THIS ARTICLE DRAWS on four high school teachers’ experiences to show how a multiliteracies approach can be practised in the classroom. Multiliteracies envisions inclusive education that encompasses:
The examples we discuss are drawn from a national research study, funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant. Our research explores multiliteracies in Grades 7–12 classrooms and adult community spaces.
Lifelong learning is not just about acquiring workplace skills. It offers a vision for a more just, compassionate, and creative society based on the values of “participatory democracy” (Brookfield & Holst, 2011, p. 5). Ideally, adolescents’ education prepares them to become adults who will engage with passion, intelligence, and integrity in shaping the world. Teachers foster a disposition for lifelong learning in their students by opening up opportunities for students to think deeply and holistically about meaningful contributions they can make to their societies. Many of the students in our research indicated they felt more engaged in courses when teachers allowed them to follow their own interests and included topics or assignments that explored cultural diversity.
In our study, a Visual Arts teacher provided an interdisciplinary opportunity for her students to collaborate in a multimedia exhibit with the English department’s Indigenous literature course. The teacher noted, “Even through interviews they [students] had conducted with First Nations elders, they wanted to distill it symbolically within a work, and that process alone, coming from an abstraction, and realizing it visually, is a very difficult thing to do.” Shifting from the oral mode to the visual mode, students needed to find ways to visually symbolize their interpretations of the interviews they had conducted with the elders. The teacher observed that students opened up more about their own cultural backgrounds when asked to be a part of this art exhibit. The students’ artwork was shared with a broader audience of teachers, administrators, parents, guardians, and community members. Thus, this exhibit bridged students’ school and home lives.
The New London Group coined the term “multiliteracies” and called for civic pluralism, involving the “formation of new civic spaces and new notions of citizenship” (New London Group, 2000, p. 15). Our research revealed examples of teachers bringing civic pluralism into their pedagogy. The Civics teacher reflected,
“I think it is my job as a teacher to prepare them [students] for life as citizens of the community that they are in, and I try to make sure that whatever I do, whether it be computers or careers or communications technology, it shows them how best to participate in society.”
This teacher involved students in the community’s Youth and Philanthropy Initiative. Students chose a social justice issue, found a local charity that addressed that social issue, and interviewed someone at the charity. The students then created a presentation to convince the Initiative that this charity deserved their $5,000 grant. Through this assignment, the students had to consider, in philosophical and practical terms, what citizenship meant to them. Initially, the teacher encountered some resistance from students about having to go into the community for this assignment, but ultimately they became enthusiastic, and some students even continued working with the charities afterwards.
Teachers in this study modelled inclusive education by reaching out to their students with significant learning disabilities, using multimodalities and differentiated assessment and evaluation tools. As one Special Education teacher reflected,
“What’s necessary for some, is good for everyone. And so, ensuring that you are helping every student at the ‘just right’ step of their process of learning, enables them to have the confidence and the tools to show you what they know. And just writing it down on a piece of paper is not the best vehicle for every student.”
As this teacher recalled, she often had students create “a three-dimensional landscape of where the story takes place. And so, they would tell me why the character starts here doing this… they’re either giving me the plot or they’re focusing on character.” Another example of an alternative assessment involved creating graphic novels that highlighted an important scene or summarized the plot of a literary story through visual means. For example, one student created a graphic novel in English but also translated it into Hebrew. (See photo.) Alternative assessments like these give high-school students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge without solely relying on the written mode to express themselves.
In another secondary classroom for students with special needs, a Biology teacher similarly engaged in a multimodal teaching strategy. She explained how she worked with her students to build a model of lungs using balloons. She wanted students to physically see how the diaphragm’s contraction makes the lungs expand. The teacher commented that building the model helped the students “concretely grasp” this abstract concept.
This teacher’s assessment used multimodalities: tactile (blowing on balloons), spatial (making organs proportionate), visual (getting colours and shapes accurate), gestural (ensuring movement mimics human respiration), and oral (team discussions). To follow up, she consolidated students’ knowledge by having them create an interactive book about the respiratory system. (See photo.) Theorists such as Kalantzis et al. (2016) believe that “knowing how to represent and communicate things in multiple modes is a way to get a multifaceted and, in this sense, a deeper understanding” (p. 234). Teachers in this research promoted student success and a deeper understanding by building multimodalities into their assessment practices.
An Art teacher in the study questioned, “What would life be like without people wondering and making and doing and creating meaning and connecting culture and using our humanity to inform the good work of the future?” She believed in the importance of identity exploration through various artistic forms. One of her students explored religious identity. This teacher recalled that the student created “a portrait of a girl wearing a hijab – or as an Arabic [sic] student would say a ‘hijabi girl’ – and there were colours all over the hijab that revealed she was wearing [it] as a crown.” Later, that same student painted a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. Her teacher commented on the power of students creating portraits to represent diversity in a positive light. Serafini (2014) makes the point that “visual literacy combines psychological theories of perception with sociocultural and critical aspects of visual design” (p. 29). Through visual literacy, these young student-artists negotiated ways to visually communicate their interpretations of cultural diversity. In an interview, another student said, “I think it’s important to maintain what was brought down from different cultures. And that way we get to see different views on teaching and different styles.”
Recognizing the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity on students’ experience, a Civics teacher discussed an assignment she used that encouraged students in a rural, monocultural school to think analytically about their community. She explained,
“What I have the students do is create a cultural brochure that introduces immigrant workers to differences that they might face working in Canada as opposed to in their home country. So, it forces the students to actually examine what culture is like here.”
This assignment allowed students to reflect critically on their own culture, which they were so fully immersed in that it might have felt invisible to them. This teacher, as a person of colour herself, recognized that it is vital when teaching a homogenous student body to engage in critical thinking about cultural diversity to encourage students to be prepared for their futures in an increasingly globalized, heterogeneous society.
THE MULTILITERACIES PROJECT web platform (www.multiliteraciesproject.com), founded on this research, is designed for classroom teachers and adult educators to provide them with free resources and ideas for teaching using a multiliteracies approach. The theory of multiliteracies offers a practical way forward for teachers to foster an inclusive classroom that allows students of diverse backgrounds and levels of abilities to thrive in their school classrooms and beyond.
All Photos: courtesy of authors
Brookfield, S. D., & Holst, J. D. (2011). Radicalizing learning: Adult education for a just world. Jossey-Bass.
Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.). (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures. Psychology Press.
Kalantzis, M., Cope, B., Chan, E. et al. (2016). Literacies. Cambridge University Press.
New London Group. (2000). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 9–38). Routledge.
Serafini, F. (2014). Reading the visual: An introduction to teaching multimodal literacy. Teachers College Press.
School, for nearly every child, means far more than schoolwork. This point was clearly highlighted by the pandemic-related isolation: children were missing their friends and the social fabric of their school communities. During the pandemic, most children in Canada were isolated at home or confined to cohorts during the school day, often separated from friends. Recess, lunch, extra-curricular sports were drastically reduced, if not cancelled altogether.
How quickly we were reminded that social connection, play, and overall well-being are critically important to a healthy childhood, and how quickly we were reminded that well-being is critically important to school engagement. Just as there have been concerns of pandemic-related “learning loss,” there has been, unequivocally, a “play loss.” As we start a fresh new school year, we argue that children will need an extended amount of school time to focus on reconnection, healing, and play. Supportive spaces at school will need to be carved out for this to happen.
Schools have long been defined by standardization, academic competition, individualism, and conformity – so much so that play, social connection, and a sense of belonging may seem trivial and counterproductive to the purpose of learning.
But there is a sizable body of research to indicate otherwise. In a landmark new book, Let the Children Play, Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle (2019) consolidate over 700 recent research studies that link school-based play and social connection to increases in well-being and far better learning. Creativity, imagination, play, and social connection are foundational to well-being, and well-being is foundational to learning. It’s that simple. Yet the education system tends to be deeply entrenched in practices and routines that pay less attention to the social and emotional needs of children.
But we can change this. If the pandemic is to have a silver lining, it’s that it has highlighted the need to prioritize time and space for human connection. And this is particularly necessary in school, where attitudes and behaviour take root early and are continually reinforced. We have an opportunity now to change up the entrenched routines.
Let’s start now with something rather simple: provide more – and better – recess.
Recess is a social space. Remember how important recess was to your life, for better or for worse? Recess, from the perspective of students, is far more than a break from instruction, a time for fresh air, or a need to amass the required 60 minutes of daily physical activity. We have long known that positive school friendships provide students with a sense of connectedness that makes school meaningful and engaging. Indeed, we know that learning happens in relationships, and relationships are forged when students have an opportunity to connect with their peers during the school day, most often outside of instructional time. These connections happen during lunch, on the playground, and in other informal school spaces, with important benefits for health and learning.
Yet, we need to pay attention to these informal settings to ensure that they are supportive and inclusive, otherwise we run the risk of undermining the very benefits we hope to realize. Unfortunately, out of all of the developed nations, Canada has some of the highest rates of school-based social harm – and the majority of this harm has been found to take place during recess and lunch. Many schoolyards, particularly those in low-income areas, are barren and uninviting, covered by a soulless layer of asphalt; and in dense urban neighborhoods, schoolyards are further impeded by their small size. And for some children, particularly those in low-income and urban areas, recess may be the only chance for outdoor play and access to friends in their entire day. Our concern is that when these spaces go unsupported, we see higher rates of boredom, bullying, loneliness, and exclusion – factors that undermine children’s attempts at play and connection.
We can do better. It’s time to change this and use this time to prioritize well-being and ensure all children have the space in the school day to connect with others in activities that allow for meaningful, inclusive, and playful engagement. Far from detracting from learning, these opportunities can influence mood, well-being, school engagement, behaviour, learning, focus, attendance, and overall school climate.
Play and social connection mitigate stress. After nearly a year of social isolation, chaotic change, and uncertainty, students are undeniably experiencing stress. Stress makes it difficult for children to access the aspects of the brain that allow for thinking and reasoning. We now know that play activates the brain’s reward circuitry and releases endorphins – the chemicals that make us feel happy and calm.
Play, by definition, is something we do because we want to, not because we have to (Gray, 2013). This is important for children – particularly now – because it gives them a sense of control and predictability that allows them to feel safe and secure, mitigating the effects of anxiety and stress. Both laughter and physically active play trigger the release of oxytocin and serotonin, chemicals that relieve tension and buffer against further stress. Social play provides the emotionally sustaining qualities of happiness and support, which is precisely what children need to feel safe and secure.
Play makes children happy. Gasp – dare we consider this as a “metric” to measure school quality? Schools are far more than academic institutions. They are communities where children spend a considerable amount of their waking hours during highly significant developmental years. We know that when children feel included, connected, and accepted by their communities, they are more likely to develop a healthy, positive attitude toward themselves and others that influences their behaviour at school. When children feel calm, secure, and happy they are more likely to enjoy school, engage cooperatively and considerately toward their schoolmates, be committed to their schoolwork, and have higher expectations of success.
Children have a Right to Play. Because play is so fundamental to a healthy childhood, Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (General Assembly of the United Nations, 1989) deems play and rest to be indispensable human rights: “the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child.” This responsibility to protect and promote this right includes schools. This right can be leveraged by ensuring the recess environment is inclusive, fully accessible, secure from the effects of social harm, and appropriate for all genders, ages, stages, and abilities (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2013).
Children should love school. We all want our children to experience an ecosystem that supports curiosity, creativity, and connection. When this nightmare pandemic is over, let’s collectively find ways to give them opportunities to laugh and connect again, to have meaningful breaks in their day that allow them to heal from the relentless trauma. Let’s push hard for what William Doyle calls a new Golden Age of Play – and be sure schools are part of this conversation.
This article is a summary of a chapter from the Royal Society of Canada’s Report on COVID and Schools, in press, 2021.
As a start, we suggest all stakeholders – teachers, administrators, education leaders, parents – continuously advocate for schools to integrate more and better recess:
General Assembly of the United Nations, Convention on the rights of the child (1989) Treaty no. 27531. United Nations Treaty Series, 1577, pp. 3–178.
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1990/09/19900902%2003-14%20AM/Ch_IV_11p.pdf
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.
Sahlberg, P., & Doyle, W. (2019). Let the children play: why more play will save our schools and help children thrive. Oxford University Press.
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), General comment No. 17 (2013) on the right of the child to rest, leisure, play, recreational activities, cultural life and the arts (art. 31), 17 April 2013, CRC/C/GC/17. www.refworld.org/docid/51ef9bcc4.html
The close coupling of content standards with standardized testing brought about by Margaret Thatcher’s U.K. government in the late 1980s ushered in a new form of school accountability that has become the dominant education reform model used by industrialized governments around the world (Volante, 2012). Student performance on large-scale assessment measures are intended to hold school administrators and teachers accountable while also providing the “data” to spur system and school-level improvements. Indeed, every single Canadian province and territory administers and reports achievement in relation to these external provincial measures and also participates in varying degrees in prominent international tests such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme in International Student Assessment (PISA).
The OECD, and PISA in particular, has increasingly exerted a pronounced influence in the governance of education systems both nationally and internationally and forced policymakers to grapple with consistent and recurring challenges, such as achievement gaps between different segments of their national and provincial student populations (Volante et al., 2018). One key achievement gap that is often reported is the difference between high and low socio-economic status (SES) groups. The OECD provides national profiles – which can also be disaggregated at the provincial level – to indicate the differences in student achievement that exist between the most and least socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Countries that possess a higher relative share of low SES students who achieve well are said to have a more academically resilient population.
As previously suggested, academic resilience is the notion that there are some students who achieve favourable achievement outcomes despite coming from lower SES backgrounds. Yet, to the average person, the word “resilient” means something quite different. Indeed, the Oxford dictionary defines resilience as “the ability of people or things to recover quickly after something unpleasant, such as shock, injury, etc.” Clearly, the general notion of resilience is much broader than what is typically captured and often widely reported when discussing students and education systems. At the same time, the unprecedented and generational challenges presented by COVID-19 have provided an important impetus to reconsider how we support students in contemporary schools. It is highly likely that the pandemic has created even greater inequities with respect to students’ access to learning resources and supports due to socio-economic factors. Further, the impact of these inequities will impact more than just academic outcomes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the growing necessity of broader notions of academic resilience that recognize important mental health as well as physical well-being concerns in children and adolescent populations – elements of resilience that are typically not captured by large-scale assessment measures. Rarely does a day go by without public recognition of the daily struggles students, particularly those from poorer households, are facing given the upheaval caused by school closures, social isolation, and familial economic losses – to name but a few factors. Certainly, federal resources such as the recently released Guide to Student Mental Health During COVID-19 (Health Canada, 2020) underscores some of the growing challenges students are facing during the pandemic.
Canadian children may be facing an impending epidemic of mental health and general wellness struggles when the virus eventually subsides. For example, a pan-Canadian survey of the impact of the COVID pandemic on physical activity found less than 5 percent of children 5–11 years old and 0.6 percent of youth 12–17 years old were meeting required guidelines (Moore et al., 2020). Similarly, a recent study by the Hospital for Sick Children in Ontario found a staggering 67–70 percent of children/adolescents experienced deterioration in at least one of six mental health domains during the COVID-19 pandemic: depression, anxiety, irritability, attention, hyperactivity, and obsessions/compulsions (Cost et al., 2021). What steps should be taken by policymakers, district leaders and educators, and teacher education institutions to help alleviate these challenges, both in the short and long term?
There are scant examples within Canada where policymakers report on the overall mental health and/or physical well-being of their student populations. Although international and provincial metrics of student proficiency in such content areas as reading, mathematics, and science abound, measures of health and wellness are typically not reported in a consistent manner or given the same status in policy communities.
Perhaps the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey can serve as a model for provincial/territorial education systems. The HBSC is a cross-national survey conducted in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) that is administered every four years and focuses on the health and well-being of young people (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2020). This survey is administered in Canada to 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds, and includes much broader aspects of health than those reported by large-scale assessments such as PISA. Provincial governments could develop a similar annual survey to provide more timely comparative data to inform policy directions during and after the pandemic. Ultimately, we need to provide and recognize markers of mental health and physical well-being with the same reverence that has been traditionally ascribed to student achievement measures.
In addition to policy reform considerations, building capacity for more healthy schools will ultimately depend on effective leadership and teaching practices. On a national level, we see Physical and Health Education Canada’s 2021–2024 strategic plan outline the organization’s aim to emerge from COVID-19 with clearly defined intentions targeting pan-Canadian education efforts to improve the well-being of children and youth (Physical and Health Education Canada, 2021). The proposed efforts are wide-ranging and build on current (e.g. Schonert-Reichel & Williams, 2020) and former (e.g. Ontario Ministry of Education, 2017) provincial-territorial healthy schools policy and practice priorities targeting student well-being (i.e. development of national competencies, innovations, testing, sharing of best practices, and professional development). For their part, school districts across Canada will need to devote the necessary resources and provide appropriate professional development opportunities so that teachers are equipped to better identify and intervene in the worsening physical and mental health crisis that is facing Canadian education systems.
Now more than ever, congruent efforts to expand universal screening measures will need to be deployed to address these worrisome trends. Screening in elementary and secondary schools would primarily involve the completion of student questionnaires (American Psychological Association, 2020) – albeit with notable adaptations to account for the unique challenges encountered during distance learning and social isolation. Emerging from this pandemic era of education, measures considerate of academic, personal, physical, cultural, and social circumstances should be considered to promote greater understanding of the relationships between student success and student well-being. Such surveys in provincial and territorial education systems could complement the school climate surveys that many schools and districts already use, but with the necessary specificity to provide more granular data for specific student interventions. Just as governments around the world have echoed the importance of contact tracing to tackle the pandemic, district leaders and teachers will need timely data to help direct their resources and efforts to where they are needed most.
Lastly, any discussion on addressing mental health and physical well-being issues must include considerations for the education of future teachers. Pre-service education programs across Canada will need to continually evolve to ensure aspiring teachers are equipped with the latest pedagogical approaches in both face-to-face and distance learning environments. In addition to instructional time devoted to traditional subject-areas (i.e. language arts, mathematics, science, etc.) is a greater recognition of health and physical literacy, which are regarded as desired outcomes of health and physical education teaching, and important system and school health promotion goals to be achieved (Physical and Health Education Canada, 2021).
Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated with brute force that our traditional hierarchy of subjects, content knowledge, and associated skills are insufficient to “measure” the effectiveness of schools if we expect our students to thrive in a post-COVID world. Collectively, capacity building efforts geared at provincial policy reforms, districts and schools, and teacher education institutions represent a viable multi-level approach to strengthening the resilience of student populations. As one interesting example of a response to this growing need, New Zealand is developing a well-being curriculum that will be integrated across other curriculum streams.
Given the novelty of the current circumstances facing teachers and school-aged children across Canada, there will be a need to research and document the relative impact of different school structures and pedagogical approaches being utilized in online, blended, and socially distanced classroom learning environments. Understanding how these different structures and strategies interact and impact the most at-risk student populations will require an iterative process where recent research findings inform teaching and teaching informs subsequent research. This cyclical process is essential to establish a “best-practice” literature that policymakers and school leaders can draw upon to support their students in rapidly evolving school environments.
The effectiveness of these structures and approaches, and the impact of policies and programs utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic, must be rigorously researched and judged against a broader range of success criteria. Unfortunately, most of the current research in many international contexts appears to be focused on “learning loss” – which is essentially the examination of average drops in standardized test scores in different education systems during the pandemic (Kaffenberger, 2021). Yet virtually every school-based practitioner would acknowledge and echo the significant mental health and physical well-being “losses” that students are also experiencing. Certainly, it is possible for our education systems to attend to both the academic and mental health and physical wellness issues of Canadian youth to help build resilient schools.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
American Psychological Association (2020, September 22). Student mental health during and after COVID-19: How can schools identify youth who need support? www.apa.org/topics/covid-19/student-mental-health
Caldwell et al. (2020). Physical literacy, physical activity, and health indicators in school-aged children. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17. www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5367
Cost et al. (2021). Mostly worse, occasionally better: Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of Canadian children and adolescents. European Child Adolescent Psychiatry. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33638005/
Ministry of Education. (2017). What we heard: Well-being in our schools, strength in our society. Government of Ontario. www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/about/wb_what_we_heard_en.pdf
Health Canada (2020). Guide to Student Mental Health During COVID-19. Government of Canada. www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/sites/default/files/2020-09/covid_19_tip_sheet_student_mental_health_eng.pdf
Kaffenberger, M. (2021). Modelling the long-run learning impact of the Covid-19 learning shock: Actions to (more than) mitigate loss. International Journal of Development, 81. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059320304855#
Moore et al. (2020). Impact of the COVID-19 virus outbreak on movement and play behaviours of Canadian children and youth: A national survey. International Journal of Behaviour Nutrition and Physical Activity, 17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-020-00987-8
Physical and Health Education Canada. (2021). 2021-2024 PHE Canada Strategic Plan: A clear path forward. https://phecanada.ca/about/strategic-plan
Public Health Agency of Canada. (2020, November). Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children. Government of Canada. www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/childhood-adolescence/programs-initiatives/school-health/health-behaviour-school-aged-children.html
Schonert-Reichel, K., & Williams, J. (2020). Assessment of Schoolwide Well-Being & Social-Emotional Learning. Well-Being BC. www.wellbeingbc.ca/images/school-toolkit/Well-Being-BC—Assesment-Tool—FULL-Workbook.pdf
Volante, L. (2012). Educational reform, standards, and school leadership. In L. Volante (Ed.), School Leadership in the Context of Standards-Based Reform: International Perspectives (pp. 3–20). Springer.
Volante, L. (Ed.). (2018). The PISA Effect on Global Educational Governance. Routledge.
“Fitton, you baby.”
I can still remember the nasal voice and twitchy mustache of my Grade 9 wrestling coach as he derided me, and the way he emphasized the luscious double “B” in “baby.” I’d arrived at wrestling practice sick, knowing how important it was to my coach that we attend regularly for the team. I’d asked woozily if I could watch practice from the bleachers.
I wish I could tell you that his words inspired my immune system to leap into action and triumph like the Miracle at Dunkirk. Instead, I felt gutted. His infectious words meant that within the year, I’d quit the wrestling team. Twenty-three years later, his words served as a powerful inoculation against the use of negative semantics in my own classroom.
Many people can vividly remember their own short but powerful instance of a time when someone believed in them – or not. Maya Angelou’s wisdom is visceral: “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”
One October staff meeting, our admin team presented a graph that became the reason I get out of bed each day. As the data appeared on a PowerPoint, our principal congratulated us on the results of the previous year’s Ministry of Education Learning Survey of students at our school. He pointed out that when asked “How many adults at your school care about you?” 69 percent of our students reported, “Two adults or more.”
A few staff members stifled a yawn; others finished their grading. Sedation washed over the faculty like the warm hug of a narcotic – but my reaction was volcanic.
A good news story? I felt angry. Worse: ashamed. Nearly one in three – 162 kids – were walking through our front doors feeling that hardly any adults in the school cared about them. That’s five to six full classrooms of students disconnected from adults, possibly for four years of their academic experience. That’s not education. That’s a prison sentence.
But the data was a call to action.
In 2021, the survey is asking a new question: “Are there two adults in the building who believe you will be a success in life?” Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert, two professors from the University of British Columbia, had urged our district to explore this question. It’s a subtle but seismic semantic shift: Adults can care about a person and not believe in them. Belief is related to “care” and “connection,” but is something akin to a combination of both on steroids. It’s a three-for-one deal!
In Give and Take, Adam Grant reminds readers of the Rosenthal Experiment. Elementary teachers were told by Harvard researchers Rosenthal and Jacobsen that they had a class with several “Bloomers.” These were students who could make 15 to 20 percent gains in achievement during the year.
It was a ruse. But as a result, the teachers developed a mindset where they believed in their students. Then the magic happened. When teachers thought their students had high potential, their teaching methods and approach ensured that the kids made significant academic gains. Interestingly, the research was replicated by Dov Eden in the Israeli military. As Adam Grant (2013) reports, these “high potential” students and soldiers were viewed by their instructors differently. When they made mistakes, their instructors believed they simply needed coaching or had made an error that was not indicative of incompetence. Teachers were generally warmer and spent more time with these identified pupils.
The power of the self-fulfilling prophecy – the Rosenthal Effect – should be revisited in our schools. As a best practice, schools would encourage teachers to consciously adopt the mindset that all students have high potential. Indeed, this paradigm shift is championed in Kaser and Halbert’s Spirals of Inquiry, by George Couros in The Innovator’s Mindset, and by Adam Grant in Think Again. Ultimately, their ideas around education seem to distill into creating meaningful relationships with students that demonstrate that their teachers believe in them.
The shift to believing in kids can have a 15 to 20 percent positive impact on students academically. Isn’t it time that we educators applied it with efficacy and intentionality? Without duping faculty, could schools adopt the Rosenthal Effect mindset consciously? Let’s work together to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that will positively alter the experiences and lives of our students! Today, will you consciously find something to nurture and believe in, with every student you teach?
Illustration: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
My teaching career began as a high school mathematics teacher, yet my focus over the last ten years has been in elementary, both researching and now teaching. I am currently teaching math to two Grade 5/6 classes, with half of them having IPPs. They are a complex group.
My interest in elementary math began by watching my own kids struggle. What was holding them back? Why did some students struggle more than others? Both of my kids, early in school, were labelled with learning disabilities in mathematics. Now both are achieving at a high level, one in high school, the other in junior high. My work with them was a journey that ebbed and flowed between barriers and progress. It often felt like going through a maze, heading in one direction, and then hitting a barrier. So, we would turn around and try another direction. Over time, patterns emerged in those barriers, and one telltale characteristic began to reveal itself: memorization. Through this recognition, the barriers became easier to avoid. Upon hitting a barrier, I would ask, “OK, what in this task am I expecting them to just remember without understanding?” Once identified, we would go back and focus on developing the conceptual understanding or image in their mind for this idea or symbol. Once they were no longer expected to memorize a process or a symbol without understanding, they would progress in leaps and bounds, often exceeding my expectations. Where there had previously been a brick wall there was now a passageway.
The barrier for many students is not the math but the ability to remember. Presenting students with symbols along with a series of steps that represent concepts before they have sufficiently grown their own personal understanding or image for that concept can be a major barrier. Students who memorize easily have an advantage, but is that advantage rooted in mathematical understanding? I have worked with many students who can find an answer but do not understand the underlying math.
How can we be more inclusive while focusing on the growth of understanding for the majority? It was this question that took me down the path of exploring how we absorb information and what types of activities contribute to the growth of our mental images for mathematical ideas. Are there ways of offering students information that are richer than others?
May I suggest three categories for offering information, ranked according to their ability to give us information as directly, originally, and optimally as possible:
The first mode of presenting a mathematical idea is through the oral discussion of mathematics and its written symbols. This is the emptiest way of presenting the meaning within a mathematical idea. We absorb information through our senses, and these symbols visually look nothing like the ideas they represent. If a student has not grown the understanding of these symbols, we are not offering them anything with meaning. Symbols are just the tip of the conceptual iceberg; the meaning, which is so much bigger than the symbol, lies underneath the surface. The symbol for four (4) can represent a distance, position, or quantity, which can be represented in an infinite number of ways. The shape of the symbol (4) itself offers no meaning; it is the students themselves who bring the meaning.
The second form, the imaginative, is the act of visualizing. Zimmerman and Cunningham (1991) state that the intuition that mathematical visualization affords is not a vague kind of intuition; rather, it is what gives depth and meaning to understanding. This internal offering of information for the idea through your personally developed images has much to offer in terms of growth in understanding. Images beget more images, leading to deeper understanding.
It has been well documented in both sports and music that growth occurs through the act of visualizing. As a teenager, my husband’s swim coach would ask the swimmers to lie on deck with their eyes closed while he orally described a swim race, guiding them through it, while they imagined themselves in the race. The description by the coach is a signitive offering, but where each swimmer takes those oral descriptions imaginatively is different for each person. In a meta-analysis done to answer the question Does mental practice enhance performance? (Driskell et al., 1994) the researchers concluded that “mental practice is effective for both cognitive and physical tasks; however, the effect of mental practice is significantly stronger the more a task involves cognitive elements” (p. 485). In this discussion, it is noteworthy to mention that physical practice was the most effective form, and that those who were experienced in physical practice (perceptual) benefited more from mental practice (imaginative) than those who were novices in the task. The reason suggested for this is that, “the novices who mentally practiced a physical task may not have sufficient schematic knowledge about successful task performance and may be spending their effort imagining task behaviors that could turn out to be somewhat counterproductive” (p. 490). This supports the idea of the importance of establishing the perceptual level of activity, which allows for continued growth when visualizing.
Our world is perceived not only in terms of object shapes and spatial relationships, but also in terms of environmental possibilities for action. A perceptual experience in mathematics, I suggest, is the acting out of a mathematical idea. It is within the spatial acting out that meaning is given or “lived” in the most direct, original, and optimal way, for we are experiencing the mathematical idea through our senses when, for example, we physically cut the shape into equal parts, connecting us to the concept of fractions. This physical act will allow for growth when we later imagine this act.
It is important to distinguish and emphasize the importance of this third category (perceptual) because it is a sensory act. It is this act that allows for the deepening and continual growth of images. So, when a student is stuck and struggling to understand, some kind of perceptual experience must be offered, some level of active interaction with the environment to promote further growth.
The imaginative and perceptual are closely intertwined. In fact, they are hard to discuss as separate entities, for together they are one idea – spatial reasoning. Spatial reasoning is more than just passively receiving sensations; it is the intentional act of perceiving and then engaging our bodies purposefully (Khan et al., 2015). Through acting out a mathematical idea there is a co-evolving that occurs in both our mental and physical skills. The actions being discussed are not only physical actions, spatial reasoning encapsulates mental actions as well. Visualizing is very productive within mathematics, as spatial reasoning ability and mathematical ability have been shown to be intimately linked (Mix & Cheng, 2012). Mental interactive playing and exercising of our images can stimulate growth in and of themselves without actually engaging our environment, but a foundation for this imagining must first be established (e.g. physically counting, organizing, regrouping, building, drawing, etc.). It is through these physical acts that our imaginative and perceptual experiences interact seamlessly with each other, building and strengthening images.
The idea that the math classroom benefits from the interaction between the signitive, imaginative, and perceptual is the arena in which my research lies. The perceptual and imaginative strengthen and evolve as we engage with our environment, but also within mathematics there is a strong signitive element that must be attached (memorization) to our mental images. How can these elements interact to the mutual benefit of all three?
The classroom teacher and I worked with her Grade 5 students in a school for students labelled with learning disabilities. We began with the foundational ideas of fractions. In our preassessment the students presented as having minimal understanding, many not knowing how to write a fraction (signitive). We had four days with them, offering perceptual experiences that were always combined with the signitive to encourage the association with their growing images. We would have them physically cut shapes (perceptual), practising the concept of splitting into equal parts. Yet before they cut the shapes, we would discuss and imagine how to ensure that they would end up with equal parts (imaginative), i.e. we would fold the shapes and then cut them. Next, the students would write the symbols representing the fraction pieces (signitive). This interaction with pieces offered them a visual, embodied, and imaginative experience connected to the mathematical concept. Later they would combine (perceptual) these different pieces and write the fractions (signitive) using an addition symbol.
Although we started with the basics, we continued stretching the complexity of the topic to see how far their images/understanding would take them. By day four, we played a game called imagine-build-steal, in which we offered them a signitive question first, such as 2/4 + 1/2 The students were then asked to imagine and give a solution. None were able to answer the question based solely on this signitive offering; they had not yet grown sufficient images. They needed more from their environment to deepen their own images. To promote this further enhancement, the students were asked to build (perceptual) using the fraction pieces that they themselves had cut out. This they could do; they had grown sufficient images for looking at the signitive offering and building the solution. So, we continued with this cycle of signitive first, then asking to imagine, and then offering a perceptual experience. Their images continued to grow until by the end of that period, students began to offer up imaginative solutions to expressions like 2/3 + 2/6 + 2/8, based solely on the signitive offering. They had reached the point of sufficient growth of their personal images to solve this complex expression without having to build it.
The growth of mathematical understanding is a complex process, as seen over and over again with my own kids, in my research, and in the classroom. It is also personal; each student must grow their own images for the mathematical ideas in order to be able to visualize and make use of them. For some, they can be slippery. This is true of both the student who finds it easy to memorize and the one who does not. I find spatial reasoning tasks to be a great equalizer in a classroom. The student who struggles to memorize and therefore follow steps may reason and visualize with ease, but those who can follow a series of steps to an answer may struggle to visualize the mathematical concept. Math, however, is about ideas and concepts, not a set of memorized rules. My experience and my research support the claim that mental images are a key element to mathematical understanding that is often underappreciated. Far too frequently, the goal is to get the student as quickly as possible to an answer rather than to deep understanding of the idea.
If these mental images are the key to deep understanding, then what factors influence the growth of these images? If we accept the idea that images are grown through a dynamic process of restructuring based on a stream of perceptual encounters and conceptual revelations (Arnheim, 1969), then playing with, utilizing, and exercising these images can support their growth. A classroom focused on growing images is one in which students are engaged in imagining, drawing, moving, and regrouping objects while incorporating the signitive to encourage association. If all we offer students are symbols on a piece of paper, only those students who have already grown sufficient images can benefit from such a task. As educators, we are then not providing new opportunities for growth to the various levels of student understanding that every classroom contains.
Arnheim, R. (1969). Visual thinking. University of California Press.
Driskell, J., Copper, C., & Moran, A. (1994). Does mental practice enhance performance? Journal of applied psychology, 79(4), 481–492.
Khan, S., Francis, K., & Davis, B. (2015). Accumulation of experience in a vast number of cases: Enactivism as a fit framework for the study of spatial reasoning in mathematics education. ZDM: The International Journal of Mathematics Education, 47(2), 269–279.
Mix, K. S., & Cheng, Y. L. (2012). The relation between space and math: Developmental and educational implications. In J. B. Benson (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 42, pp. 197–243). Academic Press.
Zimmermann, W., & Cunningham, S. (1991). Editors’ introduction: What is mathematical visualization. In W. Zimmermann, & S. Cunningham, Visualization in teaching and learning mathematics (pp. 1–7). Mathematical Association of America.
What would it take to support all students and be a part of their academic and social success? How can we advocate for our students? Isn’t education a tool for social justice? Around the world, students in the same classroom are not necessarily receiving the same learning opportunities. Teaching practices, assessment processes, curriculum delivery, as well as exclusive practices and racism, may in some measure deprive students of the support they need to develop their skills and competencies. How can teachers promote equity among their students? In a multi-ethnic context, teachers are called on to support immigrant and refugee students in their cultural, linguistic, and academic integration. Thus, teachers have to adjust their practices and adapt their actions to develop a supportive environment for all students, regardless of their culture. Considering this challenging context, our project, which takes place in Québec, the French-speaking province in Canada, aims to analyze stories of practice in which teachers were asked to narrate a situation they faced in class with an immigrant or refugee student. Two stories were chosen for analysis because of their potential to illustrate – through the teachers’ “conversation with the situation” process (Schön, 1987) – how they adapted their practices to improve learning opportunities for their students. The actions listed below could be used as tools for teachers’ professional development.
Stéphanie, a classroom teacher, has years of teaching experience in many schools in Québec. The story she narrated took place in a multi-ethnic, public French primary school located in Montréal. Stéphanie told the story of Mohamed, a newly arrived immigrant Grade 6 student who had not yet mastered French, the language of instruction. According to her, the student was experiencing a trauma. She said that he was “very closed and isolated, and going through emotional issues.” Academically, Stéphanie declared that “though Mohamed had difficulty in reading and writing, he didn’t have a specific learning disability.” Stéphanie stressed the importance of diversifying her intervention strategies to support her students in general, and for Mohamed specifically. To do this, she took four actions.
Stéphanie considered it important to understand the reality of her students and to bond with them in order to accompany them in their learning process. She said, “We have to do everything to understand where the difficulties of our students come from. I frequently ask them to tell me about themselves, their migratory journey and their mother tongue.” For her, this “may guide the intervention process.” In Mohamed’s case, she tried to get to know more about him and how he was doing in school. She believed that “he certainly has got emotional wounds.” She added that she understood that Mohamed was “a strong and able student in his native language and then, all of a sudden, had found himself failing in school here.” This awareness can help the teacher adjust her practices to address the student’s academic and emotional needs.
Stéphanie valued her students’ backgrounds; she used tools that were anchored in their culture and language to support them. She asked Mohamed to write his texts in his original language: “I tried to value him in his native language, even if I was not sure of his competence. My goal was to reduce his cognitive load and give him the chance to demonstrate his writing skills.” She was also concerned about motivating him: “I told myself that by doing this, he would find this feeling of personal efficacy that is so important for motivation.” She also changed her practices to address his needs: “I realized that certain collaborative practices did not work for Mohamed, so I decided to work individually with him, and that worked,” she explained. “In reading practices, I used to break down the task for him and allowed him to work on his own and not in a team.” In this way, recognizing the student’s culture and language as an asset facilitates their integration process.
Stéphanie continued to work with Mohamed, believing that with the right support he would succeed: “I was sure that this student had everything he needed to succeed, even if his results at the start of the year were very weak,” she noted. Although his other teachers didn’t agree with her, she stuck to her decision to support him. She mentioned that “other teachers at the school believed that Mohammed had a behaviour and attitude problem.” She reported in her story that she believed, rather, that there was something that made him unhappy, and that he needed time. She talked to her colleagues in an effort to convince them: “I informed my colleagues about what he had experienced, and I asked them, by the same token, to be patient with him.”
Stéphanie acted to engage other stakeholders in supporting Mohamed. Not only did she collaborate with the school’s speech therapist in an attempt to facilitate the student’s learning process, but she also changed the usual practice: “Mohamed did not want to work individually with her. I think it was difficult for him to accept the fact that he needed individual help. So, we decided not to force him to work with her outside the classroom. When she came to the class, she offered help, but indirectly, which he accepted.” By respecting his feelings, Stéphanie created a safe emotional environment for Mohamed.
Maggie, a music teacher, had been teaching music for seven years in mono-ethnic schools before moving to a multi-ethnic school context. When we interviewed her, she told us about a challenge she faced when she had just been transferred to a largely multi-ethnic public French primary school located in Montréal. This is the story of her mixed group of Grade 5/6 students, who were “very resistant to what I taught them.” She reported: “Whenever I entered this class, I encountered a kind of rebellion.” Maggie mentioned that of the class of 27 children, 25 were immigrant students. She admitted that she was “shocked” when she first saw this very large concentration of immigrant students. Music class, she found, didn’t “interest the students at all.” She added that she “felt some pressure as I was losing control.” Thus she decided to adjust her practices to adapt to the new situation. She also reported that this “was a big evolution” for her in her career, and described it as “making a great journey.” Our analysis of Maggie’s story revealed the actions she took and the changes she made in her own practice in response to students’ needs and interests:
As she was at the beginning of her career, Maggie disclosed that she “relied a lot on the school program.” She explained that she had “to teach the students to sing, create, and perform musical works.” Because of the students’ resistance, she decided to widen the scope of her lessons to include American music: “I told myself that young people liked it, but it didn’t really work with them,” she said. So she resolved to act differently to motivate them: “I decided to change my approach. I asked the students about the music they liked and what it meant to them.” She then went even further, by asking them to teach her the music. She stated that after many inducements, “they finally started to mobilize; they introduced me to their music, and the girls taught me how to dance. They were excited to do so.” She related this change in their attitude to her actions: “I realized that because I had chosen to open up to them, they started to be less defensive with me.” By the end of the year, Maggie was able to assess them: “This change didn’t stop me from evaluating them. I had covered my program, but in a different way. I remained the teacher and they, the students, while having a lot of fun,” she said. As noted, this adjustment didn’t prevent her from fulfilling her initial aim to meet the requirements of the program.
Maggie was concerned about engaging her students to create a positive class environment. She said: “It is important to maintain positive class management. We had to find what pleased them. For them, it was the pleasure of learning, and for me, the pleasure of teaching them in a participative class atmosphere.” This conviction led her to take action: “I really had to take a big step toward them to try to bring them toward me,” she recalled. Maggie noticed that the class environment became: “more pleasant and positive when she was more open.” As Anderson (2016) stated, students need to feel connected to the class to improve their learning. This is what Maggie did by giving them the choice and the voice to learn about the music they liked.
Maggie mentioned that it was really important for her to build the teacher-student relationship. She reported the necessity of “taking time to sit with the students for a chat.” She advised teachers to “ask your students to tell you about themselves and open up to them to get to know them better, be curious about what they like, ask them questions and tell them about you, too. This is how the bond is created. ” She insisted that the basis of everything is for the students to “feel that you are interested in them and that you are there for them. You must take the time to get to know each other, to share good times. I also think that you have to love your students. They feel it when we love them and then they don’t want to disappoint us. ” Developing such a dialogue helps teachers to understand students’ existing knowledge, situation, and problems (Kincheloe et al., 2011), so they can act effectively.
Establishing a culture of equity necessitates a real adjustment, not only in practices but also in positions and beliefs. Maggie mentioned this in her story about herself and her students: “You had to go beyond their music, our music, or our values, their values. We managed to meet, but for that, I was the one who made the first move. It really changed the classroom environment.” She admitted that this shift in her practices and beliefs wasn’t a simple formula: “I knew I had to go through their culture, but I was afraid. I didn’t know their music. I was not sure how to do it. Then, I realized that I am not losing my identity, I am teaching.” She added that she “had to keep this attitude of openness.” She stressed the importance of integrating cultural elements from her students’ background. By doing so, Maggie reconstructed her professional and personal identity and her comfort with diversity grew.
Teachers need to reflect on their practices and modify them according to the class context. As Maggie said, “I believe that as a teacher, I have to be able to analyze my actions.” She added, “This experience has changed the way I think about immigration and diversity. It allowed me to ask myself a lot of questions. I will never see diversity the same way again.” This subsequently has influenced her teaching: “It has changed the way I teach. I had to have a new approach by beginning to get to know the students, before introducing the program. When I [later] worked in another multi-ethnic school, I had a positive experience.” By the same token, Anderson (2016) stated that reflection is key to growing as a professional. This allows teachers to bridge the gap between their practice and their students’ needs.
THE NINE ACTIONS that emerged from the teachers’ stories of practice were the result of a lengthy process of inner negotiation and decisions teachers made in light of many contextual factors. Teaching for equity is a long journey. To make changes to their practices, teachers and educators must engage in a process of self-awareness. In this way, a school culture can be reconstructed that gives all students an equal opportunity to pursue their way.
1 Intervenir en contexte de diversité ethnoculturelle : se raconter. Un projet de reconstruction et de théorisation de récits de pratique d’enseignants, by G. Audet, G. Lafortune and M. Potvin (2018–2021), was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Anderson, M. (2016). Learning to choose. Choosing to learn. ASCD.
Kincheloe, J., McLaren, P., & Steinberg, S. (2011). Critical pedagogy and qualitative approach. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 163–178). Sage Publications.
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. Jossey Bass.
This was a question I kept asking myself when I thought about the youth living through the 2013 Alberta floods. What were their experiences and what could we learn from them? In 2019, I interviewed nine youth who had graduated the year of the flood to find out what life had been like for them during and after the disaster (Markides, 2020). I chose this group because they were transitioning from life in school to life out of school at the time of the event. The stories and advice they shared about living through a disaster has significant bearing for supporting youth during our current pandemic times.
“It’s hard but you need to find time to grieve and it… it’s tough. Being a teenager is tough by itself.”
While the disasters are different, the needs of the youth of today are likely similar to those of the youth from the study. Following from this assertion, we can expect that the youth will lean on and be held in relationship to others as a means of mutual support. They will need informal and formal outlets for processing their experiences and healing from the trials of pandemic life. Finding work will also be a challenge for many, and accessing resources for school will be of greater need in the years to come. Youth are often hailed for their resilience, and rightly so, but that does not negate the reality that youth will need various supports to bounce back from this experience.
Whether describing their greatest supports or greatest challenges, the youth consistently spoke about their families, friends, partners, and even pets as a source of strength. Some relationships were strained and others changed over time. It became clear who was there for them in their time of need and who was not. The youth value those who can be present for them – to provide a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand, financial support, a place to crash, or a space to visit with their friends. Some youth were able to be a supportive person for others:
“Some of my friends who felt close enough would reach out to me if they needed a place to stay.”
“I just had a campfire one night, so everybody got together and got to feel some companionship.”
With the ever-changing safety guidelines in mind, youth living through COVID-19 have had to significantly reduce their in-person social interactions, which has consequently reduced their opportunities for mutual peer support. The social isolation may be seen by many youth as the greatest challenge they faced during the pandemic. Even over the shorter duration of the flood experience, youth found the isolation from their peers challenging:
“I feel like it would have been better to have a space where we could all talk and converse… Just a place to share stories.”
As restrictions lift, the youth may be re-evaluating their relationships and prioritizing social gatherings. Some have become more reliant on virtual interactions than before, while others have found creative ways to see friends outside of their schools and homes. In the months to come, they will need spaces to gather and reconnect with peers in safe and supported environments. Specifically, youth may need structured support in navigating their changing peer or familial relations.
While the youth in the study did not utilize wellness supports themselves, they all noted that youth would benefit from having access to counsellors and psychologists. They recommended that health-care professionals need to find creative ways of connecting with the youth and letting them know what resources were available to them. They also felt that group settings or online options would be most appealing.
“I feel like there should have been, like therapists and psychologists at those evacuation centres, like right away.”
When we consider the experience of the pandemic, it is clear that no one has been left untouched by the present disaster. However, each person’s experience of it is unique. Youth will need space to share and process their experiences from the past year and a half, as well as having options for professional supports offered directly to them. Families, schools, and organizations working with youth should pro-actively seek out counselling and other mental-health related programming that could benefit the youth. Often youth know that supports exist, but do not know how to access them. Keeping open and honest communication about the challenges of living through a disaster can help to destigmatize the issues and normalize seeking support.
During the post-flood cleanup, many youth had their hours cut back significantly or lost their employment due to business closures. Those who had sustainable employment reported that they appreciated having purposeful work during the summer months and being able to save money for school or to support themselves if they were living on their own. In many ways, they were a largely untapped labour force in the post-disaster recovery. Additionally, one youth expressed gratitude for receiving a scholarship earmarked for flood victims:
“My third year, I worked two jobs while in school…. But actually, I was lucky enough my first year of college they had a grant for flood victims.”
With the pandemic closures and restrictions of 2020 and 2021, the economy has been hard hit. Youth are seeing greater competition for employment and fewer opportunities than in years past. The prospect of finding a job, let alone meaningful work, is more abysmal than ever. With extended time at home, people have been tending to their yard work and home improvements themselves, potentially reducing the positions for summer employment. As businesses begin to open up, increase hours of operation, and cautiously increase staffing, it will be important to consider where youth can be utilized. Youth who are transitioning from high school may also need support in accessing bursaries and scholarship for further education, and in securing apprenticeships and co-operative learning positions. Again, people working in intermediary roles with youth can play a major role in supporting their needs – by approaching industry to provide bursaries and positions earmarked for youth.
The 2013 Alberta floods disrupted many events and plans that the youth had envisioned and prepared for as they transitioned into adulthood. Graduation, summer celebrations, travel, work, and other happenings were cancelled or changed completely. These sudden and often stark shifts created significant breaks between what the youth had anticipated and their lived realities. As Leaf Van Boven and Laurence Ashworth (2007) assert, the expectations of future positive events can heighten emotions and associations in ways that overshadow the event itself. For example, the replacement of an anticipated graduation ceremony with something “other” – such as a drive-thru graduation or online ceremony – can lead to long-term feelings of loss and regret, despite their gratitude for the efforts made to make the day special for them. As one youth explained:
“There was the effort made to make it as best as possible and I appreciate that. And I think it was – I think everyone felt a little bit disappointed.… It’s kind of like the tradition [to have grad in the park] and it was a bit weird not to. It was kind of disappointing not having that, to be honest with you. I find no fault with anyone, it’s just how things worked out.”
In the years to come, youth will look back on the pandemic with a range of emotions and associations that may be difficult to negotiate. They may feel loss, anger, grief, and remorse for various aspects of their lives that changed temporarily or permanently as a result of the worldwide disaster. Oftentimes, these experiences will go unexamined unless there is a purposeful space for the conversation to unfold. As one youth said:
“[I] didn’t really, didn’t overly feel affected from the flood until I… wrote this out and… put all the puzzle pieces together.”
The notion of the “new normal” refers to the reality that life cannot return to what we remembered, anticipated, or wished it to be. It just carries on, different than before. So much of the experience has been out of the youths’ control. Rules, safety precautions, closures, cancellations, and limitations abound. Youth will be looking for ways to assert their autonomy and reclaim power over their lives. Some of these options may be healthy, others may not be. As parents, educators, and people involved with youth, we need to be pro-active in our planning and programming. We need to invite the youth into dialogue – to listen to their experiences, learn about their needs, and support them as they live through the challenges of post-pandemic life.
Photo: Shutterstock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
Markides, J. (2020). Wisdom and well-being post-disaster: Stories told by youth [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Calgary.
Van Boven, L., & Ashworth, L. (2007). Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 136(2), 289–300.
If there is anything that we have learned over the course of COVID-19 and the constant shifting from in-person to remote, etc., it’s the importance of a positive classroom community. This is established when all students feel valued, safe, and represented in their classroom, and students are actively taking risks and making mistakes.
Every classroom is going to look different, because every teacher and student group is different; what works for one educator is not going to be the same for others – and that’s OK! It’s important to reflect on your strengths and what you bring to your own classroom, and build from there.
In an ideal world, face-to-face interactions are a key component to building community; students get to see and interact with their teacher and peers, and become comfortable in the classroom setting. The strategies we share below are meant to provide ideas on how you can leverage tech tools to support this class bonding.
Please remember that building community is not a one-and-done activity; it takes real effort and continuous commitment to build and foster positive relationships throughout the course of the school year.
Why is community so important? Classroom community is a fundamental building block upon which everything is based. Positive relationships foster safe, inclusive, and effective learning environments.
First, a positive community encourages communication. Communication allows students to get comfortable with their peers, to build friendships, and to gain confidence using their voice in the classroom. It also allows students and teachers to communicate more openly about expectations, struggles, and how to improve.
From there, community leads to more effective collaboration. This is a skill that is important for students in all courses, but will also be important for their future.
Community also supports social and emotional learning. It’s important for students to build healthy attitudes toward their self-identity, to learn how to manage their emotions and behaviours, and to develop a sense of empathy for themselves and others.
Finally, one of the most important reasons for building community is the creation of a safe and inclusive learning environment. By recognizing milestones and highlighting the many cultures and strengths in their classrooms, educators can create a space where students feel valued and able to share their ideas, their learning, etc., without feeling judged or ridiculed by their peers or teacher.
Now let’s talk about technology tools that you can use to support community building in your classroom. No matter which tools you choose, consider tools that allow students to see and/or hear you and each other. This helps students to connect with you as their teacher, and with their peers. Think of the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” – when you include yourself in a video, students can see facial expressions and hear intonation, without having to interpret that from text only.
Be sure to protect students and their identities. Check privacy policies, and try to avoid having students use tools that gather a lot of personal data. If your board has rules about technology use for students, make sure that you are verifying each tool to ensure students are protected.
Please note that there are many different tools that are quite similar. We have included tools that we use regularly.
You can record a combination of voice, screen, and/or webcam. Tools include Screencastify, Loom, Explain Everything, Screencast-o-matic, and WeVideo.
These tools allow you to record audio notes in Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, Forms, Gmail) and beyond. You can achieve this with Mote and Google Read&Write’s Voice Comment feature.
Real-time messaging apps are more similar to the way that students communicate in real life. Tools include Remind, Slack, Discord, Google Chat or the chat feature built into your LMS.
These are collaborative tools that can be leveraged in the classroom. Examples of these tools are Microsoft (Office) 365 (Word, PowerPoint) and Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, Drawings).
These tools can be used to gather information. Surveys can be created using a variety of tools, such as Microsoft Forms, Survey Monkey, and Google Forms.
This is a great tool for collaborating in real time. Similar tools include: Google Jamboard, whiteboard.fi, whiteboard.chat, as well as the Microsoft Whiteboard.
Video conferencing tools have become a staple in virtual classrooms. Take advantage of additional features within these tools such as polls, Q&A, and breakout rooms to build your classroom community.
An LMS is a centralized hub where students can access content, submit assignments, and more. Examples of an LMS are: Google Classroom, Brightspace by D2L, Schoology, Canvas, etc.
As you start off your school year, remember that community building does not happen overnight. Teachers must continue to make an effort throughout the course or school year to ensure that all students feel safe and comfortable in the classroom. Taking just a few minutes every day can lead to positive student outcomes, as well as stronger and more positive student-teacher relationships.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
This department is generously sponsored by IPEVO
www.ipevo.com
Now, more than ever before, educator wellness is of the utmost importance – both for ourselves and for our students. We are dealing with a mental and physical health crisis on a global scale, and Canada is no exception:
In view of this reality, I think we can agree that it is past time that we start making some changes in how we approach wellness in education and the impact that staff wellness has on our students.
I recently had an educator reply to a tweet on the impact of educator mental and physical wellness on students with “School’s out. Students are at home. We’re crawling out of the abyss of a demoralizing year. We need examples, too. Besides, why are we always the first to be prompted to set this example, instead of the parents – where good modelling starts?”
While I agree that wellness examples should start at home, it is negligent to think that students are not looking to their educators to be the example of what mental, emotional, and physical wellness look like. Educators have chosen a path of impact and impact starts with being the right example.
A reactive and passive approach to our own health is missing the mark. So what needs to change?
Now let’s move to some actionable takeaways that you can use as an individual educator to start becoming more well and setting the example today. These actionable takeaways will focus on building habits in four main pillars of wellness. Those four pillars are mindfulness and mental health, movement, nutrition, and sleep.
The concepts below will focus on building healthy habits and are taken from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I highly recommend his book if you want to make a healthy and sustainable lifestyle change.
Whether you want to start a mindfulness practice, increase your water intake or start exercising in the morning, you have to set yourself up for success by making daily habits obvious. Some examples of this would be keeping a water bottle on your desk so you always have access to water or setting out your fitness clothes the night before so you are ready to take action before your long school day starts. Another great example for teachers and school leaders is to schedule your sleep and set an alarm to go to bed. Stop burning the midnight oil and prioritize sleep. As educators we must always focus on removing barriers to our wellness.
Let’s be honest, if hard things are not attractive and fun, we will struggle to sustain them. A way to do this would be habit stacking, the act of attaching a difficult habit with one that you enjoy. My favourite example of this is attaching my morning hydration to my coffee. I want to have my coffee on the way to school, so to get it I must drink a large glass of water first. This automatically makes my hydration habit more attractive, because it allows me to have the thing I really want.
It is hard to do hard things, so make them easy. This is all about setting yourself up for success. Remove friction in finding time to be active or to practise mindfulness by scheduling it in your calendar and not allowing things to get in the way. Use technology to help you plan healthy meals, find great at-home workouts, or provide you with a daily breathing practice to calm your mind and prepare you for the day. Another great way to make habits easy as an educator is to grab a co-teacher and hold each other accountable. It is always easier to maintain a challenging habit if you have a friend to support you along your journey.
It is human nature to strive to reach goals and to love being rewarded for meeting them. Set small, realistic, and achievable goals and tie in rewards to them. A great example of this would be setting a walking goal for the month and if you achieve that goal, you get to buy yourself those new shoes you want. School and district leaders can create walking or wellness challenges and create rewards for their teams. Set goals, hold yourself accountable, and celebrate your success.
No change is easy; if it were it would already be done. As we make these changes on a large scale and at a personal level, we have to remember and be held accountable by the fact that we are not only doing this for ourselves, but for our students. We are in a time of crisis. Change is necessary, and whether we were prepared to accept the responsibility to be the example of mental, emotional, and physical wellness for our students or not, that has to be the new expectation of educator wellness.
Are you willing to be the example your students need to be mentally, emotionally, and physically well adults?
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
Boak, A., Hamilton, H. et al. (2016). The mental health and well-being of Ontario students, 1991–2015: Detailed OSDUHS findings (CAMH Research Document Series No. 43). Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
Canadian Mental Health Association & University of British Columbia. (2020). Mental health impacts of COVID-19: Wave 2. https://cmha.ca/documents/summary-of-findings
Public Health Agency of Canada, Mood Disorders Society of Canada, & Health Canada et al. (2006). The human face of mental health and mental illness in Canada. Government of Canada. https://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/human-humain06/pdf/human_face_e.pdf
Pearson, C., Janz, T., & Ali, J. (2013). Health at a glance: Mental and substance use disorders in Canada. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 82-624-X. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-624-x/2013001/article/11855-eng.htm
Statistics Canada. (2018). Table 13-10-0394-01 Leading causes of death, total population, by age group [Data table]. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1310039401
World Population Review. (2021). Obesity rates by country 2021. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/obesity-rates-by-country
Consider your own personal journey in the world of education. When you began your story, were there any classes that covered how to grapple with teaching and leading during a global pandemic? Did your coursework provide opportunities to learn how to educate students during a worldwide crisis? Did any of your mentor teachers give you a heads-up about how to completely transform your life from in-person instruction to teaching completely online in just a few days?
The truth of the matter is, educators have been grappling with an ever-present demand to be flexible, to think on our feet, and to pivot at a moment’s notice. We are accustomed to feelings of uncertainty while simultaneously putting on a brave face as we continue to show up day in and day out. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were tasked with supporting students in the midst of the most seemingly insurmountable obstacles. And, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an educator burnout pandemic.
We know that stress and burnout are not new phenomena to educators, but unfortunately they’re getting worse. According to research, teachers are dealing with increasing demands, lack of resources, and limited autonomy. And their leaders are grappling with burnout, too.
Principals struggle with increased workload, the pressures of 24/7 online access, and the growing diversity of student and staff needs. When teacher burnout increases, teaching quality decreases, which results in less effective classroom management and reduced student engagement. When teacher stress increases, it contributes to student stress, which has been linked to learning and mental health problems.
I’ve recognized this issue as an educator for Baltimore City Public Schools, but before becoming a teacher, as a student in crisis, I learned the importance of supporting mental health and well-being. In both high school and college, I suffered from crippling depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. I represented the one in four Americans who has grappled with a mental illness and the one in ten college students who have contemplated suicide. My teachers were my emotional first responders who noticed the subtle changes in my behaviour, encouraged me to seek treatment and get help, and supported me with life-saving accommodations and differentiation. They are the reason I am alive and writing this today. They were my inspiration to become a teacher myself.
It was as a teacher that I realized the complete lack of preparedness and ongoing support for the emotional demands of the profession – and specifically, for working with children who have experienced trauma or are experiencing ongoing trauma first-hand.
Because of the lack of resources and support around self-care and mental health in the workplace for adult staff, I left the classroom after nearly a decade to start an organization aiming to revolutionize workplace well-being, called Happy Teacher Revolution. (See Happy Teacher Revolution.) I am by no means an expert about how to perfectly master the elusive work-life balance, as I am learning right alongside you as we embark on the next school year together, but I want you to know that this is an opportunity for us to collectively make change by prioritizing our own well-being as a best practice for those we serve. Below you will find my top eight strategies for revolutionizing your own wellness this school year. I hope you take the time to try out one of the action steps I’ve suggested – or create your own and share it with us!
The first step in prioritizing your well-being this school year is to know that just reading this, and making the intention to fill your cup first instead of pouring from an empty vessel, is an action that you have already taken. So, go YOU! This act of personal development is radical and disruptive in a good way because it is the means to your own professional sustainability. Some ways you might choose you this year are by setting boundaries, saying “no” or “I’ll think about it” instead of an automatic “yes,” or creating more opportunities to spend time enjoying the things you love.
This strategy comes from fellow Baltimore City Public School educator and advocate for teacher well-being LaQuisha Hall. Identify toxic forces that need to be “muted” in your life. Know that these influences may be rearing their ugly heads after you initiate boundaries like I’ve suggested above… but know that the people who will be pushing back on your boundaries are probably the same people who took advantage of your lack of boundaries to begin with.
This strategy is one that applies to all of us: whether you are an aspiring educator, a brand-new educator, or you’ve been in the game for decades. Fascinatingly, it doesn’t matter if you’re older versus younger, or if you have a chronic condition or disease, feeling that you have a sense of purpose in life may help you live longer, according to research published in Psychological Science (2014), a journal of the Association for Psychology Science. Research shows that having a purpose in life is a best practice no matter one’s age, and a powerful strategy we could model to our students.
One of our Revolutionary educators in Alabama, Benita Moyers, suggests creating a self-care action plan. Just as you create intentional plans for your students, consider what it could look like to implement a time every week to pour into your own cup, so that you can continue supporting your students and the community of individuals surrounding you. Carve out a time in your schedule to spend time on YOU. Actually put it into your calendar so that it will happen. Put in a reminder. Even if it feels indulgent to spend time on yourself, recognize that self-care isn’t selfish; self-care is professional development.
This inspired practice comes from one of our very first Happy Teacher Revolution pilot sites and trauma-informed schools in Nashville. To pre-forgive is to acknowledge that you will probably make mistakes and to be prepared to forgive yourself when things don’t go absolutely perfectly. This strategy is the opportunity to be gentle with yourself, just as you would be gentle with any friend or student who could benefit from a nurturing/encouraging sentiment rather than an accusatory one. Acknowledge that the pandemic of COVID-19 was something we could have never expected or “practised” for. Offer yourself pre-forgiveness and self-compassion around the immense amount of change that upended our lives over the last few years. Give yourself the space to grieve the losses, the changes, the ways that our lives will forever be different. Acknowledge that you will continue to make mistakes as you set one foot in front of the other. Pre-forgiveness is knowing that the road may still be bumpy in life post-COVID, and recognizing that the healing process is never linear.
An accommodation that teachers often make for their students is to provide them with opportunities to take frequent breaks. This applies to us, too. Take time to disconnect and detach with love. Unplug from technology and the demand to be “available” all of the time. Put up an auto-response that you are currently unavailable. Go outside in nature. Move your body and take a moment to let your mind rest and digest the stimulation of the day. Disconnect for a time so that you can better connect with those you serve once you are back “on the grid.”
One of the most powerful practices in our Happy Teacher Revolution meetings has been to offer personal, positive affirmations. Some sentence starters include: “I’m proud of myself for,” “I forgive myself for,’’ “I recognize the courage it took for me to,” and “I’m grateful for.” Write these affirmations down. Say them out loud. Text one to a well-being accountability partner and invite them to share their own. We also utilize opportunities to prioritize autonomy in Happy Teacher Revolution meetings by using the sentence frame, “I choose.” Some choices include: “I choose what to let go of,” “I choose to prioritize the relationships that matter,” and “No matter how the school year started, I choose to finish well.”
Self-care is an incredibly individualized industry, but we are collectively craving a reduced sense of isolation and an increased sense of community. Now, more than ever, it is of utmost importance to check in with one another. The mental-health crises I experienced personally as a student were intercepted by my heroes, my teachers, because of the relationships they fostered in and out of their classroom community. The mental-health crisis is only getting worse, and we are posited with the unique chance to prioritize workplace well-being as a best-practice approach, not only professionally with each other, with our students, and with our stakeholders… but also personally with ourselves.
To find out more how to foster community care alongside personal care, check out the exciting new collaboration with Happy Teacher Revolution and the EdCan Network at: www.edcan.ca/HTR
Illustration: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
Happy Teacher Revolution is an international movement on a mission to organize and conduct well-being support communities for education professionals in order to help increase their happiness, retention, and professional sustainability. To learn more visit www.HappyTeacherRevolution.com
Association for Psychological Science. (2014, May 12). Having a sense of purpose may add years to your life. ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140512124308.htm
At east city high, a large high school in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, the gymnasium was located in an outbuilding. There were two entrances, one on the east side for girls and one on the west side for boys. These entrances led to gendered washrooms and changerooms and then flowed into the main gymnasium, where all classes met at the start of the period to rendezvous with their teachers. This setup required students to select a binary gender just to get into class.
At the start of the year, Mr. Gonzalez,1 a Physical Education (PE) teacher at East City High, gave Raeyun,2 one of his Grade 10 students, special permission to use the boys’ changeroom. However, Raeyun did not want to use the boys’ changeroom. He was worried that being surrounded by other boys would only serve to underscore the ways he was different from them. Not only did Raeyun never use the boys’ changeroom, but he also never once got changed for PE at school. Instead, Raeyun came to school already in his PE clothes and stayed in them all day, no matter how sweaty he got during class. Raeyun cleverly figured out that he could sneak into the gymnasium through the back entrance by taking a staircase up from the staff parking lot. This tactic allowed Raeyun to avoid choosing a gender at the start of class.
I spent a year at East City High, moving alongside several gender-nonconforming3 youth as they went to class, attended extracurricular activities, fanned out across the campus for lunch, participated in artistic and musical performances, and just generally lived their lives. The youth who participated in the study all had different relationships with gender nonconformity, like Raeyun, whose relationship was complicated. He was a Filipino trans guy and aspired to pass; however, he experienced the world of East City High as a gender-nonconforming person most of the time. Even though he wanted to pass, Raeyun’s gender was not easily understood at East City High. Often people struggled to see Raeyun as he saw himself. Raeyun once described this complexity to me, saying: “I’m not like completely [gender nonconforming], but I’m also not like a cis guy, so, kind of like midway. Like I’m part of the binary but I’m also like part of the binary in a weird way.” Though few adults at the school understood Raeyun’s gender, many people noticed that Raeyun did not “fit in” and responded to his presence in accordance with the accommodation approaches laid out by the district’s trans-inclusive policy. Throughout Raeyun’s time at East City High, teachers pulled him aside and offered individualized workarounds and alternatives, ways for Raeyun to still participate in gendered activities without feeling left out.
As accommodation approaches become more popular in North American schools, it is important to consider which students are welcomed by it (or not), and how a reliance on accommodation neglects to challenge cisheteronormativity. While the current emphasis on inclusive washrooms and changerooms is important, this focus does not address the larger issue of rethinking how pervasively schooling is organized around a system of visible, binary gender. Accommodation as a primary approach relies on gender nonconformity as a visible identity – an identity that sticks out and can be easily categorized as not fitting in at school. Visibility, as scholars have examined, relies on racialized, ableist, and settler colonial norms (Beauchamp, 2018; Gill-Peterson, 2018). For instance, popular ideas about gender nonconformity privilege white, thin, andro-masculine forms of expression. Since people at East City High frequently struggled to understand the complexities of youths’ genders when they did not fit into these normative expectations, most of the youth that I worked with were not seen as gender nonconforming by others at the school.
How do schools’ accommodation practices privilege binary enactments of trans identities? What might it mean for all youth if we, as educators, did not rely on the presumption that we can see our students’ genders? What types of relationships with gender beyond the binary might we be able to welcome into our classrooms and schools if we let go of the need to know youths’ genders? I aim to open up these questions through highlighting the experiences of two of the gender-nonconforming youth I moved alongside during my research.
Schools across North America have responded to the growing awareness of trans and gender-nonconforming students by implementing trans-inclusive policies and procedures. These policies often rely on creating and providing accommodations. The concept of accommodations has a long history in North America, from race politics to disability law. Currently, educators, activists, and legislators are using the language of accommodations as a framework for including trans students in schools. The basic intention of offering accommodations is to create greater equity of access. One of the main criticisms of accommodation approaches is that they focus on the individuals who encounter obstacles, rather than the systems and institutions that create those obstacles.
At East City High there was a hard-fought trans-inclusive policy that instructed teachers, counsellors, and administrators in responding to trans and gender-nonconforming students. This policy directly named possible accommodations that students could receive at school: the right to access the washroom or changeroom that matched their gender identity, to be addressed by the name and pronoun they “prefer,” to dress in clothing that aligned with their gender expression, and to join athletic activities that corresponded with their gender identity. Though these rights were written for all trans students, including gender-nonconforming and non-binary youth, the material conditions and knowledge of staff largely limited the policy’s reach to binary trans students. For instance, there were only gendered sports teams and gendered changerooms, so a gender-nonconforming student who was not a boy or a girl had no sport team to join or changeroom that matched their gender identity. Also, few teachers at the school were familiar or comfortable with gender-neutral pronouns. As a result, students rarely felt invited into sharing “they/them” pronouns with anyone but close friends. The policy facilitated the experiences of students who knew they wanted to transition from one binary gender to another, but there was little space or understanding for youth who related to their genders as fluid, flexible, and changing.
In listing out specific accommodations, the policy also indicated the presumed points of conflict, concern, and/or challenges for trans students in schools. The policy attempted to highlight when and where trans students would encounter difficulties moving through their days in the same manner as cisgender students, and then offered possible workarounds. There are two main issues with this approach. First, this framework singles out trans students as problems in need of a solution in school. This issue has been covered extensively elsewhere in critiques of accommodation practices generally and specifically in relation to trans youth (Airton, 2013; Loutzenheiser, 2015; Travers, 2018). Second, this approach hinges on the intertwined ideas that trans students are visible to educators and that only visibly gender-nonconforming students will benefit from gender-inclusive schooling. Let’s examine this idea further.
Each term, Mr. Gonzalez led his Grade 10 PE class through fitness testing. Fitness testing is not required by the province and not all PE teachers at East City High incorporated this activity into their curriculum. However, it was a main feature of Mr. Gonzalez’s class. To pass a fitness test, Mr. Gonzalez instructed students that they had to perform according to an index of gendered standards that he maintained at the front of his binder. Though Mr. Gonzalez had elected to use these tests in his classes as forms of assessment, he still worried about how they excluded Raeyun. “What am I supposed to do with my trans students?” Mr. Gonzalez once asked, pointing at his page of gendered standards. Mr. Gonzalez was worried about fairness and safety, and he wanted to protect Raeyun. Therefore, he worked to create modifications for what he viewed as Raeyun’s “unique” situation. The assumption was that Raeyun, as a visibly gender-nonconforming student, was the only one who would benefit from a less binary alternative in class.
However, many of the trans youth that I worked with over my year at East City High were never seen by their teachers, counsellors, or the administrators as gender nonconforming. Since they were not visibly gender nonconforming, like Raeyun, these students were never presented with any options for workarounds at school. For instance, almost no one read Scarecrow Jones, a Grade 9 non-binary student, as gender nonconforming. “In terms of other people, no, I think that they probably do not see me [as gender nonconforming],” Scarecrow Jones explained. “Since I’m not out to many people, I don’t want to give anyone any reason to think that I am not what I appear to be.” Scarecrow Jones’ gender nonconformity did not align with others’ expectations, so they were not offered any special permissions. To others, Scarecrow Jones did not look as if they needed them. Therefore, Scarecrow Jones got ready for PE in the girls’ changeroom, was counted as a girl during activities, and was judged based upon the standards for girls. Even if Scarecrow Jones’ teacher had noticed that they were non-binary, there was nowhere else for Scarecrow Jones to get changed, no other team for them to join, and no other standards by which they could be evaluated. Scarecrow Jones described PE as “this weird heteronormative culture, like heteronormative, cisgender ingrained into everyone’s brain that’s just making it so much more difficult, and so much weirder for everyone every day.” Scarecrow Jones understood the gendered dynamics in PE class as affecting “everyone every day,” not just gender-nonconforming students. Furthermore, they believed that teachers’ strategies of offering individualized alternatives for visibly nonconforming students did not address, let alone disrupt, the cisheteronormative culture and curriculum of PE class that they found so difficult and weird. Scarecrow Jones did not want a third option; they wanted a less gendered experience of PE in general.
While PE class is perhaps more easily understood as a gendered space, these issues transcend subject areas. Though East City High had a reputation for being progressive, diverse, and inclusive, I was never in a class in which an adult created space for the possibility of gender nonconformity without either being asked to by a young person or in response to the presence of a known trans youth. Both Raeyun and Scarecrow Jones were enrolled in French Immersion at East City High. At the start of the year, Madame Blanchet took Raeyun aside and asked him what pronouns he wanted to use in French. His visible gender nonconformity compelled Madame Blanchet to reach out and initiate this conversation. While this act was helpful for Raeyun, it also singled him out as not fitting in and in need of an alternative in class.
The first time I went to Mr. Gallagher’s French drama class, he conducted a mini-lesson on French gender-neutral pronouns. I did not attend his class until the beginning of October, which meant that Mr. Gallagher had not believed it necessary to broach the existence of these pronouns until compelled to do so by the presence of my visibly gender-nonconforming body. However, Scarecrow Jones was in that class. We spoke about this situation months later. Scarecrow Jones told me, “The only time anything (related to trans topics) has ever happened is when you were in Mr. Gallagher’s class and he explained the gender-neutral pronoun.” Mr. Gallagher only brought up pronouns the first time I attended, though he always used them for me. Since he was not able to see Scarecrow Jones as gender nonconforming, Mr. Gallagher never pulled them aside, as Madame Blanchet had with Raeyun. Mr. Gallagher understood accommodating trans people as important, but by waiting until I arrived to tell students about these pronouns, Mr. Gallagher communicated both his belief that knowing this information was only pertinent if it directly affected someone, and that he would be able to tell if that were the case.
Accommodation approaches rely on the assumption that gender nonconformity is a visible identity. There is a presumption that we as educators will be able to tell if our students are trans, which allows us to respond by creating alternatives in our classrooms and schools. I argue that instead of understanding trans-inclusive policies as providing resolutions for gender-nonconforming youth in schools, we look beyond accommodation strategies to our pedagogies. For instance, rather than require our students to make their genders visible to us in ways that we can understand, we can always teach for the possibility of gender nonconformity. Educators do not need policies to create classrooms that reimagine normative expectations about gender; we can cultivate this shift by not only teaching trans topics but also through actively challenging gender roles and heteronormative assumptions in our own teaching and among students. This move means no longer categorizing students by gender, abandoning gendered assumptions that inform how we teach and interact with our students, and integrating material throughout all subjects that likewise invites these complexities.
Welcoming gender nonconformity into our classrooms means we do not need to pull students aside to ask about their pronoun preferences, because those pronouns already exist as possibilities in the classroom. Furthermore, if we approach our classrooms with the idea that students may be gender nonconforming, we no longer have to be on the lookout for signs a youth may be trans and thus in need of an accommodation. What harm would it cause to tell all students about gender-neutral pronouns and use them in our teaching? What relationships with gender might we invite into our schools if we let go of the belief that gender is binary, visible, and that we have a right to know how our students identify on any given day? Instead of asking students to make their genders known to us, we can let go of the idea that knowing students’ genders is the same as knowing them.
Illustration: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
1All names are pseudonyms.
2The youth participants chose their own names and pronouns.
3 “Gender nonconforming” is an expansive term that encompasses a multiplicity of gender identities. It underscores how a person either intentionally challenges or is perceived to disrupt normative gender constructions, including not conforming to expectations connected to their gender designated at birth.
Airton, L. (2013). Leave “those kids” alone: On the conflation of school homophobia and suffering queers. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(5), 532–562.
Beauchamp, T. (2018). Going stealth: Transgender politics and U.S. surveillance practices. Duke University Press.
Gill-Peterson, J. (2018). Histories of the transgender child. University of Minnesota Press.
Loutzenheiser, L. W. (2015). “Who are you calling a problem?”: Addressing transphobia and homophobia through school policy. Critical Studies in Education, 56(1), 99–115.
Travers, A. (2018). The trans generation: How trans kids (and their parents) are creating a gender revolution. University of Regina Press.
Last May I visited Walnut Park Elementary, which is located on the unceded traditional territories of the Wet’suwet’en in Smithers, B.C. While navigating the halls to get to Mary Neto’s Grade 4 classroom, I passed students and staff decked out in denim, fluorescent headbands, tie-dye masks, scrunchies, and leather jackets. It was ’80s day.
Mrs. Neto welcomed me into her classroom and invited me to make myself at home. Students were quietly reading at their desks, some eating snacks, while others continued to trickle in. One student asked Mrs. Neto if he could tell her something, and when she replied of course, he told her about his dog running away (they found him), and then getting stuck in traffic, almost making him late for school. Mrs. Neto empathized with his hectic morning and said she was glad he made it to school on time in the end.
Looking around, I noticed many objects and displays that were familiar from my childhood Grade 4 classroom. Lined up along the windowsill were Styrofoam cups filled with dirt and the beginnings of tiny green sprouts. On the walls were exhibits of student work. However, there were also differences. Posters on the back bulletin board showed the different “Core Competencies” (Communicating, Collaborating, Creative Thinking, Critical and Reflective Thinking, and Personal and Social Identity). The chairs students were sitting at weren’t all the standard plastic-backed chair I remember either; some were wobble stools and others were on rockers.
A buzzer interrupted my thoughts, announcing the end of individual reading time. Students were instructed to find a partner and read to each other. Two boys reading Calvin and Hobbes comics partnered up and laughed at the antics of the boy and the tiger. Over the murmur of the class I heard a girl exclaim, “Oh, poor dinosaur!” in response to the story her friend was sharing. I hadn’t been in the class for more than 15 minutes and I had already witnessed displays of students practising and strengthening their social and emotional skills.
Walnut Park Elementary is one of seven schools in Bulkley Valley School District 54 (SD 54). It is no surprise that I observed social and emotional learning (SEL) in Mrs. Neto’s class, as SEL is a priority in the district. For those of you who are unfamiliar with SEL, it focuses on five competencies (CASEL, n.d.):
There are numerous SEL programs designed for the school setting; however SD 54’s approach goes beyond a single program, which is likely one of the reasons it is so successful. SD 54 uses an approach that aligns with Comprehensive School Health (CSH).
CSH is an internationally recognized framework for supporting improvements in students’ educational outcomes while addressing school health in a planned, integrated, and holistic way. It is based upon the proven relationship between health and education: healthy students are better learners and more educated students are healthier.
Schools are often seen as an ideal setting to promote health among children and youth. Most children and youth attend school, and therefore ideas taught at school reach the majority of the population. However, educators already have a lot of material to cover in the short span of ten months. Adding more to their plate can be overwhelming, and in some cases, impossible. If you imagine each subject that educators have to cover as a block, many educators are already carrying their maximum number of blocks. Using a CSH approach to promote health ensures that we aren’t just adding another block to educators’ already towering stacks. Instead, a CSH approach seeks to embed health into the school and district culture so that making the healthy choice is the easy choice. I like to imagine CSH as a wheelbarrow rather than another block. It may take time and energy for educators and schools to figure out how best to use it, and how to organize their other blocks within it, but once they do, the wheelbarrow actually makes carrying all of the other blocks easier.
Specifically, CSH involves planning health-promoting activities in four distinct but interrelated areas:
Here is more detail about each component:
Teaching and learning occurs in the classroom and beyond. It includes any teaching and learning opportunities that build knowledge and skills. Students learn from teachers, other adults in the school and community, and from their peers.
The physical environment refers to the physical spaces in the school that support health and well-being. This includes buildings, equipment, and outdoor areas. The social environment includes the quality of relationships and emotional well-being of members of the school community.
There are many potential community partners that schools can connect with to promote health and well-being. Some examples are parents, other schools or classrooms, community organizations, and health professionals.
The final component of CSH refers to provincial, district, school, or classroom policies, as well as rules, procedures, and codes of conduct that help shape a caring and safe school environment and promote student health and well-being.
CSH can be used to promote any health topic, but for this article we’re going to take a deeper look at how SD 54’s actions to promote SEL in their schools align with a CSH approach.
In 2016, the B.C. Ministry of Education released a revamped K–9 curriculum with the significant new addition of Core Competencies. The Core Competencies closely align with the five SEL competencies. Incorporating the Core Competencies into the provincial curriculum is an example of a policy change that supports SEL in schools. Policy changes such as these are effective, especially when combined with support for implementation. While changes to the curriculum are out of the control of any one school district, the district can provide this support to ensure they are successful.
A case in point: around the same time that the new curriculum was being released, SD 54 created a new position within their district: Elementary Social and Emotional Helping Teacher. It was originally a part-time role and filled by a school counsellor in the district. Over time it developed into a .8 FTE position as demand from educators to work with the Helping Teacher increased. In a short video about the initiative, superintendent Mike McDiarmid explains that the role was spurred by increasing concern about the mental wellness of students in the district and educators feeling like they didn’t have the necessary background to teach the social and emotional curriculum.
This partnership between the district and elementary schools successfully supported implementation of SEL and the Core Competencies. Educators could schedule sessions for the Social and Emotional Helping Teacher to join their classroom to collaborate and co-teach around the social and emotional curriculum. If you think back to my earlier analogy of the teacher holding a towering stack of blocks, you might ask, “How are they supposed to load the wheelbarrow without dropping everything? They don’t have any free hands.” This shows just how important partnerships are when it comes to CSH. In SD 54, educators who had previously felt uncomfortable or unsure about how to approach SEL gained valuable skills and confidence by observing and working alongside the Social and Emotional Helping Teacher. They were then able to more easily incorporate the ideas that they had learned into their regular lesson plans, which laid the groundwork for embedding SEL into the school culture.
In Mrs. Neto’s classroom, the physical environment supported SEL with different seating options that allowed students to self-regulate depending on how they were feeling. Schools and districts can support changes in the physical environment by ensuring there is funding available for classrooms to put toward SEL. There are also strategies educators can use to impact the physical environement that don’t cost any money. Mrs. Neto turned off some of the lights in the classroom when students were high energy and it was time to focus, and had different seating configurations that were associated with different levels of ease to communicate with their classmates.
Modelling behaviour and actions is another form of teaching. By modelling SEL through their words and actions, teachers are directly impacting the social environment. Cultivating an environment of mutual respect and care will support learning and create a space that is more enjoyable for everyone. Sometimes actions speak louder than words; Mrs. Neto’s calm and empathetic demeanor set a precedent that her students followed.
Teaching and learning is part of many of the actions that I’ve already discussed, but SEL was also explicitly addressed while I was in Mrs. Neto’s class. After students each did two laps around the school (an effective way to regulate their energy levels and develop their fitness), they came inside and worked on their daily goals. Mrs. Neto started the class off by reviewing her own goal from the previous day: to read one chapter of her book. She shared that it was difficult because she was tired, but she persevered and managed to finish the chapter. Alongside their goals, students had space to write the steps they would take to achieve them and something they were grateful for. I walked around the room asking students what their goals were, and they varied from being a better listener to eating healthier snacks. In the space asking what they were grateful for, many of the students wrote, “Mrs. Neto.”
Procedures such as daily goal setting and partner reading demonstrate how policy can be established at the classroom level, and that it doesn’t have to come from the district when using a CSH approach.
These collective actions in policy, community partnerships, the environment, and teaching and learning have made SEL an integral part of students’ school days in SD 54. Hopefully you can also see how the approach the district took meant that the weight of it didn’t fall solely on any one person’s lap. And while Mrs. Neto is particularly passionate about SEL, the underlying SEL principles are present in every classroom in the district.
Health and learning are intertwined. Using a CSH approach to make health and well-being part of your school’s culture will inevitably improve student learning and behaviour and contribute to the development of more well-rounded students.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) (n.d.). CASEL’s SEL Framework: What are the core competence areas and where are they promoted? https://casel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/CASEL-SEL-Framework-11.2020.pdf
Emotion regulation requires noticing and naming emotions as they arise (e.g. joy, excitement, frustration, anger), understanding the impact these emotions have in our body, thoughts, behaviour and expressions, knowing what causes us to feel the way we do, and having strategies to navigate our way through them. Research demonstrates that emotion regulation is a skill that can be taught and developed across the lifespan.
It’s important to help learners notice and name their emotions. For example, you can help students identify book characters’ emotions and then link those to their own experience using guiding questions like: how is the character feeling? Why do you think they feel this way? What might they do to change how they feel? What would you do?
It’s helpful to teach a wide range of emotion regulation strategies, including mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, positive self-talk and positive reappraisal (i.e. reframing a negative perspective about something and changing it into a positive one). Start by teaching strategies that are accessible in the moment (like mindful breathing) and that students already know. Explain what the strategy is and why/how/when it might be used.
Practice the strategies when students are “cool” and not “hot.” When anyone is emotionally activated, it’s difficult to think rationally. In a classroom, this might include integrating a daily mindful practice during circle time or class meetings. This practice helps students feel familiar with the strategy and builds neural pathways, making the strategies more accessible when needed.
Integrate support for emotional regulation into day-to-day life (e.g. if a conflict arises, you can help learners draw on strategies they have been learning). Students can also be provided with spaces where they can go to “cool off” if needed. It’s important for children and youth to have autonomy to choose and use strategies that they are comfortable with that meet their particular needs.
It’s important to be mindful of how our behaviours provide implicit instruction and influence student’s skill development. It can be helpful for adults to narrate some of the regulation processes so that children can see/hear how they handle emotions. In a challenging situation, it’s also critical that adults use strategies themselves to stay calm so that they are available to help others respond to the situation effectively.
Parents and teachers play a critical role in supporting and teaching students the skills and strategies needed for emotion regulation. Research has shown that when students are able to successfully regulate their own emotions, they tend to experience improved health and wellbeing, greater emotional resilience (i.e. the ability to recover from stressful situations), more positive interactions with peers, and more success at home and school.
Barrett, L. F., Gross, J., Christensen, T. C., & Benvenuto, M. (2001). Knowing what you’re feeling and knowing what to do about it: Mapping the relation between emotion differentiation and emotion regulation. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 713–724. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 02699930143000239
Building Emotion Skills at Home: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b8b251189c172835f9398e1/t/5c04497988251b931be5e9aa/1543784825343/Practicing+Emotional+Intelligence.pdf
CASEL (general): casel.org
CASEL (lesson examples): https://www.casel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Sample-Teaching-Activities-to-Support-Core-Competencies-8-20-17.pdf
Edutopia (general/SEL): https://www.edutopia.org/social-emotional-learning
Graziano, P. A., Reavis, R. D., Keane, S. P., & Calkins, S. D. (2007). The role of emotion regulation in children’s early academic success. Journal of School Psychology, 45, 3–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2006.09 .002
Greater Good Parenting: https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/parenting
Greater Good (general/educators: https://ggsc.berkeley.edu
Greater Good (SEL/emotion regulation): https://ggie.berkeley.edu/student-well-being/sel-for-students-self-awareness-and-self-management/sel-for-students-emotion-regulation/
Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271–299. http://dx.doi .org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
Ivcevic, Z., & Brackett, M. (2014). Predicting school success: Comparing conscientiousness, grit, and emotion regulation ability. Journal of Research in Personality, 52, 29 –36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2014.06 .005
Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 79, 491–525. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0034654308325693
Marroquín, B., Tennen, H., & Stanton, A. L. (2017). Coping, emotion regulation, and well-being: Intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. (pp. 253-274). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58763-9_14
Stanton, A. L. (2011). Regulating emotions during stressful experiences: The adaptive utility of coping through emotional approach. In S. Folkman (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of stress, health and coping (pp. 369-386). New York: Oxford University Press.
In recent years, schools have become more interested in outdoor education for a number of reasons. Outdoor education can help students learn to appreciate nature and its biodiversity in nearby settings before being introduced to the seriousness of environmental issues (e.g. pollution and deforestation). These familiar outdoor spaces are rich learning environments where teachers can incorporate content in a concrete way to make what is learned in school more meaningful. For example, students can study biodiversity by discovering the species that surround them, use buildings to put mathematical concepts into practice, or identify problems in their community to develop a project.
To properly plan an outdoor activity, it’s essential to set a clear educational intention for each outing (e.g. have students explore the diversity of arthropods that live in environments near school).
To ensure that students know what to do outside, it’s important to define your expectations by providing clear instructions, and/or by modelling the expected behaviours.
Respect your level of comfort. It’s best to start with shorter challenges the first few times (e.g. a 15-minute outing) before gradually adding new elements with each outing.
To maximize the impact of outdoor activities, it’s important that they are integrated into and complement the activities taking place indoors (e.g. prepare an observation sheet for students to record their observations of arthropods and then have them compare their observations with their classmates when they return to class).
Although the adoption of new educational practices requires a period of adaptation, trust your experience, your adaptability and your desire to teach outside.
While outdoor education allows students to learn differently, this practice also includes many other benefits. When natural outdoor environments are integrated into teaching and learning, they can foster students’ cognitive, social, and physical development. In particular, research shows that outdoor education decreases sedentary behaviours and encourages students to be more physically active, improves their attention and motivation, and reduces stress levels.
This webinar is primarily for school district leaders, principals, and vice-principals, and school or district wellbeing leads as well as anyone interested in K-12 staff wellbeing.
We know that wellbeing – especially cases of burnout – are issues in Canadian schools. We know a lot of this is systemic – involving organizational culture, structures, priorities, and policies at various levels of the education system. However, research is still evolving about how approaches taken at the school level or the individual level could help educators cope with their daily stress. In a 12-month research project, The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) set out to develop two simple approaches that could be scaled district-wide.
This webinar broadcasted on June 16, 2021 discussed findings from this research project outlining what worked, what didn’t work, and lessons learned that can be used to support education leaders in ensuring their staff’s wellbeing.
Education Canada Discussion Kits are an EdCan Member Exclusive Benefit for Organizations (School Districts, Faculties of Education, Corporations, Non-Profits), transforming evidence-based literature from our critically-acclaimed Education Canada Magazine into practical group discussion and self-reflection guides that can be used by K-12 staff to question, strengthen, and improve their professional practice across a variety of current and emerging trends in education.
Whether you’re an educational assistant, teacher, school leader, or superintendent, we encourage you to invest in your continuous learning and that of your team through these easy-to-use and affordable professional development resources that encourage critical thinking and actionable strategies for unique school contexts.
This discussion kit complements our Spring 2021 edition of Education Canada magazine – available both in flippable PDF and online – and puts the spotlight on how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer cross-curricular relevancy and invaluable learning opportunities for students to discover their crucial role in solving local, regional, and global problems. Educators are prompted to explore how they can engage students to become active global citizens and authentically address global issues in empowering and hopeful ways.
This discussion kit contains a total of three group discussion and self-reflection guides – available in both English and French – covering topics ranging from creating a to-do list to help K-12 educators take action on the SDGs in the classroom; taking a whole-school approach to teaching the SDGs and making your school culture the catalyst for change; and using outdoor education as way to build students’ awareness of and appreciation for biodiversity.
If you’re an EdCan member, you’ll be able to access the full-version of the Teaching with the SDGs Discussion Kit, including all of our other archived and upcoming discussion kits! Simply fill out the form below! Not sure if you’re a member? Check out our list of members here. If you’re an employee of one of the organizations listed, or a student or faculty member of a university listed, then you’re already a member! Click here to create your employee, student, or faculty account. Note: To access this discussion kit, you must have an organizational membership, meaning that you are an employee, student, or faculty member of the following: Not a member yet? That’s okay! To gain unlimited access to the Well at Work Discussion Kit and all other discussion kits, we encourage you to explore our membership options here. If you require any assistance or have any questions with regards to becoming a member please contact membership@edcan.ca.
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Will the post-pandemic world return to a past version of itself or will there be a new story with changed values? The Story Model (Drake et al., 1992) is a transdisciplinary way for students and teachers to explore these questions, and address change and the “unimaginable” future. At a time of deep uncertainty, it is crucial to offer students two things: an approach to interpret the world they live in now, and a way to nurture their hope and personal agency for their future.
No matter what changes, two fundamental questions of education will remain: What is important for students to know, do, and be in the 21st century? And how is education best delivered? We cannot reliably predict the “know” of essential content, but it’s clear that artificial intelligence will play a role (Hey, Siri).
What should students be able to do? There is general global consensus that learning 21st-century skills is essential (OECD, 2020). The Councils of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) identify these skills as:
How do we want students to be? While attitudes, values, and behaviour are influenced by cultural norms, in Canada we want students to develop a good work ethic, and to be flexible, open-minded, and committed to being good citizens.
How is the curriculum best delivered? In a post-pandemic world, we anticipate an expansion of technological skills, integrated curriculum, project-based learning, design thinking, and personalized and collaborative learning.
The Story Model (see Figure 1) is aligned with our view of future education and can be integrated into curriculum in any subject area. It is the perfect vehicle for a collaborative multidisciplinary project and is particularly useful to explore “wicked problems.” The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs.un.org/goals) are examples of wicked problems. Ending poverty, achieving zero hunger, and addressing climate change are problems so complex and intertwined that they can seem overwhelming and unsolvable. The Story Model’s emphasis on individual and collective agency for positive change counters despair and motivates action in the face of such problems.
Humans make meaning through narrative (Binder, 2011; Vygotsky, 1978). Individuals “story” their lives to make sense of them, interpreting experiences to create a story that has a perceived past and an anticipated future. Groups, cultures, and nations also have stories. Stories are filled with emotion and conflict. Embedded values influence decisions. The Story Model makes these stories and values explicit. Alone or collaboratively, people can consciously choose to change the storyline if they do not like its direction. We can create a new story to live by.
1. Explore a topic. Students work with the Story Model graphic (Figure 1) to explore a relevant, engaging topic through the four interwoven layers that frame the model: personal, cultural, global, and universal. Topics such as pollution, the Olympics, beauty products, hockey, video games, and racism can be studied at different levels of complexity throughout the grade spectrum. Let’s use the topic of blue jeans to consider each frame.
The personal narrative is the first lens of knowing. Canadian students, familiar with this popular fashion item, can write or tell a story about wearing or wanting to wear jeans. A personal connection increases engagement and highlights the relevance of the topic.
The second lens is the cultural story. Each student lives within at least one cultural story, be it ethnic, religious, social class, and so on. Some cultures may disapprove of jeans, whereas jeans are almost a uniform in others. Critical reflection helps deconstruct these cultural stories and their often taken-for-granted values.
The third lens is the global story. The popularity of blue jeans has significant global repercussions for ecology, labour, and the economy, to name a few. Cotton cultivation and manufacturing consume vast quantities of water, produce toxic pollution, and exploit labour. Multinational companies advertise, transport, and sell globally. When Canadians purchase their jeans at a local mall, they tap into a huge international network worth $100.25 billion US in 2020 (Shahbandeh, 2020).
The universal story connects us as humans. We all experience human needs and hold values. Humans everywhere value survival, health, and social belonging (Maslow, 1954). Yet, these universal human rights are threatened by the fashion industry.
2. Analyze the present story. Individually or in groups, students analyze the present story of their topic(s) by situating it within a transdisciplinary real-world web (Figure 2) that has been designed by the teacher, the student, or both together. The categories on the web are flexible; for example, the web in Figure 2 is missing politics/ government, global connections, and the arts. Perhaps they would appear on the web you design. The key idea is that categories are broad and rooted in real-world context. For younger children, the web would contain fewer words and words that are more familiar to them. For example, the word economy becomes money; equity becomes fairness; law becomes rules; technology becomes computers.
An effective web ultimately pushes any topic into the global realm. It also extends any topic from a disciplinary to a transdisciplinary context. Students use each category on their web to identify what they already know. They supplement their knowledge with research. Frequently, they consult with other students to make connections among categories. Systems thinking can be made visible by drawing connecting lines on a paper transdisciplinary real-world web or mind-mapping on the computer. Completing this exercise shows that in the real world, every category on the web is interconnected.
3. Identify the old story and its values. Next, students consider the present story in light of the past, their personal stories, and the transdisciplinary real-world web. The present story contains elements of the past. What are the historic roots? What explicit values of the old story persist? Old story values of the jeans story would include industrialization and capitalist values. Are there positive parts of the old story that are still useful? For example, students might enjoy the comfort of jeans. However, learning that their manufacture has environmental repercussions and economic disparities invites critical thinking.
4. Create a new story. Applying the Story Model graphic, students envision different futures. The model proposes two (or more) divergent paths for the future: either a projected story as a continuation of the old story or a preferred story as an imagined idealized alternative. The projected story would continue an industrial worldview with values such as profit, competition, greed and power. The preferred path will be an idealistic (and possibly unrealistic) story. This path might include eco-friendly manufacturing, and safe, secure working conditions based on different values such as sustainability, social justice, collaboration, and empathy.
Students critically evaluate the old and present stories and look for ways to reconcile them with their idealistic future story. The future story needs to consider the interdependence of multiple categories in the dynamic, transdisciplinary real-world web. Creating a new story evolves in an iterative, creative way, focused on interwoven questions (Figure 3).
The new story is not an either/or choice; it is more of a selective synthesis, a “both/and” resolution. Martin (2007) defined this process as integrative thinking – generating a solution that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to either one. Central to the process is the question: “How can we accomplish [this] while also accomplishing [that]? As students grapple with a possible answer, more and more complications arise. The question “but what about…?” always defeats a simple, superficial solution.
Returning to the blue jeans example, one tension between seemingly opposing positions is profit versus health. How can we have a thriving denim/blue jeans industry while also having a healthy environment and healthy workers? The resolution must resolve around a collective and sustainable option, which is what we are seeing with the green initiatives (water reuse, fair wage practices, use of natural dyes) of major companies that have responded to collective consumer activism (Farra, 2020; Sarkar, 2020).
5. Commit to “my” story. As a “final” step, students develop a values-based personal action plan to actualize their new story. They might purchase sustainably made jeans, endorse eco-responsible companies on their blogs, repurpose used denim, and so on.
Education (research, schools), media, and legislation propel a new story forward. The seatbelt is a good example of a formerly new story that is a taken-for-granted one today. The acceptance of seatbelts happened when people learned how they enhanced personal safety and when laws were created to penalize people who did not wear them. Emerging new stories are LBGTQ2+ equity, integration of AI, legalization of marijuana, and mainstream adoption of alternative power sources.
A new story does not stay “new” for long; it becomes the status quo from which another new tension arises. Thus, students come to understand the importance of lifelong reflective critique of the status quo. In an uncertain world, they see that action is the antidote for despair – that the individual has influence. Look at Greta.
The model can be simplified in multiple ways and combinations to suit various ages.
For the richest experience, apply both the Story Model and the web; students can follow specific steps to move from “old” to “new” story.
To learn how the Story Model was used in a Grade 9 Science class, read the article “A New Story in Grade 9 Science,” by Susan M. Drake, Bruce Hemphill, and Ron Chappell: https://greenteacher.com/the-story-model-empowering-students-to-design-their-future
1 Adapted from Drake, S. M., Bebbington, J., Laksman et al. (1992). Developing an integrated curriculum using the story model. OISE Press.
CMEC. Global Competencies.
www.cmec.ca/682/global_competencies.html
Drake, S. M., Bebbington, J., Laksman, S. et al. (1992). Developing an integrated curriculum using the story model. OISE Press.
Binder, M. J. (2011). Remembering why: The role of story in educational research. In Education, 17(2).
https://ineducation.ca/ineducation/article/view/82/357
Farra, E. (2020, April 24). These are the 10 sustainable denim brands you should know about now. Vogue.
www.vogue.com/article/best-sustainable-denim-brands
Martin, R. (2007). The opposable mind: How successful leaders win through integrative thinking. Harvard Business School Press.
Maslow, A. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.
OECD. (2020). OECD Future of education and skills 2030.
www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/about
Sarkar, P. (2020, July 29). Making denim & jeans [in a] more sustainable way – initiatives by top apparel brands. Online Clothing Study.
https://www.onlineclothingstudy.com/2020/07/making-denim-jeans-more-sustainable-way.html
Shahbandeh, M. (2020). Global denim market – Statistics & facts. Statista.
www.statista.com/topics/5959/denim-market-worldwide
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society. Harvard University Press.
Over the past two decades, classroom assessment for formative purposes has taken centre stage in curriculum policies, assessment standards, and professional learning conversations across Canada. Educators have increasingly embraced and implemented formative assessment approaches under the umbrella of assessment for learning. This endorsement of formative assessment is unsurprising as it has been shown to improve student achievement, metacognition, and motivation (Hattie, 2013) and to aid in promoting more equitable outcomes for lower-achieving students (Black & Wiliam, 2009). As a result, assessment is now more integrated within teaching and learning in Canadian classrooms than ever before, fostering an assessment culture that prioritizes ongoing feedback and the growth mindset (Shepard, 2019).
In this article, we ask: Is the ongoing pandemic and related disruptions to Canadian education threatening the positive assessment culture we’ve worked so hard to create? Classroom teachers have been thrust into online or blended learning contexts, often with little notice and preparation, forcing them to reimagine and transform their instructional and assessment practices in real time. While summative assessment remains a required component of schooling, many teachers are challenged by how to adapt formative assessment practices for online and blended learning contexts. With screens now interfacing so much of our interactions with students, the teaching profession faces pressing questions such as: How can we effectively engage assessment for learning with our students when learning is mediated by technology? How do we maintain the spirit of formative assessment when we don’t “see” or “hear” our students as much as we used to, if at all? and How do we avoid reverting to an emphasis on summative assessment in our online and blended classrooms?
Indeed, emerging research confirms these concerns. A recent report by Doucet and his colleagues (2020) highlights five key assessment-related challenges currently experienced by educators around the world:
While there is cause for optimism that these global challenges in K–12 education will dissipate, it is likely that current conditions will persist for some time and that elements of online or blended learning will take on greater precedence in future classrooms. As we collectively pivot and adapt our approaches to assessment in online and blended learning contexts, it is critical that classroom teachers, school and system leaders, policymakers, researchers, and teacher educators come together to rethink how we assess in online and blended K–12 learning. The changes we make now will not only serve our current students but also inform how we integrate technology in assessment after the pandemic subsides. In this vein, we offer three foundational tenets to help us move forward together to continue to foster a productive assessment culture – whether in online, blended, or face-to-face classrooms.
In rethinking how we assess online, it is essential to remember that we need not start from scratch. Instead, we can look beyond the surface of tried-and-true assessments to their underlying first principles and focus on: the learning we need to assess from our students (purpose), how students may demonstrate their learning (process), and what it is that we might do with that assessment information (use). In keeping an assessment’s purpose, process, and use top of mind, we are better positioned to incorporate technological tools that enable the assessment – whether in a face-to-face, blended, or online learning context. For instance, technology has now made it easy to capture how an idea or a product has evolved over time. Students can save multiple iterations of their work easily and with minimal burden, and easily share their work with others for feedback. Adopting these new technological options serves to strengthen the validity of the assessment by generating richer and more numerous observations of the learning, allowing for better triangulation of student assessment data. While there is no shortage of technological tools and applications that support assessment for learning in K–12 learning – which can be overwhelming in and of itself – emphasizing first principles allows us to confidently select the tool that best aligns with our assessment’s purpose, process, and use.
The shift to online and blended learning has created new professional challenges for educators and led to new stresses for students and families. Now more than ever, we must keep students’ needs, interests, and well-being at the centre of all teaching and assessment activities. Whether face-to-face, blended, or online, we can use assessment for learning to build relationships with our students and support their sense of inclusion. Leveraging one of the greatest strengths of assessment for learning – its capacity to build community – is essential in this time of prolonged isolation. Engaging students in peer feedback processes through group work, collaborative problem-solving activities, breakout rooms, or discussion boards can be a productive place to start. In addition, ongoing teacher-student conversations provide opportunities to celebrate successes, provide feedback, and show our students care and compassion. This supports not only their growth as learners but also their development as individuals. Further, allowing multiple opportunities for students to engage in self-assessment and reflection can serve to support their self-regulation and mental health. And importantly, aside from providing feedback on learning itself, assessment for learning can enable teachers’ ongoing communication with students and their parents/guardians to ensure students have access to the necessary infrastructure to support their learning and address potential equity or social-emotional issues students might be facing.
As we experience and reflect on the sudden and widespread shift to online and blended classrooms, we must continue to learn together about how assessment supports our teaching and our students’ learning and well-being. In the decade prior to the pandemic, educators were increasingly exploring and using various new technologies in the classroom to support teaching, learning, and assessment. However, the pandemic has forced our hand as a profession, requiring widespread adoption of technology in all aspects of our teaching practice, including assessment (Doucet et al., 2020). So, while systematic professional learning about assessment was already essential prior to 2020, the global pandemic has magnified the need to help classroom teachers develop new strategies and leverage technology to support both formative and summative assessment in online and blended contexts. As a result, it is critical that educators across classrooms, schools, boards, regions, and provinces engage in various forms of professional learning and inquiry – whether through self-directed learning, collaborative professional inquiry, professional webinars, social media networks, or formal coursework. We are all learning at a rapid pace that has been forced upon us by circumstances beyond our control, but we can use this opportunity to grow and develop as individuals and as a profession. We particularly encourage a system-wide approach to professional learning within boards and engagement with online professional learning networks such as the Canadian Assessment for Learning Network1 (CAfLN) so that educators may generate relevant and appropriate insights to their local contexts.
While education is constantly evolving and changing, the global pandemic has intensified the need to adapt how we teach and assess our students to better support their learning, development, and well-being. As a profession, we have been forced to change, expand, and redefine the assessments we were doing face to face into online and blended learning contexts. We must acknowledge the steep learning curve we are experiencing as a profession and prioritize open and honest communication among all stakeholders involved – students, teachers, school leaders, system leaders, policymakers, parents/guardians, other professionals, researchers, and teacher educators. We must also pause to celebrate our successes and progress to date in forging new territory in K–12 assessment amid a challenging time. Moreover, we must continue to allocate time, resources, and supports as we continue to learn and grow in our understanding and practice of assessment.
The pandemic has altered many things in our world, but it has not eradicated what we know about the value and importance of assessment for learning and our shared desire to sustain a productive assessment culture in schools and classrooms. Nor has it changed the spirit of assessment, which is captured by the etymology of the word assess itself: to “sit beside” our learners and support their learning. At the end of the day, we need to continue to come together as an education community to use research-based practices to collectively navigate online assessment and promote a positive assessment culture that transcends context.
1 Canadian Assessment for Learning Network: www.cafln.ca
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21, 5–31.
Doucet, A., Netolicky, D., Timmers, K., et al. (2020). Thinking about pedagogy in an unfolding pandemic: An independent report on approaches to distance learning during COVID19 school closures to inform Education International and UNESCO. Education International.
https://issuu.com/educationinternational/docs/2020_research_covid-19_eng
Hattie, J. (2013). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
Shepard, L. (2019). Classroom assessment to support teaching and learning. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 683(1), 183–200.
In early 2020, I sat in the revolving restaurant of the Calgary Tower on a cold January night to share a meal with a teacher and vice-principal from Tarui, Japan. We were celebrating the successful conclusion of a cultural exchange between our schools. Over the week, we had opened our school, billeted students in our homes, and shared rich cultural experiences. Through broken English and Japanese we told stories and forged bonds. Little did we know that within weeks, borders would close, and the COVID-19 pandemic would change all our lives fundamentally. Looking back, it is easy to see the ways we took that experience, and so many like it, for granted.
In early February, our school community would be thrown into disarray. One of our students returned from a trip to China and questions began to arise. Parent calls followed. What if the student had been exposed to this novel coronavirus? What if it came into the school? This previously distant disease became an unsettling and very present reality.
As anxiety rose, I worked with parents, staff, and my admin team to maintain calm while coping with crippling uncertainty myself. My responsibility to create a safe environment for children had never felt so challenging or elusive. Following guidance, we didn’t encourage the use of masks in our school, citing their limited effectiveness
(if only we knew!) and scarce supply for healthcare workers. On Sunday, March 15 in the late afternoon, we watched a news conference announcing the closure of physical schools effective Monday morning. We had no more notice of the closures than the families we served.
Overnight, we were thrust into this strange new reality. My wife was home sick with our three school-aged children who were suddenly distance learning. I felt I had no choice but to go in to work to help guide my community through those tenuous early days of remote teaching and learning.
Our staff met in-person the next morning as we had always done. I naively felt prepared to lead. After all, I had spent years researching instructional leadership. In our meeting I told teachers to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” I am surprised now they didn’t walk out. “Uncomfortable” was a grave underestimation of how they were feeling. A teacher with a compromised immune system contacted me that night to say he could not meet in person anymore. In that moment, my perspective changed. I realized that the very lives of my staff would be impacted by my decisions from here on out. The gravity of that responsibility sat heavy on my shoulders.
We scrambled to provide professional learning and resources to our teachers as they moved online. We shared resources, PD was organized, and teachers worked together to troubleshoot new tech tools. In the end, our success pivoting to online learning was built on relationships rather than program. We worked tirelessly to reach out to families in those months. We reached out to one another. We focused on building community despite physical distance.
The pandemic has been one of the most dynamic, nerve-wracking, challenging, exhausting, and at times exciting experiences of my career as a school principal. From moving classes online overnight in the spring, to riding the wave of uncertainty and fear about school reopening through the summer, to reinventing school around safety guidelines in the fall, to the constant threat of contact-tracing and isolations this winter, this school year has been like no other. It has been said that leadership is a rainy-day job. In the 2020–21 school year, we are living through a monsoon.
On that cold January night with our Japanese counterparts, we compared our school systems in the hopes that this cross-pollination of ideas would lead to positive change. We dreamed of future trips to Japan and the celebrations and fun that would ensue. While those dreams now seem distant, I often think of our friends from Japan and wonder how they experienced this global calamity, how they adapted their school and family life, and when we will meet again. We will certainly not take it for granted when we do.
The pandemic has tested our resilience and fortitude as educators, parents, and individuals. I am proud of how my school has served our community and how all teachers continue to show commitment to their students even in the face of personal health risks. Let us move forward through this pandemic with hope for better things to come while celebrating the gift of a new perspective.
Photo: courtesy of Kirk Linton
First published in Education Canada, June 2021
Digital technologies have taken a more prominent role in Canadian classrooms in recent years, but COVID-19 has pushed technology centre stage, requiring educators and students to strengthen their digital skills and potentially reconsider their traditional roles.
In April of 2021, the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) released a new study, 21st Century Digital Skills: Competencies, innovations and curriculum in Canada, which examines, among other things, the top technical and human skills (or “soft skills”) required by educators and students.
As the 2020/21 school year winds down and planning for the fall begins, uncertainty remains around the vaccine rollout and the coming term. What will the coming school year like? A return to in-class instruction, remote learning, or a mixture of both (hybrid learning)? What is certain is that the demand for digital skills will continue to grow.
When used skillfully as part of an educator’s toolkit, edtech possesses the ability to strengthen student engagement while encouraging academic success. The rise of technology in classrooms is surfacing new pedagogical best practices that encourage better collaboration, improved interactivity, and greater flexibility for educators and their students. These methods and their accompanying skills are likely to have long-lasting implications for educators who have adopted both in-class and online teaching responsibilities.
The 21st Century Digital Skills report, which draws on a series of interviews from subject matter experts across Canada, highlights the changing role of the K–12 educator to that of a “facilitator” of learning, which is a fundamental departure from the long-standing “sage on the stage” paradigm. As indicated by interview respondents, educational technologies have quickened the pace of this transition while also challenging outdated policies surrounding the use of cell phones and other technologies in the classroom.
This shift calls on educators to cultivate new technical skills, but it also requires strong “human skills.” Study interviewees also noted that human skills (which was preferred to the term “soft skills,” and includes critical thinking, creativity, and adaptability) are not vulnerable to the impacts of automation, artificial intelligence, or technology obsolescence.
These skills and competencies are reaching new and more nuanced levels as technology deepens considerations around, for example, critical thinking and media literacy. As one educator in the study stated:
With summer approaching, teachers who are interested in improving their technical skills can take advantage of a wide array of online courses in digital technologies, which include media literacy.
An analysis of study interviews identified the following list of both technical and human skills, ranked in descending order by frequency of mentions:
Digital literacy Typically refers to competency in using core technologies (this can range from the use of search engines, office productivity software, basic operating system functions, up to database usage, coding, and computational thinking) and involves the ability to find, evaluate, create, and share content online. As the world increasingly adopts digital technologies, higher standards of digital literacy are needed to fully participate. Educators can work to improve their digital literacy through various available online training resources, by participating on various platforms, and as part of professional learning communities.
Information/media literacy This involves understanding how and why a media message is constructed – as well as its impact. In addition to accessing media and information, there is also the need to be able to analyze it critically, evaluate different media, and to ultimately be able to use it effectively. Educators can find a variety of media literacy resources, curriculum guides, lesson plans, and video tutorials through provincial teaching accreditation bodies (e.g. Ontario College of Teachers) teacher associations, individual school boards or online at places such as mediasmarts.ca.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) fluency and awareness As teachers are increasingly required to use LMS environments such as Moodle and D2L to deliver teaching materials, receive assignments, and communicate with students and parents, it is crucial they feel comfortable navigating this software. In addition to training provided by school districts, there are professional development conferences, web tutorials, and online courses through Coursera or edX.
Digital engagement Although “engagement” is typically understood to be linked to interpersonal communication, this term was often used by the educators we interviewed in discussing retention rates and maintaining student attention while using learning management systems or social media platforms such as Tik Tok, Snapchat, etc. It is not necessary for educators to become avid users of these social media platforms, but it is helpful for them to have an awareness of these growing trends and how they fit into the larger digital ecosystem.
Data and analytics competencies Digitization has greatly increased the amount of data available to decision makers, and this leads to increased interest in the use of analytics to make better “evidence-based decisions” and identify patterns that were not previously apparent. This is definitely the case in business and government, but it is also increasingly relevant in education. Increasingly, learning management systems are integrating data analytics for personalized learning insights as well as data dashboards (Gunawardena, 2017). There is a growing field of data analytics training at postsecondary institutions as well as online courses for classroom teachers.1
Technology use in the classroom today varies greatly among educators, their schools, regions, and even provinces, but best practices have emerged. Study interviewees and education experts have highlighted the following:
While digital skills and new technology tools are important – and teachers need to receive both training and support to effectively work with these technologies – the subject experts consulted for ICTC’s 21st Century Digital Skills study noted that digital tools are part of a much larger educational transition. In this evolution, educators facilitate student development based on their individual needs and interests to help keep pace with a rapidly changing world.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, June 2021
The 21st Century Digital Skills report also includes a focus on educator training and support, an exploration of the top technical, academic, and human skills required of K–12 students, and examples of innovative technologies being leveraged in Canadian classrooms.
1 See, for example, www.edx.org/course/analytics-for-the-classroom-teacher
Gunawardena, A. (2017). Brief survey of analytics in K12 and higher education. International Journal on Innovations in Online Education. doi: 10.1615/IntJInnovOnlineEdu.v1.i1.80
This department is generously sponsored by IPEVO
www.ipevo.com