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
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
IF YOU ARE A PARENT, you likely recall your baby’s wellness visits with the family doctor. During these frequent visits, the focus was on monitoring physical growth and development to identify any issues that might require attention. By plotting children’s individual growth curves and comparing them with standardized charts, physicians can determine whether satisfactory growth is occurring and when intervention is needed.
Just as health practitioners monitor physical growth with charts, educators can monitor learning growth with universal screeners. A universal screener is a short assessment administered to all students in a classroom that tests sub-skills predictive of a more complex skill. In the case of literacy screeners, the sub-skills of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are assessed because they are essential for decoding (Biel et al., 2020). Similarly, numeracy screeners include counting, number relations, and basic arithmetic items because they are components of early numeracy (Devlin et al., 2022).
To discover any learning gaps and ascertain progress, universal screeners are often conducted three times over the course of a school year. Initial screener use provides educators with a baseline of students’ abilities that can be used to guide instruction and flag students who may require additional support. A key tracking feature of universal screeners is that target scores are connected with a child’s grade or age. Students who meet target scores are progressing as anticipated, whereas students who are close to or below target scores may be struggling with foundational skills. For students who do not meet target scores, instructional support or intervention is recommended. Tracking students’ progress over time allows teachers, schools, or districts to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, ultimately determining whether learning gaps have been reduced or closed.
As an educator or school administrator, you are probably aware of the importance of literacy screeners for identifying and supporting children who may be at risk for reading difficulties. You may also be familiar with specific literacy screeners and interventions used in classrooms. Unfortunately, information about numeracy development is not as readily available as it is for literacy, since the field of mathematics cognition research is still fairly new. However, strides in understanding mathematics development and growing interest in supporting early mathematics learning have led to the creation of evidence-based universal numeracy screeners. This article features one such numeracy screener, the Early Math Assessment at School (EMA@School), which is licensed by Alberta Education as the Provincial Numeracy Screening Assessment (PNSA). PNSA data was used by the Grande Prairie Public School Division in Alberta to target students for intervention and assess whether the interventions worked as intended to remediate identified students.
Math learning is cumulative (increasingly complex skills build on one another), so it is important to lay a strong foundation in early mathematics (Sarama & Clements, 2009).
Moreover, when young children begin school, they vary widely in their mathematical understanding and skills, meaning an achievement gap already exists in Kindergarten (Duncan et al., 2007; Jordan et al., 2009). If this math achievement gap is not addressed early, children with less mathematical proficiency will continue to fall behind their peers. Numeracy screeners are a practical tool for identifying students who require extra instruction and intervention to grasp foundational skills.
Data from Alberta suggests that early achievement gaps may have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Child and Youth Well-Being Panel, 2021). In response, Alberta Education has implemented literacy and numeracy screeners for children in Grades 1–3 to help students get back on track. While there is an abundance of evidence-based literacy screeners available for classroom use, comparable numeracy screeners are lacking. For this reason, Alberta Education contacted the Mathematical Cognition Lab (MCL) at Carleton University in the spring of 2021 to discuss the creation of a provincial numeracy screener. Based on their expertise in mathematical development, the MCL constructed a grade-specific numeracy screener for students in each of the primary grades. The screener consists of items assessing number knowledge, number relations, and number operations, because these related subdomains tap into early mathematical knowledge, but they all predict mathematics learning separately (Devlin et al., 2022). Although many tasks are common across grades (with questions reflecting grade-specific knowledge), there are some differences between grades. For students in the younger grades, the screener has a stronger emphasis on number knowledge and number relations (e.g. counting, number naming, comparing numbers), while there is more of a focus on number operations (e.g. arithmetic fluency, principles of addition) for older grades.
During the 2021/2022 school year, classroom teachers administered the Provincial Numeracy Screening Assessment (PNSA) to over 50,000 primary students. The Grade 1 PNSA involved both one-on-one testing (5 minutes per student) and whole-class testing (15 minutes). For Grades 2–3, the PNSA was implemented in a whole-class setting during a 20- to 30-minute session. Target scores for the PNSA were established, so the tool could be used to identify students who were at risk for low achievement in mathematics. Alberta Education developed intervention lessons that accompanied the PNSA that included: activities for each numeracy sub-skill encompassing concrete-to-representational-to-abstract instructional processes, explicit mathematical vocabulary, and mathematical symbols. The Alberta government provided funding to school divisions to both administer the PNSA and provide needed interventions for students.
In September 2022, the Grande Prairie Public School Division (GPPSD) in Alberta administered the PNSA to students in Grades 2 to 3. Grade 1 students completed the PNSA in January 2023 to allow for some initial mathematics instruction and acclimatization to school prior to screening. To meet the needs of students in the
division, the Numeracy Coordinator designed a comprehensive early numeracy intervention approach, consisting of the following elements:
Figure 2. A math mat used to capture student learning during early numeracy intervention.
Once students demonstrate strong understanding in most sub-skills, they are discharged from the intervention program. Students who exhibit little to no growth have lessons adapted to meet their needs. In the case where growth is limited even after lesson adaptations, intervention work is used as evidence that students may require formal psychoeducational assessments for learning disabilities.
Overall, the intervention is being well received by the school community. One educational assistant commented on the success of the program: “Because we see the students daily, in small groups, we can target the help they need more individually, giving them the opportunity to ask questions and learn in a small-group setting at their level.” From a classroom perspective, a Grade 2 teacher noted that “the kids come back from intervention with more confidence and willingness to take risks!” To date, intervention tracking data indicates that 431 students (across 15 schools) have received targeted support. Of those students, 330 (77 percent) have advanced to meet target scores in most numeracy sub-skills, earning a discharge from the targeted support. The remaining 101 students, although considered “still at risk” after the six-week cycle, made significant gains, specifically in the sub-skills of number line and computations.
As the GPPSD continues to enhance their early numeracy intervention design, they are focusing on fostering greater collaboration between classroom instruction and the early intervention program to reinforce the learning in both environments. There is no question that numeracy screeners are a powerful tool for helping educators focus on foundational learning needed for future mathematics and life success.
For more information about numeracy screeners and early numeracy intervention, check out these resources:
Assessment and Instruction for Mathematics (AIM) Collective website: www.aimcollective.ca
Fuchs, L.S., Newman-Gonchar, et al. (2021). Assisting students struggling with mathematics: Intervention in the elementary grades (WWC 2021006). National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. http://whatworks.ed.gov/
Youmans, A., & Colgan, L. (Eds.). (in press). Beyond 1, 2, 3: Strengthening early math education in Canada. Canadian Scholars Press.
Biel, C., Conner, C., et al. (2022). How does the science of reading inform early literacy screening? Virginia State Literacy Association. https://literacy.virginia.edu/sites/g/files/jsddwu1006/files/2022-03/How%20Does%20the%20Science%20of%20Reading%20Inform%20Early%20Literacy%20Screening9888e091cc0c17d238d1c54ce31de7afc4bbc396863e07e1d942a4505c5a17a0.pdf
Child and Youth Well-Being Panel. (2021). Child and youth well-being review: Final report. Government of Alberta. https://open.alberta.ca/publications/child-and-youth-well-being-review-final-report#summary
Devlin, D., Moeller, K., & Sella, F. (2022). The structure of early numeracy: Evidence from multi-factorial models. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 26. doi:10.1016/j.tine.2022.100171
Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., et al. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43(6), 1428–1446.
Jordan, N. C., Kaplan, et al. (2009). Early mathematics matters: Kindergarten number competence and later mathematics outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 850–867. doi:10.1037/a0014939
Sarama, J., & Clements, D. H. (2009). Early childhood mathematics education research. Taylor & Francis.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
HOW DO WE INFUSE INDIGENOUS perspectives into our work on educator wellbeing and workplace wellness? This is the question our writing team asked ourselves as we began working on the book, Teacher, Take Care: A guide to wellbeing and workplace wellness for educators. We wanted to infuse Indigenous knowledge throughout the book as a means of widening the lens on what it means to be well. Our Elder, Stanley Kipling, and Knowledge Keeper, Richelle North Star Scott, guided us in this process, using the Sacred Hoop as a model for wellbeing. We used this image as a foundation for understanding how to find balance and harmony within ourselves and within our schools. This article will explore the Sacred Hoop, its meaning, and the ways in which we have applied it to educator wellbeing and workplace wellness.
“The circle [Sacred Hoop], being primary, influences how we as Indigenous peoples view the world. In the process of how life evolves, how the natural world grows and works together, how all things are connected, and how all things move toward their destiny. Indigenous peoples see and respond to the world in a circular fashion and are influenced by the examples of the circles of creation in our environment. They represent the alignment and continuous interaction of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual realities. The circle shape represents the interconnectivity of all aspects of one’s being, including the connection with the natural world. [Sacred Hoops] are frequently believed to be the circle of awareness of the individual self; the circle of knowledge that provides the power we each have over our own lives (Dumont, 1989).”
Image from Teacher, Take Care: A guide to well-being and workplace wellness for educators, by Jennifer E. Lawson. Copyright 2022, Reproduced with permission from Portage & Main Press.
We each have our own definition of wellness, whether we have articulated it or not. One understanding of holistic health and harmony is reflected in the Sacred Hoop. The Sacred Hoop is a representation of how some Indigenous Peoples view the world. It is also known by other names, such as Cosmological Circle, Circle Teachings, Hoop Teachings, Medicine Wheel, or Wheel Teachings. (Many Indigenous communities are trying to break free from using references to the Medicine Wheel and Wheel Teachings, as these are colonial terms.) There are many different perspectives on the Sacred Hoop, depending on nation, territory, and personal interpretations. A common theme, as represented in the Sacred Hoop by the Four Directions, is that wellness involves the whole person – their Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual selves. The Sacred Hoop shown here is the one that Elder Kipling and North Star are most familiar with. It supports their thoughts and ideas and has shaped the teachings they have received throughout their lives. When using the Sacred Hoop, it also is a reminder that we are not perfect – that as individuals we will go around the Sacred Hoop many times in our lifetime and that we are never done our healing. Wellness is not a destination, so we must think of it as endless teachings as we venture through life.
In the Sacred Hoop, the Physical dimension is represented by babies and children, as their physical bodies do much growing and learning when they are new to this world. The Golden Eagle sits in the East as a teacher of unconditional love for our children. The colour yellow represents the rising sun and the gift of a brand-new day. Nourishing a healthy body through exercise, nutrition, and sleep are ways to promote physical wellness.
The Emotional dimension is represented by teenagers, who experience a wide range of emotions during a time of hormone changes in their lives. The Wolf sits in the South as a teacher of humility. As true leaders, wolves are humble. Although often misrepresented as wild and dangerous animals by settlers, they care for the pack even if it means their needs are not met. The colour red represents the red-hot emotions we may have during this life stage. We are teaching emotional wellness when we allow ourselves and others to experience feelings in a safe environment. Expressing emotions is a natural way to bring ourselves back into balance.
The Mental dimension is represented by adults, who spend much of their time in cognitive thought. Actually, they also often overthink and then worry about the decisions they have to make or the consequences of the decisions they have already made. The Black Bear sits in the West as a teacher of courage, as it takes courage to go deep within our minds and learn about patterns that no longer serve us. The colour black represents our minds and the introspection it takes to journey through our lives. Being engaged in the world through learning, problem-solving, and creativity can improve our mental wellness. Learning is an ongoing, ever-evolving, lifelong process. It keeps us forever moving and growing and prevents us from getting stuck or becoming stagnant.
The Spiritual dimension is represented by Elders because they have great knowledge, having travelled the path around the entire Sacred Hoop. The White Buffalo sits in the North as a teacher who teaches us about facing the toughest of challenges head-on. Because of this, both the Elders and the White Buffalo deserve much respect. The colour white represents the harsh weather we must face and the wisdom our Elders have gained, often turning their hair white in the process. The Spiritual is that which fills us up. For some, Spirituality means connecting to our higher power, whether we call it Creator, God, Buddha, or Allah. For others, it means something different, such as that which embraces our soul, giving our lives meaning. The Spiritual also means the fire within us – our pursuits that fill us up when we feel empty. These can be dancing, singing, attending ceremonies, or painting – things that make us feel whole again. As we go deeper within ourselves, committing to another walk around the Sacred Hoop, spirituality keeps us grounded, creative, and inspired.
So, how do we live in harmony and find balance using the Sacred Hoop? It begins with an understanding of the equal importance of our Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual dimensions. It means acknowledging and caring for those four aspects of our whole being by keeping them in balance. Think, for a moment, about standing on a Bosu ball at the gym, and imagine that the ball’s round, flat circle is your Sacred Hoop.
Photo: iStock
Using this analogy, the goal is to keep yourself steady and balanced in all four dimensions of your being. If you are struggling in one area, it will indeed affect your overall sense of harmony. If you are challenged in more than one area, it may be difficult to maintain equilibrium at all.
How can we manage to find balance? Here, we will provide an example from each of us on how we strive to maintain a sense of wellbeing and harmony in our daily lives.
I am diabetic, and I struggle from day to day to maintain my blood sugar levels. Teaching can often be stressful, and my job keeps me extremely busy meeting 26 schools’ needs. I’m often not eating properly because I’m constantly on the move from one school to another and I’m not eating lunch at appropriate times. In addition, once I’m at a school, I am either teaching in a classroom or I am attending meetings in small conference rooms, requiring me to sit. So my Sacred Hoop is out of balance. I’m not eating well or exercising and that throws my Physical wellbeing out of balance. As soon as my Physical self suffers, my Emotional wellness also becomes askew. In contrast, my Mental health and Spiritual life are strong. I am constantly learning, reading, and writing, and I challenge myself mentally all the time. I am always in ceremony, so my spirit is strong. This means that I must be aware of both my strengths and challenges in my Sacred Hoop. As I become aware of where I am the strongest on my Hoop and where I am needing some support, I can seek out help to rectify this, knowing that the Physical and Emotional aspects of my life are out of balance. One thing that has always helped me with my diabetes and supporting the Physical and Emotional aspects of my Hoop is being out on the land. There I find I’m moving more and releasing any negative emotions, and so I often try to teach out on the land. I am taking care of myself, as well as my colleagues and students, as I introduce them to healing out on the land.
I find it important to be cognizant of my strengths and challenges in terms of my four dimensions. For example, in a Physical way, I am quite strong, active, and healthy. I walk outdoors daily and take Zumba classes several times a week. I also see my Mental dimension as quite strong, as I challenge my learning and thrive on gathering new knowledge. My Spiritual dimension is enhanced by my time immersed in music and nature. However, my Emotional dimension is where I struggle. I am what one would call an empath, highly sensitive, and can be easily overwhelmed by my own emotions. This makes it difficult for me to balance my own Sacred Hoop. I try to recover this imbalance by focusing on my strengths (Physical activity, Mental stimulation, Spiritual endeavours), while also acknowledging, articulating, and accepting my Emotions. This helps me to find balance, harmony, and wellbeing in daily life.
We are at the centre of our own wellbeing and healing. If we keep ourselves at the centre and take care of ourselves, then we can also take care of others. Often, as teachers, we are constantly taking care of everyone else, in both our personal and professional lives, and we can forget to take care of our own daily needs. As we journey around the Sacred Hoop, we need to be having that internal conversation about how we’re feeling throughout the day. Are we in balance?
The Sacred Hoop can also be used to determine and strengthen balance, harmony, and wellness in the workplace. For example, in schools, we need to consider all four dimensions – the Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual – as having equal influence on workplace wellness, and also the school community’s wellness.
The Physical dimension of a school, for example, involves every aspect of the community’s physical wellbeing, including the building itself. It is the right of every member of a school community to feel physically safe at all times. Unfortunately, this dimension also includes physical violence and injury, which puts both students and staff at risk. In addition, everything from temperature control and air quality to icy sidewalks and leaking ceiling tiles need to be attended to in order to maintain a well school. There is no easy answer to addressing these issues, but it is of utmost importance that Physical wellness and safety be at the forefront of managing facilities and creating a well school. For many students, the land surrounding the school is important not only for their Physical needs, but also for their Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual dimensions. Many schools recognize this and are now actively integrating outdoor classrooms and land-based learning.
The Emotional wellness of a school focuses on the culture and climate that is a felt sense in the building. How do students, families, and staff feel when they walk in the front doors? Is there a sense of feeling welcome, accepted, and belonging? This is the aim of an emotionally well school. Indigenous families may knowingly or subconsciously ask themselves, “Do I belong here? Will my child be safe here?” It is important for us to connect on an emotional level with our colleagues, students, and their families. One example of this is planning a graduation Powwow for students in their final year of high school. This brings together the staff, students, school families, as well as many other community members who may come to dance or drum.
The Mental dimension of school wellness focuses on the academic and intellectual pursuits of its members, keeping in mind the individual strengths, challenges, and needs of all members of the school community. In keeping with this commitment, a well school focuses on the learning and growing of students, while encouraging professional development for staff. Events such as a Celebration of Learning provide an opportunity for students and their teachers to share successes (from the Mental dimension) with families.
The Spiritual dimension of a school is rich and complex because we all see spirituality differently. This is a gift in one sense, in that we can acknowledge, respect, and celebrate a wealth of spiritual practices. At the same time, the challenge is to be inclusive and recognize the diversity of spiritual beliefs and traditions reflective of the school community. We need to be aware of what fills us up, for ourselves, our students, and our colleagues. This is Spirit. As an example, acknowledging and participating in a variety of cultural celebrations is one way of acknowledging Spirit. For many students, staff, and families, the Spiritual dimension is reflected in these cultural practices, so this is a way to respect Spiritual diversity.
Finding balance and harmony in terms of workplace wellness requires intentional actions that address the Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual dimensions of the school and its members. This, in turn, enhances the wellbeing of each individual in the school community.
FINDING BALANCE in one’s own Sacred Hoop is a challenging task, as is the endeavour to create that same harmonious balance at the whole-school level. By considering the inherent potential of the Sacred Hoop, we can acquire a stronger understanding of holistic health and harmony, and continue to strive for balance in the Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual dimensions. As we move around the Sacred Hoop on our journey with wellness, we become more aware of ourselves and others, and strengthen both individual wellbeing and workplace wellness.
Dumont, J. (1989). Culture, behaviour, & identity of the Native person. In NATI-2105: Culture, behaviour, & identity of the Native person. Laurentian University Press.
Lawson, J. E., Gander, S., et al. (2022). Teacher, take care: A guide to wellbeing and workplace wellness for educators. Portage & Main Press.
Banner Photo: Image from Teacher, Take Care: A guide to well-being and workplace wellness for educators, by Jennifer E. Lawson. Copyright 2022, Reproduced with permission from Portage & Main Press.
First published in Education Canada, September 2023
CONCERNS WITH ACADEMIC DISHONESTY have intensified with the advance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Now, students can enter essay questions into bot-technology, like ChatGPT, to generate text-based responses that can appear to be authentic student work. While these AI bots cannot generate novel or creative ideas, they can synthesize existing knowledge and organize it into logical arguments.
We are now entering what we would call the third epoch of academic integrity. The first relates to the period preceding digital technology, the second coincides with the gradual use of Information Communication Technology (ICT), and the current epoch includes advanced and responsive ICT including AI applications. In many respects, these AI applications have ushered in a new age of plagiarism and cheating (Xiao et al., 2022). So, what should educators do next?
Cheating and artificial intelligence
Estimates of cheating vary widely across national contexts and sectors. For example, more than 50 percent of high school students in the United States reported some form of cheating that could include copying an internet document to submit as part of an assignment and/or cheating during a test (Eaton & Hughes, 2022). Cheating in Canada is also reported by more than half of high school students, with higher percentages (73 percent) reported for written assignments (Eaton & Hughes). In both Canada and the U.S., the incidence rates for undergraduate students are significantly lower (approximately five percent), but are still a noteworthy issue. What is less known is how the recent launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI will impact cheating in both compulsory and higher education settings within and outside of Canada. Perhaps in recognition of this potential issue, OpenAI’s terms of use state that “you must be at least 13 years old to use the Services. If you are under 18, you must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to use the Services” (OpenAI, 2023).
The ability of popular plagiarism detection tools to identify cheating using ChatGPT remains a formidable challenge. For example, one study found that 50 essays generated using ChatGPT were able to generate sophisticated texts that were able to evade the traditional check software (Khalil & Er, 2023). In other studies, ChatGPT achieved the mean grade for the English reading comprehension national high school exam in the Netherlands (de Winter, 2023) and passed law school exams (Choi et al., 2023). Given that ChatGPT reached 100 million active users in January 2023, just two months after its launch, it is understandable why some have argued AI applications such as ChatGPT will precipitate a “tsunami effect” of changes to contemporary schooling (García-Peñalvo, 2023).
Current policy responses
Not surprisingly, there are opposing views on how to respond to ChatGPT and other AI language models. Some argue educators should embrace AI as a useful tool for teaching and learning, provided the application(s) is cited correctly (Willems, 2023). Others assert that additional training and resources are needed so that educators can better detect cheating (Abdelaal et al., 2019). Still others suggest that the educational challenges posed by AI described above must ultimately lead to assessment reforms (Cotton & Cotton, 2023) that will prevent students from using AI to complete their assignments, so that this threat is minimized. Even with likely further advances in cheating detection software, schools at all levels need to rethink their pedagogical and assessment approaches to respond to a continually evolving information world, one in which computers and technology are increasingly capable at synthesizing and organizing information.
Interestingly, some educators are actively exploring how to incorporate AI into their teaching and assessment methods. Fyfe (2022) describes a “pedagogical experiment” in which he asked students to generate content from a version of GPT-2 and intentionally weave this content throughout their final essay. Students were then asked to confront the availability of AI as a writing tool and reflect on the ethical use of emergent AI language models. This example suggests AI could be used to not only support student learning of core content, but extend critical digital literacy skills, too.
To put a finer point on this, when AI is integrated into teaching and learning, students’ engagement in their learning is higher, according to learning taxonomies. Take for instance a simple learning taxonomy like I.C.E. (Fostaty-Young & Wilson, 1995), where the “I” represents a student’s capacity to remember and work with basic content ideas (e.g. facts, figures, knowledge); the “C” represents a student’s ability to make connections between ideas (e.g. to organize ideas into a logical argument, to compare and contrast, to synthesize); and “E” represents a student’s capacity to make extensions. The “extensions” level of learning, which has also been referred to as “higher order thinking,” is where novel, critical, and creative outputs occur. At this point, AI is unable to achieve extensions, thus this becomes the role and function of students: to understand the ideas presented by texts, teachers, and AI bots and use them to establish novel extensions.
The challenge, of course, is that not all curriculum expectations require extension-level learning. Sometimes students need to learn and demonstrate their learning of basic ideas and connections. So, the question remains, how can AI and assessment work together to support all types of learning? Phrased differently, how can a teacher ensure their teaching and assessment practices are not susceptible to academic integrity issues?
Rethinking assessment with artificial intelligence in mind
There is little doubt that the emergence of ChatGPT represents the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of the use of AI in society and in education. In preparation for its growing presence in education, we provide six key practices to deter the misuse of AI in assessment and evaluation processes.
These six key practices have already proven to support more effective learning and assessment. Importantly, their continued use may either work with AI where appropriate, or deter the use of AI when necessary. For example, while we do not devalue the importance of learning goals that include foundational knowledge and conceptual understanding, the presence of AI creates an opportunity to identify more complex learning goals. These goals may build on teaching and learning that uses AI but then requires learners to evaluate or create extensions in their learning. Similarly, clarity of criteria helps students focus their learning, and the co-creation of criteria with students can lead to discussions regarding those aspects of an assignment or task that may use AI to supplement the work. Feedback cycles better reflect the processes we actually use to complete complex tasks, and the use of peer, self, and teacher feedback improves the quality of work and learning. While AI may be incorporated within early drafts, the revision process will require additional learner effort. Collectively, performance and authentic assessments require a high level of student engagement to demonstrate a number of integrated learning outcomes. As above, AI may supplement some of the foundational aspects of the work and/or task, but the final product will be illustrative of higher-order and critical thinking skills. Lastly, collaborative grading has a number of benefits, including greater assessment consistency, reduced bias, and, we would argue, a greater potential for detection of inappropriate use of AI and/or plagiarism.
Taken together, these practices not only make clear the role of AI in teaching, learning, and assessment, but also encourage students to be more agentic in the learning and assessment process. Effective learning requires students to engage actively, collaboratively, and orally in their learning and to demonstrate their learning through effective assessment. Assessment practices that are embedded within the learning process (formative assessment) will help reduce academic integrity concerns while encouraging more authentic and alternative assessments. The current debate around the presence of AI technologies such as Chat GPT must quickly shift from one of concerns about assessment integrity to one about how we use these technologies in our classrooms to enable our students to demonstrate more-complex and valued learning outcomes. In this respect, AI provides the necessary impetus to spur more forward-thinking assessment practices and policies within provincial and national education systems.
Abdelaal, E., Gamage, S. W., & Mills, J. E. (2019). Artificial Intelligence is a tool for cheating academic integrity. Proceedings of the AAEE2019 Conference. Artificial-Intelligence-Is-a-Tool-for-Cheating-Academic-Integrity.pdf (researchgate.net)
Choi, J. H., Hickman, K. E., et al. (2023). ChatGPT goes to law school. Minnesota Legal Studies Research Paper No. 23-03. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4335905
Cotton, D. R. E., & Cotton, P. A. (2023). Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. EdArXiv Reprints. https://edarxiv.org/mrz8h?trk=public_post_main-feed-card_reshare-text
de Winter, J. C. F. (2023). Can ChatGPT pass high school exams on English language comprehension. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366659237_Can_ChatGPT_pass_high_school_exams_on_English_Language_Comprehension
Eaton, S. E., & Hughes, J. C. (2022). Academic Integrity in Canada. Springer. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/53333/1/978-3-030-83255-1.pdf#page=99
Fyfe, P. (2022). How to cheat on your final paper: Assigning AI for student writing. AI & Society. doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01397-z
García-Peñalvo, F. J. (2023). The perception of Artificial Intelligence in educational contexts after the launch of ChatGPT: disruption or panic? Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. https://repositorio.grial.eu/handle/grial/2838
Khalil, M., & Er, K. (2023). Will ChatGPT get you caught? Rethinking of plagiarism detection. arXiv. doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2302.04335
OpenAI. (2023). Terms of use. https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use
Willems, J. (2023). ChatGPT at universities – the least of our concerns. SSRN Journal. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4334162
Xiao, Y., Chatterjee, S., & Gehringer, E. (2022). A new era of plagiarism the danger of cheating using AI. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET). https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10031827
Schools play an integral part in the lives of children and youth. Not only is this a space for intellectual development, but it is also where many social skills and core competencies are acquired. During the past three years, provinces and territories implemented a variety of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, including school closures and remote learning. While these measures were focused on reducing the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, there have been other consequences and impacts on the lives of students.
We are still trying to understand the impact of the pandemic on students, but we do know that there were huge repercussions throughout all education systems across Canada. Challenges included, but are not limited to, staff and student mental health, increased inequalities between learners, staff shortage and chronic attendance problems, learning loss, cancellation of sports and extracurricular activities, and adapting to online learning. There were also, however, a few opportunities that emerged: enhanced teachers’ digital skills, learning outside the classroom, Indigenous land-based education, prioritizing opportunities for authentic learning, and improved curricula in some jurisdictions.
It is important to recognize students’ intersectional identities and varying circumstances when discussing the impact of COVID-19 on students. We should not generalize the experiences of all youth. Not all communities, or students, faced the same impact of COVID-19.
Here, we share our experiences during the pandemic. These reflections only represent our individual experiences and not all students’ experiences.
Online learning
Fiona: It was January 2020 for me when my school announced that we would be doing classes online. Until that point in my life, I had never used Zoom or Google classroom. In a week, my peers and I were thrown into an unfamiliar world.
The class was just an hour of looking at black screens with occasional emoji reactions from half-asleep students. Instead of interactive learning, we were asked to watch pre-recorded lectures, usually on Zoom, by teachers. As much as teachers tried their best to make lessons engaging, these lessons were just not as effective.
For example, in Grade 9 science, we had to learn about the different colours of flames. In a pre-pandemic classroom, students would participate in elaborate experiments and see the different flames at school. In our new class setting, the teacher displayed different pictures of the flames on his screen and explained them one by one. We were unable to experience the bright colours of the flame and experience the excitement. As a result, the information from the class was not deeply impressed upon us.
Raeesa: Learning online was a challenge at times. From poor internet connections disrupting our classes, to needing to constantly help my siblings who were often confused after their lessons, to staring at a screen for prolonged periods, online learning had many flaws. I found that fewer people spoke and gave answers to questions during online classes, which made things harder for teachers. Due to less student participation, classes felt longer and got boring at points. It was especially sad when the teacher had to wait for someone to answer their question. The flow of the class wasn’t as interesting or engaging, which affected students’ learning and interest.
On the plus side, learning from the comfort of my home was better for me, since I was in my own learning space. I got to explore and get used to using technology more often for school tasks, which was helpful since in the future most of us will use apps on our devices to complete our assignments and projects.
Lack of structure, need for more independence
Fiona: We used to have structured class schedules with strict expectations, like arriving to class on time and being there for attendance. However, as online classes rolled out, there was no one there to ensure we joined the online classes, and in many instances, classes were cancelled due to an unstable network. Because classes weren’t as effective, I had to figure out ways to learn on my own, so I found myself trying to watch crash-course YouTube videos and Khan Academy. Many classmates also resorted to these sources of information. Over time, we felt a disconnection between the teachers and us because they were no longer the people we went to for concerns and inquiries.
Raeesa: During the pandemic, without a teacher being there to make sure I did my work, I had to learn to be responsible for myself and manage my time independently to complete all my assignments and work at home. I also learned the importance of communicating with teachers. We were able to chat and text with teachers online, and I learned to be the one responsible for communicating with my teachers for help, because they are not able to help me if I don’t ask them.
Social impacts
Raeesa: For me, school has always been the place where I can participate in different activities like sports, arts, and clubs, and it has provided me with many opportunities. I missed out on many in-person activities, such as school assemblies and playing on certain sports teams due to the pandemic.
Fiona: Looking at the greater picture, the pandemic took away the chance for many students to discover their passions. I believe that passion is discovered through meaningful encounters with peers and teachers. With the pandemic, courses that many used to enjoy became mundane and not enjoyable. There were fewer interactions with teachers, less face-to-face communication. In the crucial years of interest exploration in Grades 8, 9, and 10, some were unable to explore their interests to the full extent.
However, the pandemic helped me appreciate the resources I have in my life. Pre-pandemic, there were no breaks. I was involved in hockey, rugby, multiple extracurricular classes, debate, and more. Right after school, my mom would drive us to all sorts of extracurricular programs. When we got home, my sister and I would quickly eat and go to our rooms to do homework. In contrast, after the pandemic hit a lot of classes were cancelled or were moved online, which gave my family a lot more family time. I was able to have more conversations with my mom and understand her immigration story to Canada. This gave me a stronger sense of family and appreciation for the things my mom has sacrificed to build a life in Canada.
Youth leadership
Fiona: The pandemic brought out a huge surge of youth activists and youth leaders. There were many rising issues regarding educational resources, technology, and homelessness. Youth were inspired to speak up and aid their community members after seeing how the pandemic impacted their local communities. On a personal level, I run a non-profit organization, United Speakers Global, that aims to make public speaking resources more accessible to youth. Just after I joined the organization, the pandemic hit and the initiative became completely online – which at first seemed a problem. However, with an increased demand for these programs, we reached more students not only in the GTA but also in 11 different cities globally. Through this organization, I met youth leaders in Kuwait, Shanghai, Zambia, the U.S., and other places.
Last words
Raeesa: While the pandemic had its negative impacts on my learning, there were also some perks and learning opportunities. I like to think of it as a matter of perspective. I could have looked at the pandemic as an obstacle I was unable to overcome. Instead, I looked at the pandemic as a learning opportunity and used all the obstacles that came my way as stepping stones to opening my mind to different perspectives and ways of learning. The challenges helped me move forward instead of halting my path. In the end, it is our perception that forms our life and the way we choose to live it.
Photos: iStock, Fiona Shen and Raeesa Hoque
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
COVID-19 and the measures put in place to limit its spread have affected the quantity and quality of teaching and services offered by schools. These measures include the complete closure of Canadian schools as of mid-March 2020, emergency distance learning and support, the creation of classroom bubbles, and the temporary closure of classes to control outbreaks. According to the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation du Québec (2021), school disruptions could lead to an impoverishment of the knowledge and skills acquired by children, particularly among the most vulnerable. From an economic perspective, learning delays among elementary and secondary school children in Canada could result in losses amounting to nearly $2,500 billion in GDP over 80 years (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2020).
A growing body of data regarding the effects of academic disruptions on learning became available during the years 2021-2023. A pre-recorded systematic review on the topic indicates that outcomes vary according to the social and school context in which the disruptions occurred, and how they were managed. According to this meta-analysis of 42 studies in 15 countries, a substantial overall learning deficit (Cohen’s d = -0.14, 95% confidence interval -0.17 to -0.10) emerged early in the pandemic and persisted over time. Learning deficits are particularly significant among children from underprivileged socioeconomic backgrounds. These deficits are also higher in mathematics than in reading, and in middle-income countries than in high-income countries.
Although the effects of COVID-19 on learning are of concern to the Canadian government, there appears to be little national data available. In Quebec, the Observatory for Children’s Health and Education (OPES), in collaboration with the Ministère de l’Éducation, collected data to measure the reading skills of Quebec children completing Grade 4 of elementary school in 2021. Between March 2020 and May 2022, these children experienced 15 months of school disruptions caused by the health measures that were implemented to counter the spread of COVID-19.
The goal was to compare the learning level of children in 2021 to that of Grade 4 children in 2019 (who had not been exposed to the pandemic). We tested the possibility that learning gaps between cohorts can vary by child gender, reading-risk status and socioeconomic background, and by the number of days classes were closed.
Methodology
In April 2021, all French-language and public school service centres (n=60) in the province were invited to participate in a study to understand the impact of school closures on reading performance in Grade 4. School participation was voluntary.
The analyses included 10,317 students in 2021 and 13,669 students in 2019 from the same schools, for a total of 23,986 students.
Learning was measured using the compulsory French test (language of instruction). This was the same test that was administered prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, i.e., the June 2019 test.
The Grade 4 reading assessment featured two tasks: the literary text task and the ordinary text task. Only one of the two tests was administered in this study: the ordinary text test. This is a 2.5-hour test in which students read an ordinary 1,000-word text and respond to 12 questions with short answers. The tests were corrected centrally, with each copy being corrected twice by employees of the Direction de la sanction des études (DSE) of the Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec.
The child’s gender and the school’s Socio-Economic Environment Index11 (IMSE) were used as independent variables.The number of class closure days during the 2020-2021 school year (fewer than 15 days closed or more than 15 days) was used in the analyses.
Calculation of learning gaps
To estimate learning gaps between 2019 and 2021, we used a linear model that included school fixed effects. The model is as follows:
Yiet=ɑ +β Cohortt2021 + γBoyi + θe + εiet
where Yiet is the score of student i in school e in year t. The term Cohortt2021 is an indicator variable equal to one in 2021 and zero in 2019. School fixed effects are collected by θe. The student’s gender is controlled via Boyi and εiet is the error term. Standard deviations were calculated to account for the strongest correlation in outcomes among children in the same school (cluster analysis). Thus, the coefficient β captures the effects of school disruptions under certain assumptions. The possibility of interactions between IMSE, performance and gender was investigated.
Our results
There was an average 8.4 percentage point decline in reading between June 2019 and June 2021. The size of this gap varied according to the children’s test performance: it was high for the bottom decile of performance (20 pp); medium for the middle deciles (10 pp at the 4th decile); and zero for the top 2 deciles of performance. Boys had slightly more pronounced losses than girls.
School staff and promotion of equal opportunities
We compared reading skills as measured through a ministry test (n=10,880, 9-10-year-old students) with children in the same schools (n=13,669) that had administered the same test in 2019. Results indicated an 8.4% difference in student reading scores between 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2021 (after 15 months of exposure to the pandemic). Thus, while the average score was 77.7% in 2019, it was 69.3% in 2021. The size of this standard deviation varied depending on how well the children performed on the test. It was high for the bottom decile of performance (20 pp2); medium for the middle deciles (10 pp at the 4th decile); and zero for the top two performance deciles. These results suggest that children who were already strong in reading, i.e., those with scores in the top 20%, had not experienced learning losses 15 months after the onset of the pandemic. On the other hand, children who were weak in reading, i.e., those with scores in the bottom 20%, did experience significant learning losses (15-20 pp). The performance gaps were larger (by 1.3 pp) for boys.
The results suggest that students with academic difficulties are particularly in need of the specialized and structured environment offered by the school to support them in their learning. They highlight the crucial role of teachers and school professionals as advocates for equal opportunity. Moreover, studies of classroom management practices in a context of uncertainty (such as during a pandemic) suggest that less attention is paid to vulnerable groups during times when everyone is experiencing a low sense of safety. As the years 2020-2021 have placed unusual demands on school staff, it is possible to anticipate that the return to greater normality in 2022 will provide the support needed for everyone’s success.
The results of Betthauser et al. (2023) indicate greater losses for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Although our results show that children from disadvantaged schools had lower scores than others in both 2019 and 2021, we did not detect that learning losses were greater for children from disadvantaged schools, but rather for children who had lower reading levels. Note that since the disadvantage index is correlated with performance, it is plausible that the differential results by performance obscured the difference in the disadvantage index.
It is also possible that we did not find an impact from deprivation due to the fact that the index to which we had access was measured at the school level and not at the child/family level. The composition of schools is in fact very heterogeneous in terms of family disadvantage. Thus, even in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, the variable may not capture individual differences in the level of deprivation, whereas the performance variable does. This explanation also applies to the income threshold, which is a school-level variable.
Special considerations and recommended follow-ups
This study has important methodological strengths, including the standardized nature of the test, the large sample size (n=23,986), the diversity and representativeness of the socioeconomic status of participating schools, and the comparison of children in the same schools in 2019 and 2021. The within-school comparison type controls for a large number of confounding variables, including school management, school staff and the children who attend the schools.
The results captured the full direct and indirect effects of pandemic disruption on the acquisition of reading skills, not just the effects of academic disruption. It should be noted that the context in which the tests were taken may have influenced the results: the test in 2021 was not compulsory and was not entered on report cards. Although teachers were instructed to prepare their students for the test by following standard practices, children’s motivation and stress levels may have been different in 2021 than in 2019. The lower level of stress may have had a positive effect on the performance of some children. For others, the fact that grades were not reported on the report card may have decreased motivation.
The results underscore the importance of conducting a long-term review of the learning trajectories of Canadian students following the 2019-2021 academic disruptions. Researchers have shown that a 0.2 standard deviation increase in academic achievement is associated with higher earnings (2.6% over a life course) and better labour market participation (Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014a, 2014b). It should be noted that this study shows greater effects for the most vulnerable students, suggesting increased social inequalities in academic performance. Monitoring of standardized test scores over the next several years is necessary to quantify changes in gaps, if any, and to identify strategies to narrow them.
We would like to thank our collaborators: Karine Trudeau, PhD, and William Sauvé.
Blainey, K. (2020). The impact of lockdown on children’s education: a nationwide analysis. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.risingstars-uk.com/media/Rising-Stars/Assessment/Whitepapers/RS_Assessment_white_paper_1.pdf
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2014a). Measuring the impacts of teachers I: Evaluating bias in teacher value-added estimates. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2593-2632.
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2014b). Measuring the impacts of teachers II: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2633-2679.
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, 118(17), e2022376118.
Goldhaber, D., Imberman, S. A., et al. (2022). To what extent does in-person schooling contribute to the spread of Covid-19? Evidence from Michigan and Washington. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 41(1), 318-349.
Haelermans, C., Jacobs, M., et al. (2021). A full year COVID-19 crisis with interrupted learning and two school closures: The effects on learning growth and inequality in primary education. doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/78fje
Hanushek, E. A., & Woessmann, L. (2020). The economic impacts of learning losses. OECD Work document on education, 225, OECD Edition, Paris.
Maldonado, J. E., & De Witte, K. (2022). The effect of school closures on standardized student test outcomes. British Educational Research Journal, 48(1), 49-94.
Milanovic, K. (2022). The residual impact of educational disruption on primary school attainment by spring 2022. 22 RS Assessment, School Dash. https://risingstars-uk.com/media/Rising-Stars/Assessment/Whitepapers/Spring22_RS_Assessment_white_paper.pdf
Quebec, É. (2021). GDUNO. https://prod.education.gouv.qc.ca/gdunojrecherche/rechercheOrganisme.do;jsessionid=3sZe_Q8EMu68DHnFStbDpDDcFQszamaRzuTZLx4hSeKmIfn7AGRh!1100596104!-1697553619?methode=recherche
Quebec, M. d. l. e. d. (2021). Indice de milieu socio-économique (IMSE). www.education.gouv.qc.ca/enseignants/aide-et-soutien/milieux-defavorises/agir-autrement/indice-de-milieu-socio-economique-imse
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, April 2023
1 The school’s Socio-Economic Environment Index (IMSE): This is an index made up of two variables, the mother’s undereducation and the parents’ inactivity, which emerge as the strongest explanatory family variables of a child’s non-achievement in school. A student’s IMSE is the IMSE of the population unit from which he or she comes, while the school’s IMSE is the average of all students’ IMSEs.
2 Percentage point
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.
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: Chief Mi’sel Joe facilitates the final Elders’ sharing circle for 2-Eared Listening.
During a 2018 National Restorative Justice Week event in Newfoundland and Labrador, panellist Chief Mi’sel Joe of Miawpukek First Nation concluded his remarks with, “If you want to know about restorative justice, just ask.”
dorothy vaandering, Co-Chair of the Restorative Justice Education Consortium-NL, which hosted the event (and co-author of this article), took up the invitation. This developed into a collaboration with the Chief, a group of Memorial University colleagues, and an Indigenous community advisory committee to plan a gathering that contributed to decolonizing the way many participants thought about justice. The collaboration resulted in Two-Eared Listening for Deeper Understanding: Restorative Justice in NL, a community-wide event that hosted 170 people with diverse roles in government, education, community, and justice contexts. This event came to be called The Gathering (influenced by Hager & Miwopiyane, 2021). It reflected Mi’kmaw scholar Marie Battiste’s (2002) description of decolonizing education, in that it was an opportunity to raise the collective voices of Indigenous peoples, expose the injustices of colonial history, and contribute to deconstructing the social, political, economic, and emotional reasons for the silencing of Indigenous voices (p. 20).
Chief Joe stated that the primary responsibility of The Gathering would be to create space for truth-telling about settler colonialism’s past and ongoing violence against Indigenous peoples. He said, “Never have Indigenous peoples in this province had an opportunity to tell their stories.” Such truth-telling is an act of decolonization (Waziyatawin, 2005).
From the start of the planning, Chief Joe guided the group to focus on how the work we were engaged in was and would be truth-telling. “Before you can restore justice, you need to listen to the stories of injustice. At the heart of justice is listening,” he said. As such, the Gathering grew into an opportunity for non-Indigenous people to listen and learn about Indigenous history in the province from the lived experience of Indigenous Peoples. The role of listening was accentuated by fact that non-Indigenous leaders, whose voices are typically privileged, were not given roles as speakers but, instead, were explicitly tasked as listeners.
The shared stories reflected the impact of colonization both pre and post Newfoundland and Labrador joining the Confederation of Canada in 1949, amplifying the explicit choices made by various governments to “write Indigenous people out of existence.” Elders Emma Reelis and Ellen Ford spoke about their experiences in residential schools and their lives as Inuit women. Chief Mi’sel Joe and Chief Brendan Mitchell (Qalipu First Nation) spoke about their respective communities’ complex histories and the impact of uninformed decisions made by provincial governments, and Elder Calvin White described the impact of imposed hunting and fishing regulations on the social fabric of his community. Elder Elizabeth Penashue shared the catastrophic impact on the Innu Nation of NATO’s decision to practise low-level flying over their living and hunting territory, disrupting every aspect of their lives. The current Indigenous communities’ realities were also shared and illustrated how colonial attitudes persist, as their successes and needs continue to be supplanted by the dominant population’s more “pressing” demands. These stories are not commonly known, as demonstrated by their absence from courses and learning resources at all levels of formal education in the province.
Indigenous culture was woven into The Gathering through daily smudging, a Mide-wiigwas,[1] music, and on-site meals that reflected the cultural importance of sharing food. People gathered in a unique environment purposefully set up for truth-telling and for deep listening to Indigenous stories of injustice that would challenge many participants in ways not ordinarily experienced.
Listening with two ears
A Two-Eared Listening protocol was shared with participants. It read:
Elders tell us that we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen more than we talk.
At the Two-Eared Listening Gathering, we invite participants to listen deeply with the intention of learning and understanding. Deep listening requires the listener to receive new information through an open mind and to suspend judgment with an open heart.
Two-eared listening is an act of conciliation by promoting respectful relationships through building trust and nurturing understanding.
As you participate in this Gathering, please:
Such listening is an important component of decolonization work as all sectors of Canadian society strive to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Calls to Action (2015a). To practically support participants in engaging fully with these five elements, the Gathering space was designated as “technology-free” from the start.
Elements of two-eared listening
Listen with two ears: Listening to stories of injustice involves more than hearing the sounds of words being spoken; it involves more than listening with our ears. Two-eared listening involves listening with our emotions as well. Stó:lō educator and researcher Jo-Ann Archibald (2008) describes listening with “three ears: two on the sides of our head and the one that is in our heart” (p. 8). Chief Joe explains that listening in this way communicates a sense of caring to the speaker:
“Injustice is about hurt and pain so that brings in parts of our body, including the heart and soul. [This talking] includes body language [and] knowing someone is listening and caring. If you are listening from your core, you will understand the telling of these stories of justice and injustice.” (Joe, vaandering, et al., 2022)
According to Métis scholar Jo-Ann Episkenew (2009), Indigenous stories generate empathy, enabling settlers “… to understand Indigenous people as fellow human beings. Empathy, in turn, has the potential to create a groundswell of support for social-justice initiatives to improve the lot of Indigenous people” (pp. 190–191).
Be open to receiving new learning: Deep listening involves listening to and understanding stories that have come from different life experiences and through different lenses that challenge the dominant narrative. For example, assumptions that land is “empty” and thus open for resource extraction or military exercises shifts to realizations that land is teeming with life. Taking in new learning may require adjusting the frame of reference through which the world is understood. Mezirow (1997) explains that “frames of reference are the structures of assumptions through which we understand our experiences” (p.5) and “We transform our frames of reference through critical reflection on the assumptions upon which our interpretations, beliefs, and habits of mind or points of view are based” (p. 7). In this way, decolonizing requires a transformation of our frames of reference.
Suspend judgment: Two-eared listening requires that we listen without judgment. In responding to questions about residential school records, Father Ken Thorson (Findlay, 2022), a Canadian Oblate priest, speaks to the importance of how we listen:
“… too often the institutions… have led the conversation, have set the narrative. And we’re in a time now when, rightly, Indigenous Peoples are setting the narrative and are full partners in the conversation… our primary role at this time is to humbly listen to our Indigenous brothers and sisters, their experience, their pain and not to judge, but to listen.”
Suspending judgment allows the listener to take in what is being said and hold it with an open mind. Reactions are replaced with opportunities for change and understanding.
Listen with intention: Cree scholar Dwayne Donald describes colonization as the “extended process of learning to deny relationships” (2022). At the core of this, there is an “intentional imposition of a particular way of understanding life and living, understanding human beings, understanding knowledge and knowing… a gridwork of understanding knowledge and knowing” (2022). Listening deeply and learning from the stories of others, particularly stories that are counter narratives, challenges this gridwork way of understanding the world. Two-eared listening is listening with a willingness to hear what is said with the possibility that what I hear will change me. Two-eared listening becomes part of the extended process to nurture relationships.
Purposefully engage in (re)conciliation: The act of two-eared listening has the potential for leading people into authentic engagement with (re)conciliation. “By listening to your story, my story can change. By listening to your story, I can change” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015b, p. 15). This reciprocal act of listening to the truth leads to contemplation, meditation, and internal deliberation (Augustine in Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015b, p. 13). However, given that harm was inflicted by societies of people promoting colonizing ways of being, the act of reconciliation will be embodied when non-Indigenous people of privilege move beyond tokenizing and consulting with Indigenous peoples and embrace being led by Indigenous people.
BEFORE THE FINAL MEAL together, Chief Joe concluded the Gathering symbolically by inviting everyone to stand in a large circle holding hands for a final prayer. His closing words, “Go in peace, be friends, enjoy,” encapsulated the common feeling in the room. The deeper understanding gained through two-eared listening to injustices experienced by Indigenous Peoples was palpable. Two-eared listening had shown itself to be a universal skill across the diversity of those present for respectfully engaging in an active process that is traditionally understood as passive. As truths of injustice were shared, participants listened with intention, opened their minds to new learning, and suspended judgment. They slowed down in order to truly witness the truths, focused on being present, and did not rush toward desired predefined outcomes. The challenge of listening (and not talking) permeated every aspect of The Gathering. Those who planned the event, and those who responded to the invitations to share or to listen, caught a glimpse over three days together of what is possible in establishing a context for the stories and truths of members of multiple Indigenous groups in Newfoundland and Labrador to be heard.
Drawing on Palmer (1980), we must listen our way into a new kind of thinking. And this, in turn, can become the basis of reconciled relationships.
IDEAS for Educators: Two-eared listening with colleagues
Present the term, along with the statement that we have two ears and one mouth so we can listen more than we talk, to the group you are working with in a staff or committee meeting.
Explain the five components of two-eared listening, then invite them to think about what this will mean for:
Use a talking circle with one round for each topic for colleagues to share their ideas. Finish with a 4th round for each to summarize their key learning from hearing each other’s ideas.
IDEAS for Educators: Two-eared listening with K–6 students
Present the term two-eared listening along with the statement that we have two ears and one mouth so we can listen more than we talk.
IDEAS for Educators: Two-eared listening with 7–12 students
Present the term two-eared listening along with the statement that we have two ears and one mouth so we can listen more than we talk.
[1] Traditional Mi’kmaw giveaway.
Acknowledgement: Event funded by SSHRC and Memorial University.
Photo: Bob Brink
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Archibald, J. (2008). Indigenous storywork. UBC Press.
Battiste, M. (2002). Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy in First Nations education: A literature review with recommendations. Apamuwek Institute. www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/pr/pub/krw/ikp_e.pdf
Donald, D. (2022). Personal communication with the author.
Donald, D. (2020). Homo economicus and forgetful curriculum: Remembering other ways to be a human being. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM1J3evcEyQ
Episkenew, J. (2009). Taking back our spirits: Indigenous literature, public policy, and healing. University of Manitoba Press.
Findlay, G. (2022, March 23). Rome Indigenous archive to open [Radio broadcast transcript]. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/march-23-2022-episode-transcript-1.6396755
Hager, S. N. & Mawopiyane. (2021). The gatherings: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler relations. University of Toronto Press.
Joe, M., vaandering, d., Ricciardelli , R. et al. (2022, July 8). Two-eared listening is essential for understanding restorative justice in Canada. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/two-eared-listening-is-essential-for-understanding-restorative-justice-in-canada-185466
Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative Learning: Theory to practice. New directions for adult and continuing education, (74), 5–12.
Palmer, P. J. (1980). The Promise of Paradox. Ave Maria Press.
Findlay, G. (2022, March 23). As It Happens [Radio broadcast transcript]. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/march-23-2022-episode-transcript-1.6396755
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015a). Calls to Action. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015b). Canada’s residential schools: Reconciliation. Final Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Waziyatawin. (2005). Relieving our suffering. In W. A. Wilson & M. Y. Bird (Eds.), For Indigenous eyes only (pp. 189–205). School of American Research Press.
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.
In 2018, during their 50th anniversary, the Whyte Museum in Banff, Alberta, hosted an extraordinary sculpture exhibit of 100 human busts. Christine Wignall, the sculptor, reflected on her work:
“When I began the project, I thought I would simply start and see where the muse would lead. It wasn’t until I had completed about ten heads that I began to realize who they represented and from where they were coming. My memories and imagination were giving life to the clay and each one of the heads took on the character of someone I had known while growing up… Many of these folks are dead now, a lot of them, but they do haunt my memories. They walked the streets of Banff while the museum was being planned. It is good to remember them all.”
One of the reports on the exhibition stated, “Wignall captured the faces of prominent Banff people… the faces were so full of life” (Szuszkiel, n.d., para. 8). Indeed, the collection was impressive. But when I saw the exhibit with a colleague, what struck me was that 96 of the sculpted busts in the exhibit were those of individuals who had settled in the Banff area. The exhibition included four people from the Stoney Nakoda Nations.
The Stoney Nakoda, comprising the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First Nations, are the first peoples in this region. And unlike all the other sculptures in the exhibit, only one of these four sculptures was of a named individual, Walking Buffalo. We wondered, if more people from the Stoney Nakoda Nations were to be included, who might those individuals be. Who were some of the important members of the Nations?
I was fortunate to lead a professional learning and research organization, Galileo Educational Network (Galileo) in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Those of us at Galileo had a history of developing research-practice partnerships to engage in professional learning with teachers, principals, and district leaders. Galileo had an ongoing research-practice partnership with the school district in the Banff corridor, focused on nurturing excellence in instruction and leadership, also known in the district as NEIL. In one of the monthly co-design meetings with educators from the school district, we shared our observation about the exhibit at the Whyte Museum. We proposed that perhaps one of the teachers in the district might want to work with one of our professional learning mentors to engage in a project that would involve members of the Stoney Nakoda Nations to learn who from their Nations they considered to be important and to learn their stories. One of the public schools in the school district, whose population is comprised primarily of students from the Stoney Nakoda First Nations, was put forward by district leaders as the one most likely to have an interested teacher. A Grade 4 teacher, whose students were all from the Stoney Nakoda Nations, stepped forward.
The school’s success coach joined the first meeting between the Galileo mentor and the teacher. The success coach, who had worked with the Stoney Nakoda Education Authority for 18 years, brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the first design meeting. While offering to assist with the overall initiative, she also stated she could assist with making connections with Elders within the community. It was imperative to us at Galileo that Elders be involved in this project, right from the beginning of the design process. While we had engaged in a number of research-practice partnerships with First Nations communities and Elders prior to this one, this would be somewhat unique as we wanted to invite Elders to collaboratively design (co-design) the classroom activities and tasks with us. Having Elders as co-designers added a new and valuable dimension to this classroom initiative.
As this was not only a professional learning initiative, but also a research initiative, I felt it was important to take a participatory research approach. Within participatory design, the individuals involved in creating the design make a resolute commitment to ensure those who will be impacted by the design be significantly involved in the initial and subsequent iterative work of design (Bødker et al. 2004). In participatory design initiatives, the partners are not merely informants; rather, they are legitimate and acknowledged participants in the design process. In this initiative, the teacher, success worker, and the Elders contributed in all phases of the design work, and throughout all the iterations. As legitimate partners it is important that the participants “be involved in the making of decisions which affect their flourishing in any way” (Heron, 1996, p. 11). For it is through their participation they experience a sense of well being.
At the next meeting, four of the respected Elders from the Nations accepted our invitation to join us in conversation. They agreed to join the initiative; however, when it was suggested they provide the names of members – heroes from the Nations – they were not forthcoming with names. The Elders, although intrigued, spoke of intellectual property, of acknowledging who “owns” the stories and who has the right to hear or to re-tell the stories. They spoke of the disconnect many students have to their own heritage, their families, and their identities. At this point they saw an opportunity that those engaged in the previous design work had not seen. The Elders saw an opportunity for the students to learn about who they are by having them identify their own ancestors and trace who they are related to. The Elders wanted to work directly with the students to help them connect with their culture, their community, and their own families. They were confident they would be able to help each student trace back their lineage to a Stoney Nakoda “hero.” Through genealogy, students would then have the intellectual property rights to the stories of their own ancestors. As the Elders instructed, the students’ ancestors’ stories are their stories.
Over the following month, the teacher worked with the students and their families to identify the names of family members. Most students came back with family trees that extended to their grandparents. Some had more. Some had less. Regardless of what students were able to come up with, it would serve as a starting point for the next step.
At the next meeting with the co-design team, the four Elders brought an additional four Elders to the meeting. The teacher and her Galileo mentor brought the family trees to that meeting to show the Elders in hopes that the Elders would review the family trees. However, the Elders were clear: the children needed to be present when they reviewed the family trees. This new information necessitated a change to the design. The eight Elders would be invited into the classroom, where the children would share their family trees. What became evident to the entire co-design team, is that the initial four Elders recognized their own need to bring in more Elders to help fill in the gaps in students’ family trees. In addition, the Elders were not interested in merely viewing the family trees that students had created without the students; rather, they wanted the students to hear the stories of their ancestors from the Elders themselves.
The eight Elders began their teachings with the children with an opening prayer and a sharing circle in which the students were encouraged to speak their names clearly and proudly. The Elders and the children immersed themselves in the important work of tracing ancestral lineages. Speaking with one child, an Elder stated, “You are a descendent of great warriors. Your name comes from your ancestors.” In another corner of the room, an Elder looked at a child and said, “Your great, great, great grandfather was a powerful Shaman. People came to see him from far away because he had supernatural powers. He could heal people.” Where one Elder’s recollection ended, another one carefully filled in the gaps. The conversations and collaboration between Elders and students were a powerful sight to witness. The Elders circled the room going from one student to another, from one family tree to another, helping each other remember when there was a gap that needed to be filled or confirming each other’s recollections. Throughout the day’s activity, the family trees that initially seemed so small were now expanding beyond the constraints of the chart paper. Notes were added to one family tree to show how this student’s lineage continued onto another student’s chart. Elders continually reinforced to the students, “You are family. Get to know each other. Now you need to look out for each other, because that’s what families do.”
We did not end there. The now 11-person co-design team invited Christine Wignall, the artist whose exhibition inspired this project, to join the initiative. While sculpting busts with nine- and ten-year-olds was a bit daunting to her at first, she willingly agreed to accept the challenge. The local Canmore community arts centre, artsPlace, agreed to open its doors to Christine and the children. The children had all selected one of their ancestors as their hero, had learned the stories of their ancestral hero from the Elders, and now they were ready to sculpt a bust of their hero to fill in the missing people from the original 100-head exhibit. The local news media (Lucero, 2019) featured the work of the students, and the public was invited to attend the exhibition of their hero sculptures as part of the National Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations.
I had more than 20 years of experience in research-practice partnerships with teachers and school leaders. However, with this project, I and my colleagues at Galileo had the opportunity to learn how to weave what we knew with the wisdom of the Elders who participated with us to co-design classroom learning for children. It was our opportunity to engage in a process of unlearning – unlearning professional learning and research, and unlearning classroom and curriculum approaches and processes tethered to “colonial logics of relationship denial” (Donald, 2022, para. 8).
What began fairly naively as a school project to connect children with their community grew and surpassed any of our expectations. The Elders brought us into relationship with each other, the children’s ancestors, and historical events that not only shaped this region, but also so many regions across Canada. One of the Elders commented, “Not only was this experience incredibly beneficial for the children, but for the Elders as well.” A number of the Elders noted that as they helped each other remember, they were reminded of stories, family members, and cultural histories that have not been spoken of in some time. As one Elder stated, “This is good for our community.” I would add, this was so good for me as well. I witnessed the ways in which even the best intended curriculum approaches often remain tethered to colonial logics. Opening myself to the teachings of the Elders and being in the presence of their work with the children showed me how to begin the work of unlearning in a good way – a way that honours and respects. Perhaps my unlearning is best captured by the words of an Elder who was such an integral part of this entire project, Elder Skyes Powderface. Elder Powderface has now passed on to the spirit world, but I am left with his words: “This is what reconciliation is all about.”
The Galileo Educational Network created a short video documenting this project:
Stoney Nakoda Heroes Project https://vimeo.com/333252310/5f9b208c95
Photos: Amy Park and and Sharon Friesen, Galileo Educational Network
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Bødker, K., Pors, J. K., & Simonsen, J. (2004). Implementation of web-based information systems in distributed organizations: A change management approach. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 16(1). https://aisel.aisnet.org/sjis/vol16/iss1/4
Donald, D. (2022). A curriculum for educating differently: Unlearning colonialism and renewing kinship relations. Education Canada, 62(2). www.edcan.ca/articles/a-curriculum-for-educating-differently
Heron, J. (1996). Quality as primacy of the practical. Qualitative Inquiry, 2(1), 41–56. doi.org/10.1177/107780049600200107
Lucero, K. (2019, June 20). Stoney Nakoda heroes: Uncovering lost family history with guidance of elders. RMOTODAY.com. www.rmotoday.com/mountain-guide/stoney-nakoda-heroes-uncovering-lost-family-history-with-guidance-of-elders-1574369
Szuskiel, D. (n.d.) Whyte Museum 50th anniversary. https://whererockies.com/2019/05/10/whyte-museum-50th-anniversary
A GROUP OF ABOUT 30 scholars, school administrators, graduate students, and educators gathered for three days in St. John’s, N.L., in August 2022 to engage in conversations about what it means to “decolonize professional learning.” For many of us, this was the first in-person gathering since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and it was food for the heart and soul.
Decolonize-ing is an action verb that seeks to alter existing inequities and disparities in outcomes for equity-deserving groups. As a process, a pedagogy toward decoloniality works to change unequal relations of power and notions of “professionalism,” which are often taken for granted without examining who they privilege and exclude and in what ways. Decolonizing your mind, heart, and soul translates to identifying the roots of why things are the way they are and working toward transformative possibilities that centre the experiences, voices, and perspectives of historically minoritized peoples, particularly Indigeneity.
What can be a starting point for educators grappling with where to begin? It starts with investing in pedagogical approaches that support students who have in the past or currently are experiencing trauma, including intergenerational trauma such as the impact of residential schools. This involves creating spaces for healing where students have opportunities to share their lived experiences as embodied curriculum, including who they are and how they are impacted socially and emotionally by societal issues and systemic barriers in education. As a whole, this constitutes a trauma-informed approach to critical pedagogy where engaging with pain and suffering is encouraged, as it has the potential for empowerment and liberation (Eizadirad et al., 2022). We must operate from a harm reduction stance, aiming to reduce systemic barriers for equity-deserving groups while advocating for new policies, practices, and processes that are more equitable and just. This needs to be an all-hands-on deck effort involving ideas and voices of different students, parents, teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders, particularly minoritized groups.
Hegemony was coined by Antonio Gramsci as a theoretical concept describing how the ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – established and maintained control of power through the combination of force and consent. Hegemony is socio-culturally constructed through a dynamic process that influences social relations through legitimization of a narrow set of ideologies as “commonsense,” often told and perpetuated by those in positions of power and authority. Through this process, ideas are taken for granted without questioning.
We can apply the concept of hegemony to the rhetoric of “professionalism” in education. Teacher “professionalism” has become a tool for exclusion and deficit thinking in such areas as how we are expected to dress, speak, and interact with others. This applies to students, educators, and administrators. As Weiner (2014) reminds us,
“The subtle cruelty of hegemony is that over time it becomes deeply embedded, part of the natural air we breathe. One cannot peel back the layers of oppression and identify a group or groups of people as the instigators of a conscious conspiracy to keep people silent and disenfranchised. Instead, the ideas and practices of hegemony become part and parcel of everyday life – the stock opinions, conventional wisdom, or commonsense ways of seeing and ordering the world that people take for granted.” (p. 40)
The central feature of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony is that it operates without force as “it becomes our worldview and through hegemony we are in complicity with our own subordination” (Madison, 2012, p. 65).
Part of decolonizing and unlearning is engaging with critical questions, rather than accepting simplified or distorted answers. For example, we must question processes or lack of them that contribute to the limited teacher diversity in the workforce. When it comes to the existing lack of teacher diversity from coast to coast to coast in Canada, which does not reflect the demographics of students and communities we serve, we must ask: What are the barriers for racialized and minoritized educators to secure permanent teaching positions? What has become hegemonic within educational policies and practices, functioning as gatekeeping mechanisms, and what needs disruption and dismantling? How can processes be improved to value diverse identities for who they are and their contributions and experiences, instead of pressuring them to fit the hegemonic notion of how they are supposed to look and how they are supposed to show up to do the job? What data is being collected (e.g. race-based data) and shared with the public to ensure transparency and accountability and to improve diversity over time? This is the struggle to decolonize education and to meet the needs of equity-deserving students and educators who face more systemic barriers in the education system.
“Small fires” were used as the main pedagogical approach at the gathering to facilitate interactions amongst participants. Participants gathered in small groups based on a topic of interest where a leader facilitated a discussion. The intention was to encourage unlearning and challenge each other through a lens that valued each participant’s unique identities, lived and professional experiences, and complex intersections with privilege and oppression. The objective was to build relationships, value spirituality, and create networks across the country for those who advocate for and engage in decolonizing education at various levels from K to 12 and in higher education.
Below are reflections from three of the small fire leaders.
The theme for my small fire circle was “Resistance, Subversion, and Non-Hegemonic Approaches” in education. As a small group we engaged in discussions about what decolonization means and looks like in action in our various roles. I used an interactive activity with sticky notes to promote reflection. I proposed that participants reflect on four major questions:
Discussing the purpose of research in response to the question posed, I shared my conviction that research should be a tool for advocacy and activism. As a collective, we agreed that research should not only critique but also facilitate ways of doing things differently to support the needs of all students. This prompt led to further discussions about how and in what ways we can disrupt “professionalism” in educational settings in our various roles and relative access to power. As part of their responses, participants emphasized the importance of “actions over appearance,” “seeing students of colour,” “different ways of knowing being valued,” and “rejecting the expectations of the status quo.” We all agreed that we must take risks, at times be subversive, and challenge the status quo internally and externally.
During my small fire session, I discussed the theme of “deconstructing systemic anti-Black racism within la francophonie.” I highlighted how the first step to combating systemic anti-Black racism is transformative leadership. In particular, I focused on the following questions:
The discussions aligned with what I have learned from my research with educational system leaders in la francophonie (see my article in this issue: www.edcan.ca/articles/critical-incidents-in-educational-leadership/) about the importance of examining critical incidents (experiences that confirm, modify, or fragment leadership) that arise to identify areas for change (Sider et al., 2017). Principals and other system leaders are called upon to review critical incidents as valuable data. Examples of critical incidents that can be examined together include how a school board’s administration delayed removal of a white school principal after two interrelated situations involving anti-Black racism, and more specifically what it took for the Black student to finally be heard two years later via the Black Lives Matter London Twitter account (CBC News, 2021).
As a collective, we discussed how essential conversations that de-centre whiteness and traditional educational leadership discourse are central to transformative change to create more equitable spaces for belonging (Cranston & Jean-Michel, 2021). Participants felt it is necessary to couple prevention with concrete and continual interventions. The discussions within the group indicated that it is not about one-off activities, training sessions, or reacting in a way that reduces students, families, and community members from equity-deserving groups to anecdotal evidence or experiences. Rather, transformative leadership is about listening and creating conditions for inclusion. Instead of being fixated on what is impossible, we can continually explore how as educational leaders we can embrace diversity and work toward creating conditions, policies, and processes that advocate for equitable inclusion for all. This work has to be done at the individual and institutional levels for it to be sustainable in society.
Borrowing from the title of Tuck and Yang’s (2012) much read and discussed provocation “decolonization is not a metaphor” and some of its underlying ideas, participants were invited to consider how they might shift from seeing themselves as “allies” to becoming engaged “co-conspirators” to dismantle the Eurocentric, white supremacist system of higher education, including the discourse and rhetoric associated with professionalism.
In offering my own experiences as a racialized, immigrant, first-generation university student who is also a cis-gendered, heterosexual male and holds a senior administrative role in a Canadian university, I framed the conversation to consider:
The discussions in the group focused on key characteristics of decoloniality (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), particularly how we can work together to uncover the social and ideological hierarchies embedded in the education system from kindergarten through post-secondary that are designed and sustained to disconnect, displace, and dispossess Indigenous and racialized peoples. As part of enacting decoloniality, participants identified the importance of creating learning opportunities for students to connect to traditional lands and their histories, various languages and cultures, and family ancestry. As a collective we agreed that we require decolonizing at the ideological and ontological level.
PART OF DECOLONIZING is asking critical questions – with consideration for where we raise such questions, how we raise them, with whom, and for what purposes. This is the spirituality of decolonizing work to undo and reduce the harm caused by the intersections of colonial logic, white supremacy, and imperialism. Decolonizing work can occur in different settings. At the micro level, it can involve creating mentorship opportunities and support networks to ensure minoritized identities do not leave educational spaces due to lack of inclusion, belonging, or being on the receiving end of constant microaggressions. At the institutional level, it translates into not only creating access to opportunities for equity-deserving groups but also ensuring they are supported and valued for who they are, how they show up, and what they contribute to the teaching and learning community once they arrive within educational spaces, even if that differs or goes against the status quo.
Indigenous Podcasts
https://newjourneys.ca/en/articles/11-indigenous-podcasts-for-your-listening-pleasure
Healing and Decolonizing: Bridging Our Communities Toolkit
https://youthrex.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/boc-report.pdf
Remembering the Children Educator’s Guide
www.canadashistory.ca/getmedia/688d366f-1a9c-42a4-9705-019724b22d26/EduClaRememberingTheChildrenEduGuide.pdf.aspx
A Toolkit for Selecting Equitable and Culturally Relevant and Responsive Texts for English and Language, K-12
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H5qAxvEK9Dg2LhYqejS54B-gRc9x1KpX/view
Creating Racism-Free Schools through Critical/Courageous Conversations on Race
www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/docs/support/racism_free/full_doc.pdf
Photos: Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Ardavan Eizadirad
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
CBC News, (2021, May 29). Ontario principal removed after twice wearing hair of Black student like a wig. CBC News.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ontario-principal-removed-hair-black-student-1.6045755
Cranston, J., & Jean-Paul, M. (2021). Braiding Indigenous and racialized knowledges into an educational leadership for justice. In F. English (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse, (pp. 1–27). Palgrave Macmillan.
doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39666-4_120-1
Eizadirad, A., Campbell, A., & Sider, S. (2022). Counternarratives of pain and suffering as critical pedagogy: Disrupting oppression in educational contexts. Routledge.
Hayes, A., Luckett, K., & Misiaszek, G. (2021). Possibilities and complexities of decolonising higher education: Critical perspectives on praxis. Teaching in Higher Education, 26(7-8), 887–901.
Hernandez, J., & Khadem, M. (2017). Transformative leadership: Mastering the hidden dimension. Harmony Equity Press.
Madison, D. (2012). Critical ethnography: Methods, ethics, and performance. SAGE Publications, Inc.
Mignolo W., & Walsh C. E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts analytics praxis. Duke University Press.
IN 2019, THREE of us (Leyton, Joelle, and Carol) attended a conference in San Diego that focused on professional learning networks (PLNs), with a specific emphasis on how they enable educators to “tear down boundaries” to connect and learn with colleagues beyond our own schools. It was a productive meeting of scholars from North America and multiple European countries. The group focused on professional learning, collaborative inquiry, and educational change, sharing varied perspectives. But as we reflected on our learning, we began talking about what wasn’t part of this conversation: the ways in which PLNs can reproduce colonial ways of knowing and being, by:
In fact, little attention has been paid to the colonizing practices and assumptions embedded in the vast majority of professional learning (PL) initiatives (Washington & O’Connor, 2020). Donald (2012) describes the colonial project as one of division, excluding ways of being and knowing as well as value systems that are different from a Eurocentric point of view. Present-day education systems are implicated in this colonial project, where curriculum (a focus on constructing subject areas that privilege a particular type of knowledge), pedagogy (approaches to teaching and instruction), and classroom routines (e.g. grading, grouping) contribute to institutional structures that privilege some students to the expense of others who are often racialized and minoritized within this system (Yee, 2020).
Alas, from these observations, the idea for the Decolonizing Professional Learning event, held in St. John’s, N.L., in August 2022, was born. The 30 participants were educators and researchers from across the country who were already working to develop decolonizing education practices. They were focused on cultivating culturally sustaining, relational pedagogies in ethical relationship with equity deserving communities (Donald et al., 2011; Ermine, 2007). The central goals of the gathering were two-fold:
Ultimately, our goal is to rethink and reconstitute professional learning as a collaboratively constructed, transformative, and decolonial practice.
At the centre of the gathering was the concept of decolonization. Decolonizing professional learning is about decentring settler colonial practices and their curricular and pedagogical Eurocentricities. All levels of education in Canada are working to implement initiatives that respond to the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). In turn, terms such as decolonization, reconciliation, and Indigenization are now being taken up in higher education and the K–12 schooling systems.
The scholars and practitioners who attended the gathering came together to discuss their understanding of decolonizing and how they promote this concept in research and professional learning. Some drew on the concept of decolonizing education as intentionally identifying, challenging, and dismantling colonial practices and policies (Lopez, 2021), while others focused on interrogating and unlearning colonial ideologies (Donald, 2022).
The intent of the gathering was not to agree on a single definition of decolonization, but rather to share ideas and create a network for learning in which we move forward together. We came together guided by our “learning spirits” (Battiste, 2013, p. 18), sharing the stories of our collective work to disrupt colonial school systems in our local settings.
There is an assumption of neutrality in professional development approaches; therefore, we sought to disrupt the “typical” conference format when designing this event. We wanted a less hierarchical approach – so instead of having a few presenters deliver an address to a largely passive audience, we offered a series of collaborative experiences. Across the three days, we worked to create space for all participants to share their work within small groups of interested teachers, administrators, and researchers.
The gathering was guided by a series of questions, for example:
Coming together: The event began at a small gathering place at a local park. Mi’kmaw knowledge keepers Sheila O’Neill and Marie Eastman welcomed participants to the traditional territory of the Beothuk and Mi’kmaq. Following introductions, they shared some of the history of the land, discussed the ongoing struggle for the recognition of Indigenous Peoples in the province, and talked about their work with Mi’kmaw communities to strengthen the language and culture.
Small fires: Each day, participants could choose from among three to five “small fires,” each hosted by one of the attendees. In these small groups, the hosts shared their research and practice related to decolonizing professional learning. Each SSHRC-funded participant served as a small fire host on one day of the program.
Sharing circles: Once each day we came together in Sharing Circles. Participants chose one of three different circles – such as mindfulness practice, nature walks, and talking circles – to participate in. Attendees reflected on what they were noticing or wondering, and connections they were making to their own practice. These sharing circles invited deeper conversations about what we heard in the small fires and our experiences in different contexts (K–12 schools, post-secondary institutions, communities).
Writing activities: To support the building of connections within this emerging community, we embedded daily opportunities for collaborative writing. We began by inviting everyone to write about their own decolonizing work. Next we invited people to explore the connections and intersections between their work and the work of others. We hoped that discovering these relationships would encourage continued collaboration and sharing once everyone returned to their communities.
VoicEd panels: Two live-streamed panel discussions were hosted by Stephen Hurley from VoicEd Radio. Colleagues discussed colonization and placelessness, disrupting deficit thinking, inclusion and exclusion, educational change networks, and more. Online participants were encouraged to submit questions to the panel. Recordings of the Decolonizing Professional Learning panels are available on VoicEd Radio.
Final sharing circle: To end the gathering, we all joined in a final circle to share our thoughts about our time together and how we might move forward together. Each person had a turn to share what they thought were key themes, next steps, and opportunities missed. Attendees spoke of forming a network, meeting together virtually and/or in person, writing an edited collection of chapters, presenting together at conferences, and this Education Canada issue.
What was evident to us all was that we had not collectively defined decolonization, and that future collaborations between us need to both honour the diversity of our approaches and include opportunities to define key terms and expectations. In this debrief, participants also surfaced the different aspects of power and privilege we carry and/or do not have in our various roles and contexts. Our identities, roles, and educational change efforts can and must be returned to as part of decolonizing work, and trying to move too quickly to consensus and definitions is counterproductive. This work takes patience and time.
The Decolonizing Professional Learning gathering that took place in Newfoundland was a starting point for what we hope will become a larger conversation and impetus for collaborative action across Canada. There is already some pan-Canadian work that genuinely connects researchers and practitioners with a commitment to educational change and improvement. We know from previous research that a considerable number of professional learning activities are happening across Canada, but there are inequities in access to quality professional learning for people who work in education (Campbell et al., 2017). There is also a need to consider the purpose and content of such professional learning. If educators are to care for all students and support them in developing to their fullest potential, it is essential that professional learning activities for educators are critically examined to ensure that structural inequities are not un/intentionally reproduced.
We are at a moment in time when valuing Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, fulfilling the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and addressing and undoing systemic racism from generations of colonialism and genocide are urgent and essential. This is the call to move forward with conversations to understand and share approaches to decolonizing professional learning and to act together – researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers – for educational equity and improvement in Canada.
An important starting point is for further discussion about the concept of “decolonizing professional learning” itself and the linked work of “unlearning” historically embedded assumptions. As educators, it is our job to continuously learn, but that can be challenging when confronting ingrained colonial ways of seeing and living in the world. We also need to consider what this work looks like in practice. Bringing together practitioners with applied researchers was a beginning, but it is important to share our stories, our evidence, our ideas, and our examples widely. Deprivatizing individual or isolated practices and mobilizing knowledge by sharing in conversations and communications are powerful strategies.
This collection of articles for Education Canada is a way to reach out and call on people across Canada (and beyond) to join in connecting, collaborating, and sharing to advance decolonizing professional learning in and through education.
Photo: Nicholas Ng-A-Fook
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
It is important to share the understandings that guide and frame decolonization work. Below we offer working definitions of some key terms, recognizing that these terms can have different meanings in different contexts.
Decolonization: Decolonization is about decentring Eurocentric, colonial knowledge and practices, and recentring knowledge and world views of those who have been placed on the margins by colonization.
Decolonization involves active resistance to colonial practices and policies, getting rid of colonial structures, and centring and restoring the world view of Indigenous peoples. It demands an Indigenous starting point; Indigenous people will determine appropriate approaches and acts of decolonization. It also involves recognizing the importance of land – in particular, how colonized peoples were cut off from their land and traditions – and the return of land to Indigenous peoples.
Indigenization: Indigenization calls on educational institutions and stakeholders to establish policies, processes, and practices that are led by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples toward ensuring their particular ways of knowing, being and doing are nourished and flourish.
This includes creating opportunities for K–12 school leaders and teachers to learn how to develop and enact curriculum that honours First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples’ histories, perspectives, and contemporary issues. It also calls on school leaders and teachers to embed relational and responsive culturally nourishing pedagogies and curricula as part of the values of their K–12 school community.
Positionality: Positionality refers to one’s identity – how we position ourselves within our society. To identify your own positionality, you need to consider your own power and privilege by thinking about issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, educational background, citizenship, and so on.
As educators, our positionality impacts how we make sense of the world and how we engage in it. It takes self-assessment and reflection to identity the ways in which our assumptions and beliefs, as well as our own expressions of power, influence how we (co-)create learning environments in our classrooms and schools.
Systemic racism: Systemic racism refers to the aspects of a society’s structures that produce inequalities and inequities among its citizens and specifically, the institutional processes rooted in White supremacy that restrict opportunities and outcomes for racialized and minoritized peoples.
Systemic racism includes institutional and social structures, individual mental schemas, and everyday ways of being in the world. Schools and school systems must engage in anti-racist education practice to address the systemic issues particular to racialized students.
Unlearning: Unlearning involves removing ideas, practices, and values grounded in coloniality and colonialism from everyday practice.
It is rethinking and reframing what we thought we knew about many aspects of everyday life, including traditions grounded in Eurocentric ways of knowing, and replacing it with decolonized knowledge.
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER LEARNING
Culturally Nourishing Schooling for Indigenous Education, University of New South Wales. www.unsw.edu.au/content/dam/pdfs/unsw-adobe-websites/arts-design-architecture/education/research/project-briefs/2022-07-27-ada-culturally-nourishing-schooling-cns-for-Indigenous-education.pdf
Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada, Eds. Sheila Cote-Meek and Taima Moeke-Pickering. https://canadianscholars.ca/book/decolonizing-and-indigenizing-education-in-canada
Indigenization, Decolonization and Reconciliation (chapter in Pulling Together: A guide for curriculum developers). https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationcurriculumdevelopers/chapter/indigenization-decolonization-and-reconciliation
The UnLeading Project with Dr. Vidya Shah, York University. www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading
Truth and Reconciliation Commission. https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf
Universities and teachers’ associations provide myriad resources to support the development of anti-racist practices in schools. See, for example: www.ualberta.ca/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/teaching-support/indigenization/index.html
Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Purich Publishing Limited.
Campbell, C., Osmond-Johnson, P., et al. (2017). The state of educators’ professional learning in Canada: Final research report. Learning Forward.
Donald, D. (2022, September 19). A curriculum for educating differently: Unlearning colonialism and renewing kinship relations. Education Canada, 62(2). www.edcan.ca/articles/a-curriculum-for-educating-differently/
Donald, D. (2012). Forts, colonial frontier logics, and Aboriginal-Canadian relations: Imagining decolonizing educational philosophies in Canadian contexts. In A. A. Abdi (Ed.), Decolonizing philosophies of education (pp. 91–111). SensePublishers. doi:10.1007/978-94-6091-687-8_7
Donald, D., Glanfield, F., & Sterenberg, G. (2011). Culturally relational education in and with an Indigenous community. Indigenous Education, 17(3), 72–83.
Ermine, W. (2007). The ethical space of engagement. Indigenous Law Journal, 6(1), 193–203.
Lopez, A. E. (2021). Decolonizing educational leadership: Exploring alternative approaches to leading schools. Springer International Publishing AG, ProQuest Ebook Central. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mun/detail.action?docID=6450991
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education and society,1(1), 1–40. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/issue/view/1234
Washington, S., & O’Connor, M. (2020). Collaborative professionalism across cultures and contexts: Cases of professional learning networks enhancing teaching and learning in Canada and Colombia. In Schnellert, L. (Ed.), Professional learning networks: Facilitating transformation in diverse contexts with equity-seeking communities. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Yee, N. L. (2020). Collaborating across communities to co-construct supports for Indigenous (and all) students. [Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia.] UBC Library Open Collections. https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0392533
ON FEBRUARY 14, 2012, the section of Wellington Street directly in front of Parliament Hill was filled with yellow school buses that stopped to let off the children and teachers who were aboard. As the bus doors opened, children of all ages and backgrounds hopped off onto the snowy sidewalks, carrying colourful homemade signs and wearing buttons and fabric hearts pinned to their jackets. They excitedly walked toward the steps of Parliament to join the hundreds of other students, teachers, and community members who had come to participate in the first annual Have a Heart Day event, one of many First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (Caring Society) reconciliation-based education campaigns. Many of the children chanted, “Equal education for First Nations!” and read speeches they’d written. Others sang songs they’d penned, and hundreds mailed letters they’d written to then Prime Minister Stephen Harper, calling on him to treat all children in Canada with love and fairness. The children’s many hand-crafted signs expressed how they felt: “Respect First Nations Children”; “Fight for Equal Rights!”; “Treat First Nations Children Fairly, Please!” Another of the signs that the children held that day stated: “Just because we’re small doesn’t mean we can’t stand tall!”
These children and youth, and their teachers, had been called to action by Shannen Koostachin, who was a youth from Attawapiskat First Nation, a Cree community at the mouth of the Attawapiskat River, on the shores of James Bay in Treaty 9. These lands have been home to the Mushkegowuk Cree for thousands of years, where generations of Mushkegowuk children were educated on the land by their kin prior to the forced removal of their children by the Canadian state to the Indian Residential Schooling system for nearly 90 years (General, 2012). For years, Shannen and her schoolmates had been forced to attend school in temporary portables, after the demolition of the community’s school due to a massive diesel leak. The portables soon became decrepit, with intermittent heat, warped doors, mice infestations, and frozen pipes during the winter. After nine years of waiting for their new school, Shannen and the other children were upset by the federal government’s failure to act. Shannen documented the condition of the school in Attawapiskat and invited other students and their teachers across Canada to write letters to the federal government to get action. Shannen’s leadership resulted in thousands of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children and non-Indigenous children writing letters to elected officials to demand proper schools and education for First Nations students.
When Shannen tragically died in a car accident in 2010, a group of students from Attawapiskat, with support from the Caring Society and Shannen’s family, created the “Shannen’s Dream” campaign, vowing to continue her work so that all First Nations children receive a proper education. On June 22, 2012 – the day Shannen would have graduated from high school – construction began for a new school in Attawapiskat. The school opened in 2014; however, many other First Nations are without proper schools, so Shannen’s Dream continues (Blackstock 2019). Shannen remains an important role model for all children and young people, as she taught us to “get up, pick up your books and keep walking in your moccasins” (First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, 2020).
Shannen’s Dream, which has been described as “the largest youth-driven movement in Canadian history” (Angus 2015, p. 2), has grown to include other social justice campaigns put forth by the Caring Society. As a national non-profit organization, the Caring Society aims to ensure First Nations children and their families have culturally based and equitable opportunities to grow up safely at home, be healthy, get a good education, and be proud of who they are. A recognized leader in child and youth activism and reconciliation education, the Caring Society supports the learning of educators and students through three main social justice-based reconciliation campaigns: Shannen’s Dream (equity for First Nations education), Jordan’s Principle (equitable access to government services), and I am a witness (equitable First Nations child welfare). Thousands of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis and non-Indigenous children and youth have participated in these campaigns, and their activism has offered a unique opportunity to advance knowledge about the impacts of reconciliation-based education and provide evidence-based research about how we can best move forward to support professional learning (Blackstock et al., 2018).
Across Canada, teachers and students are doing the work of truth, and then reconciliation, through their learning and actions. While this is significant, our research with teachers tells us that there continues to be hesitation, avoidance, and fear for many educators when approaching this work and a tendency to relegate learning to such days as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, rather than a year-long commitment. Our research project, “Just because we’re small doesn’t mean we can’t stand tall,” seeks to understand how teachers use Caring Society campaigns, such as Shannen’s Dream, in their classrooms, and what the impacts are on their teaching and student learning. Based on our findings, we developed a curriculum and resources that were piloted with a group of teachers. We believe that co-creating professional (un)learning communities that are grounded in sustained relationships over time provides opportunities for teachers to engage with their heads, hearts, and spirits in truth and reconciliation and thus address some of the tensions that teachers often explain as reasons for not doing the work.
Our research project began in 2018 and involves a team of researchers, teachers, community members, activists, and experts in law, medicine, and child rights from around the globe. This team contributes to a reconciliation framework that respects First Nations epistemology and relational ethicality, emphasizes collaboration, and takes a collective inquiry approach to a shared responsibility (Blackstock, 2011). Our research team endeavoured to uphold an ethic of relationality throughout the study, by forming trusting relationships with the members of the teacher pilot group over the year we worked with them. We did this by reaching out several times throughout the year, and offering support at all stages. We invited them to events within the university community, including talks, workshops, and sharing circles. Thus, in seeking to address the TRC Calls to Action in the transformational spirit that they were intended, our research team endeavoured to work with teachers toward “[b]uilding student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect” while “[i]dentifying teacher training needs” and “[s]haring information and best practices” on reconciliation education (TRC, 2015, pp. 238–239). The group of teacher participants who piloted these resources in their classrooms and shared their experiences informed the development of future resources, and have become “Spirit Bear” teacher leaders.
By creating, supporting, and sustaining professional communities of (un)learning with teachers, we hope that our research provides examples of how it is possible, and beneficial, to unsettle teacher professional learning from a one-day workshop-based model toward a sustainable ecosystem of relationships as we unlearn and learn together. Our relationships with teachers have resulted in the upcoming launch of the Spirit Bear Virtual School for Teachers, which will be hosted on the Caring Society’s website. The Spirit Bear Virtual School will be a space where teachers from across Canada can access curriculum and learning guides co-created with teachers; listen to talks by educators experienced in working with the Caring Society’s campaigns; and learn about additional resources that will help them on their journey towards enacting truth and then reconcilia(c)tion education in their classrooms.
Barbara Giroux is a Grade 1 teacher at Holy Family School in Ottawa, Ontario. After taking part in our virtual Spirit Bear Retreat for Teacher Professional Learning in August 2021, Barbara decided to join our pilot group during the 2021–2022 school year. She was hoping to unlearn some of the history she’d learned in school, and by extension, had taught to her students. Through our partnership with the Caring Society, Barbara received a Reconciliation Ambearister to help teach herself and her learners about the ongoing legacies of colonialism, including Residential schools, the Indian Act, and current inequities such as the lack of clean water, education, and services in First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities. Barbara writes:
“My Grade 1 class embarked on an incredible learning journey with a black and cream bear who came to us as a Reconciliation Ambearister from the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. He arrived in a box with the word “puzzles” on it. We took it to mean that he was puzzled to find out about his Algonquin heritage and we would learn along with him, with the help of an Elder for as much time as she could give to us. She gifted our bear the name Makoonse, which means “bear cub” in Algonquin. The Reconciliation Ambearister Program is perfect for us because it could meet us where the children were at, and expected only a willingness for us to learn about the territory and peoples on whose unceded land we reside, to make connections with, and learn from, our partners, and to demonstrate meaningful work for Reconciliation. The Reconciliation Ambearister Program also encourages us to continue our own group learning, particularly as it relates to the local Algonquin First Nation. We have learned that the third moon of the year is the Sugar Moon or ZIISSBAAKDOKE GIIZAS, and represents the Anishinaabe New Year, when the maple sap begins to run. The children enjoyed learning about maple sap as a medicine, and that Nanabush, an Anishinaabe cultural hero, taught us, through stories, that the greatest gift is in the giving. We also learned that the back of a turtle represents the number of lunar cycles in a year, and the length of time in each lunar cycle.”
In the sharing sessions we held over the year with the pilot group, Barbara shared the challenges and struggles she experiences while doing this work. The sharing sessions supported her questions, thinking, and growth as not only a teacher, but as a human being. Although the sessions were virtual due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the teachers who participated remarked how they felt a strong sense of solidarity, friendship, accountability, and mentorship. By connecting with other teachers doing the work of unlearning and truth and then reconcilia(c)tions, teachers received and offered support in sustained and meaningful ways. Barbara shares:
“I had a lot to learn and a lot to teach, and I am humbled and proud to say that this year has been the most rewarding experience of my teaching career, as well as the most challenging. It has been a year of humility; admitting to the children that I am learning along with them; realizing there is no end to how much I have yet to learn; being an actively reflective practitioner and acknowledging where past practice requires a new mindset.”
Barbara recently was awarded the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in teaching for her work with Spirit Bear and her Reconciliation Ambearrister, Makoonse kindergarten curriculum and program. Her example demonstrates that transformational approaches to professional (un)learning and teaching gives life to the head, heart, and spirit. Furthermore, opportunities to engage in (un)learning teacher communities with researchers supports the work of community partners such as the Caring Society, and the thousands of children and youth who are leading the way forward.
An Invitation to Join Us
The work of unlearning colonialism cannot be facilitated in a one-day workshop based on a slideshow presentation or discussion. Teachers must be invited into a community of relations where they feel a sense of belonging, the space to question and wonder, and the opportunity to pose questions and ideas. In the words of Shannen Koostachin, who said, “School is a time for hopes and dreams of the future” (Angus, 2012), we welcome more teachers to join us as we hope and dream for the future of professional (un)learning. We invite you to visit www.fncaringsociety.com/spiritbear to learn more about Spirit Bear, and for updates about the launch of the Spirit Bear Virtual School!
Photo: Barbara Giroux
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Angus, C. (2012, January 10). Shannen Koostachin “Really believed that kids could change the world.” HuffPost Canada. www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/shannen-koostachin-really-believed-that-kids-could-change-the-w_b_1197267
Angus, C. (2015). Children of the broken treaty: Canada’s lost promise and one girl’s dream. University of Regina Press.
Blackstock, C. (2011). The emergence of the breath of life theory. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 8(1), 1–16. https://jswve.org/download/2011-1/spr11-blackstock-Emergence-breath-of-life-theory.pdf
Blackstock, C. (2019, July 16). When will Ottawa end its willful neglect of First Nations children? The Globe and Mail.
General, Z. (2012). Akimiski Island, Nunavut, Canada: An island in dispute [Unpublished master’s thesis]. University of Waterloo. https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/7022
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. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
We live and teach in a society that for the most part ignores the brain. For many of us, when we hear the term “wellness” we think about our physical, emotional, and mental health, yet few of us apply the term wellness to our brains. Research into the brain has increased in leaps and bounds over the last forty years. It is time for us to include it in our wellness repertoire.
It’s common knowledge that our sleep, diet, and activity level impact both body and brain health. What’s less commonly understood is how chronic or toxic stress can cause harm to both body and brain. And while we may seek out medical insights when our body manifests symptoms of toxic stress, we are less likely to do so when our brain shows signs of suffering. After all, neurological scars, anatomical changes, and the dismantling of brain architecture cannot be seen with the naked eye. Scientists, in contrast, can see these physical changes on brain scans. Non-invasive technology has revealed that toxic stress can do serious and lasting damage to the brain.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is scientists also have learned, and documented in extensive research, that our brains are innately wired to repair and recover. That said, it is not a quick fix and it is not easy. Returning a brain that has felt trapped in a toxic stress environment to organic brain health requires daily work at evidence-based practices. Reducing and eliminating the destructive effect of chronic stress demands the same kind of activation energy needed to get up off the couch and begin an exercise regime. You need to start slowly or risk injury. You need to believe in yourself in order to muster up the day-in, day-out work of deliberate practice. With commitment, over time you will find your lungs gasping less, your heart pounding less, your muscles strengthening, your resilience increasing, and your stress levels dropping.
Aerobic exercise is not only good for the body, it is immensely curative for a stressed-out brain. It fuels the brain with BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor, which neuroscientists see as comparable to fertilizer needed to encourage the birth of new brain cells, grow healthy brain structures, and fuel neural networks. A notable distinction between the body and brain, when it comes to exercise, is that the former can happily run on either a treadmill or a wooded path and still get strong and fit. In contrast, the brain does far better on the wooded path. Brains are hungry for learning on multiple levels. Along with the documented stress reduction of “forest bathing,” the path out in nature feeds the brain’s craving for challenges, surprises, and changes. There are few things better for the brain’s balance system than being thrown a rock or root on the path that requires it to do a rapid adjustment. Comparably, playing a sport combines aerobic exercise with further brain challenges. Competition that revolves around exercise is ideal for a brain that needs to train social-emotional connections, expand peripheral vision, hone focus, work the memory, and make split-second decisions.
Targeted brain training can also provide a boost to an educator’s overall wellness. A role model for what can be attained in terms of brain fitness is American quarterback Tom Brady. At 45 years old, he’s competing with 22-year-old professional athletes and outperforming them. Not only does he do daily physical fitness training, but he also does the BrainHQ online program designed by neuroscientists. While the market has many programs, I am highlighting this one because it is backed by extensive independent research from top-level institutions and individuals. Many programs promise to increase brain performance, but they lack research to back up their claims.
Other high performers who put the brain front and centre of their wellness program are basketball players Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant. However, rather than targeted brain training, they practiced mindfulness with their team. The goal of their former coach, Phil Jackson, was to build a team that was so mindfully and empathically connected they could go into a flow state when playing regardless of the pressure they were under. They were trained by mindfulness expert George Mumford, and they went on to earn 11 NBA championships.
As documented in extensive research, mindfulness effectively calms the stress that triggers the sympathetic nervous system. The slow, purposeful breathing signals to the brain that it is safe and activates the parasympathetic response known as “rest and digest.” This lowers the stress hormone cortisol, which can become very harmful to brain and body health if it is being frequently released by the many stressors faced by educators and students. Despite a busy schedule, carving out time to activate your parasympathetic nervous system is an evidence-based investment that comes with multiple rewards. Mindfulness practitioners are responsive, not reactive; they’re more calm and creative; they feel more grounded and happier; they have better physical and mental health.
In our stressed lives we feel we cannot add another thing, but creating time for exercise, brain training, and mindfulness is a game-changer in terms of wellness that includes the brain. As educators, we are in the privileged position of being able to role model wellness for students and share with them what we practice. Imagine how much healthier, happier, better regulated, calmer, and less reactive students would be if they too had time each day for aerobic fitness, targeted brain training, and mindfulness. According to leading neuroscientists, these lessons in wellness are arguably the most important ones we need our students to learn. Prioritizing teacher and student wellness that includes the brain creates a foundation from which great learning can occur. Without it, lessons can be quickly lost to toxic stress.
The ability of scientists to see the brain via non-invasive technology needs to change the way educators understand threats to their own wellness and safety, as well as student wellness and safety. Schools are well-prepared and assessed regularly by experts when it comes to the risk of fire, but we have more work to do to ensure that teachers and students are not suffering from activated stress response systems and the damage caused by high cortisol levels. Chronically stressed educators and students not only suffer harm, they can also pass on their stress to others. As seen on brain scans, frequently released cortisol can turn a plush healthy hippocampus into a shrivelled lump. The hippocampus is an area of the brain engaged in learning, memory, tagging memories with emotion, and storing memories. If it is being bathed in cortisol, an educator may struggle to teach and a student may struggle to learn. Wellness is compromised for both adults and children. According to leading researchers Martin Teicher, Tracy Vaillancourt, and Bessel van der Kolk, harm to the brain from bullying and abuse creates much too high levels of cortisol and can leave neurological scars on the brain.
Shining a spotlight on harm to the brain from adversity and trauma supports a holistic understanding of wellness and encourages daily practices to enhance brain recovery and health. Having informed discussions as educators and sharing this knowledge with students enhances social-emotional relations, self-regulation, and overall learning. It is especially valuable since neuroscientists are well-informed about ways to return brains back to organic health after adversity. Evidence-based practices such as aerobic exercise, targeted brain training, and mindfulness can repair and restore brains so even students who have adversity in their past or present can be empowered to care for their brain.
The greatest way to share this important knowledge is by engaging in it personally, role-modelling it, and embodying it. This is where teachers can be allies in bringing about a brain-fitness revolution. Teachers who prioritize wellness that includes their brain can do a great deal to support student wellness.
Many workplace well-being initiatives in Canadian school districts originally developed approaches focusing on the individual, such as mindfulness, improving sleep patterns, doing more exercise, and improving diets. This approach was critiqued as limited by those who felt such a focus ignored systemic factors, like class size and workload, that can impact teacher and staff well-being. As Chelsea Prax, programs director of children’s health and well-being at the American Federation of Teachers, said in an Education Week article:
“You can’t deep-breathe your way out of a pandemic; you cannot stretch your way out of terrible class sizes; you cannot ‘individual behavior’ your way out of structural problems. Those are effective coping measures, but they don’t change the problem”
(Will, 2021).
The notion of systemic change in some literature states or implies system transformation: radical overhauls of K–12 school systems to replace allegedly creaking systems with brand-new models in a brave new world. Well, brave new worlds come and go. Concepts and trends emerge, peak, and falter, yet education systems somehow continue, adapting and evolving. Or not, depending on your perspective.
In the world of workplace well-being, the notion of systems change is gaining greater credibility as an approach to improving staff well-being. Corporate Canada recognizes that organizations need to change and adapt to promote employees’ mental health, yet it can be argued that provincial governments and school districts have been slow to focus on their systems rather than on individuals when addressing workplace well-being in Canadian schools. So how to consider systems change concepts that provide direction for systemic implementation to improve workplace well-being?
Let’s consider what we mean by systemic implementation by looking at three ways to change systems:
This might include allocations for staff with responsibilities for staff well-being within or beyond the domain of district HR departments. It might mean focusing on workplace well-being in strategic plans and budgets, so that well-being is central to planning and funding, moving it away from the periphery to the core business of school districts. A focus on all staff – teachers, administrators, support and exempt staff – also suggests a major structural change in terms of focus.
Changing policies, administrative procedures, and guidelines to address well-being can send both a powerful signal and impact educators’ work and the expectations placed on them. Such policies might be at a provincial or district level, establishing priorities, directions, and values.
This concept is emerging as one possible strategy for creating systemic change. As enablers, school districts fund, support, and disseminate collaborative and facilitated approaches to workplace well-being, which are intended to permeate a system over time rather than mandate one-off approaches that may or may not be implemented or sustained. In some provinces, union grants can also be applied to support collaborative inquiry into workplace well-being, which potentially positions unions as enablers of systemic action. With some co-ordination, district and union actions could combine to systemically address workplace well-being issues.
Enabling systemic action may be considered “slow” systemic change, requiring staff buy-in and participation, but it may be more sustainable than policy mandates over the long term.
Some of these approaches have been documented and are accessible on EdCan’s Well at Work website
(https://k12wellatwork.ca) and on the B.C. K–12 Staff Well-being Network’s site (https://bc.k12wellatwork.ca).
We suggest that systemic action is possible through these three channels: structural change, policy initiatives, and school districts/unions acting as enablers of actions that can become systemic.
By combining these three approaches, school districts can include but move beyond a focus on the individual to create a sense of shared responsibility through collaborative actions and systemic change. The combination of approaches might also help to bridge the gap between unions and governments/districts if more ways can be found to introduce systemic change initiatives that address workload issues.
As we expand our scope and focus, we hope to share what we learn, and to learn ourselves from multiple jurisdictions about approaches to improving workplace well-being. Join us!
Photo: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, March 2022
A growing number of school districts in several provinces are participating in a new EdCan Well at Work project (https://k12wellatwork.ca/advisors). This provides advisors to school districts wanting to further their workplace wellbeing efforts with the support of external expertise, acting as advisors and “critical friends.” We have developed a concept that includes individual approaches to wellbeing but goes beyond to propose and attempt new collaborative and systemic approaches to improve wellbeing of all staff in Canada’s K–12 schools.
Developed by the EdCan Network, Well at Work supports education leaders across Canada to develop and implement system-wide strategies to improve K-12 workplace wellbeing for the long term – all while mobilizing a network of passionate educators, researchers, practitioners, and stakeholder groups.
Well at Work offers an advisory service, professional learning, and resources.
Alberta Education. (2018). Superintendent leadership quality standard. Government of Alberta. www.alberta.ca/professional-practice-standards.aspx#jumplinks-3
British Columbia Ministry of Education. (n.d.). Mental health in schools strategy. Government of British Columbia. www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/erase/documents/mental-health-wellness/mhis-strategy.pdf
College of Alberta School Superintendents. (2020). Workplace wellness. https://cass.ab.ca/resources/wellness/
College of Alberta School Superintendents. (2021). Practice profiles. https://cass.ab.ca/resources/practice-profile
Naylor, C. (2020). The Powell River Learning Group: Improving professional relationships. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nSs5ZGmqQkYWCxqio42JehlV473kqm_l/view
Will, M. (2021, Sept. 14). Teachers are not OK, even though we need them to be: Administrators must think about teacher well-being differently. Education Week. www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teachers-are-not-ok-even-though-we-need-them-to-be/2021/09