:
“What if we saw illness as an imbalance in the entire organization, not just as a manifestation of molecules, cells or organs invaded or denatured by pathology. What if we applied the findings of western research and medical science in a systems framework, seeking all the connections that contribute to illness and health?”
Historically, addressing individual symptoms has been the dominant approach in western medicine. The same focus on individuals rather than systems has also pervaded approaches to workplace wellbeing in Canadian schools. A plethora of incentives, from gym membership to yoga classes, suggests that K–12 staff wellbeing can be addressed by encouraging individuals to access such programs to counter stresses in work and life.
This article rejects a dominant focus on individual remedies and argues for systemic approaches to address workplace wellbeing. While individual responsibility has its place, a primary focus on it is misplaced. Teachers, principals, or school bus drivers should bear some responsibility for their own wellbeing, and for positively contributing to their professional workplace, but should not bear responsibility for fixing school systems that may be making them sick.
So how to create systemic approaches to wellbeing?
To its credit, the British Columbia government, through its Ministry of Education’s Mental Health in Schools Strategy (2020) has encouraged a focus on workplace wellbeing:
“Research confirms stress experienced by school administrators can negatively impact school staff. Teacher stress has been directly linked to increased student stress levels, spilling over from the teacher to the student and impacting social adjustment and student performance.”
Funds from the Ministry of Education to address mental health can be utilized for a focus on adults in K-12 school systems.
Addressing two issues would greatly improve the role of provincial governments (including B.C.) in supporting systemic workplace wellbeing:
Teacher and other unions tend to be reactive organizations. But addressing workplace wellbeing requires stakeholders to collaboratively consider data and act together to find solutions. When working with districts as EdCan Advisors,3 we have utilized the Guarding Minds at Work survey,4 conducted interviews with a range of staff, and accessed demographic, sick leave, and other data. These combined data sources, as well as reports we generate, can be used in management-union collaborations to jointly develop action plans.
A new form of proactive, collaborative social entrepreneurship might be considered, where ideas to improve wellbeing emerge from all stakeholders, and where consensus should be developed on proposed solutions. Both union and management can build trust by co-creating solutions and by working together to support wellbeing.
Being a compassionate leader is a fine idea, but being a collaborative one is better. Hierarchical school systems are reflected in job titles like Superintendent, CEO, and Executive Team. Many progressive leaders within these roles utilize collaborative approaches and encourage innovation within their organizations. But others do not, and autocratic leadership, especially in school principals, has been found in our work to have negative impacts on teacher and support staff wellbeing, while more collaborative and less autocratic principals have improved wellbeing in their schools.
Leaders can support systemic approaches by:
Everyone who works as an employee in a K–12 Canadian school district is part of a system. Yet how often does one hear “the system” discussed as though those working in it are not part of it? If I work in a system, I need to take some responsibility to make it better. But if my workload is excessive, my stress is high, and some of my professional connections and relationships are problematic, giving me one more job is not going to help.
So, what to do? The answer is simple – reduce workload and stress. But how to do it is not. We as EdCan Advisors have found two useful starting points:
As these progress, longer-term systemic approaches can be the focus of dialogue and planning, perhaps to address issues of racism or discrimination, or shifting school and district culture into more positive spaces.
One way to address racism in schools is to hire greater numbers of Indigenous and racialized teachers and other staff. A Rideau Foundation effort to boost Indigenous teachers was reported by McKenna (2023), and stated that in Winnipeg, 16.9 percent of students identified as Indigenous but only 8.6 percent of teachers were Indigenous. This lower ratio of Indigenous staff compared to districts’ Indigenous student populations is repeated in many Canadian school districts.
Systemic approaches to combatting racism and discrimination require more Indigenous teachers and racialized staff in schools. This is a more complex issue than recruitment, as some Indigenous people have stated they are reluctant to participate in what they still consider a predominantly colonial system. Indigenous staff report hearing racist and discriminatory comments from students, staff, or parents, comments which impact their wellbeing. Indigenous support staff have told me of bullying and harassment at work linked, in their view, to being Indigenous, female, and of low status in school districts.
At the same time, many non-Indigenous teachers are making significant efforts toward respectful access to both Indigenous knowledge and people. Others are apprehensive about cultural appropriation or fear to offend.
Just as decolonization is a work-in-progress, so will addressing wellbeing with anti-racism efforts take time and careful dialogue before significant changes are seen. McKenna also offers some thoughts on the complexity of the issue, identifying historical, cultural and current contextual issues, including “ongoing trauma connected to education that stems from residential schools, as well as colonial curriculums and a general lack of cultural safety in public education.”
While a significant dialogue with Indigenous and racialized people is needed, steps can be made while the bigger picture is explored. In one B.C. school district, Indigenous staff have stated that they do not trust either management or union processes to deal with racism, discrimination, or harassment. They prefer more restorative processes to address racist attitudes and actions. Evidence from districts that have utilized restorative approaches suggests such processes improve wellbeing for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff.
A similar focus to that on Indigenous and racialized staff might be placed on LGBTQ2+ staff in schools, perhaps with a focus on wellbeing for LGBTQ2+ staff in rural areas, where U.K. research (Lee, 2019) has outlined high levels of depression and anxiety among LGBTQ2+ teachers.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health reports: “More than 75% of suicides involve men, but women attempt suicide 3 to 4 times more often than men” (CAMH, 2023).
The Canadian Women’s Foundation (Senior & Peoples, 2021) states:
“Women experience depression and anxiety twice as often as men. Women in heterosexual pairings have long taken the position of ‘designated worrier.’ They tend to bear the brunt of the anxiety about family health and wellbeing. Of course, the data shows how worry work comes at the expense of a mother’s own health and wellbeing.”
Women comprise around 75 percent of many school district workforces. Yet there is a surprising lack of focus on women’s wellbeing and mental health in many school systems. Systemic change in a workforce largely populated by women requires a focus on women. Work-life balance can be difficult for women who often still have the primary care responsibilities within families, and even more so for those in the “sandwich generation” who are supporting both children and aging parents.
Teacher demographics in many school districts currently show more younger teachers, as retirements surge. New patterns are emerging with this changing demographic. One I have heard recently in B.C. school districts is that many younger teachers arrive shortly before the morning bell and are gone shortly after schools close in the afternoon, a pattern differing from some more experienced and older teachers, who often chat and collaborate after students leave. Teachers with young families have many demands at home that may limit the “after-hours” time they can spend at school. But younger staff in K–12 schools may also be protecting their own work-life balance by putting limits and boundaries on their work.
How to address the wellbeing of women staff in schools?
Look at the data. Are women taking leaves, accessing EFAP or short/long term rehabilitation programs proportionately more than males, and if so, in which roles? But if supporting collaborative approaches with systemic support resonates with districts, it is also crucial to start conversations with women staff at every status level about their wellbeing.
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PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTs should be more active in supporting systemic approaches to wellbeing. Adopting some or all of the six factors explored in this article to a school district’s context might create strong foundations. Initiating short-term action would build momentum and ease districts into addressing tougher issues over the longer term. Systemic action is possible with the right leadership, staffing, and funding, a focus on data, and effective collaboration, facilitation, and implementation to build workplace wellbeing.
It’s not easy and there’s no exact recipe, but systemic improvements can be made. Let’s do what we can and share what we learn.
B.C. Ministry of Education. (2020). Mental health in schools strategy. Government of British Columbia.
www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/erase/documents/mental-health-wellness/mhis-strategy.pdf
Capobianco, A. (2023, May 24). Halifax education workers’ strike continues. Globe and Mail.
www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-halifax-education-workers-strike-continues/
Lee, C. (2019). How do lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers experience UK rural school communities? Social Sciences, 8(9), 249.
www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/9/249#:~:text=Results%20showed%20that%20LGB%20teachers,%2Dworth%2C%20depression%20and%20anxiety
Maté, G., with Maté, D. (2022). The myth of normal: Trauma, illness and healing in a toxic culture. Knopf Canada.
McKenna, C. (2023, March 28). Finding the Knowledge Keepers: The Indigenous teacher shortage. The Walrus.
https://thewalrus.ca/finding-the-knowledge-keepers-the-indigenous-teacher-shortage/
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. (2023). Mental illness and addiction: Facts and statistics.
www.camh.ca/en/driving-change/the-crisis-is-real/mental-health-statistics
Naylor, C. (2020). The Powell River Learning Group: Improving professional relationships.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nSs5ZGmqQkYWCxqio42JehlV473kqm_l/view
Senior, P., & Peoples, A. (2021, June 7). The abysmal state of mothers’ mental health. (2021, June 7). Canadian Women’s Foundation.
https://canadianwomen.org/blog/the-abysmal-state-of-mothers-mental-health
Wang, F. (2022, October). Psychological safety of school administrators: Invisible barriers to speaking out. University of British Columbia.
https://edst-educ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2022/10/Psychological-Safety-of-School-Administrators-v7-Final.pdf
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
Although statistics vary across provinces, Canadian schools in general were closed for a total of 51 weeks during the pandemic – placing the nation in the highest bracket globally for school closures (UNESCO, n.d.). Unsurprisingly, provincial policymakers across Canada continue to be concerned about the negative short- and long-term impacts of the disruptions created by these closures on students’ learning and have been focusing their attention on improving achievement in traditional content areas such as reading, writing, mathematics, and science. The dominant political and popular media discourse is that students have fallen behind and need to “catch up” in these foundational subject areas. Certainly, international research suggests that this concern is well-founded, and that students’ learning has been significantly disrupted during the pandemic.
Learning loss within and outside of Canada
International research is beginning to document the learning losses students experienced due to school closures, shifts toward online and hybrid learning, and other impacts associated with successive waves of the pandemic. Although these studies are relatively sparse, a limited number of Western nations such as the Netherlands (Engzell et al., 2021), Germany (Depping et al., 2021), Belgium (Maldonato & De Witte, 2021), and the U.S. (Bailey et al., 2021) suggest learning essentially stalled during the pandemic. These studies also suggest that the pandemic may have exacerbated existing inequalities, with lower socio-economic status (SES) students falling even further behind their more affluent peers. Collectively, the emergent literature suggests that learning and the academic resilience of students globally have been particularly threatened during the pandemic (Volante & Klinger, 2022a).
Unfortunately, Canadian large-scale assessment research, which is used to draw reliable and comparative measures of student achievement and system-level judgments, has been particularly constrained during the pandemic. Indeed, the administration of international, national, and provincial assessments have all been adversely impacted, with numerous cancellations during the initial waves of the pandemic. Further, those assessment programs that did occur met with high levels of non-participation, impacting sampling designs. These challenges have made it difficult to make provincial comparisons of student achievement. Those studies that do exist are confined to select geographical contexts such as Toronto (Toronto District School Board, 2021), or offer predicted losses extrapolated from summer learning research (Aurini & Davies, 2021). Collectively, the available research in Canada has been unable to quantify, with any level of certainty, the pandemic’s impact on students’ achievement.
Nevertheless, Canadian education systems, including higher education settings, are reporting important gaps in student learning, suggesting that learning losses have occurred for students in K–12 and beyond. International organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2020) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2022) have also reported that lower SES students and their families have been unable to secure the necessary resources needed to succeed in online and hybrid learning environments amidst the turmoil created by the pandemic. These challenges are also well documented in popular media stories across Canada and reflected in the policy interventions adopted by various provincial governments to try to support our most vulnerable student groups. Nonetheless, the relative success of these efforts and interventions has not been measured.
Policy trends across Canada
One of our recent studies provided a pan-Canadian analysis of educational policy developments from January 2020 to December 2021 that were specifically related to academic resilience in the wake of the initial waves of the pandemic. Not surprisingly, our findings suggested greater attention was devoted to academic issues – namely learning outcomes in cognitive domains – with relatively fewer policies and resources to support mental health and general physical wellness (Volante et al., 2022c). Our analysis also suggested that there was also a general lack of policy differentiation in terms of how specific resources and supports were to be directed within provincial educational jurisdictions to help support at-risk students. Without such differentiation, we have argued that the resources developed will not be fully realized, and will undoubtedly fail to stem the growing disparities between low- and high-SES student populations that have been amplified by the pandemic.
Collectively, our policy research also underscores the importance of reconsidering how provincial education systems operate to achieve positive outcomes for students and how these outcomes might be “measured” and evaluated. Although a great deal of work is already underway by provincial testing bodies, large-scale assessment measures currently do not offer a multifaceted picture of student development. Conversely, international achievement measures such as those administered by the OECD and/or the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), provide background questionnaires that attempt to capture student-, school-, and system-level factors that may be related to student outcomes. As an example, these international measures increasingly include factors and outcomes that could be classified as non-cognitive skills, drawing attention to the importance of non-cognitive and mental/physical wellness outcomes.
Challenging the dominant discourse
One would be hard-pressed to find any educational stakeholder group that does not recognize the importance of student achievement in traditional subject areas such as reading, writing, mathematics, and science. Nevertheless, the pandemic has highlighted how achievement in traditional cognitive domains offers a necessary, but incomplete picture of the pressing challenges that face Canadian youth. As Volante, Klinger, and Barrett (2021) noted in a previous Education Canada article, Canadian children reported disturbing trends in relation to mental health and general wellness. Similarly, the promotion of non-cognitive skills such as growth mindset represents an increasingly important cadre of key attributes that contribute to resilient students, schools, and education systems in general (Volante & Klinger, 2022b).
Thus, provincial policymakers are faced with an important dilemma. Namely, to develop a comprehensive vision of student learning and wellbeing that emphasizes cognitive (i.e. reading, writing, mathematics, science achievement), non-cognitive (i.e. learning habits, self-beliefs, growth mindset), and general wellness in the face of dominant historical and political ideologies that have focused almost exclusively on standards-based education reform. Indeed, standards-based reform and achievement of the “three R’s” (reading, writing, arithmetic), has largely driven large-scale reform agendas in much of the Western world for more than half a century (Volante et al., 2022d). In spite of the concerns and evidence that have arisen with respect to the impact of the pandemic, every provincial jurisdiction in Canada continues to adhere to a standards-based reform model that emphasizes a hierarchy of subject areas and achievement outcomes. The importance of other critical factors and outcomes may be acknowledged, but receives little if any formal attention, and there is little effort to build on the information being collected by international assessments that now include such measures.
Rethinking large-scale reform
It is often written that adversity is a catalyst for growth and change. Certainly, the last several years have likely presented the most formidable adversity that many students, families, and teachers may face in their lifetimes. Rather than return to status quo approaches that emphasize a narrow set of achievement outcomes, this critical epoch in our collective history offers an opportunity to rethink our approaches to large-scale education reform to provide a more nuanced recognition of the skills and attributes required to face the challenges of the future. Certainly, any student, parent, or teacher will tell you that more than academic content was lost during the pandemic – capturing and addressing the multifaceted complexity of this “loss” requires a new conception of what quality education looks like in a post-COVID world. Failing to recognize the latter could undoubtedly result in students catching up in academic content, only to fall behind in the non-cognitive skills they require for further success. It is time for us to look for ways to link provincial, national, and international assessments and surveys in order to obtain the data needed to examine the complexity of learning that supports the whole child.
This research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Aurini, J., & Davies, S. (2020). COVID-19 school closures and educational achievement gaps in Canada: Lessons from Ontario summer learning research. Canadian Review of Sociology, 58(2), 165–185. doi.org/10.1111/cars.12334
Bailey, D. H., Duncan, G. J., Murnane, R. J., & Yeung, N. A. (2021). Achievement gaps in the wake of COVID-19. Educational Researcher, 50(5), 266–275. doi.org/10.3102%2F0013189X211011237
Depping, D., Lücken, M. et al. (2021). KompetenzständeHamburger Schülerinnen vor und während der Corona-Pandemie [Alternative pupils’ competence measurement in Hamburg during the Corona pandemic]. DDS – Die Deutsche Schule, Beiheft, 17, 51–79. www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2021/21514/pdf/DDS_Beiheft_17_2021_Depping_et_al_Kompetenzstaende_Hamburger.pdf
Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M. D. (2021). Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(17), 1-7.www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/17/e2022376118.full.pdf
Maldonato, J. E., & De Witte, C. (2021). The effect of school closures on standardised student test outcomes. British Educational Research Journal. doi.org/10.1002/berj.3754
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on student equity and inclusion: supporting vulnerable students during school closures and school re-openings. OECD Publishing. https://oecd.org/education/strength-through-diversity/OECD%20COVID-19%20Brief%20Vulnerable%20Students.pdf
UNESCO. (n.d.). Dashboards on the Global Monitoring of School Closures Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://covid19.uis.unesco.org/global-monitoring-school-closures-covid19
Volante, L., & Klinger, D. A. (2022a). PISA, global reference societies, and policy borrowing: The promises and pitfalls of academic resilience. Policy Futures in Education. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14782103211069002
Volante, L., & Klinger, D. A. (2022b, January 27–28). Assessing non-cognitive skills to promote equity and academic resilience [Paper presentation]. Advancing Assessment and Evaluation Virtual Conference. https://aaec2022.netlify.app/_main.pdf
Volante, L., Klinger, D. A., & Barrett, J. (2021). Academic resilience in a post-COVID world: a multi-level approach to capacity building. Education Canada, 61(3), 32–34.
Volante, L., Lara, C., Klinger, D. A., & Siegel, M. (2022c). Academic resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: a triarchic analysis of education policy developments across Canada. Canadian Journal of Education, 45(4), 1112–1140.
Volante, L., Schnepf, S., & Klinger, D. A. (Eds.) (2022d). Cross-national achievement surveys for monitoring educational outcomes: Policies, practices, and political reforms within the European Union. Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/406165
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, April 2023
During the last few years, we saw over 90 percent of the world’s student population affected by school closures linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation has created a world crisis in education and reminds us how quickly rights can be taken away. UNESCO, the UN agency responsible for education, science and culture, responded by launching the COVID-19 Global Education Coalition to help countries reach at-risk children and youth.
Meanwhile in Canada, 5.7 million students in primary and secondary school were impacted by school closures over the last three years. Statistics Canada identified that this had a big impact on the academic success, mental and physical health, and socio-economic status of children. From an inclusion and diversity lens, COVID-19 was particularly detrimental to members of some populations who were overrepresented among the most vulnerable groups.
The Canadian Commission for UNESCO (CCUNESCO) responded by gathering free and accessible online educational resources to share with teachers, students and parents across the country. It has also collaborated with the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) to support UNESCO’s work in collecting information on the impact of the pandemic in education. Lastly, CCUNESCO most recently launched an Expert Working Group to explore the various impacts of the pandemic by province and territory.
As most of you know, education is a provincial and territorial jurisdiction in Canada. It is therefore of upmost importance that we share with each other lessons learned and opportunities gained during the pandemic. Innovations in one region should be shared and celebrated across the country, as well as ongoing challenges that need to be faced. We hope to continue to gather and collaborate with all education stakeholders in Canada. Only by working together can we create a future for education that is inclusive, accessible and sustainable.
First published in Education Canada, April 2023
WHEN WE’RE IN TROUBLE, we can give up, keep going, or play our way out of it. The COVID-19 pandemic has been big trouble, for sure. It is this century’s greatest crisis, and, for most of us, the greatest crisis of our entire lives. The immediate impact of the pandemic on learning, engagement, and wellbeing is clear. In Canada, concerns about student mental health, physical inactivity, excessive screen time, delayed social skills, inconsistent attendance, and ever-widening learning gaps are growing (Vaillancourt, T. et al., 2021).
There have been four prominent educational responses to recovery from COVID-19:
These responses are insufficient or inappropriate. The question is how can we re-engage all students and their educators with the joy and purpose of learning after months and sometimes years of literally – as well as figuratively – switching off from it? In other words, how can we play our way out of it?
It is not only our students who are struggling. Globally, teachers and school leaders are leaving the profession at an unprecedented rate (UNESCO, 2022). There is an urgent need to find ways to recruit and retain new teachers, and also support those who stay. Engage our students, and we will engage their teachers, too.
We’ve already witnessed schools get creative with scheduling and spaces, shift more learning outdoors, and embrace a variety of playful approaches to engage students. How do we capture and circulate these innovative practices across the country post-pandemic? What types of play-based learning matter for students, especially those traditionally under-served by school systems? These questions inspired our University of Ottawa team to apply for a LEGO Foundation COVID Recovery Grant to establish the bilingual Canadian Playful Schools Network (CPSN).
The Playful Schools Network
The first of its kind in the world, this bilingual network brings together 41 school teams from seven provinces to explore and advance significant and sustainable learning through play in the middle school grades (4–8). Learn more about the 41 participating school teams and their learning through play projects in the videos and descriptions on the CPSN interactive map.
As a learning network, the CPSN connects educators who are using playful pedagogies from across the country and provides opportunities for them to share innovative practices and resources, learn with and from one another as well as experts in learning through play, and inspire and challenge each other. Together, CPSN members and the research team are exploring answers to the following research questions:
Participating school teams share their playful learning journey through monthly reports, project videos, school showcases, and network events, such as playdates, playgroups, and the Showcase Conference in June, 2023.
The CPSN provides each school team with funding to support time for monthly professional learning and its self-directed Learning through Play Project. Each month, educators collaborate as a school team, learn from other schools through playdates or playgroups, attend webinars offered as part of the Playjouer Professional Learning Series, share resources, and ultimately, deepen their play-based practices. The CPSN uOttawa team and 13 international advisors provide facilitation, consultation, coaching, and research support for the schools.
The importance of play
The importance of play for children’s learning and wellbeing has a distinguished history. The German inventor of kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel, Italian school reformer Maria Montessori, and U.S. progressive educator John Dewey have all argued for more play in the classroom. Learning through play is essential to children’s development and can support abstract thinking, language development, social skills, and self-expression. “Play nourishes every aspect of children’s development – it forms the foundation of intellectual, social, physical, and emotional skills necessary for success in school and in life. Play paves the way for learning” (Canadian Council on Learning, 2006). In Free to Learn, Peter Gray (2013) shows how free play, which is distinguished from play that is structured by adults, can help children learn to make friends, get along with peers as equals, solve problems, overcome fears, create rules, and make their own decisions.
Across Canada, play is most prevalent in kindergarten and the early years of elementary school, but tends to vanish as students progress through junior, middle, and senior grades. Play-based approaches seem to be more challenging as students get older and bigger, and can be at odds with the pressures of top-down accountability and content-heavy curricula. Play is often seen as a frivolous distraction from the hard work of learning. Yet, as Dutch philosopher Johann Huizinga has argued, play is central to civilization and forms the basis for human culture. Play can and should look different across different ages and contexts, but it must be present throughout all levels of schooling.
The CPSN is not just about getting more play into the curriculum. It’s about deepening and questioning what play is and where and how it makes a difference. Play is often fun – but not always. Play is not the opposite of work. Paradoxically, they are interconnected. Getting young people re-engaged after the pandemic is about grasping the connection between play and work, where play is work, and vice versa.
Research focus
The CPSN digs deep into the potential of play in the middle years, while addressing issues related to inclusion, equity, and wellbeing, as well as learning and evaluation. As a network, we are examining the ways through which students in grades 4–8 play, and how we can identify and integrate them. We are interested in when play can enhance students’ engagement with learning and wellbeing, and also when it does not – and finding ways to address this. We want to know how play in schools can better reflect students’ diverse languages, cultures, and identities and help make play-based learning accessible to all students in all contexts rather than being only for the privileged.
The CPSN is also interested in the potential impact of learning through play on educators’ engagement with learning and wellbeing. Recognizing the challenges of integrating play-based pedagogies in older grades, we want to know how CPSN teachers persist in the face of testing, content, and behaviour demands and support one another. What are the most effective ways for educators and schools to share and circulate positive strategies for play-based learning? Which network activities, resources, and professional learning are most impactful for CPSN teachers and how can they give each other feedback that will deepen the approaches they are all taking? The answers to these questions will not only support the network but also help other schools interested in implementing play-based practices.
Ways to play
In the CPSN, learning through play is explored across four modes: green (outdoors), screen (digital and computer-based), machine (digital and physical building) and everything in between, which looks at the intersections of language, identity, and cultures through play and playful learning (See Figure 1). All 41 CPSN school teams design and implement their own CPSN projects that fit their different learning contexts (e.g. urban or rural community, Indigenous, French or English language, etc.). Together, the projects range across the four modes and many encompass more than one of them. In the network, learning through play is understood in different ways, though the themes and modes cut across all playful projects. For some schools, play can include experiential and hands-on activities such as building outdoor learning spaces, greenhouses, multi-modal murals, and electronic cardboard arcades. For others, play looks like playful inquiry projects where students have dedicated time all year, choose their own topics to explore deeply, and are supported by teachers and community members. For other schools, play means spending time in nature and learning on the land with knowledge keepers or it means creating your own play, song, or book and using technology like animation, Minecraft, or Ozobots to make it come alive. In all projects, play involves hard work, choice, autonomy, challenge, collaboration with peers, and the risk of failure.
CPSN projects
A description of all participating CPSN school teams and their learning through projects is available on our website: www.playjouer.ca. Below are some examples from four of our seven participating provinces.
Chinago Nongom Wabang – Past, Today, and Tomorrow is the name of the learning through play project at Kitigan Zibi Kikinamadinan, a Grade 1–Secondary 5 school in Algonquin territory, near Maniwaki, Quebec. Their CPSN project reflects the school’s priority to provide a nurturing community that values Anishinaabe language and culture for students. Building on the school’s long history of passing on the traditional Algonquin way of life to students, this green play project is focused on learning on the land. During monthly cultural days, students choose from a variety of activities that spark their interest while also learning about their ancestry and local environment. Led by teachers, community members, Elders, and knowledge keepers, the activities vary depending on the month and season and include canoeing, ice fishing, boiling sap to make maple syrup, building shelters and fires, sewing, beading and making moccasins, working with hides, and learning about local plants and medicines.
The project of Monseigneur de Laval Elementary School in Regina is focused on developing and filming a play based on the biography of a prominent figure of Saskatchewan francophone heritage. Their project involves language and culture, as well as arts and making. Collectively, students choose their subject, and take a leadership role to document the region’s history, draft the script, design set and costumes, as well as act, direct, film, and edit. Students are supported by community partners, such as their local theatre group, Radio Canada, the Saskatchewan Historical Society, and the artists’ association.
In King’s Point, Newfoundland, students at Valmont Academy are building a multi-modal mural out of recycled materials. The design is a sailboat, inspired by the work of a local artist. Students have the choice to work with a variety of materials, such as fibreglass, metal, driftwood, and beach glass. Students collected materials for the mural through field trips to their local beach, hiking trails, and surrounding nature. Local industry partners, including boat builders, welders, and fibreglass manufacturers mentor students on how to work with the different materials. The mural will be assembled under the guidance of a local artist. The project aims to rebuild Valmont’s connections to its community and promote local industry career opportunities.
At L’École acadienne de Pomquet, a French-language K–12 school in Nova Scotia, students, community members, and Indigenous knowledge keepers have collaborated to build outdoor educational spaces, such as a greenhouse, outdoor fire pit, and 30-foot teepee. The school’s project focuses on improving the forest that surrounds the school and the connection between Indigenous and Acadian cultures. Consulting with partners from the local Indigenous community, students learned that there are no water sources in the forest, so they are working to dig a pond and build an aquatic ecosystem. They also plan to use the pond as a skating rink in the colder months. The project is not only an opportunity for students to play, build, and learn outdoors in French, but to see the minority language as a source of joy, rather than work: “Si t’as pas de plaisir, ça devient une langue de travail.”1
CPSN members’ reflections
In our playgroup discussions, CPSN members have shared how much they appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues and how their projects are not only rejuvenating and motivating for their students but also for themselves. “It is bringing joy back,” one member stated. Learning through play, they report, supports inclusion, values student strengths, offers leadership opportunities, helps make connections with community and land, encourages students to speak French, and builds classroom community. It also provides a meaningful way for students such as newcomers from Ukraine to meet, work, and develop a sense of belonging with classmates through the universal language of play.
Exciting as all this sounds, learning through play is not without its challenges. There is a tension between play-based learning and curricular expectations. Moving away from traditional teaching and evaluation may concern families, community partners, and even some colleagues. In French-language schools, most materials must be translated and adapted, which consumes resources and can increase workload. The CPSN supports educators to work (and play) their way through and out of these challenges together.
In the middle years of schooling today, play is the exception, not the rule. It tends to flourish in early childhood, or prosper in university psychology “labs” promoting learning sciences where human and financial resources are much greater than in mainstream school systems. It also caters more to the privileged than the marginalized, as is the case in the worldwide Montessori school movement, for example. And it is tolerated in alternative schools, where there is an understanding that traditional ways of teaching and learning may look different.
The CPSN is designed to spark thinking and action in the mainstream about the importance of play-based approaches in the middle years, legitimize learning through play, provide inspiration, offer examples and resources for other schools across the country, and deepen the dialogue about the nature and value of play in general.
If the world were a hockey game, it would be in overtime now. This is not a time to hold on and be defensive. It’s time to make our best moves; to play our way out of trouble; to learn better, and play harder. Play is learning. It should be accessible to all students, no matter where they live, who they are, and which language they speak.
Gray, P. (2013). Free to learn: Why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life. Basic Books.
Hewes, J. (2006). Let the children play: Nature’s answer to early learning. Early Childhood Learning Knowledge Centre, Canadian Council on Learning.
Huizinga, J. (2014). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element in culture. Routledge.
UNESCO. (2022). Transforming teaching from within – Current trends in the status and development of teachers. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Vaillancourt, T., Beauchamp, M., et al. (2022). Children and schools during COVID-19 and beyond: Engagement and connection through opportunity. Royal Society of Canada.
Photo credit: Leslie Mott, Grade Five, North Gower Marlborough Public School
It is now THREE years since governments around the world announced the shutdown of schools to protect students and teachers from COVID-19. According to UNESCO (2020), more than 1.5 billion children from more than 190 countries were sent home in March 2020 to receive instruction remotely, if at all. Since then, educators, parents, and policymakers have been interested in knowing how much the disruptions COVID-19 brought to regular reading instruction impacted children’s reading performance. In this article, we expand on a previous report on children’s reading performance during the first six months of the pandemic (see Georgiou, 2021) to include information from 20 K–9 schools in Alberta from September 2019 until they returned to regular classroom instruction in September 2022.
Findings from the rest of the world
The results of most published studies in different parts of the world indicate that COVID-19 had a significant impact on children’s reading performance, particularly in early grades. For example, in a recent study covering five million Grade 3 to 8 students in the U.S., Kuhfeld et al. (2023) reported that the average fall 2021 reading scores on a standardized reading measure were .09 to .17 standard deviations lower relative to same-grade scores in the fall of 2019. Compared to the growth a typical (pre-pandemic) student makes in these grades, these test score drops represent roughly a third of a school year’s worth of growth. Similarly, working with a sample of Finnish children, Lerkkanen et al. (2022) reported that the growth in reading from Grade 1 to 4 was slower for their COVID-19 cohort than for their pre-COVID-19 cohort.
The same body of research has also revealed that the effect of COVID-19 has not been equal for different groups of students. For example, students from lower socio-economic (SES) backgrounds (or students attending high-poverty schools) seem to have been influenced more than students from higher SES backgrounds. There is also some evidence that students with reading disabilities were more impacted than students without reading disabilities. Finally, Kuhfeld et al. (2022) found that in the U.S., the effect of COVID-19 was greater for Hispanic, American Indian and Alaskan Native, and Black students than for Asian American or White students.1
Findings from Canada
Evidence on how COVID-19 has impacted Canadian students is still scarce and we know of only two studies reporting on how Canadian students were affected, one conducted in Alberta and one conducted in Quebec.
The Alberta study: Georgiou (2021) compared the performance of approximately 4,000 English-speaking students from Grades 2 to 9 in September 2020 (right after the schools re-opened) to the performance of same-grade students in the three years prior to the school closures. Georgiou found that only the performance of younger children (Grades 2 and 3) was lower compared to previous years. Interestingly, the performance of older children (Grades 4 to 9) either remained the same or improved during the pandemic. On the basis of these findings, the Ministry of Education in Alberta (Alberta Education) asked schools to test all their Grade 1 to 3 students in reading and provided substantial funding to support schools in providing reading interventions to the most affected children in early grades.
The Quebec study: Côté and Haeck (personal communication, June 3, 2022) compared the performance of Grade 4 French-speaking students in Quebec using the results from the reading ministerial exam in June 2019 (prior to the pandemic) and June 2021 (a year into the pandemic). They found a substantial decrease in the average performance of students between the two measurement points (77.3 percent in 2019 vs. 69 percent in 2021).
Back on track?
We have been studying reading development and difficulties in Alberta for the past 20 years. Because of this, we had measures in place in multiple schools to also examine the impact of COVID-19. For the purpose of this article, we examined:
To better understand the impact of COVID-19, it is important to break down the time into three separate periods. The first time period covers September 2019 to September 2020. This time period captures the time when schools closed indefinitely after the COVID-19 outbreak and only remote instruction was available to children. The second period (September 2020 to September 2021) is the academic year when schools re-opened, but children had to quarantine for 10 to 14 days if they had COVID-19 and whole classes shifted between face-to-face and online teaching depending on the number of positive cases in each class. Finally, the third time period (from September 2021 to September 2022) is when most teaching took place face-to-face and there were relatively fewer learning disruptions.
These findings suggest that the students in these 20 schools might be back on track in reading following three years of COVID-19 pandemic.
Four keys to recovery
There are four key factors we believe that have helped the students in this sample to get back on track. We summarize them below.
Use of evidence-based practices in the participating schools
Obviously, we wouldn’t have any data to present here unless these schools were collecting data from their students on a yearly basis using norm-referenced assessments. In addition, teachers in these schools have been participating in ongoing professional development seminars with us focusing on best practices in teaching reading, and have been sharing their experiences from field-testing different strategies as part of their communities of practice (see Georgiou et al., 2020, for more information). Principals have also been meeting regularly to discuss the results of their assessments and to identify areas in which their teachers would benefit from further professional development. It is important to note here that the evidence-based practices were in place in the sample schools well before COVID-19. This means that when Alberta Education called teachers in the province to focus their instruction on foundational skills in learning to read (e.g. phonological awareness, phonics, reading fluency), the teachers in these schools did not have to change what they were already successfully doing. This likely had a positive impact on their students’ reading performance and contributed to a quicker recovery.
Early screening and intervention
Alberta Education mandated screening of all Grade 1 to 3 children using reliable and valid assessments of foundational reading skills. Traditionally, most school divisions in Alberta have been using various benchmark assessments to identify struggling readers, despite research showing that they are neither reliable nor accurate (Burns et al., 2015; Parker et al., 2015). Alberta Education did not approve these assessments for accessing additional funding. In addition, Alberta Education shared a reading intervention program with all schools in the province that included 80 lessons on phonological awareness and phonics, and asked schools to report on children’s growth over time. To our knowledge, this is the first time a province mandated early literacy screening and provided free intervention materials to all schools; both policies should continue in the future.
Funding
Alberta Education provided $45 million additional funding to schools to address any learning losses. To our knowledge, this is the largest amount spent in the country and assuming the money was used for the intended purpose (i.e. intervention), it may explain why students in our sample schools caught up quickly. Alberta Education also funded research projects on early intervention and the results of these projects provided valuable information on how to address learning losses. In one of these projects, we provided intervention to 365 Grade 2 and 3 struggling readers, and after 4.5 months of intervention, 80 percent of them had improved about 1.5 years in their reading. Some of these children were in the schools included in the study reported above. Funding of evidence-based reading interventions in conjunction with frequent monitoring of students’ progress using reliable and accurate measures should continue in the future.
Discussions around evidence-based practices
The discussions taking place around the country on what should be done to address learning losses drew teachers’ attention to evidence-based practices in reading. For example, among the recommendations given to teachers through different media was one that reading researchers have long asked for: Provide systematic and explicit phonics instruction in early grades. This recommendation is now also included in the new Alberta English Language Arts curriculum for the early primary years.
The positive results on recovery come from schools that use evidence-based early literacy instructional practices and have provided their teachers with professional development on these practices that they may not have received in their teacher education programs. At this time, we don’t yet have reliable information on COVID-19 recovery from schools that are behind in transitioning to evidence-based early literacy programs. Finally, the promising results we see in our schools in Alberta reflect positively on the policy implemented by Alberta Education. By mandating early screening and funding additional interventions, and by making reliable assessments and effective intervention programs available to schools, Alberta Education essentially acted on the recommendations provided by the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read report.
Burns, M. K., Pulles, S. M., et al. (2015). Accuracy of student performance while reading leveled books rated at their instructional level by a reading inventory. Journal of School Psychology, 53, 437–445.
Georgiou, G. (2021). Has COVID-19 impacted children’s reading scores? The Reading League Journal, 2, 34–39.
Georgiou, G., Kushnir, G., & Parrila, R. (2020). Moving the needle on literacy: Lessons learned from a school where literacy rates have improved over time. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 66, 347–359. doi.org/10.11575/ajer.v66i3.56988
Kuhfeld, M., Lewis, K., & Peltier, T. (2023). Reading achievement declines during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from 5 million U.S. students in Grades 3–8. Reading and Writing. doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10345-8
Lerkkanen, M.-K., Pakarinen, E., et al. (2022). Reading and math skills development among Finnish primary school children before and after COVID-19 school closure. Reading and Writing. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-022-10358-3
Parker, D. C., Zaslofsky, A. F., et al. (2015). A brief report of the diagnostic accuracy of oral reading fluency and reading inventory levels for reading failure risk among second- and third-grade students. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 31, 56-67.
UNESCO. (2020). COVID-19 impact on education. https://en.unesco.org/COVID19/educationresponse
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, April 2023
1 These are the descriptors used in the study.
“Ongoing staffing challenges, lack of daily staff supports for post-pandemic recovery, daily bus cancellations, lack of system navigation and social work for all families, and a focus on ‘catching up’ when massive structural issues continue to be major challenges. The idea that we are ‘back to normal’ seems to reign, yet every day is a challenge for staff and families. This places incredible pressure on administrators and staff who consistently attend work, further burning out essential staff. With labour challenges at the forefront and possible strikes, it remains unseen how much more the system can bear.” – Elementary school principal, Northern Ont.
The start of the 2022-23 school year was the closest to normal that students, families, and educators have experienced since September 2019 – but how are schools, educators, and students really doing? Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the newest findings from People for Education’s Annual Ontario School Survey (AOSS) provide valuable insights. This article will focus primarily on the data collected from the 2022-23 AOSS,1 which received responses from 1,044 principals across all 72 publicly funded school boards in the province.
When the pandemic first shut down schools in March 2020, the list of challenges that emerged seemed endless. There now exists a substantial body of research documenting how the relentless pivoting between no school, virtual school, hybrid school, and eventually in-person school triggered a domino effect of issues that included families troubleshooting technology, juggling remote learning and work, and navigating perpetually evolving health and safety protocols (People for Education, 2021a). None of us had ever gone through a global pandemic before, so it was natural to be focused on the logistics of COVID-19: monitoring positive case counts, screening tools, social distancing, and never leaving the house without a mask – or at all. In the meantime, people’s mental health and wellbeing were progressively being impacted by feelings of anxiety, isolation, or depression, to name just a few (Vaillancourt et al., 2021).
The first AOSS conducted after the arrival of COVID-19 immediately shone a light on the toll that the pandemic had taken, specifically on the wellbeing of school principals. More than half of the 1,173 principals who responded during the 2020-21 school year disagreed or strongly disagreed that their levels of stress felt manageable (People for Education, 2021b). This same finding occurred in the following 2021-22 school year, along with principals’ concerns about the mental health and wellbeing of students and staff (People for Education, 2022). At this point in time, principals’ perceptions about the availability of school resources to support staff and student mental health and wellbeing were mixed:
However, in October 2022, when asked to indicate the level of support needed from boards and the Ministry of Education for recovery from COVID-19, the vast majority of schools (91%) reported that they require some or more support for mental health and wellbeing, with almost half (46%) reporting that they need a lot of support.
At the beginning of the pandemic, most of the focus in schools was on COVID-19 safety and the logistics of remote learning; three years into the pandemic, mental health and wellbeing supports have emerged as a top priority. Numerous principals shared insights about the specific challenges they are witnessing in the current school year.
“Children are excited to be back at school and there is an energy in the building. That said, many students have never experienced school pre-COVID and as such, are needing support in basic expectations regarding how to behave at school. We are noticing significant self-regulation challenges in primary; anxiety and fears of coming to school in junior; and a lot of sexualized /swearing/inappropriate language in our intermediates. And all grades struggling with conflict resolution skills.” – Elementary school principal, GTA
“Student needs have increased significantly due to COVID-19: self-regulation, literacy, numeracy, mental wellness. Due to the impact of COVID-19 many students are experiencing many more challenges. These challenges are being met as best we can with the resources we have. Human resources are the most important type of resource.” – Elementary school principal, GTA
Although mental health and wellbeing was identified as the area where schools feel that support is most needed, staffing was also consistently underscored as a critical issue. This finding is not surprising, given that:
“Supporting increased children’s mental health needs with no increases in resources stresses the staff and leads to increased absenteeism. The lack of replacement staff (especially for Educational Assistants (EAs) and designated Early Childhood Educators (DECEs)) causes this problem to snowball.” – Elementary school principal, southwestern Ont.
The lack of sufficient staff has been regularly highlighted over the past three years (People for Education 2021a; 2022). Early in 2022, a wave of the highly transmissible Omicron variant prompted an investigation into staff absences across numerous school boards and found that the number of daily unfilled teaching jobs was, on average, steadily increasing (Teotonio & Rushowy, 2022). School boards used various strategies to cover staffing shortages, such as removing the caps on the number of days worked by retired teachers, permitting student teachers to work, assigning teachers classes to cover during their planning time, and principals stepping back into classrooms.
These survival tactics, however, did not come without a cost to the mental health and wellbeing of school staff and students alike. When asked if there were any challenges so far in the current 2022-23 school year, one elementary school principal in northern Ontario wrote:
“People are burning out way more quickly post-COVID, partly due to staffing challenges; learning and mental health needs of students are exacerbated post-COVID; the staff shortage impact on daily triage of student needs because of illness and no one to cover; having all expectations of a ‘normal everything open year’ without allowing educators to build back up before being expected to go all out for everything.”
The finding that 91% of Ontario schools need some or more support for mental health and wellbeing supports is inextricably tied to the finding that 82% of Ontario schools reported needing some or more support for school support staff. After all, one of the primary ways of addressing mental health and wellbeing is with more staff who specialize in this area. An elementary school principal in southwestern Ontario explained, “Full-time mental health care workers are required in schools to be present and available to support students and families on a DAILY basis, and to offer support for staff who are struggling to deal with the class dynamics erupting from mental health challenges.”
While 78% of schools expressed needing some or more support for teaching staff, only 19% noted needing a lot of support, which is markedly less than the 35% of schools who expressed needing a lot of support for school support staff (e.g. educational assistants, administrators, custodians, etc.) (See Figure 2). This finding is significant, given recent events related to job action and labour negotiations for education workers in the province (McKenzie-Sutter, 2022). While teaching shortages do exist, there is currently a higher demand for education support workers. One elementary school principal in southwestern Ontario described the situation: “Staffing shortages are leading to a crisis in education. Addressing the shortages across all employee groups has to be a priority for the government.”
As we look ahead to the remainder of the 2022-23 school year, it is essential to consider what actions are necessary to address the needs of Ontario’s publicly funded schools. Here are some ideas suggested by principals:
Three years into the pandemic, COVID has taught us the importance of mental health and wellbeing, as well as the incredibly huge role that schools play in our lives. If public education is the foundation of our society and the key to solving many of society’s current problems, it is crucial to learn from the challenges of the past few years and get our priorities right as we plan for a happier, healthier, and more hopeful future. As one elementary school principal from southwestern Ontario put it:
“A recovery plan for a global pandemic, hmm… I think it is an opportunity to rethink some aspects of public education. Could be a great opportunity.”
McKenzie-Sutter, H. (2022, November 4). What you need to know about the Ontario education workers’ strike. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/9253376/ontario-cupe-education-worker-strike-explained
People for Education. (2021a). Challenges and innovations: 2021-20 annual report on Ontario schools.
https://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2020-21-AOSS-Final-Report-Published-110721.pdf
People for Education. (2021b). Ontario principals’ challenges and well-being: Annual Ontario School Survey 2021. https://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/People-for-Educations-report-on-Ontario-Principals-Challenges-and-Wellbeing-AOSS2021.pdf
People for Education. (2022). A perfect storm of stress: Ontario’s publicly funded schools in year two of the COVID-19 pandemic. https://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/People-for-Education_A-Perfect-Storm-of-Stress_May-2022.pdf
Teotonio, I. & Rushowy, K. (2022, February 7). ‘Really severe challenges’: Ontario school boards struggle with unprecedented staff absences. The Toronto Star. www.thestar.com/news/gta/2022/02/07/really-severe-challenges-ontario-school-boards-struggle-with-unprecedented-staff-absences.html
Vaillancourt, T., Szatmari, P., Georgiades, K., & Krygsman, A. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of Canadian children and youth. FACETS, 6(1), 1628–1648. doi.org/10.1139/FACETS-2021-0078
Illustration: iStock
First published in Education Canada, April 2023
1 The 2022–2023 AOSS is the 26th annual survey of elementary schools and 23rd annual survey of secondary schools in Ontario.
Once close friends and colleagues, teachers Ashley, Morgan, and Mackenzie stood in their classroom doorways, their physical distance a stark reminder of the emotional distance between them now. In an attempt at building a bridge of commiseration after teaching in pandemic conditions for over a year, Ashley said, “I wish the admin would understand how this feels for us. I have never felt so discouraged and isolated. Another PD about online methods is exactly NOT what I need right now.” Morgan agreed. “What we really need is to be heard and respected – and a break. Yeah, a break would be nice. I’ve had it!” Mackenzie was silent. She had been looking forward to the PD later that day. Online teaching had been a welcome break from business as usual, and after an initial bumpy period, she was leaning into it and feeling a sense of accomplishment. Each teacher looked at the others. The silence dragged. And then the bell rang, and it was back to work.
In April 2020, schools around the world were forced into a period of historic disruption as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Similarly, in Canada, an initial few weeks of school closures evolved into several months, with schools continuing to ride the ongoing waves of the pandemic and teachers expected to pivot from in-person to remote instruction and adopt new pedagogies as required. Here we present an on-going, SSHRC-funded Canadian study (Babb et al., 2022) that our research team began in April 2020. We queried over 2,000 Canadian teachers for almost three years during the pandemic, so that we could gain a deep understanding of their experiences, inquiring into the demands faced by teachers and the resources available to support them through this time.
Teaching during the first few months of COVID-19
Initial interview data collected from Canadian teachers early in the pandemic showed that balance was difficult to maintain (Eblie Trudel et al., 2021). Many learners had inadequate access to technology, limited home support in their language of instruction, and reduced assistance with the challenges of additional learning needs. Many parents, already strapped with work and child-care duties, were overwhelmed and unable to assist in facilitating their children’s instruction. Moreover, teachers struggled to prioritize basic student needs, create vital partnerships between schools and families, and develop the necessary confidence to deliver engaging learning through new modes of teaching.
As our research developed, findings demonstrated that teachers responded predictably to the two widely accepted theoretical models of burnout used in our study, voicing their subjective appraisals of teaching in a pandemic in remarkably diverse ways. The job demands-resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) allowed us to recognize that varied, but unique, experiences of teachers were leading some teachers to burnout, due to the increased demands and inadequate resources available for support. A model by Maslach and Jackson (1981) permitted us to assess the progression of burnout along a spectrum associated with periods of occupational stress, noting dimensions of exhaustion, depersonalization or cynicism, and reduced work accomplishment. We found that exhaustion could arise from excessive demands felt in a particular role and that lost efficacy could result from insufficient resources to meet such demands. Some exhausted teachers withdrew from students and colleagues, or avoided work altogether, actions recognized as depersonalization and cynicism in the burnout literature. Given that teachers’ withdrawal from students could impact student achievement and wellbeing, finding ways to reduce teacher stress and increase coping was shown to be vital for maintaining quality instruction and avoiding teacher burnout.
Unsolvable as a single puzzle
Imagining the research process akin to assembling a large puzzle, our team attempted to use traditional statistical methods to provide a concise picture of teacher coping over the course of the pandemic. However, developing a clear picture of teacher experiences proved to be challenging. Just when we thought we understood the trends, we were faced with new data that did not fit at all. It was like we were assembling a puzzle with pieces mixed in from other puzzles – and the pieces just didn’t fit. By using a new kind of statistical analysis, we found that there were, in fact, five unique puzzles that required consideration. Our findings revealed five distinct profiles (or patterns) of responses to teaching in the pandemic, each relating to different combinations of role demands as well as access to both individual and employer-provided resources (See Figure 1).
Five puzzles
Specifically, we identified two groups of teachers who were flourishing, and we called them the “engaged” and “involved” groups. Despite experiencing moderate levels of exhaustion and perceiving high demands, teachers in both of these categories accessed a greater number of resources and demonstrated higher levels of accomplishment than other teachers in the study. Like Mackenzie, the teachers in the engaged and involved groups were supported to meet their job demands during pandemic conditions, although the teachers in the involved group were slightly more withdrawn than those in the engaged category.
A third teacher group was nearing burnout and was acknowledged as being “over-extended.” Teachers in this category, like Ashley, had a small deficit of resources compared to their work demands, and were at the “tipping point” of burnout symptoms. While they were experiencing close to the highest levels of exhaustion and feeling moderately withdrawn, they were still able to demonstrate higher levels of accomplishment. Finally, we found two other teacher groups to be experiencing moderate to high levels of exhaustion and feeling significantly withdrawn. Teachers in these groups, like Morgan, were languishing and exhibiting symptoms of burnout. We coined them “detached” and “inefficacious,” with the latter reporting the lowest levels of accomplishment of all. These findings were shared by our partners at the EdCan Network through an article and infographic.
Importantly, for each group we found that it was not the number of demands or the number of resources that predicted burnout, but rather the ratio of resources to demands that predicted the level of stress and burnout perceived by the teachers in the groups. This realization challenged the thinking that teachers were “all in the same boat” during the pandemic. Some teachers were in yachts and some were in life rafts. Some had smooth sailing while others taught through a raging storm – all dependent on whether they had sufficient resources to meet the demands of their specific teaching contexts.
Solutions to the five puzzles
Subsequent work with our partners in a large Manitoba school division, allowed comparative insight between national and provincial data. We were alarmed to discover that 46 percent of Manitoban teachers demonstrated patterns of the two struggling groups, compared with 27 percent of teachers from across Canada. In fact, a greater proportion of Canadian teachers remained at a tipping point in the over-extended group, whereas more Manitoban teachers had already spilled over to become detached and inefficacious. With the Manitoba government aware and informed of this research, over $1 million in funding was awarded to our partners at the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) (mbwpg.cmha.ca/) provincially, to address the wellbeing of individuals and organizations in the provincial education sector. CMHA established a website (careforallineducation.com) that facilitates real-time access to Wellness Specialists through phone and online chat modalities to all Manitoban education sector workers, including teachers. CMHA also developed a suite of workshops as part of a multi-level response mechanism. This initiative acknowledged that individuals, administrators, organizations, and government needed to work together to ensure that support is provided for education sector recovery and growth.
Bakker and de Vries (2021) found that with support from school organizations, teachers were more likely to sustain individual resilience while still meeting professional responsibilities. Not only could teachers freely engage with individual strategies for coping (setting boundaries with work time and space, applying healthy eating, exercise and sleep habits, and practising self-compassion) but they could also partake in systemic programs for workplace wellbeing.
For teachers who were flourishing, concurrent employer-hosted opportunities that fit the specific needs of these teachers best include:
Responding to teachers at a tipping point, languishing, or feeling role strain, individual recommendations would include:
It is essential to remember, however, that employees cannot recover from stress within workplaces that demonstrate imbalances in demands and resources, so simultaneous workplace changes are essential to facilitate and encourage individual strategies that allow for recovery and replenishment. Leadership suggestions here include:
The key idea in this scenario is that teachers can engage in self-regulation by identifying their levels of stress and then actively select individual and organizational strategies to enhance coping and optimize wellbeing. In order to do this, however, it is vital to identify burnout as a collective rather than an individual responsibility, with interventions provided at both personal and organizational levels.
Different boats in the same storm
Holmes and colleagues (2020) endorsed the importance of understanding teacher stress as a means of supporting the education sector going forward. As one interview participant described, “Teachers were experiencing the pandemic in different ways. Some were thriving and engaging in novel aspects of teaching and technology, while others were experiencing trauma and tensions, and grieving the loss of pre-pandemic practices.” With enhanced awareness of the diversity of responses to coping during the pandemic, our research demonstrated that teachers could be assisted to understand and navigate their stressors and supports, thereby accessing additional resources as necessary to engage with or offset the strain of job demands. Furthermore, with this knowledge, school boards and other stakeholder organizations could be better prepared to provide resources and supports to help employees achieve or restore work-life balance and enhance or recover wellbeing. Ongoing monitoring and subsequent follow-up research with the CMHA is being conducted by our team to evaluate the effectiveness of both individual and organizational resources for wellbeing, as we move forward with post-pandemic recovery. We now know that teachers are not all in the same boat as they continue to navigate their teaching roles, and that a collective suite of responses will be necessary to ensure they all make it safely and successfully back to the harbour.
babb, J., Sokal, L., & Eblie Trudel, L. (2022). THIS IS US: Latent profile analysis of Canadian teachers’ resilience and burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian Journal of Education, 45(2), 555–585.
doi.org/10.53967/cje-rce.v45i2.5057
Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands-resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309–328. doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115
Bakker, A., & de Vries, J. (2021). Job Demands-Resources theory and self-regulation: New explanations and remedies for job burnout. Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 34(1). 1–21. doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2020.1797695
Eblie Trudel, L., Sokal L., & Babb, J. (2021). Teachers’ voices: Pandemic lessons for the future of education. Journal of Teaching and Learning, 15(1). doi.org/10.22329/jtl.v15i1.6486
Holmes, E., O’Connor, R., et al. (2020). Multi-disciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health sciences. Lancet Psychiatry, 7(6), 547–560. doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(20)30168-1
Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Occupational Behaviour, 2(2), 99–113. doi.org/10.1002/job.4030020205
Sokal, L., Eblie Trudel, L., & Babb, J. (2020a). It’s okay to be okay too. Why calling out teachers’ “toxic positivity” may backfire. Education Canada, 60(3). www.edcan.ca/articles/its-ok-to-be-ok-too
Sokal, L., Eblie Trudel, L., & Babb, J. (2020b). COVID 19: Supporting teachers in times of change. Education Canada, Infographic Series. https://edcannetwork.wordpress.com/2020/09/02/teacher-covid-survey
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, April 2023
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How can we “unlearn” colonialism and bring kinship relations into the school and classroom experience?
This knowledge exchange between researcher, Dr. Dwayne Donald, and a group of education professionals, expands on the ideas in Dr. Donald’s Education Canada article and shares the perspectives and challenges of educators as they think about decolonizing their own schools and classrooms.
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Photo caption: Land-based learning with Knowledge Keeper Anona Kampe
How can education change networks (ECNs) support Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and community members to create relationships and ultimately better meet the needs of Indigenous (and all) learners? We have been investigating this question as part of an emerging field of research concerned with developing decolonizing education practices in relationship with Indigenous communities. Overall, we have found that ECNs based on relationality within ethical spaces of engagement have the greatest potential for positive change. Specifically, our research has found that ECNs are most effective when they keep the focus of the learning explicit, acknowledge local protocols, make space to engage with local Indigenous knowledge and Knowledge Keepers, and identify and address structural barriers.
We recognize that colonialism continues to shape educational systems and student experiences across Canada (e.g. Pidgeon, 2022). For example, many educators may communicate lower expectations for Indigenous students as opposed to the other students in their classes (Yee, 2021). Colonial learning contexts can be traumatizing for Indigenous and other historically marginalized students, families, and communities, and deeply troubling for teachers and administrators struggling to meet the needs of Indigenous (and all) students (Yee, 2021). Educators often do not know how to begin a process of transformation or what changes to make (Donald, 2009). At the same time, Indigenous communities may be eager to work with and influence Western educational systems, but may not have opportunities to participate in educational change (Yee, 2021).
We propose that to move away from colonial practices, educators can begin by exploring decolonizing possibilities. Niigan Sinclair (Kirk & Lam, 2020) suggests that decolonization involves dismantling racist and oppressive ideas. It requires us to reflect on our beliefs and assumptions and how they are connected to the various forms of privilege we experience (e.g. cultural, socio-economic, gender, etc.). In education, decolonization involves disrupting classroom and school practices that maintain power imbalances. However, it is vital that educators do not stop there. As Graham Smith (2000) suggests, it is critical to reimagine what is possible and what should be implemented, in relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Gaudry and Lorenz (2018) talk about Indigenization as including and advancing the perspectives and intellectual priorities of Indigenous communities to support Indigenous cultural resurgence. When we collaborate with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and educators, we can create more inclusive learning communities for Indigenous (and all) learners.
To explore decolonizing possibilities in education, researchers, school districts, and Indigenous communities can come together in ECNs to de-centre dominant ways of knowing and reimagine teaching and student success. ECNs are learning networks that engage diverse teachers, administrators, community members, parents, and students as collaborative inquirers and co-constructors of equity-oriented teaching practices (Cochran-Smith, 2015; Schnellert et al., 2022). Collaboration between educators and Indigenous community partners within ECNs offers tremendous potential for co-creating teaching practices that foreground local Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and for supporting system and practice change.
The Welcoming Indigenous Ways of Knowing ECN, where Indigenous and non-Indigenous teachers, school administrators, academics, and school district personnel work together with syilx Elders and Knowledge Keepers, provides an example of how ECNs can support educational change (Schnellert et al., 2022). Five times during the school year, on professional development days, this B.C. ECN meets as one large group to experience land-based teachings from local Indigenous Knowledge Keepers. Then in the afternoon, educators complement this learning by participating in smaller inquiry groups (6–15 educators) to plan and implement their new understandings in classroom practice (Schnellert et al., 2022). In this way, ECNs can support disrupting and transforming classroom teaching and learning, thus taking up Principle of Reconciliation 4 that requires engagement in “constructive action on addressing the ongoing legacies of colonialism that have had destructive impacts on Aboriginal Peoples’ education” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p. 3).
In our work we have found that efforts to decolonize are best realized when they are shaped by ethical relationality. Nêhiyaw (or Cree) scholar Dwayne Donald explains, “Ethical relationality is an ecological understanding of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather seeks to more deeply understand how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other” (2009, p. 6). This understanding means that members of the ECN embrace their Indigenous or non-Indigenous positionality, and vulnerably speak about their own understandings, experiences, and the learning they feel they need. Within ECNs, this kind of approach allows us to open decolonizing possibilities through critique and the recognition of diverse ways of being and knowing. Building from a stance of ethical relationality helps create a solid foundation for the work to be done in ECNs, but can only unfold in an ethical space of engagement.
Even though ethical relationality requires vulnerability, non-Indigenous ECN members may fear being called out for their role in colonialism and Indigenous ECN members may fear continued colonial violence. As such, creating an ethical space of engagement is key. According to Ermine (2007), when Indigenous and Western knowledge systems come together, a space to “step out of our allegiances” (p. 202) can emerge. This ethical space of engagement invites us to share assumptions, values, and interests we each hold, while creating opportunities to learn (and unlearn) more deeply and authentically. Members can co-construct this space by discussing how they understand respect, for example, or how they might centre Indigenous perspectives as part of their decolonizing process. Creating an ethical space means taking a holistic stance – considering and attending to our personal thoughts, feelings, and actions and their often unintended impact on others. If members build this space together, agreeing on processes for sharing, decolonization becomes more relevant and responsive to those in the room. To summarize, ECNs can be structured as an ethical space to support Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and community partners to collaborate in disrupting and transforming classroom teaching and learning by valuing and welcoming Indigenous ways of knowing.
Our collaborative research with ECNs offers insights that can support similar efforts in other Canadian contexts. In the next section we reflect on a few lessons we have learned through the ECN described above, but also from our diverse experiences working in this area over the last decade.
Central to exploring decolonizing possibilities is asking educators to interrogate their own identities and their role as educators, deconstruct ways that classrooms and schools reproduce privilege, and reimagine their practice to welcome Indigenous ways of knowing. We have found that explicit attention to these goals and activities is important. Educators attend professional development opportunities – and networks – with the assumption that they will receive strategies to take away and use in their contexts. While this may be part of the work of ECNs, decolonizing processes first and foremost require educators to examine their own privilege through multiple lenses. To reference Donald’s work (2022), surfacing and addressing unconscious bias within ourselves and our teaching involves unlearning. This unlearning is uncomfortable, but ECN members report that it is also powerful; educators need opportunities to encounter colonial truths, explore their identities, commit to a co-constructed vision of education, and then work to align their practice accordingly. Participants in one ECN shared that they are more confident in identifying and disrupting teaching practices that reproduce privilege as a result of these kinds of experiences within the ECN (Schnellert et al., 2022).
Also key has been the introduction of protocols that make space for Indigenous and historically marginalized participants to share their experiences and insights within the larger work of the ECN. Circle protocols, where each participant has an opportunity to share and other ECN members are invited to listen without judgment, have been important. Other strategies include building in time for IBPOC educators and participants to meet (caucus) as a separate group, and ensuring that Knowledge Keepers are introduced and thanked with appropriate recognition of their role, the knowledge they bring, and the responsibilities they carry. Sometimes we demonstrate respect and reciprocity through food. When working with Indigenous communities, it is also important to clarify how knowledge can be shared. Some knowledge is sacred and not to be shared freely. It is key to be responsive to and respectful of local protocols as a way of centring Indigenous perspectives.
One of the most impactful aspects of ECNs has been the opportunity to engage with local knowledge and Knowledge Keepers. ECN members in one study expressed appreciation for local Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, the impact of engaging with foundational ideas over several convenings, and opportunities to work with Knowledge Keepers to apply what they were learning in their classrooms with students (Schnellert et al., 2022). For these ECN members, a particularly transformative aspect of the work with Knowledge Keepers involved land-based learning. Educators said that they engaged more deeply with local Indigenous stories and concepts when ECN meetings happened on the land (Schnellert et al., 2022).
From our work with ECNs, we have identified several factors related to systems-level educational change that need to be identified and addressed in order to open decolonizing possibilities within education systems. Lack of knowledge has consistently been surfaced as a significant concern (e.g., Schnellert et al., 2022; Yee, 2021). Most educators were not educated with a decolonizing or Indigenizing lens as students or in teacher education. Educators valued learning about how colonial history has influenced what is taught and how we teach in schools. Using this lens, we can disrupt perceptions of neutrality in the school system. Another key structural factor to consider is pervasive anti-Indigenous racism – in particular, the racism of low expectations (Auditor General of British Columbia, 2015). Increased awareness has led teachers to engage with Indigenous learners from a strength-based perspective, to mentor and encourage Indigenous students, and to explicitly address comments that perpetuate stereotypes (Schnellert et al., 2022).
Education change networks are a strong tool for opening decolonizing possibilities across the educational system and within schools. Specifically, we explore decolonizing and Indigenizing possibilities as we work in ethical relationality across difference, in ethical spaces of engagement. In our collective experiences, we have found it important to keep the focus of the learning explicit, acknowledge local protocols and make space, engage with local Indigenous knowledge and Knowledge Keepers, and identify and address structural barriers. In this way, educators can come together to more effectively open decolonizing possibilities within themselves, and for the next generations in our classes.
Photo: Leyton Schnellert
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Auditor General of British Columbia. (2015). An audit of the education of Aboriginal students in the B.C. public school system. Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia. www.bcauditor.com/sites/default/files/publications/reports/OAGBC%20Aboriginal%20Education%20Report_FINAL.pdf
Cochran-Smith, M. (2015). Teacher communities for equity, Kappa Delta Pi Record, 51(3), 109–113. doi: 10.1080/00228958.2015.1056659
Donald, D. (2009). Forts, curriculum, and Indigenous Métissage: Imagining decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian relations in educational contexts. First Nations Perspectives, 2(1), 1–24.
Donald, D. (2022, September 19). A curriculum for educating differently. Education Canada, 20–24. www.edcan.ca/articles/a-curriculum-for-educating-differently
Ermine, W. (2007). The ethical space of engagement. Indigenous Law Journal, 6(1), 193–203. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ilj/article/view/27669
Gaudry, A., & Lorenz, D. (2018). Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: Navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian academy. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 14(3), 218–227. doi.org/ 10.1177/1177180118785382
Kirk, J., & Lam, M. (Hosts). (2020, October 8). Indigenizing education (No. 26) [Audio podcast episode]. In Leaning in and Speaking Out. BU Cares Research Centre. www.bucares.ca/podcast/n5c2968wkajahe2
Pidgeon, M. (2022). Indigenous resiliency, renewal, and resurgence in decolonizing Canadian higher education. In S. D. Styres & A. Kempf (Eds.), Troubling truth and reconciliation in Canadian education: Critical perspectives (pp. 15–37). University of Alberta Press.
Schnellert, L., Davidson, S. F., & Donovan, B. (2022). Working towards relational accountability in education change networks through local indigenous ways of knowing and being, Cogent Education, 9(1), 2098614. doi: 10.1080/2331186X.2022.2098614
Smith, G. H. (2000). Protecting and respecting Indigenous knowledge. In M. Battiste (Ed.), Reclaiming Indigenous voice and vision (pp. 209–224). UBC Press.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Truth and reconciliation commission of Canada: Calls to action. www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_ Action_English2.pdf
Yee, N. L. (2021). Review of inclusive and special education: Final report. Department of Education for Yukon Territory. https://yukon.ca/en/review-inclusive-and-special-education-yukon-final-report
Let’s put aside the myth that K–12 teachers and leaders who identify as Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) are experts in equity, making them naturally inclined to discuss race, class, or gender at the drop of a hat. Let’s also put aside the assumption that only racialized and Indigenous people should be engaged in equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization work. Let’s recognize that all educators and leaders should be committing to and engaging in anti-racism, anti-oppression and decolonization practices.
We know that doing anti-racism and anti-oppression work in education is often emotionally and mentally exhausting. Walking into intimidating and stressful spaces where unconscious and conscious biases coupled with microaggressions and macroaggressions are present is not for the faint of heart – especially given that there is a relative overrepresentation of white, male identities in leadership positions and a corresponding underrepresentation of Indigenous, female, queer, and racialized identities.
We also know that identities are complex, fluid, and overlapping, impacted by experiences and contexts. While it is true that lived experiences of equity-deserving populations can lead to deeper understandings of bias and assumptions, it does not prepare us to address and to counter, in a very public manner, systemic inequities. Gaining insight into lived experiences by acknowledging distinct histories, stories and identities is one way to be inclusive and responsive to the increasing diversity of school populations. For those learning and relearning about past, present, and omitted histories and working in contexts where distinct stories emerge, Applewhite (2022) suggests that we take an action-oriented approach: “Stop doing the work and start being the work.”
Culturally sustaining pedagogy
One way of being the work is engaging in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP). Building on the work of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (Gay, 2000), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) affirms students’ backgrounds by connecting cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and frames of reference to their local school and societal contexts. An important consideration is the development of critical consciousness to recognize and critique societal inequalities. Within the CSP framework (Paris & Alim, 2017), the diversity of cultural ways of being and doing in communities is recognized, acknowledged, and sustained via:
Sharing stories and coming to a fuller understanding of histories, customs, and traditions of diverse populations in the school communities would provide opportunities for teachers, students, staff, and leaders in K–12 to learn and to unlearn about deep-rooted assumptions about teaching and learning. Many educators recognize that being authentic and responsive with their actions, and supporting decisions reflective of culture and values, is foundational to this work. The real changes occur when reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action (Schön, 1985; 1987) push us to ask ourselves whether the implemented practices were good enough.
Representation matters
We know that representation matters when it comes to who is included and who is excluded in teaching, leadership, school district, and school trustee contexts. Despite anti-racist policies and mandates across the board in the multiplicity of educational contexts, access, equity, and equitable representation remain ongoing challenges. Indigenous and racialized students need to see themselves better reflected in the curriculum, and in the teaching and leadership staff of their schools.
Kendi (2019) urges all K–12 educators, regardless of identity, to engage in anti-racist education by considering long-held assumptions about race, culture, identity, and gender. By cultivating the tools for recognizing, observing, and understanding internal and external reactions to diverse realities, we can all come to a deeper understanding and insightful reflections about our positionality in societal systems and our impact on student outcomes and successes.
Addressing the needs of diverse educational populations, some public school systems are engaging in explicit equity initiatives that transform policies and administrative actions, that engage in decolonization and anti-racism practices, that support professional and human resource development, and that actively seek out community and parent engagement. Important considerations include advocacy and accountability measures that monitor improvement to support high achievement for all diverse students.
Addressing systemic racism
The Peel District School Board (PDSB) is an example of how a school system addressed systemic racism. On the heels of a very public outcry to dismantle practices and behaviours that led to racialized educational disparities, an independent external review concluded that the PDSB did not have the capacity to address the issues of systemic racism. Key recommendations of the external review focused on collecting data on issues like bullying and suspensions, advancing a culturally responsive curriculum, anti-racist training for educators, promoting racially responsive leadership and establishing an Education Equity Office. Positioned in the school district, the Equity Office would provide an organizational structure to address issues of systemic racism on a proactive and on-going basis by implementing:
So, as we consider how to be the work and how to take action, let’s learn from one another, let’s think about and reflect on how we are being equitable in our teaching and leadership practices. By listening attentively to our students, our colleagues, and our communities, by intentionally sharing ideas and by coming together, we gather strength in numbers. Maybe an Equity Education Office in each of our school districts/divisions can support strategic priorities by reviewing policies and procedures, questioning and interrogating professional learning, and influencing pathways for success for students. By creating agency, by establishing policy and process, by making space, by reaching out, by speaking out, and by bringing voices not often heard to the foreground, we can target transformative and action-based practices. While the fear of getting it wrong or saying the wrong thing may constrict our actions, we can no longer stand by and move away from unsettling provocations, conversations, and experiences. Together, we can create equitable and inclusive environments by approaching the work with humility and an authentic interest in improvement, change, and transformation.
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Applewhite, B. (2022). Stop doing the work, start being the work. Principl(ed), 44–50.
Equity Matters Manitoba. (n.d.). Education Equity Office Campaign. https://equitymattersmb.ca
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press
Henry, F., Dua, E., et al. (2017) (Eds.). The equity myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian universities. University of British Columbia Press.
Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. New World.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3).
Paris, D., & Alim, S. H. (Eds.) (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. BasicBooks.
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. John Wiley & Sons.
OVER TEN YEARS AGO, the Urban Communities Cohort (UCC) was established at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education to ensure teacher candidates were better prepared to work within urban priority schools (UPS’s). We (a group of professors, school administrators, and educators in the field) saw the need for teacher candidates to be ready to challenge inequities that were pervasive across priority schools. In many ways, the initiative grew out of our collective frustration at the resistance to change throughout the system that is linked to institutional and systemic racism. For example, we observed:
The UCC was originally framed as a way of supporting teacher candidates to engage with students and teachers in UPS’s and to advance their own understanding of equity and social justice. In this article, we trace the evolution of this school/university partnership that began with the UCC and a focus on teacher candidates, and led to further spaces for critical conversations that continue to provoke and support our unlearning and learning. What has emerged over the past decade is more multifaceted than we could have first imagined.
Let’s step back and consider the beginning. Linda, a university researcher and lead author of this article, spent three months immersed in one UPS where she spoke with everyone – students, custodial staff, teachers, and administrators – to gain a critical understanding of the culture of the school (Ibrahim et al., 2012). This school, like the other 32 designated as urban priority schools across Ontario, had very low scores on Grade 9 and 10 literacy and mathematics standardized tests, a history of comparatively high suspensions and expulsions, and a public perception of being a “difficult school,” perhaps even a “failing school.”
The in-depth ethnography revealed what the administrators and educators within the building already knew – that the profile failed to capture the calibre of the educators and students; it missed “who and what we were in the school,” as one staff member put it. The EQAO scores measured where the students were at a point in time, taking no account of where they had come from or their future promise and potential. The school population included newcomers to Canada, along with youth displaced by conflict, who may have spent recent years in refugee camps and who might not have had consistent schooling even in their own language, let alone in English or French. For these students the school was a safe haven, a building with walls as opposed to a tent. Yet if the school was to support all of these students in their learning journeys, there was a critical need for a teaching staff who were better equipped to do this work.
So began the partnership through which teacher candidates and university professors became part of the school community. The UCC supported teacher candidates to develop culturally sustaining, relevant, and responsive pedagogy, and immersed them in urban school communities from day one of their teacher education program. University classes were taught within the building and the school administrators were integral to the teacher candidate’s professional learning – speaking to teacher candidates on the first day of school, walking them through the corridors, welcoming them for their required school-based practicum, inviting them to experience and feel what it takes to become a teacher committed to social change.
Hard Conversations was started by Kristin Kopra, Sherwyn Solomon, and Geordie Walker, who are lead partners in the UCC. This initiative brings together school administrators and university researchers to engage in challenging conversations about what is happening in their schools. Over the past four years, this group has worked outside the school board, gathering in their own time to examine the relevant research, understand their own positionality and roles, grapple with systemic biases within their schools, and most importantly commit to actionable strategies they can take back into their daily practice. Their goal is to first understand and then dismantle systemic barriers so they, as school leaders, can better serve Indigenous, Black, and racialized students, families, and communities. Put simply, group members consider their role in perpetuating inequities and what each individual can do to change practices in their own schools. Kristin, a UPS principal who began as a program lead for Indigenous education, explains why the group was started: “We didn’t do it for any other reason than we need things to change for kids in schools.” Many of the topics taken up in this group focus on the power of administrators and teachers and the damaging choices that the Education Act legitimizes.
Now in its fifth year, the group has grown to well over 70 colleagues engaged in these critical conversations. Membership is open to all and includes school and central administrators, senior staff, managers, University of Ottawa professors, and sometimes teacher candidates. Meetings have varied in frequency and in format, ranging from small group pods to larger university-based weekend-long conferences (including guests such as leading researchers in equity and racism and Indigenous leaders).
An example of the work of the Hard Conversations group is challenging the disproportionate numbers of suspensions for Black, racialized, and Indigenous students. Kristin recalls from her own school’s statistics in her first year that “if we were not the highest, we were the second-highest in the district; ridiculous!” This reflects what Sherwyn refers to as “hard-baked” structural obstacles, where our ignorance gets perpetuated as law. In Ontario’s Education Act the suspension of a student is at the discretion of the principal. While administrators might be well-meaning, Sherwyn underlines, “A principal’s perspective on what is acceptable school conduct and what is not is often colonial in nature, as these emerge from the imperialism that has had an impact on what schools look like across the globe.” There is no learning in a suspension, which reaffirms the exclusion of the student and causes harm that may reverberate for generations. The data speaks for itself in Ottawa schools: if you are Black or Middle Eastern, you are two and a half times more likely to be suspended. Hard Conversations provides a forum where administrators can examine critical questions around the discretionary suspensions for which they have authority, such as: How does removing students from what might be one of their few safe spaces serve already vulnerable students? How might race be playing into our suspension decisions? What will you do differently rather than suspend Black youth? The conversations, critical reflection, and transformations in principal practices emerging from Hard Conversations should be celebrated. But we are mindful that they represent a small initial step within some schools, and that colonialism pervades our education systems and guides decisions and practices that retraumatize those who have already been traumatized. As educators we ask the question, how can we avoid the re-traumatization of marginalized individuals and groups?
In our ongoing university/school partnerships to support teacher education, in-service educators, and youth, we are repeatedly made aware of how each of us is unlearning and re-learning in our work with students, student teachers, and in relations with each other (Donald, D. 2022). We recognize that we are all, regardless of ethnicity and positionality, impacted in our work and relations by colonial structures.
Our conversations bring to the surface what we have been taught and raised to believe – certain narratives about society, about other people, about positionality – and the structures that support these narratives. These histories and understandings have been passed from parents and grandparents and transmitted to us in institutions such as schools and universities. They become what we know to be true. But what happens when we start examining these past truths in light of other realities we see around us, and question if our long-held narratives are true? Geordie, former principal and now part of the UCC teaching team, asks, “Why is it so hard for me as a white person who is a dad to believe it is necessary for my Black friend or Indigenous friend to teach their kids to proceed with extreme caution in police interactions and how to survive an arrest, when that was never part my children’s education or learning?” With this question, he underlines that it starts with the individual journey. He shares that his own decolonization process is about “becoming as educated as you can about the past.” Understanding the past and the present context as educators and as teacher educators requires an openness to examine history, to recognize or acknowledge what culture is, whose it is, the backgrounds of the people in our schools, and how they see their own history from different perspectives.
At Le Phare Elementary School, Sherwyn has established an Equity Advisory Committee, a parent group that names and challenges social injustices and advises on things they would like to see going on at the school. As part of the district and school learning plan, Sherwyn encourages his school community to incorporate more Algonquin teaching, learning, and understanding, as well as more knowledge of the school experience of Black and other marginalized groups. Sherwyn argues that such initiatives go part way to addressing racism like that he experienced in his own childhood as a Black newcomer to Canada – such as having to learn to speak without his Caribbean accent, and the colonial violence he and his family faced as immigrants. Across the school district, student groups, such as the LGBTQ2+, Indigenous, and Muslim student groups among others, are being led by people with that lived experience. This school-based change has not come without resistance, and equity coordinators have had to work tirelessly to demand that, after years of being pushed to the margins as “urban problems,” these groups are placed at the centre stage of education.
Since the beginning of the UCC, decisions made at faculty and program levels have presented structural and other challenges. For example, from the start of UCC, cohort leads worked with school principals to create UPS practicum placements for UCC teacher candidates. Recently this has been discontinued by the Faculty, and UCC teacher candidates find themselves with placements across the spectrum of local schools, while other teacher candidates unaccustomed to urban priority schools are posted in the UCC partner schools. Additionally, we have now seen the community service learning component, where all UCC teacher candidates would become part of the school community at the start of the school year, come to an end. Despite these ongoing challenges, we continued to invest in the UCC by gaining research funds to support critical learning possibilities for educators (pre-service and in-service). In particular, we worked with civics teachers in UPS’s to open up spaces for students to find different points of entry into that course. This was done by inviting students to share their lived experiences – either as newcomers to Canada, as long-time settlers, or as First Nation, Métis and Inuit peoples – first and foremost in this course. Working within these diverse contexts, we have attempted to contribute to a decolonizing process by breaking down subject silos and enabling interdisciplinary learning through a pedagogy of relationship building within and beyond the classroom.
After 30 years in education, Geordie perhaps conveys best what education and teacher education might look like in practice: “It is about prioritizing relationships over curriculum, being humble, and learning from kids.” When we think about our own work of unlearning through UCC and Hard Conversations, we envision educators (ourselves, teacher candidates, teachers, and school administrators) coming to education not because we are specialists in a subject, but because first and foremost we want to serve students and build relationships. As educators, we need to be able to put aside our biases and prejudice and embrace whoever comes through our door and provide a sense of belonging for every student in the classroom regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, language, or any other false barriers. In the UCC, we are supporting teacher candidates and teacher educators (ourselves) to engage deeply with teacher identities and lived histories, and to examine the truths and untruths we hold on to. Decolonizing teacher education requires providing opportunities for teacher candidates to build relationships based on care and compassion that prioritize students’ potentials and possibilities and reject deficit thinking.
THE UCC PARTNERSHIP has provided a space for multiple and ongoing hard conversations and professional un/learning across university and school contexts. A decade of critical conversations, research, and collaborative action in the service of students in urban priority schools has transformed our own practices in university and school classrooms. In our shared quest to unlearn taken-for-granted assumptions and “truths,” we continue to challenge ourselves and each other with the responsibilities we have in relations to each other and with students, families, and communities.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Ibrahim, A., Radford, L. et al. (2012). Urban priority program: Challenges, priorities and hope. Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
Donald, D. (2022, September 19) A curriculum for educating differently: Unlearning colonialism and renewing kinship relations. Educating Canada, 62(2). https://www.edcan.ca/articles/a-curriculum-for-educating-differently/
In 2021, a white, French-language Catholic school principal was removed from his school two years after wearing a Black student’s shaved-off hair as a wig during a cancer fundraiser, and again for Halloween months later – but only once these two occurrences were reported on social media by Black Lives Matter London (CBC News, 2021). Since school improvement is unlikely to be successful without effective educational leadership (Rodgers et al., 2016), it is imperative for leaders to examine the verbal, behavioural or environmental indignities they – intentionally or unintentionally – communicate toward, or about, racialized persons through racial microaggressions. A racial microaggression is a brief, everyday indignity that (re)produces racial slights or insults toward Black students, principals, or teachers (Brown, 2019; Frank et al., 2021; Sue et al., 2007.)
What do we know about systemic anti-Black racism in French-language education? A limited number of studies have explored systemic anti-Black racism within minoritized French-language education in Canada (Ibrahim, 2014; Jean-Pierre, 2020; Villella, 2021). These studies provide insight into how systemic anti-Black racism manifests itself within this context. For example, Schroeter and James (2015) found that Black francophone immigrant students felt that white school staff, including a school principal, give white immigrant students more help to reach their career goals. Madibbo (2021) identifies three conditions that illustrate and/or enable systemic anti-Black racism within this context:
Examining critical incidents
My PhD thesis (2021) details systemic anti-Black racism critical incidents in educational leadership within francophone Ontario and their impact on Black and francophone students, teachers, families, and community partners.
This narrative case study explored the intercultural and anti-racist competency of educational system leaders through critical incidents in leadership. A system leader, such as a school principal, is an individual who also represents a professional organization, and creates and or implements a society’s policies, procedures, and regulations (Villella, 2021). A critical incident is a positive or negative experience that affects one’s leadership by confirming it, by changing it, or by shattering it (Sider et al., 2017; Yamamoto et al., 2014).
Nine educational and system leaders, most of whom were, or had recently been, school principals, completed three semi-structured interviews and a survey. Data analysis revealed that almost all the critical incidents mentioned by the nine participants as being intercultural in nature centred around Black school community members, and mostly Black boys and men, including a Catholic priest. While their survey responses suggested that most of the nine participants’ intercultural competency was well developed, the way in which they dealt with critical incidents involving Black students, staff, families, and community members indicated that their anti-racist competency needs further development. In the case of intercultural and anti-racist competencies, little to no university courses or workshop training was reported by the participants; they mostly trained themselves through international volunteer work, reading, and personal experience sharing. As such, they mostly did informal training (Villella, 2021). It should therefore not come as a surprise that critical incidents revealing systemic anti-Black racism and racial microaggressions manifested themselves in the participants’ leadership.
What the data reveals: Multiple racial microaggressions
Below, I present and analyze four systemic anti-Black racism critical incidents (translation by the author) through Brown’s (2019) racial microaggression framework of pathologizing, cultural insensitivity, persistent devaluation of Black teachers’ competency, second-class citizenship in schools, and the myth of meritocracy. Brown indicates that such microaggressions are not only steeped in anti-Black ideology, but they are also documented reasons why Black teachers1 leave the teaching profession.
“I had a meeting with the principal. So, I think that there is a former colleague of mine, I will go and see him… He says, ‘[Hassan], you’re in the white people’s staff room with me here.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You don’t see? The immigrant table is over there.’ So, I have to tell you that even when I was there, there were two staff rooms.”
In this school, Black teachers (and especially Black immigrant teachers) are the targets of systemic anti-Black racism in the staff room in the form of second-class status (Brown, 2019; Frank et al., 2021).
“[Students] were telling him off, I mean, plus [he] spoke with a rather pronounced accent. This was probably one of the first Black people they saw in person… it was one of the first classes that he had in Canada, because he had just been substituting in Montreal, if I recall correctly… In the corner at the back of the class [were] four young men who had fun putting him down: ‘Sir, I don’t understand anything, I don’t understand when you talk. It makes no sense.’”
In this example of racial microaggressions toward a Black teacher, there is a persistent devaluation of his capabilities for teaching (Brown, 2019; Frank et al., 2021) by the students and as well as by the participant, but there is also racialized linguicism (Madibbo, 2021), i.e. a combined linguistic and racial discrimination toward a Black person who is also a recent immigrant.
“They’re unable to integrate… and that, that’s despite trying to coach them. We tried… the traditionalism is too entrenched in their practices… you get into a conflict, and that’s where there are layoffs, where there are unsatisfactory assessments.”
Here, we can observe another racial microaggression whereby a white administrator pathologizes Black teachers through his fixed vision of competency based on conformity to French-language education that can be traced back to the white ideologies historically normalized within educational policies and practices.
“I’ve done interviews, and the questions we were asking, we already had an idea of what we wanted as answers… A few times, I realized that we weren’t talking about the [Black] person’s competency. Someone said, “Well, the person said this or that… and they may hit the child to discipline them.”
In this example, the racial microaggressions manifest themselves as a form of pathologizing (Brown, 2019 ; Frank et al., 2021).
“I’m doing a follow-up evaluation with… a teenager from mainland Africa… who had had very large gaps in schooling… and I had concerns about the level of work he is being given [by his classroom teacher]. Because sometimes… if a student does not know how to read, there is a tendency to pick up materials for learning to read in the younger ones… but it’s not cognitively stimulating… because I have a 15–16-year-old [male] who… is practising bobo -baba [sounds]. But this is a young person who is being treated like a… student who has a disability.”
Here, one can identify that this Black student is experiencing microaggressions in the form of micro-invalidations regarding his reading needs that are grounded in second-class citizenship, cultural insensitivity, and persistent devaluation of competency (Brown, 2019 ; Frank et al., 2021; Sue et al., 2007).
Although these are only some of the critical incidents of anti-Black systemic racism within educational leadership that emerged from my study, they are informational vignettes representing a snapshot of how systemic anti-Black racism (re)produces itself about and toward Black school-community members within French-language schooling in Ontario.
How can studying critical incidents help us (un)learn systemic anti-Black racism?
Yamamoto et al. (2014) explain that the stories we tell ourselves, share, and tell others, and once again tell ourselves regarding a critical incident is a loop allowing leaders to evaluate if they will maintain the same practices, slightly adapt their leadership, or completely change their practice in the future. As such, these critical incidents are not only formational (Sider et al., 2017), they are also informational (Villella, 2021), revealing the professional (un)learning that is required to combat systemic anti-Black racism. The question that now emerges is: what can French-language educational system leaders, such as school principals and teacher educators, learn by examining such critical incidents?
First, it is important to remember that systemic anti-Black racism is not just an Anglo-Canadian issue. It is present in education, regardless of the language of instruction.
The analysis of critical incidents in leadership in French-language education can help school administrators, trainers, school principals, and superintendent associations, as well as French-language community organizations, understand how certain practices contribute to marginalizing Black children and adults that they serve. The ways in which leaders respond to Black teachers can contribute to the reproduction and thus persistence of systemic anti-Black racism, rather than contributing to building a more inclusive educational environment and society that mitigates against it. Either way, educational system leaders send a clear message to Black students, staff, and family members about whether or not they are valued in society.
Studying critical incidents as professional (un)learning in relation to systemic anti-Black racism provides educational leaders the chance to change how they respond in future situations, in order to be proactive and reduce harm to Black community members. As such, narrative case studies can help leaders decipher systemic anti-Black racism through professional (un)learning.
What we can do now: A few recommendations
System administrators, such as superintendents, need to support all staff who wish to develop preventative strategies to decrease the likelihood of systemic anti-Black racism from being (re)produced through racial microaggressions. The provincial government and school boards/districts need to require measures that track systemic anti-Black racism incidents, and to transparently report on them. Developing a mixed approach of both qualitative and quantitative data collection is important for better understanding of the underlying issues, which should not be reduced to a case of immigration status or mother tongue language as central identifiers.
Finally, initial and continual training opportunities need to be allocated to educational system leaders at all levels who wish to be trained, or to train their school teams, about racism and anti-racism. Specific areas of needed training include: culturally sustaining pedagogy and leadership, race-based data analysis, and questioning school board pedagogical and discipline policies regarding students as well as hiring practices related to staff. Such training requires that resources not only be developed in French, but also that critical incidents of systemic anti-Black racism are based on examples collected within francophone education systems.
Although some educational leaders may be more aware of systemic anti-Black racism incidents related to their leadership, such critical incidents still exist and persist. That said, we should not be dissuaded nor discouraged from developing inclusive and equitable French-language education systems. Instead, these incidents should cause educational school and system leaders to reassess how to better build relationships with each Black student, staff member, and community partner, and how to go beyond the deficit thinking and stereotypes that lead to racial microaggressions. That process begins and continues with fully participating and engaging in decolonizing professional (un)learning. The knowledge then needs to be applied within local communities to create more equitable and inclusive spaces of belonging for Black students and staff, and for those from other equity-deserving groups within la francophonie. Not only do Black students need Black educators, so does the rest of Canadian society. Inclusion is, after all, meant for each and every one.
For the most effective self-study experience, read in the order presented.
Canadian Statistics
Blackness
Black francophone experience
Critical race theory
Additional French-language resources are listed in the French version of this article
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
1 While the Brown (2019) study focused on Black teachers, Frank et al.’s (2021) study focused on Black math teachers specifically.
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