From an ecological perspective inspired by Bronfenbrenner’s theory of human development, resilience can be defined as a process initiated by systems when they find themselves in the face of adversity (Ungar, 2018). This article examines the resilience of students during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on language resilience in a francophone minority context.
According to Ungar’s model (2018), each human being is a system in and of itself, while also being a constituent of other systems. A student is therefore a system interacting with others – their school, their community(ies), family, etc. It is by interacting with these systems that students construct themselves, build their sense of the world and participate in (re)producing other systems.
Resilience is a process that aims to return the individual system1 to wellness or well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic has placed entire nations in a context of health adversity. We have seen how they have been able to mobilize various internal resources (financial means, knowledge, attitudes, capacities) and external resources (vaccines, knowledge, allies) within a network of international systems.
In the midst of this upheaval, families, parents, children, students, teachers and school administrators mobilized internal and external resources in a process of resilience that began with school closures and the creation of an “ad hoc” virtual school space. We have therefore been able to confirm the extent to which the school is not only a place of learning but also, in terms of supervising children, a concomitant system of family and social systems. Moreover, the role of schools in reducing social inequalities has been confirmed when family systems have taken on more responsibility for the schooling of children. On the one hand, for example, we saw the lower availability of Internet and computer equipment in low-income households or in those located far from the country’s urban centres. On the other hand, families with the necessary internal resources created “school cells” and hired a qualified teacher to ensure their children’s continued schooling, while the school system struggled to meet its teacher staffing needs and other children were doing minimal hours of virtual schooling, with or without adult supervision or support at home. This is reminiscent of the creation of playgroups by some parents to ensure the availability of a French-language space for their preschoolers in an Anglo-dominated setting, as well as the trend noted in research on school choice: only some families actively choose their children’s school. Thus, the mobilization of internal and external resources by a system, in this case a family system, depends largely on the availability, accessibility and relevance of such resources.
In a francophone minority context, it is also important to take into account accessibility to the French language during the pandemic and afterwards. We already know that in the most Anglo-dominated francophone and Acadian communities, the school is the only public space where the French language enjoys a higher official status than English, although the latter enjoys a very high social status in student interactions. This is the case, for example, in Halifax (Liboy and Patouma, 2021), Toronto (Heller, 1994; Heller, 2006) and Ontario more generally (Gérin-Lajoie, 2004), Manitoba (Cormier, 2020) and Vancouver (Levasseur, 2020). The introduction of the Civic Community School concept developed by FNCSF (Fédération nationale des conseils scolaires francophones) in 2011 and the identification of the sociolinguistic role of the education system as a major issue by AEFO (Association des enseignantes et enseignants franco-ontariens) in 2022 confirmed the centrality of the school for community language resilience in an Anglo-dominated context. Within the school, students find spaces for social interaction that are conducive to contextualized language production and reproduction. The closure of schools and community centres therefore placed young people in a context of language adversity.
The pandemic has had a significant impact on the mental health of adolescents (Vaillancourt et al., 2021), particularly because of the social isolation that has significantly reduced peer contact. Even when health measures have been relaxed to allow social distancing, young people in a minority setting may have encountered difficulties in getting together with their francophone friends if these friends were scattered over an area beyond the limits of their neighbourhood. Indeed, although some historical francophone or Acadian communities occupy a well-defined geographic space (the Brayon population of the City of Edmundston, the Acadian population of Pubnico or the Franco-Ontarian population of Hearst, for example), their lives are for the most part intertwined in a municipality with the lives of an English-speaking majority, thus diminishing the opportunities to communicate in French. Under such conditions, a decision becomes necessary with respect to mobilizing internal and external resources that can support language resilience in French.
Data was collected in various provinces: in Ontario and Prince Edward Island in conjunction with communications sent to various groups in the school system; in New Brunswick in connection with the research component of the Canadian Playful Schools Network; and in Nova Scotia as part of a Master’s thesis. The data shows that the closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant effect on the availability and accessibility of external and internal resources relevant to the language resilience of some young French speakers. In our conversations with teachers and parents in Ontario and Prince Edward Island, we heard that some children’s ability and motivation to speak French decreased during the pandemic. Teachers in some elementary school settings noted that a greater number of students who did not attend daycare because of the pandemic entered school with little or no knowledge of the French language. Teachers at one school were interviewed at the annual ACELF conference and estimated that 70 percent of students did not speak French when they arrived at school in September 2022.
Secondary school students had the habit of switching from English to French when in the vicinity of a teacher in the school hallways; after two years of interrupted copresence, however, this automatic reflex seems to have generally disappeared when students returned to the classroom. Teachers have reported that some students simply refuse to speak French in the classroom, even with staff. A Master’s study of three secondary school students in Nova Scotia informs us about the factors that may have contributed to such changes and describes how in-person school acts as a concurrent system supporting students’ language resilience process (Sutherland, 2022).
Three secondary school seniors from schools across Nova Scotia participated in individual online narrative conversations during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite distinct sociolinguistic profiles, each one testified to the importance of school for their language resilience (Sutherland, 2022). The in-school resources which they mobilized were (1) access to academic French in French courses, (2) legitimization of the local variety of French (Acadjonne) by certain staff members and (3) extracurricular activities. The French language school thus provides these students with three spaces in which various language resources and norms of communication in French can circulate: interaction in academic French, in Acadjonne and in the language of young people. Although Acadjonne was available to two of these students at home, with one of them speaking French closer to the academic standard with her parents, the pandemic greatly reduced their daily access to academic French and interactions with their peers in French.
When their schools were closed, students in French-language schools had access to a reduced number of classes. French classes were maintained, but accessibility to academic French was reduced as the trend shifted from participative education to lecture-style teaching. The individuals Sutherland met noted in particular the relevance of interaction in the French classroom to their access to academic language. Considering that, for two students, this linguistic variety was not legitimate within their family and community settings but was required for their legitimacy as francophones outside these environments, interactions in academic French proved to be a necessary resource for post-secondary language resilience for these students.
In addition, students testified to the importance of a French-language space, as their propensity to use the dominant language with their peers meant that, in the absence of school-organized extracurricular activities, they turned to social media to communicate with their friends. However, they used English mostly, if not exclusively, in the digital socialization space. For these individuals, the school closure during the pandemic entailed the loss of spaces of social interaction relevant to the production and contextualized language reproduction of the various forms of French.
However, unlike a growing number of young people living in a minority setting, those met by Sutherland had access to French-language resources in their families and in their respective communities. They were also among the young people who mobilized extracurricular school activities as a resource for their resilience in general and for their language resilience in particular. In Ontario, parents from a minority background but who use French at home and mobilize French language resources in their interactions with their children noted that their children spoke and read more frequently in French. This seems to have resulted in an improvement in their French vocabulary and a greater ability to move from a situation of translinguistic communication (i.e., the creative mobilization by bi-plurilingual persons of all their linguistic resources to create meaning and communicate a message) to a unilingual situation. Could it be that, by keeping their children away from a socialization space between young people where French is little used (the school hallways, for example), school closures contributed to these students’ linguistic resilience in French?
In a minority context, the surrounding society cannot ensure that students and their families will have sustained access to the language and linguistic resources distributed by the French-language school. Consequently, the French-language school offers great potential as an external resource for students’ language resilience. Under current conditions, it is not able to fully carry out this role in the context of a pandemic or e-learning. Moreover, some anecdotal data suggests that the French-language school contributes negatively to the language resilience of some students. Thus, there is still much to be learned about the interaction between the school and students’ other language ecology systems, and about the contribution of this interaction to short- and long-term language resilience.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Cormier, G. (2020). School perspectives and definitions of linguistic identity in a minority environment: How do French-language schools respond to the needs of 21st century students faced with the many social, cultural and demographic changes underway? Éducation et francophonie, 48(1), 53-72. doi.org/10.7202/1070100ar
Gérin-Lajoie, D. (2004). La problématique identitaire et l’école de langue française en Ontario. Francophonies d’Amérique, (18), 171–179. doi.org/10.7202/1005360ar
Heller, M. (1994). Crosswords: Language, education, and ethnicity in French Ontario. Mouton de Gruyter.
Heller, M. (2006). Linguistic minorities and modernity: A sociolinguistic ethnography (2nd ed.). Continuum.
Levasseur, C. (2020). Being multilingual and Francophone: identity representations and positioning of francization students in Vancouver. Éducation et francophonie, 48(1), 93-121. doi.org/10.7202/1070102ar
Liboy, M.-G., & Patouma, J. (2021). L’école francophone en milieu minoritaire est-elle apte à intégrer les élèves immigrants et réfugiés récemment arrivés au pays? Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, 53(2), 23-40.
Sutherland, H. (2022). De l’insécurité linguistique à la résilience linguistique : le rôle de l’école de langue française dans la formation de la résilience linguistique des adolescents. [Master’s thesis, University of Ottawa]. ResearchuO. https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/43860
Vaillancourt, T., Beauchamp, M., et al. (2021). Children and schools during COVID-19 and beyond: Engagement and connection through opportunity. Royal Society of Canada. https://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/C%26S%20PB_EN.pdf
Ungar, M. (2018). Systemic resilience: Principles and processes for a science of change in contexts of adversity. Ecology and Society, 23(4). doi.org/10.5751/ES-10385-230434
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, April 2023
1 Gauvin-Lepage and Lefebvre (2010) focus their research on family resilience. In this context, internal resources belong to the family while external resources are located in the systems around them.
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How can we “unlearn” colonialism and bring kinship relations into the school and classroom experience?
This knowledge exchange between researcher, Dr. Dwayne Donald, and a group of education professionals, expands on the ideas in Dr. Donald’s Education Canada article and shares the perspectives and challenges of educators as they think about decolonizing their own schools and classrooms.
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How can education change networks (ECNs) support Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and community members to create relationships and ultimately better meet the needs of Indigenous (and all) learners? We have been investigating this question as part of an emerging field of research concerned with developing decolonizing education practices in relationship with Indigenous communities. Overall, we have found that ECNs based on relationality within ethical spaces of engagement have the greatest potential for positive change. Specifically, our research has found that ECNs are most effective when they keep the focus of the learning explicit, acknowledge local protocols, make space to engage with local Indigenous knowledge and Knowledge Keepers, and identify and address structural barriers.
We recognize that colonialism continues to shape educational systems and student experiences across Canada (e.g. Pidgeon, 2022). For example, many educators may communicate lower expectations for Indigenous students as opposed to the other students in their classes (Yee, 2021). Colonial learning contexts can be traumatizing for Indigenous and other historically marginalized students, families, and communities, and deeply troubling for teachers and administrators struggling to meet the needs of Indigenous (and all) students (Yee, 2021). Educators often do not know how to begin a process of transformation or what changes to make (Donald, 2009). At the same time, Indigenous communities may be eager to work with and influence Western educational systems, but may not have opportunities to participate in educational change (Yee, 2021).
We propose that to move away from colonial practices, educators can begin by exploring decolonizing possibilities. Niigan Sinclair (Kirk & Lam, 2020) suggests that decolonization involves dismantling racist and oppressive ideas. It requires us to reflect on our beliefs and assumptions and how they are connected to the various forms of privilege we experience (e.g. cultural, socio-economic, gender, etc.). In education, decolonization involves disrupting classroom and school practices that maintain power imbalances. However, it is vital that educators do not stop there. As Graham Smith (2000) suggests, it is critical to reimagine what is possible and what should be implemented, in relationship with Indigenous Peoples. Gaudry and Lorenz (2018) talk about Indigenization as including and advancing the perspectives and intellectual priorities of Indigenous communities to support Indigenous cultural resurgence. When we collaborate with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and educators, we can create more inclusive learning communities for Indigenous (and all) learners.
To explore decolonizing possibilities in education, researchers, school districts, and Indigenous communities can come together in ECNs to de-centre dominant ways of knowing and reimagine teaching and student success. ECNs are learning networks that engage diverse teachers, administrators, community members, parents, and students as collaborative inquirers and co-constructors of equity-oriented teaching practices (Cochran-Smith, 2015; Schnellert et al., 2022). Collaboration between educators and Indigenous community partners within ECNs offers tremendous potential for co-creating teaching practices that foreground local Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and for supporting system and practice change.
The Welcoming Indigenous Ways of Knowing ECN, where Indigenous and non-Indigenous teachers, school administrators, academics, and school district personnel work together with syilx Elders and Knowledge Keepers, provides an example of how ECNs can support educational change (Schnellert et al., 2022). Five times during the school year, on professional development days, this B.C. ECN meets as one large group to experience land-based teachings from local Indigenous Knowledge Keepers. Then in the afternoon, educators complement this learning by participating in smaller inquiry groups (6–15 educators) to plan and implement their new understandings in classroom practice (Schnellert et al., 2022). In this way, ECNs can support disrupting and transforming classroom teaching and learning, thus taking up Principle of Reconciliation 4 that requires engagement in “constructive action on addressing the ongoing legacies of colonialism that have had destructive impacts on Aboriginal Peoples’ education” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, p. 3).
In our work we have found that efforts to decolonize are best realized when they are shaped by ethical relationality. Nêhiyaw (or Cree) scholar Dwayne Donald explains, “Ethical relationality is an ecological understanding of human relationality that does not deny difference, but rather seeks to more deeply understand how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other” (2009, p. 6). This understanding means that members of the ECN embrace their Indigenous or non-Indigenous positionality, and vulnerably speak about their own understandings, experiences, and the learning they feel they need. Within ECNs, this kind of approach allows us to open decolonizing possibilities through critique and the recognition of diverse ways of being and knowing. Building from a stance of ethical relationality helps create a solid foundation for the work to be done in ECNs, but can only unfold in an ethical space of engagement.
Even though ethical relationality requires vulnerability, non-Indigenous ECN members may fear being called out for their role in colonialism and Indigenous ECN members may fear continued colonial violence. As such, creating an ethical space of engagement is key. According to Ermine (2007), when Indigenous and Western knowledge systems come together, a space to “step out of our allegiances” (p. 202) can emerge. This ethical space of engagement invites us to share assumptions, values, and interests we each hold, while creating opportunities to learn (and unlearn) more deeply and authentically. Members can co-construct this space by discussing how they understand respect, for example, or how they might centre Indigenous perspectives as part of their decolonizing process. Creating an ethical space means taking a holistic stance – considering and attending to our personal thoughts, feelings, and actions and their often unintended impact on others. If members build this space together, agreeing on processes for sharing, decolonization becomes more relevant and responsive to those in the room. To summarize, ECNs can be structured as an ethical space to support Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and community partners to collaborate in disrupting and transforming classroom teaching and learning by valuing and welcoming Indigenous ways of knowing.
Our collaborative research with ECNs offers insights that can support similar efforts in other Canadian contexts. In the next section we reflect on a few lessons we have learned through the ECN described above, but also from our diverse experiences working in this area over the last decade.
Central to exploring decolonizing possibilities is asking educators to interrogate their own identities and their role as educators, deconstruct ways that classrooms and schools reproduce privilege, and reimagine their practice to welcome Indigenous ways of knowing. We have found that explicit attention to these goals and activities is important. Educators attend professional development opportunities – and networks – with the assumption that they will receive strategies to take away and use in their contexts. While this may be part of the work of ECNs, decolonizing processes first and foremost require educators to examine their own privilege through multiple lenses. To reference Donald’s work (2022), surfacing and addressing unconscious bias within ourselves and our teaching involves unlearning. This unlearning is uncomfortable, but ECN members report that it is also powerful; educators need opportunities to encounter colonial truths, explore their identities, commit to a co-constructed vision of education, and then work to align their practice accordingly. Participants in one ECN shared that they are more confident in identifying and disrupting teaching practices that reproduce privilege as a result of these kinds of experiences within the ECN (Schnellert et al., 2022).
Also key has been the introduction of protocols that make space for Indigenous and historically marginalized participants to share their experiences and insights within the larger work of the ECN. Circle protocols, where each participant has an opportunity to share and other ECN members are invited to listen without judgment, have been important. Other strategies include building in time for IBPOC educators and participants to meet (caucus) as a separate group, and ensuring that Knowledge Keepers are introduced and thanked with appropriate recognition of their role, the knowledge they bring, and the responsibilities they carry. Sometimes we demonstrate respect and reciprocity through food. When working with Indigenous communities, it is also important to clarify how knowledge can be shared. Some knowledge is sacred and not to be shared freely. It is key to be responsive to and respectful of local protocols as a way of centring Indigenous perspectives.
One of the most impactful aspects of ECNs has been the opportunity to engage with local knowledge and Knowledge Keepers. ECN members in one study expressed appreciation for local Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, the impact of engaging with foundational ideas over several convenings, and opportunities to work with Knowledge Keepers to apply what they were learning in their classrooms with students (Schnellert et al., 2022). For these ECN members, a particularly transformative aspect of the work with Knowledge Keepers involved land-based learning. Educators said that they engaged more deeply with local Indigenous stories and concepts when ECN meetings happened on the land (Schnellert et al., 2022).
From our work with ECNs, we have identified several factors related to systems-level educational change that need to be identified and addressed in order to open decolonizing possibilities within education systems. Lack of knowledge has consistently been surfaced as a significant concern (e.g., Schnellert et al., 2022; Yee, 2021). Most educators were not educated with a decolonizing or Indigenizing lens as students or in teacher education. Educators valued learning about how colonial history has influenced what is taught and how we teach in schools. Using this lens, we can disrupt perceptions of neutrality in the school system. Another key structural factor to consider is pervasive anti-Indigenous racism – in particular, the racism of low expectations (Auditor General of British Columbia, 2015). Increased awareness has led teachers to engage with Indigenous learners from a strength-based perspective, to mentor and encourage Indigenous students, and to explicitly address comments that perpetuate stereotypes (Schnellert et al., 2022).
Education change networks are a strong tool for opening decolonizing possibilities across the educational system and within schools. Specifically, we explore decolonizing and Indigenizing possibilities as we work in ethical relationality across difference, in ethical spaces of engagement. In our collective experiences, we have found it important to keep the focus of the learning explicit, acknowledge local protocols and make space, engage with local Indigenous knowledge and Knowledge Keepers, and identify and address structural barriers. In this way, educators can come together to more effectively open decolonizing possibilities within themselves, and for the next generations in our classes.
Photo: Leyton Schnellert
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Auditor General of British Columbia. (2015). An audit of the education of Aboriginal students in the B.C. public school system. Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia. www.bcauditor.com/sites/default/files/publications/reports/OAGBC%20Aboriginal%20Education%20Report_FINAL.pdf
Cochran-Smith, M. (2015). Teacher communities for equity, Kappa Delta Pi Record, 51(3), 109–113. doi: 10.1080/00228958.2015.1056659
Donald, D. (2009). Forts, curriculum, and Indigenous Métissage: Imagining decolonization of Aboriginal-Canadian relations in educational contexts. First Nations Perspectives, 2(1), 1–24.
Donald, D. (2022, September 19). A curriculum for educating differently. Education Canada, 20–24. www.edcan.ca/articles/a-curriculum-for-educating-differently
Ermine, W. (2007). The ethical space of engagement. Indigenous Law Journal, 6(1), 193–203. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ilj/article/view/27669
Gaudry, A., & Lorenz, D. (2018). Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: Navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian academy. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 14(3), 218–227. doi.org/ 10.1177/1177180118785382
Kirk, J., & Lam, M. (Hosts). (2020, October 8). Indigenizing education (No. 26) [Audio podcast episode]. In Leaning in and Speaking Out. BU Cares Research Centre. www.bucares.ca/podcast/n5c2968wkajahe2
Pidgeon, M. (2022). Indigenous resiliency, renewal, and resurgence in decolonizing Canadian higher education. In S. D. Styres & A. Kempf (Eds.), Troubling truth and reconciliation in Canadian education: Critical perspectives (pp. 15–37). University of Alberta Press.
Schnellert, L., Davidson, S. F., & Donovan, B. (2022). Working towards relational accountability in education change networks through local indigenous ways of knowing and being, Cogent Education, 9(1), 2098614. doi: 10.1080/2331186X.2022.2098614
Smith, G. H. (2000). Protecting and respecting Indigenous knowledge. In M. Battiste (Ed.), Reclaiming Indigenous voice and vision (pp. 209–224). UBC Press.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Truth and reconciliation commission of Canada: Calls to action. www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_ Action_English2.pdf
Yee, N. L. (2021). Review of inclusive and special education: Final report. Department of Education for Yukon Territory. https://yukon.ca/en/review-inclusive-and-special-education-yukon-final-report
Let’s put aside the myth that K–12 teachers and leaders who identify as Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) are experts in equity, making them naturally inclined to discuss race, class, or gender at the drop of a hat. Let’s also put aside the assumption that only racialized and Indigenous people should be engaged in equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonization work. Let’s recognize that all educators and leaders should be committing to and engaging in anti-racism, anti-oppression and decolonization practices.
We know that doing anti-racism and anti-oppression work in education is often emotionally and mentally exhausting. Walking into intimidating and stressful spaces where unconscious and conscious biases coupled with microaggressions and macroaggressions are present is not for the faint of heart – especially given that there is a relative overrepresentation of white, male identities in leadership positions and a corresponding underrepresentation of Indigenous, female, queer, and racialized identities.
We also know that identities are complex, fluid, and overlapping, impacted by experiences and contexts. While it is true that lived experiences of equity-deserving populations can lead to deeper understandings of bias and assumptions, it does not prepare us to address and to counter, in a very public manner, systemic inequities. Gaining insight into lived experiences by acknowledging distinct histories, stories and identities is one way to be inclusive and responsive to the increasing diversity of school populations. For those learning and relearning about past, present, and omitted histories and working in contexts where distinct stories emerge, Applewhite (2022) suggests that we take an action-oriented approach: “Stop doing the work and start being the work.”
Culturally sustaining pedagogy
One way of being the work is engaging in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP). Building on the work of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (Gay, 2000), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) affirms students’ backgrounds by connecting cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and frames of reference to their local school and societal contexts. An important consideration is the development of critical consciousness to recognize and critique societal inequalities. Within the CSP framework (Paris & Alim, 2017), the diversity of cultural ways of being and doing in communities is recognized, acknowledged, and sustained via:
Sharing stories and coming to a fuller understanding of histories, customs, and traditions of diverse populations in the school communities would provide opportunities for teachers, students, staff, and leaders in K–12 to learn and to unlearn about deep-rooted assumptions about teaching and learning. Many educators recognize that being authentic and responsive with their actions, and supporting decisions reflective of culture and values, is foundational to this work. The real changes occur when reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action (Schön, 1985; 1987) push us to ask ourselves whether the implemented practices were good enough.
Representation matters
We know that representation matters when it comes to who is included and who is excluded in teaching, leadership, school district, and school trustee contexts. Despite anti-racist policies and mandates across the board in the multiplicity of educational contexts, access, equity, and equitable representation remain ongoing challenges. Indigenous and racialized students need to see themselves better reflected in the curriculum, and in the teaching and leadership staff of their schools.
Kendi (2019) urges all K–12 educators, regardless of identity, to engage in anti-racist education by considering long-held assumptions about race, culture, identity, and gender. By cultivating the tools for recognizing, observing, and understanding internal and external reactions to diverse realities, we can all come to a deeper understanding and insightful reflections about our positionality in societal systems and our impact on student outcomes and successes.
Addressing the needs of diverse educational populations, some public school systems are engaging in explicit equity initiatives that transform policies and administrative actions, that engage in decolonization and anti-racism practices, that support professional and human resource development, and that actively seek out community and parent engagement. Important considerations include advocacy and accountability measures that monitor improvement to support high achievement for all diverse students.
Addressing systemic racism
The Peel District School Board (PDSB) is an example of how a school system addressed systemic racism. On the heels of a very public outcry to dismantle practices and behaviours that led to racialized educational disparities, an independent external review concluded that the PDSB did not have the capacity to address the issues of systemic racism. Key recommendations of the external review focused on collecting data on issues like bullying and suspensions, advancing a culturally responsive curriculum, anti-racist training for educators, promoting racially responsive leadership and establishing an Education Equity Office. Positioned in the school district, the Equity Office would provide an organizational structure to address issues of systemic racism on a proactive and on-going basis by implementing:
So, as we consider how to be the work and how to take action, let’s learn from one another, let’s think about and reflect on how we are being equitable in our teaching and leadership practices. By listening attentively to our students, our colleagues, and our communities, by intentionally sharing ideas and by coming together, we gather strength in numbers. Maybe an Equity Education Office in each of our school districts/divisions can support strategic priorities by reviewing policies and procedures, questioning and interrogating professional learning, and influencing pathways for success for students. By creating agency, by establishing policy and process, by making space, by reaching out, by speaking out, and by bringing voices not often heard to the foreground, we can target transformative and action-based practices. While the fear of getting it wrong or saying the wrong thing may constrict our actions, we can no longer stand by and move away from unsettling provocations, conversations, and experiences. Together, we can create equitable and inclusive environments by approaching the work with humility and an authentic interest in improvement, change, and transformation.
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Applewhite, B. (2022). Stop doing the work, start being the work. Principl(ed), 44–50.
Equity Matters Manitoba. (n.d.). Education Equity Office Campaign. https://equitymattersmb.ca
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press
Henry, F., Dua, E., et al. (2017) (Eds.). The equity myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian universities. University of British Columbia Press.
Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. New World.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3).
Paris, D., & Alim, S. H. (Eds.) (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. BasicBooks.
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. John Wiley & Sons.
A GROUP OF ABOUT 30 scholars, school administrators, graduate students, and educators gathered for three days in St. John’s, N.L., in August 2022 to engage in conversations about what it means to “decolonize professional learning.” For many of us, this was the first in-person gathering since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and it was food for the heart and soul.
Decolonize-ing is an action verb that seeks to alter existing inequities and disparities in outcomes for equity-deserving groups. As a process, a pedagogy toward decoloniality works to change unequal relations of power and notions of “professionalism,” which are often taken for granted without examining who they privilege and exclude and in what ways. Decolonizing your mind, heart, and soul translates to identifying the roots of why things are the way they are and working toward transformative possibilities that centre the experiences, voices, and perspectives of historically minoritized peoples, particularly Indigeneity.
What can be a starting point for educators grappling with where to begin? It starts with investing in pedagogical approaches that support students who have in the past or currently are experiencing trauma, including intergenerational trauma such as the impact of residential schools. This involves creating spaces for healing where students have opportunities to share their lived experiences as embodied curriculum, including who they are and how they are impacted socially and emotionally by societal issues and systemic barriers in education. As a whole, this constitutes a trauma-informed approach to critical pedagogy where engaging with pain and suffering is encouraged, as it has the potential for empowerment and liberation (Eizadirad et al., 2022). We must operate from a harm reduction stance, aiming to reduce systemic barriers for equity-deserving groups while advocating for new policies, practices, and processes that are more equitable and just. This needs to be an all-hands-on deck effort involving ideas and voices of different students, parents, teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders, particularly minoritized groups.
Hegemony was coined by Antonio Gramsci as a theoretical concept describing how the ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – established and maintained control of power through the combination of force and consent. Hegemony is socio-culturally constructed through a dynamic process that influences social relations through legitimization of a narrow set of ideologies as “commonsense,” often told and perpetuated by those in positions of power and authority. Through this process, ideas are taken for granted without questioning.
We can apply the concept of hegemony to the rhetoric of “professionalism” in education. Teacher “professionalism” has become a tool for exclusion and deficit thinking in such areas as how we are expected to dress, speak, and interact with others. This applies to students, educators, and administrators. As Weiner (2014) reminds us,
“The subtle cruelty of hegemony is that over time it becomes deeply embedded, part of the natural air we breathe. One cannot peel back the layers of oppression and identify a group or groups of people as the instigators of a conscious conspiracy to keep people silent and disenfranchised. Instead, the ideas and practices of hegemony become part and parcel of everyday life – the stock opinions, conventional wisdom, or commonsense ways of seeing and ordering the world that people take for granted.” (p. 40)
The central feature of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony is that it operates without force as “it becomes our worldview and through hegemony we are in complicity with our own subordination” (Madison, 2012, p. 65).
Part of decolonizing and unlearning is engaging with critical questions, rather than accepting simplified or distorted answers. For example, we must question processes or lack of them that contribute to the limited teacher diversity in the workforce. When it comes to the existing lack of teacher diversity from coast to coast to coast in Canada, which does not reflect the demographics of students and communities we serve, we must ask: What are the barriers for racialized and minoritized educators to secure permanent teaching positions? What has become hegemonic within educational policies and practices, functioning as gatekeeping mechanisms, and what needs disruption and dismantling? How can processes be improved to value diverse identities for who they are and their contributions and experiences, instead of pressuring them to fit the hegemonic notion of how they are supposed to look and how they are supposed to show up to do the job? What data is being collected (e.g. race-based data) and shared with the public to ensure transparency and accountability and to improve diversity over time? This is the struggle to decolonize education and to meet the needs of equity-deserving students and educators who face more systemic barriers in the education system.
“Small fires” were used as the main pedagogical approach at the gathering to facilitate interactions amongst participants. Participants gathered in small groups based on a topic of interest where a leader facilitated a discussion. The intention was to encourage unlearning and challenge each other through a lens that valued each participant’s unique identities, lived and professional experiences, and complex intersections with privilege and oppression. The objective was to build relationships, value spirituality, and create networks across the country for those who advocate for and engage in decolonizing education at various levels from K to 12 and in higher education.
Below are reflections from three of the small fire leaders.
The theme for my small fire circle was “Resistance, Subversion, and Non-Hegemonic Approaches” in education. As a small group we engaged in discussions about what decolonization means and looks like in action in our various roles. I used an interactive activity with sticky notes to promote reflection. I proposed that participants reflect on four major questions:
Discussing the purpose of research in response to the question posed, I shared my conviction that research should be a tool for advocacy and activism. As a collective, we agreed that research should not only critique but also facilitate ways of doing things differently to support the needs of all students. This prompt led to further discussions about how and in what ways we can disrupt “professionalism” in educational settings in our various roles and relative access to power. As part of their responses, participants emphasized the importance of “actions over appearance,” “seeing students of colour,” “different ways of knowing being valued,” and “rejecting the expectations of the status quo.” We all agreed that we must take risks, at times be subversive, and challenge the status quo internally and externally.
During my small fire session, I discussed the theme of “deconstructing systemic anti-Black racism within la francophonie.” I highlighted how the first step to combating systemic anti-Black racism is transformative leadership. In particular, I focused on the following questions:
The discussions aligned with what I have learned from my research with educational system leaders in la francophonie (see my article in this issue: www.edcan.ca/articles/critical-incidents-in-educational-leadership/) about the importance of examining critical incidents (experiences that confirm, modify, or fragment leadership) that arise to identify areas for change (Sider et al., 2017). Principals and other system leaders are called upon to review critical incidents as valuable data. Examples of critical incidents that can be examined together include how a school board’s administration delayed removal of a white school principal after two interrelated situations involving anti-Black racism, and more specifically what it took for the Black student to finally be heard two years later via the Black Lives Matter London Twitter account (CBC News, 2021).
As a collective, we discussed how essential conversations that de-centre whiteness and traditional educational leadership discourse are central to transformative change to create more equitable spaces for belonging (Cranston & Jean-Michel, 2021). Participants felt it is necessary to couple prevention with concrete and continual interventions. The discussions within the group indicated that it is not about one-off activities, training sessions, or reacting in a way that reduces students, families, and community members from equity-deserving groups to anecdotal evidence or experiences. Rather, transformative leadership is about listening and creating conditions for inclusion. Instead of being fixated on what is impossible, we can continually explore how as educational leaders we can embrace diversity and work toward creating conditions, policies, and processes that advocate for equitable inclusion for all. This work has to be done at the individual and institutional levels for it to be sustainable in society.
Borrowing from the title of Tuck and Yang’s (2012) much read and discussed provocation “decolonization is not a metaphor” and some of its underlying ideas, participants were invited to consider how they might shift from seeing themselves as “allies” to becoming engaged “co-conspirators” to dismantle the Eurocentric, white supremacist system of higher education, including the discourse and rhetoric associated with professionalism.
In offering my own experiences as a racialized, immigrant, first-generation university student who is also a cis-gendered, heterosexual male and holds a senior administrative role in a Canadian university, I framed the conversation to consider:
The discussions in the group focused on key characteristics of decoloniality (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), particularly how we can work together to uncover the social and ideological hierarchies embedded in the education system from kindergarten through post-secondary that are designed and sustained to disconnect, displace, and dispossess Indigenous and racialized peoples. As part of enacting decoloniality, participants identified the importance of creating learning opportunities for students to connect to traditional lands and their histories, various languages and cultures, and family ancestry. As a collective we agreed that we require decolonizing at the ideological and ontological level.
PART OF DECOLONIZING is asking critical questions – with consideration for where we raise such questions, how we raise them, with whom, and for what purposes. This is the spirituality of decolonizing work to undo and reduce the harm caused by the intersections of colonial logic, white supremacy, and imperialism. Decolonizing work can occur in different settings. At the micro level, it can involve creating mentorship opportunities and support networks to ensure minoritized identities do not leave educational spaces due to lack of inclusion, belonging, or being on the receiving end of constant microaggressions. At the institutional level, it translates into not only creating access to opportunities for equity-deserving groups but also ensuring they are supported and valued for who they are, how they show up, and what they contribute to the teaching and learning community once they arrive within educational spaces, even if that differs or goes against the status quo.
Indigenous Podcasts
https://newjourneys.ca/en/articles/11-indigenous-podcasts-for-your-listening-pleasure
Healing and Decolonizing: Bridging Our Communities Toolkit
https://youthrex.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/boc-report.pdf
Remembering the Children Educator’s Guide
www.canadashistory.ca/getmedia/688d366f-1a9c-42a4-9705-019724b22d26/EduClaRememberingTheChildrenEduGuide.pdf.aspx
A Toolkit for Selecting Equitable and Culturally Relevant and Responsive Texts for English and Language, K-12
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H5qAxvEK9Dg2LhYqejS54B-gRc9x1KpX/view
Creating Racism-Free Schools through Critical/Courageous Conversations on Race
www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/docs/support/racism_free/full_doc.pdf
Photos: Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Ardavan Eizadirad
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
CBC News, (2021, May 29). Ontario principal removed after twice wearing hair of Black student like a wig. CBC News.
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ontario-principal-removed-hair-black-student-1.6045755
Cranston, J., & Jean-Paul, M. (2021). Braiding Indigenous and racialized knowledges into an educational leadership for justice. In F. English (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse, (pp. 1–27). Palgrave Macmillan.
doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39666-4_120-1
Eizadirad, A., Campbell, A., & Sider, S. (2022). Counternarratives of pain and suffering as critical pedagogy: Disrupting oppression in educational contexts. Routledge.
Hayes, A., Luckett, K., & Misiaszek, G. (2021). Possibilities and complexities of decolonising higher education: Critical perspectives on praxis. Teaching in Higher Education, 26(7-8), 887–901.
Hernandez, J., & Khadem, M. (2017). Transformative leadership: Mastering the hidden dimension. Harmony Equity Press.
Madison, D. (2012). Critical ethnography: Methods, ethics, and performance. SAGE Publications, Inc.
Mignolo W., & Walsh C. E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts analytics praxis. Duke University Press.
OVER TEN YEARS AGO, the Urban Communities Cohort (UCC) was established at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education to ensure teacher candidates were better prepared to work within urban priority schools (UPS’s). We (a group of professors, school administrators, and educators in the field) saw the need for teacher candidates to be ready to challenge inequities that were pervasive across priority schools. In many ways, the initiative grew out of our collective frustration at the resistance to change throughout the system that is linked to institutional and systemic racism. For example, we observed:
The UCC was originally framed as a way of supporting teacher candidates to engage with students and teachers in UPS’s and to advance their own understanding of equity and social justice. In this article, we trace the evolution of this school/university partnership that began with the UCC and a focus on teacher candidates, and led to further spaces for critical conversations that continue to provoke and support our unlearning and learning. What has emerged over the past decade is more multifaceted than we could have first imagined.
Let’s step back and consider the beginning. Linda, a university researcher and lead author of this article, spent three months immersed in one UPS where she spoke with everyone – students, custodial staff, teachers, and administrators – to gain a critical understanding of the culture of the school (Ibrahim et al., 2012). This school, like the other 32 designated as urban priority schools across Ontario, had very low scores on Grade 9 and 10 literacy and mathematics standardized tests, a history of comparatively high suspensions and expulsions, and a public perception of being a “difficult school,” perhaps even a “failing school.”
The in-depth ethnography revealed what the administrators and educators within the building already knew – that the profile failed to capture the calibre of the educators and students; it missed “who and what we were in the school,” as one staff member put it. The EQAO scores measured where the students were at a point in time, taking no account of where they had come from or their future promise and potential. The school population included newcomers to Canada, along with youth displaced by conflict, who may have spent recent years in refugee camps and who might not have had consistent schooling even in their own language, let alone in English or French. For these students the school was a safe haven, a building with walls as opposed to a tent. Yet if the school was to support all of these students in their learning journeys, there was a critical need for a teaching staff who were better equipped to do this work.
So began the partnership through which teacher candidates and university professors became part of the school community. The UCC supported teacher candidates to develop culturally sustaining, relevant, and responsive pedagogy, and immersed them in urban school communities from day one of their teacher education program. University classes were taught within the building and the school administrators were integral to the teacher candidate’s professional learning – speaking to teacher candidates on the first day of school, walking them through the corridors, welcoming them for their required school-based practicum, inviting them to experience and feel what it takes to become a teacher committed to social change.
Hard Conversations was started by Kristin Kopra, Sherwyn Solomon, and Geordie Walker, who are lead partners in the UCC. This initiative brings together school administrators and university researchers to engage in challenging conversations about what is happening in their schools. Over the past four years, this group has worked outside the school board, gathering in their own time to examine the relevant research, understand their own positionality and roles, grapple with systemic biases within their schools, and most importantly commit to actionable strategies they can take back into their daily practice. Their goal is to first understand and then dismantle systemic barriers so they, as school leaders, can better serve Indigenous, Black, and racialized students, families, and communities. Put simply, group members consider their role in perpetuating inequities and what each individual can do to change practices in their own schools. Kristin, a UPS principal who began as a program lead for Indigenous education, explains why the group was started: “We didn’t do it for any other reason than we need things to change for kids in schools.” Many of the topics taken up in this group focus on the power of administrators and teachers and the damaging choices that the Education Act legitimizes.
Now in its fifth year, the group has grown to well over 70 colleagues engaged in these critical conversations. Membership is open to all and includes school and central administrators, senior staff, managers, University of Ottawa professors, and sometimes teacher candidates. Meetings have varied in frequency and in format, ranging from small group pods to larger university-based weekend-long conferences (including guests such as leading researchers in equity and racism and Indigenous leaders).
An example of the work of the Hard Conversations group is challenging the disproportionate numbers of suspensions for Black, racialized, and Indigenous students. Kristin recalls from her own school’s statistics in her first year that “if we were not the highest, we were the second-highest in the district; ridiculous!” This reflects what Sherwyn refers to as “hard-baked” structural obstacles, where our ignorance gets perpetuated as law. In Ontario’s Education Act the suspension of a student is at the discretion of the principal. While administrators might be well-meaning, Sherwyn underlines, “A principal’s perspective on what is acceptable school conduct and what is not is often colonial in nature, as these emerge from the imperialism that has had an impact on what schools look like across the globe.” There is no learning in a suspension, which reaffirms the exclusion of the student and causes harm that may reverberate for generations. The data speaks for itself in Ottawa schools: if you are Black or Middle Eastern, you are two and a half times more likely to be suspended. Hard Conversations provides a forum where administrators can examine critical questions around the discretionary suspensions for which they have authority, such as: How does removing students from what might be one of their few safe spaces serve already vulnerable students? How might race be playing into our suspension decisions? What will you do differently rather than suspend Black youth? The conversations, critical reflection, and transformations in principal practices emerging from Hard Conversations should be celebrated. But we are mindful that they represent a small initial step within some schools, and that colonialism pervades our education systems and guides decisions and practices that retraumatize those who have already been traumatized. As educators we ask the question, how can we avoid the re-traumatization of marginalized individuals and groups?
In our ongoing university/school partnerships to support teacher education, in-service educators, and youth, we are repeatedly made aware of how each of us is unlearning and re-learning in our work with students, student teachers, and in relations with each other (Donald, D. 2022). We recognize that we are all, regardless of ethnicity and positionality, impacted in our work and relations by colonial structures.
Our conversations bring to the surface what we have been taught and raised to believe – certain narratives about society, about other people, about positionality – and the structures that support these narratives. These histories and understandings have been passed from parents and grandparents and transmitted to us in institutions such as schools and universities. They become what we know to be true. But what happens when we start examining these past truths in light of other realities we see around us, and question if our long-held narratives are true? Geordie, former principal and now part of the UCC teaching team, asks, “Why is it so hard for me as a white person who is a dad to believe it is necessary for my Black friend or Indigenous friend to teach their kids to proceed with extreme caution in police interactions and how to survive an arrest, when that was never part my children’s education or learning?” With this question, he underlines that it starts with the individual journey. He shares that his own decolonization process is about “becoming as educated as you can about the past.” Understanding the past and the present context as educators and as teacher educators requires an openness to examine history, to recognize or acknowledge what culture is, whose it is, the backgrounds of the people in our schools, and how they see their own history from different perspectives.
At Le Phare Elementary School, Sherwyn has established an Equity Advisory Committee, a parent group that names and challenges social injustices and advises on things they would like to see going on at the school. As part of the district and school learning plan, Sherwyn encourages his school community to incorporate more Algonquin teaching, learning, and understanding, as well as more knowledge of the school experience of Black and other marginalized groups. Sherwyn argues that such initiatives go part way to addressing racism like that he experienced in his own childhood as a Black newcomer to Canada – such as having to learn to speak without his Caribbean accent, and the colonial violence he and his family faced as immigrants. Across the school district, student groups, such as the LGBTQ2+, Indigenous, and Muslim student groups among others, are being led by people with that lived experience. This school-based change has not come without resistance, and equity coordinators have had to work tirelessly to demand that, after years of being pushed to the margins as “urban problems,” these groups are placed at the centre stage of education.
Since the beginning of the UCC, decisions made at faculty and program levels have presented structural and other challenges. For example, from the start of UCC, cohort leads worked with school principals to create UPS practicum placements for UCC teacher candidates. Recently this has been discontinued by the Faculty, and UCC teacher candidates find themselves with placements across the spectrum of local schools, while other teacher candidates unaccustomed to urban priority schools are posted in the UCC partner schools. Additionally, we have now seen the community service learning component, where all UCC teacher candidates would become part of the school community at the start of the school year, come to an end. Despite these ongoing challenges, we continued to invest in the UCC by gaining research funds to support critical learning possibilities for educators (pre-service and in-service). In particular, we worked with civics teachers in UPS’s to open up spaces for students to find different points of entry into that course. This was done by inviting students to share their lived experiences – either as newcomers to Canada, as long-time settlers, or as First Nation, Métis and Inuit peoples – first and foremost in this course. Working within these diverse contexts, we have attempted to contribute to a decolonizing process by breaking down subject silos and enabling interdisciplinary learning through a pedagogy of relationship building within and beyond the classroom.
After 30 years in education, Geordie perhaps conveys best what education and teacher education might look like in practice: “It is about prioritizing relationships over curriculum, being humble, and learning from kids.” When we think about our own work of unlearning through UCC and Hard Conversations, we envision educators (ourselves, teacher candidates, teachers, and school administrators) coming to education not because we are specialists in a subject, but because first and foremost we want to serve students and build relationships. As educators, we need to be able to put aside our biases and prejudice and embrace whoever comes through our door and provide a sense of belonging for every student in the classroom regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, language, or any other false barriers. In the UCC, we are supporting teacher candidates and teacher educators (ourselves) to engage deeply with teacher identities and lived histories, and to examine the truths and untruths we hold on to. Decolonizing teacher education requires providing opportunities for teacher candidates to build relationships based on care and compassion that prioritize students’ potentials and possibilities and reject deficit thinking.
THE UCC PARTNERSHIP has provided a space for multiple and ongoing hard conversations and professional un/learning across university and school contexts. A decade of critical conversations, research, and collaborative action in the service of students in urban priority schools has transformed our own practices in university and school classrooms. In our shared quest to unlearn taken-for-granted assumptions and “truths,” we continue to challenge ourselves and each other with the responsibilities we have in relations to each other and with students, families, and communities.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
Ibrahim, A., Radford, L. et al. (2012). Urban priority program: Challenges, priorities and hope. Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.
Donald, D. (2022, September 19) A curriculum for educating differently: Unlearning colonialism and renewing kinship relations. Educating Canada, 62(2). https://www.edcan.ca/articles/a-curriculum-for-educating-differently/
In 2021, a white, French-language Catholic school principal was removed from his school two years after wearing a Black student’s shaved-off hair as a wig during a cancer fundraiser, and again for Halloween months later – but only once these two occurrences were reported on social media by Black Lives Matter London (CBC News, 2021). Since school improvement is unlikely to be successful without effective educational leadership (Rodgers et al., 2016), it is imperative for leaders to examine the verbal, behavioural or environmental indignities they – intentionally or unintentionally – communicate toward, or about, racialized persons through racial microaggressions. A racial microaggression is a brief, everyday indignity that (re)produces racial slights or insults toward Black students, principals, or teachers (Brown, 2019; Frank et al., 2021; Sue et al., 2007.)
What do we know about systemic anti-Black racism in French-language education? A limited number of studies have explored systemic anti-Black racism within minoritized French-language education in Canada (Ibrahim, 2014; Jean-Pierre, 2020; Villella, 2021). These studies provide insight into how systemic anti-Black racism manifests itself within this context. For example, Schroeter and James (2015) found that Black francophone immigrant students felt that white school staff, including a school principal, give white immigrant students more help to reach their career goals. Madibbo (2021) identifies three conditions that illustrate and/or enable systemic anti-Black racism within this context:
Examining critical incidents
My PhD thesis (2021) details systemic anti-Black racism critical incidents in educational leadership within francophone Ontario and their impact on Black and francophone students, teachers, families, and community partners.
This narrative case study explored the intercultural and anti-racist competency of educational system leaders through critical incidents in leadership. A system leader, such as a school principal, is an individual who also represents a professional organization, and creates and or implements a society’s policies, procedures, and regulations (Villella, 2021). A critical incident is a positive or negative experience that affects one’s leadership by confirming it, by changing it, or by shattering it (Sider et al., 2017; Yamamoto et al., 2014).
Nine educational and system leaders, most of whom were, or had recently been, school principals, completed three semi-structured interviews and a survey. Data analysis revealed that almost all the critical incidents mentioned by the nine participants as being intercultural in nature centred around Black school community members, and mostly Black boys and men, including a Catholic priest. While their survey responses suggested that most of the nine participants’ intercultural competency was well developed, the way in which they dealt with critical incidents involving Black students, staff, families, and community members indicated that their anti-racist competency needs further development. In the case of intercultural and anti-racist competencies, little to no university courses or workshop training was reported by the participants; they mostly trained themselves through international volunteer work, reading, and personal experience sharing. As such, they mostly did informal training (Villella, 2021). It should therefore not come as a surprise that critical incidents revealing systemic anti-Black racism and racial microaggressions manifested themselves in the participants’ leadership.
What the data reveals: Multiple racial microaggressions
Below, I present and analyze four systemic anti-Black racism critical incidents (translation by the author) through Brown’s (2019) racial microaggression framework of pathologizing, cultural insensitivity, persistent devaluation of Black teachers’ competency, second-class citizenship in schools, and the myth of meritocracy. Brown indicates that such microaggressions are not only steeped in anti-Black ideology, but they are also documented reasons why Black teachers1 leave the teaching profession.
“I had a meeting with the principal. So, I think that there is a former colleague of mine, I will go and see him… He says, ‘[Hassan], you’re in the white people’s staff room with me here.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You don’t see? The immigrant table is over there.’ So, I have to tell you that even when I was there, there were two staff rooms.”
In this school, Black teachers (and especially Black immigrant teachers) are the targets of systemic anti-Black racism in the staff room in the form of second-class status (Brown, 2019; Frank et al., 2021).
“[Students] were telling him off, I mean, plus [he] spoke with a rather pronounced accent. This was probably one of the first Black people they saw in person… it was one of the first classes that he had in Canada, because he had just been substituting in Montreal, if I recall correctly… In the corner at the back of the class [were] four young men who had fun putting him down: ‘Sir, I don’t understand anything, I don’t understand when you talk. It makes no sense.’”
In this example of racial microaggressions toward a Black teacher, there is a persistent devaluation of his capabilities for teaching (Brown, 2019; Frank et al., 2021) by the students and as well as by the participant, but there is also racialized linguicism (Madibbo, 2021), i.e. a combined linguistic and racial discrimination toward a Black person who is also a recent immigrant.
“They’re unable to integrate… and that, that’s despite trying to coach them. We tried… the traditionalism is too entrenched in their practices… you get into a conflict, and that’s where there are layoffs, where there are unsatisfactory assessments.”
Here, we can observe another racial microaggression whereby a white administrator pathologizes Black teachers through his fixed vision of competency based on conformity to French-language education that can be traced back to the white ideologies historically normalized within educational policies and practices.
“I’ve done interviews, and the questions we were asking, we already had an idea of what we wanted as answers… A few times, I realized that we weren’t talking about the [Black] person’s competency. Someone said, “Well, the person said this or that… and they may hit the child to discipline them.”
In this example, the racial microaggressions manifest themselves as a form of pathologizing (Brown, 2019 ; Frank et al., 2021).
“I’m doing a follow-up evaluation with… a teenager from mainland Africa… who had had very large gaps in schooling… and I had concerns about the level of work he is being given [by his classroom teacher]. Because sometimes… if a student does not know how to read, there is a tendency to pick up materials for learning to read in the younger ones… but it’s not cognitively stimulating… because I have a 15–16-year-old [male] who… is practising bobo -baba [sounds]. But this is a young person who is being treated like a… student who has a disability.”
Here, one can identify that this Black student is experiencing microaggressions in the form of micro-invalidations regarding his reading needs that are grounded in second-class citizenship, cultural insensitivity, and persistent devaluation of competency (Brown, 2019 ; Frank et al., 2021; Sue et al., 2007).
Although these are only some of the critical incidents of anti-Black systemic racism within educational leadership that emerged from my study, they are informational vignettes representing a snapshot of how systemic anti-Black racism (re)produces itself about and toward Black school-community members within French-language schooling in Ontario.
How can studying critical incidents help us (un)learn systemic anti-Black racism?
Yamamoto et al. (2014) explain that the stories we tell ourselves, share, and tell others, and once again tell ourselves regarding a critical incident is a loop allowing leaders to evaluate if they will maintain the same practices, slightly adapt their leadership, or completely change their practice in the future. As such, these critical incidents are not only formational (Sider et al., 2017), they are also informational (Villella, 2021), revealing the professional (un)learning that is required to combat systemic anti-Black racism. The question that now emerges is: what can French-language educational system leaders, such as school principals and teacher educators, learn by examining such critical incidents?
First, it is important to remember that systemic anti-Black racism is not just an Anglo-Canadian issue. It is present in education, regardless of the language of instruction.
The analysis of critical incidents in leadership in French-language education can help school administrators, trainers, school principals, and superintendent associations, as well as French-language community organizations, understand how certain practices contribute to marginalizing Black children and adults that they serve. The ways in which leaders respond to Black teachers can contribute to the reproduction and thus persistence of systemic anti-Black racism, rather than contributing to building a more inclusive educational environment and society that mitigates against it. Either way, educational system leaders send a clear message to Black students, staff, and family members about whether or not they are valued in society.
Studying critical incidents as professional (un)learning in relation to systemic anti-Black racism provides educational leaders the chance to change how they respond in future situations, in order to be proactive and reduce harm to Black community members. As such, narrative case studies can help leaders decipher systemic anti-Black racism through professional (un)learning.
What we can do now: A few recommendations
System administrators, such as superintendents, need to support all staff who wish to develop preventative strategies to decrease the likelihood of systemic anti-Black racism from being (re)produced through racial microaggressions. The provincial government and school boards/districts need to require measures that track systemic anti-Black racism incidents, and to transparently report on them. Developing a mixed approach of both qualitative and quantitative data collection is important for better understanding of the underlying issues, which should not be reduced to a case of immigration status or mother tongue language as central identifiers.
Finally, initial and continual training opportunities need to be allocated to educational system leaders at all levels who wish to be trained, or to train their school teams, about racism and anti-racism. Specific areas of needed training include: culturally sustaining pedagogy and leadership, race-based data analysis, and questioning school board pedagogical and discipline policies regarding students as well as hiring practices related to staff. Such training requires that resources not only be developed in French, but also that critical incidents of systemic anti-Black racism are based on examples collected within francophone education systems.
Although some educational leaders may be more aware of systemic anti-Black racism incidents related to their leadership, such critical incidents still exist and persist. That said, we should not be dissuaded nor discouraged from developing inclusive and equitable French-language education systems. Instead, these incidents should cause educational school and system leaders to reassess how to better build relationships with each Black student, staff member, and community partner, and how to go beyond the deficit thinking and stereotypes that lead to racial microaggressions. That process begins and continues with fully participating and engaging in decolonizing professional (un)learning. The knowledge then needs to be applied within local communities to create more equitable and inclusive spaces of belonging for Black students and staff, and for those from other equity-deserving groups within la francophonie. Not only do Black students need Black educators, so does the rest of Canadian society. Inclusion is, after all, meant for each and every one.
For the most effective self-study experience, read in the order presented.
Canadian Statistics
Blackness
Black francophone experience
Critical race theory
Additional French-language resources are listed in the French version of this article
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, January 2023
1 While the Brown (2019) study focused on Black teachers, Frank et al.’s (2021) study focused on Black math teachers specifically.
Brown, E. (2019). African American teachers’ experiences with racial micro-aggressions. Educational Studies, 55(2), 180–196. doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2018.1500914
CBC News. (2021, May 31). London, Ont., principal removed for wearing Black student’s hair like a wig says he’s sorry, ‘ashamed.’ CBC News. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/luc-chartrand-black-student-wig-apology-1.6047068
Ibrahim, A. (2014). The rhizome of Blackness. A critical ethnography of hip-hop culture, language, identity and the politics of becoming. Peter Lang Publishing.
Jean-Pierre, J. (2020). L’appartenance entrecroisée à l’héritage historique et au pluralisme contemporain chez des étudiants franco-ontariens. Minorités linguistiques et société/Linguistic Minorities and Society (13), 3–25. doi.org/10.7202/1070388ar
Frank, T. J., Powell, M. G., & View, J. L. (2021). Exploring racialized factors to understand why Black mathematics teachers consider leaving the profession. Educational Researcher. doi.org/10.3102/0013189X21994498
Madibbo, A. (2021). Blackness and la Francophonie: Anti-Black racism, linguicism and the construction and negotiation of multiple minority identities. Les Presses de l’Université Laval.
Rodgers, W. T., Hauserman, C. P, & Skytt, J. (2016). Using cognitive coaching to build school leadership capacity: A case study in Alberta. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation, 39(3). www.jstor.org/stable/canajeducrevucan.39.3.03
Schroeter, S. & James, C. (2015). “We’re here because we’re black”: The schooling experiences of French-speaking African-Canadian students with refugee backgrounds. Race, ethnicity and education, 18(1), 20–39. doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2014.885419
Sider, S., Maich, K., & Morvan, J. (2017). School principals and students with special education needs: Leading inclusive schools. Canadian Journal of Education, 40(2). http://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/2417
Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M. et al. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life. American Psychologist, May-June. https://gim.uw.edu/sites/gim.uw.edu/files/fdp/Microagressions%20File.pdf
Villella, M. (2021). Piti, piti, zwazo fè niche li (Petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid) : le développement d’une compétence interculturelle et antiraciste de neuf leaders éducatifs et systémiques d’expression française de l’Ontario, formateurs bénévoles en Ayiti. Unpublished thesis. University of Ottawa. https://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/42728
Yamamoto, J. K., Gardiner, M. E., & Tenuto, P. L. (2014). Emotion in leadership: Secondary school administrators’ perceptions of critical incidents. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 42(2), 165–183.
Ten-year-old Kate Sergieiva and her mother, Olga, still remember the blasts of Russian bombs dropping on their hometown of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine as they fled on February 24, 2022. It took three months in Moldova, Armenia, and Bulgaria before they arrived in Toronto, where Kate was able to attend school.
Olga, a single mother, worried that Kate’s transition to school in Canada would be traumatic. She says that Kate is still frightened by noises, loudspeakers, and people in uniforms. Kate worries about friends and family in Vinnytsia, where Russian missiles have destroyed their neighborhood and killed dozens of people. She relives the trauma of the bombing.
“We have this scary feeling,” Olga says. “You think every moment that it could happen again.”
But Kate loved her month in Grade 5 in Toronto and can’t wait to return in September. The teacher was very welcoming, she says, and all her classmates wanted to lend her their computers and play with her. She is glad they didn’t ask her about the war. “I am happy not to talk about it… I don’t want to bring the sad news to everyone.”
But Kate says another Ukrainian in her class was lonely because he could not understand English. The language barrier prevented him from integrating, she says. “It was much harder for him, and he mostly ignored the lessons.”
Kate’s story shows that while children arriving from war zones have things in common, each child is different and they can face different barriers to education. Teachers must create learning environments that are not only welcoming, but also equitable and inclusive.
New students with refugee status in Canada have legal access to resources, protection, and funding. Since Russia’s latest invasion, many Ukrainian children have arrived in elementary and secondary classrooms across the country. However, Canada has not granted refugee status to Ukrainians arriving during this recent conflict, instead offering a temporary settlement program, which for some has made their settlement process more precarious and uncertain.
Ukraine has made efforts to prioritize access to education for all children, especially since February’s invasion, yet many who have been forced to flee remain without access to school (Brookings, 2022). Ukrainian children have experienced prolonged exposure to violence and conflict, particularly since 2014 when Russia invaded and occupied the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and large swathes of the oblasts (provinces) of Donetsk and Luhansk (also known as the Donbas). Many children have had to cope with the trauma, and for them close attachments to family, caregivers, and educators are most critical for their psychosocial wellbeing (Bogdanov et al., 2021).
Multilingual learners adapting to a new landscape also need socio-emotional support in their transitions. For instance, traumas suffered by students from conflict zones need to be considered when teaching about topics that could trigger students to feel oppression or exclusion (Parker, 2021). Such social and emotional burdens make learning that much more challenging.
The welcoming process for displaced students has been complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. E-learning, social distancing, and wearing face masks have taken their toll on students worldwide, leaving many to feel disconnected and disengaged (Zakaria, 2021).
Many teachers across Canada have experience with refugee students joining their classrooms. They are faced with the challenge of differentiating their instruction to meet the needs of each student. However, addressing the needs of refugee and newly arrived students who have experienced the trauma of war is an additional challenge that many teachers may feel ill equipped to handle. The challenge is amplified by a lack of support from varying levels of the education system, including uneven resource distribution across schools, inadequate communication about the needs of these students, and few professional development opportunities.
Identifying and responding involves taking the time to understand the students’ lived experiences. Below, we offer background for supporting newly arrived Ukrainian students and pedagogical support for creating inclusive classrooms.
To address the barriers facing students arriving from conflict zones, we suggest some essential practices teachers can implement.
While these factors highlight what teachers can do to support newly arrived students’ readiness to learn, more resources and training opportunities from the different levels of the Canadian education system are needed (Clark, 2017).
Restorative justice in education (RJE) offers a framework for supporting the inclusion of students who have resettled from a war zone and helping them address their internalized trauma. Used with equity-focused and trauma-informed (see sidebar) approaches (Brummer, 2020), RJE pedagogies (such as intentional relationship building, dialogue exercises, circles, and conferencing) contribute to building the safe and welcoming community that students deserve in Canada. With a restorative approach, students are not passive members of the classroom who follow the social direction of the educator, but instead become responsible, active participants in maintaining harmony with their peer community as they engage in relationship-building.
Many teachers fear speaking about young people’s traumatic experiences. Their fears are amplified by a lack of training and support from administrators, colleagues, and communities. However, research shows that when teachers take the time to get to know their students and help them process traumatic experiences through relational connection and affirmations, their relationships with each other and with the class community deepen (González, 2015; Parker-Shandal, forthcoming). Teaching students about current issues from neutral perspectives is traditionally risky for teachers; however, ignoring or glazing over them could invalidate the experiences of some students. Teachers can use dialogue exercises and circles to help facilitate conflictual conversations, while being attune to students’ feelings and questions as they process this difficult situation.
For students arriving from conflict and war zones, building healthy relationships means creating a container for dialogue and understanding of the experiences that students bring to the classroom. The sooner educators can foster deep listening skills and develop a culture of valuing each other in the classroom, the easier integration and inclusion becomes.
Develop and sustain relational connections and community
Global conflicts have infiltrated classrooms as conversations emerge based on misinformation about the pandemic, white supremacy, and this most recent genocide in Ukraine. Developing strategies to support students’ mental health and wellbeing has become part of an ongoing commitment during the pandemic. These strategies need to continue developing and being applied, especially for students from conflict zones. Focusing on the individual experiences of students, using multilingual pedagogy in teaching strategies, and prioritizing relationships through restorative justice pedagogies are all strategies teachers can use to facilitate the integration of students and contribute to creating space for peace-building in times of conflict.
Refugee Story Bank of Canada provides first-hand accounts of people who sought refuge in Canada, which could be used in lessons about refugees and autoethnographic narrative writing. This site will soon feature lesson plans and educator resources for using these narratives in K–12 classrooms. www.refugeestorybank.ca
Facing History and Ourselves Lesson plans and activities for educators to draw on to teach about the global refugee crisis.
www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/understanding-global-refugee-crisis
Relationships First This restorative justice in education consortium envisions communities where the inherent worth and wellbeing of all involved are honoured and promoted. It includes lesson plans and resources to support teachers’ integration of restorative justice in their classrooms and schools. www.relationshipsfirstnl.com
INEE: has curated a collection of tools and resources relevant to the crisis in Ukraine to support the provision of education and mental health and wellbeing of practitioners, teachers, students, caregivers, and others. https://inee.org/collections and click on “Ukraine Crisis Resources”
Sesame Street In Communities: Resources in Ukrainian: These playful exercises and inclusive materials can help students feel safe and acknowledged. Activities include videos and games to support children’s emotional wellbeing.
https://sesamestreetincommunities.org/subtopics/resources-in-ukrainian
ReliefWeb is a source for general information and news on the conflict in Ukraine.
https://reliefweb.int/topics/ukraine-humanitarian-crisis
Bogdanov, S., Girnyk, A., et al. (2021). Developing a culturally relevant measure of resilience for war-affected adolescents in eastern Ukraine. Journal on Education in Emergencies, 7(2), 311.
Brookings. (2022). Ukraine and beyond: Lessons in refugee education. A Brookings-Yidan Prize event on key issues in refugee education.
www.brookings.edu/events/ukraine-and-beyond-lessons-in-refugee-education
Brummer, J. (2020). Building a trauma-informed restorative school: Skills and approaches for improving culture and behavior. Jessica Kingsley.
Clark, K. (2017). Are we ready? Examining teachers’ experiences supporting the transition of newly-arrived Syrian refugee students to the Canadian elementary classroom [Research study, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto]. TSpace.
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/76952/1/Clark_Kathryn_201706_MT_MTRP.pdf
González, T. (2015). Reorienting restorative justice: Initiating a new dialogue of rights consciousness, community empowerment and politicization. Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, 16, 457–477.
Jones, N., Pincock, K., Guglielmi, S., et al. (2022). Barriers to refugee adolescents’ educational access during COVID-19: Exploring the roles of gender, displacement, and social inequalities. Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies, 8(2), 43–72.
Parker, C. and Bickmore, K. (2020). Classroom peace circles: Teachers’ professional learning and implementation of restorative dialogue. Teaching and Teacher Education, 95.
Parker, C. A. (2021). Refugee children in Canadian schools: The role of teachers in supporting integration and inclusion. In G. Melnyk & C. A. Parker (Eds.), Finding refuge in Canada: Narratives of dislocation. Athabasca University Press.
Parker-Shandal, C. A. H. (forthcoming). Restorative justice in the classroom: Liberating students’ voices through relational pedagogy. Palgrave Macmillan.
Zakaria, P. (2021). Education under attack: An examination of education in emergencies and strategies for strengthening education. In I.Fayed & J. Cummings (Eds.), Teaching in the post COVID-19 era (pp. 149–156). Springer.
The handshake depicted on this Treaty 6 medal is understood by nêhiyawak to symbolize asotamâkêwin – a sacred promise to live together in the spirit of good relations.
In September 1874, Treaty Commissioners representing Queen Victoria traveled to Fort Qu’Appelle to negotiate the terms of a sacred promise to live in peace and friendship with nehiyawak (Cree), Anihšināpēk (Saulteaux), Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda peoples of the region that came to be known as Treaty 4. Prior to this meeting, the Indigenous leaders had learned that the Hudson’s Bay Company had sold their lands to the Dominion of Canada without their consultation or consent. Thus, when the Treaty Commissioners sought to initiate negotiations, the leaders declined to discuss the Treaty. Instead, an Anihšināpēk spokesman named Otahaoman explained with the help of a translator that the assembled peoples felt that there was “something in the way” of their ability to discuss the terms of the Treaty in good faith (Morris, 2014, pp. 97–98).
It took several days of discussion for the Queen’s representatives to comprehend the concerns expressed by Otahaoman. The people were questioning the sincerity of these Treaty negotiations because they knew that the Government of Canada had already made a side deal with the Hudson’s Bay Company for the purchase of their lands. The view expressed by Otahaoman was that these side dealings undermined the integrity of the Government’s Treaty intentions. Through the translator, Otahaoman clearly articulated the view that the Hudson’s Bay Company only had the permission of Indigenous peoples to conduct trade. They did not have the right to claim ownership over any land: “The Indians want the Company to keep at their post and nothing beyond. After that is signed they will talk about something else” (Morris, 2014, p. 110). Despite these misunderstandings, as well as notable disagreement among the various Indigenous groups in attendance, the terms of Treaty 4 were eventually ratified.
I begin with this story to draw attention to the persistence of Canadian colonial culture as “something in the way” of efforts to repair Indigenous-Canadian relations. The critical observation that Otahaoman articulated in 1874 is still a very relevant and unsettling problem today. In the wake of the 94 Calls to Action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, educational jurisdictions and institutions across Canada have rushed to respond to the Calls through the implementation of various policies and program initiatives. However, the rush to Reconciliation facilitates an active disregard of the Truth of colonial ideologies and structures that continue to block possibilities for the emergence of healthy and balanced Indigenous-Canadian relations in Canada. Before Reconciliation can even be considered as a possibility, a broad social, cultural, and educational reckoning process must be undertaken that focuses on unlearning colonialism. Colonial ideologies remain mostly uninterrogated in Canadian educational contexts and continue to be “in the way” of meaningful Indigenous-Canadian relational renewal. Such relational renewal is only possible if colonialism is unlearned.
Colonial ideologies have got “in the way” of schooling practices in the sense that prevailing curricular and pedagogical approaches perpetuate colonial worldview. The founding principle of colonialism is relationship denial1 and the centuries-long predominance of this principle has resulted in the creation of educational practices that perpetuate relationship denial in mostly subtle and unquestioned ways. One prominent form of relationship denial is evident in the ways in which the mental aspect of a human being is considered more important than the emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects. The possibility for holistic unity and balance is denied when the different aspects of a human being are increasingly fragmented and disassociated as a person becomes educated. The teachings of relationship denial can also be seen in the ways in which human beings are taught to believe that their needs are always more important than the needs of other forms of life. They are also evident in the ways in which students are taught to deny relationships that they have with people who do not look like them, speak like them, or pray like them. When someone is educated to accept relationship denial as a way of being in the world, it becomes part of how they are as a human being – how they live – and this acceptance has a very distinctive bearing on how they understand knowledge and knowing.
Such practices are reflective of the “Western code” – the Enlightenment-based knowledge paradigm that is presented as possessing all the answers to any important questions that could be asked by anyone, anywhere in the world. It is important to state that Western conceptions of knowledge and knowing have provided many benefits. However, belief in the veracity of those understandings becomes a form of violence when they are prescribed as the only way to be a successful human being. Wynter (1992), for example, has argued that the arrival of Christopher Columbus to Turtle Island instigated a centuries-long process wherein a universalized model of the human being was imposed on people around the world. She asserts that this particular advancement of colonial power has served to “absolutize the behavioural norms encoded in our present culture-specific conception of being human, allowing it to be posited as if it were the universal of the human species” (Wynter, 1992, pp. 42-43). The assertion of this colonial power is carried out in the name of Progress.2 Formal schooling eventually became a primary means by which those with power could discipline the citizenry to conform to this model of the human being and this notion of Progress. As I see it, this has resulted in the predominance of curricular and pedagogical approaches that perpetuate these universalized behavioural norms by persistently presenting knowledge and knowing according to the rubric of relationship denial.
The complex task of unlearning colonial forms of relationship denial does require learning more about colonial worldview and the ways in which the cultural assumptions of that worldview deeply inform the structure and character of the common-sense conventions of educational practices. However, it cannot only rely on learning about such things in an informational way. To do so is to assume that relationship denial is really just an intellectual problem and that unlearning can be accomplished via a detailed three-hour lecture with accompanying PowerPoint slides.
The difficult truth is that colonial forms of relationship denial are much more than just intellectual problems. Human beings who accept colonial worldview as natural, normal, and common sense come to embody colonial forms of relationship denial that teach them to divide the world. The field of education has become so fully informed by the assumed correctness of colonial worldview that it has become difficult to take seriously other knowledge systems or ways of being human. However, this struggle to honour other knowledge systems or ways of being is implicated in the deepest difficulties faced today in trying to live in less damaging, divisive, and ecologically destructive ways. It is clear to me that the acceptance of relationship denial as the natural cognitive habit of successful human beings undermines the ability to respond to these complex challenges in dynamic ways. Thus, an urgent educational challenge facing educators today involves:
As a teacher educator struggling to address this challenge, I draw significant guidance and inspiration from Indigenous wisdom teachings of kinship relationality. These wisdom teachings emphasize how human beings are at their best when they recognize themselves as enmeshed in networks of human and more-than-human relationships that enable life and living. For example, in nêhiyawêwin (the Cree language), a foundational wisdom concept that is central to nêhiyaw (Cree) worldview is wâhkôhtowin. Translated into English, wâhkôhtowin is generally understood to refer to kinship. In a practical way, wâhkôhtowin describes ethical guidelines regarding how you are related to your kin and how to conduct yourself as a good relative. Following those guidelines teaches one how to relate to human relatives and interact with them in accordance with traditional kinship teachings. Importantly, however, wâhkôhtowin is also extended to include more-than-human kinship relations. The nêhiyaw worldview emphasizes honouring the ancient kinship relationships that humans have with all other forms of life that inhabit their traditional territories. This emphasis teaches human beings to understand themselves as fully enmeshed in networks of relationships that support and enable their life and living. Métis Elder Maria Campbell (2007) eloquently addresses wâhkôhtowin enmeshment:
“And our teachings taught us that all of creation is related and inter-connected to all things within it.
Wahkotowin meant honoring and respecting those relationships. They are our stories, songs, ceremonies, and dances that taught us from birth to death our responsibilities and reciprocal obligations to each other. Human to human, human to plants, human to animals, to the water and especially to the earth. And in turn all of creation had responsibilities and reciprocal obligations to us” (p. 5).
Thus, following the relational kinship wisdom of wâhkôhtowin, human beings are called to repeatedly acknowledge and honour the sun, the moon, the sky, the land, the wind, the water, the animals, and the trees (just to name a few), as quite literally our kinship relations. Humans are fully reliant on these entities for survival and so the wise person works to ensure that those more-than-human relatives are healthy and consistently honoured. Cradled within this kinship teaching is an understanding that healthy human-to-human relations depend upon and flow from healthy relations with the more-than-human. They cannot be separated out.
These wisdom teachings of wâhkôhtowin enmeshment and kinship relationality are also central to the spirit and intent of the so-called Numbered Treaties negotiated between Indigenous peoples and the British Crown between 1871–1921. Although I cannot claim expertise in the details of each individual Treaty, I can state that Indigenous peoples understand those Treaties as sacred adoption ceremonies through which they agreed to live in peaceful coexistence with their newcomer relatives. This means that Indigenous peoples understand those Treaties as a formal commitment to welcome newcomers into their kinship networks, share land and resources with them, and work together with them as relatives for mutual benefit. In this sense, the Numbered Treaties can be understood as expressions of the wâhkôhtowin imagination – human and more-than-human kinship interconnectivities.
However, such kinship interconnectivities are not a central part of how most Canadians understand the Numbered Treaties. In accordance with the colonial emphasis on relationship denial, Treaties have been a massive curricular omission in Canadian education systems. If Canadians have learned anything of Treaties in their formal schooling experiences, it usually comes in the form of historical background information that characterizes Treaties as business deals through which Indigenous peoples surrendered their lands and received gifts and certain rights in return. So, tragically, the possibility that the Numbered Treaties could actually honour the layered complexities of kinship relationality and its constant renewal is undermined by ongoing institutional and societal dedication to relationship denial.
It is my view that Treaties can be a significant source of inspiration in addressing the two educational challenges mentioned previously: unlearning colonialism and honouring other ways to know and be. The handshake depicted on the Treaty medal guides me to work together with others in ways that bring benefits to all people who live on the land together. Specific to Treaty 6, the shaking of hands is understood to signify ka-miyo-wîcêhtoyahk (for us to get along well), ka-wîtaskîhtoyahk (for us to live as Nations), ka-wîtaskêhtoyahk (for us to share the land and live as good neighbours), and ka-miyo-ohpikihitoyahk (for us to raise each other’s children well). These teachings place emphasis on learning from each other in balanced ways and sharing the wisdom that comes from living together in the spirit of good relations. Indeed, Treaty teachings appear to provide the much-needed antidote to colonial logics of relationship denial and assist in the educational challenge to unlearn. Importantly, however, the wâhkôhtowin imagination also offers a significant opportunity to engage with other ways of knowing and being by consistently reminding us of our enmeshment within more-than-human kinship connectivities.
What expressions of knowledge and knowing flow from an education that emphasizes kinship connectivities and relational renewal? What kind of human being emerges from such educational experiences? These are questions without clear answers. However, they are also questions that educators must begin to carefully consider as part of the much larger struggle to unlearn colonialism. It is clear to me that the human ability to honour other ways to know and be depends on the willingness to return to the ancient wisdom teachings of kinship relationality that are clearly emphasized in Treaty teachings.
Photo: courtesy Dwayne Donald
First published in Education Canada, September 2022
Campbell, M. (2007, November). We need to return to the principles of Wahkotowin. Eagle Feather News, 10(11), 5. www.eaglefeathernews.com/quadrant/media//pastIssues/November_2007.pdf
Donald, D. (2019) Homo economicus and forgetful curriculum. In H. Tomlinson-Jahnke, S. Styres, S. Lille, & D. Zinga (Eds.), Indigenous education: New directions in theory and practice (pp. 103–125). University of Alberta Press.
Morris, A. (2014). The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the North-West Territories: Including the negotiations on which they are based, and other information relating thereto. Cambridge University Press.
Nisbet, R. A. (1980). History of the idea of progress. Transaction.
Wynter, S. (1995). 1492: A new world view. In V. L. Hyatt & R. Nettleford (Eds.), Race, discourse, and the origin of the Americas: A new world view (pp. 5–57). Smithsonian.
1 I use this phrase to draw attention to the ways in which the institutional and socio-cultural practice of dividing the world according to colonial worldview has trained Canadians to disregard Indigenous peoples as fellow human beings and thus deny relationships with them. This disregard maintains unethical relationships and promotes the development of cognitive blockages (psychoses) that undermine the possibility for improved Indigenous-Canadian relations. The psychosis of relationship denial results from a decades-long curricular project dedicated to the telling of a Canadian national narrative that has largely excluded the memories and experiences of Indigenous peoples. A major assertion that stems from this relational psychosis is that Indigenous peoples do not belong in Canada and are therefore out of place in their own traditional territories. This relational psychosis is a fundamental characteristic of Canadian colonial culture that must be unlearned.
2 I choose to capitalize this term to denote its mythological prominence within settler colonial societies like Canada. This notion of Progress has grown out of the colonial experience and is predicated on the pursuit of unfettered economic growth and material prosperity stemming from faith in market capitalism. For more on this see Donald (2019) and Nisbet (1980).
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted life across the globe in every sector of society. As we move toward the third year of the pandemic, educators are examining the impact on student learning, educational outcomes, and well-being. Educators over the past two years have been adjusting practice and reflecting on what lies ahead for education and schooling in a “post-pandemic” world. We all acknowledge that it might be premature to think of “post-pandemic,” as students, parents, educators, policymakers and communities are still experiencing effects of the pandemic.
The pandemic continues to impact Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities in devastating ways, and has exacerbated structural inequities that these communities experience. Research has shown that the pandemic has impacted student learning in significant ways, with many students falling behind, experiencing challenges with persistent and ongoing virtual learning and the safety concerns with in-person learning, and suffering diminished mental health and well-being. There have been challenges for parents: supporting students with online learning, work and life balance, and child care issues, among others. Educators have voiced concerns about ongoing safety measures as many return to in-person learning. The impact and consequences of the pandemic have been experienced differently by members of society depending on status, resources, type of work, racialization, ability, and other aspects of identity. Essential and frontline workers have borne the brunt of the impact and many are experiencing burnout, anxiety, and negative impact on their well-being. As Reyes (2020) argues, our different social identities and the social groups we belong to determine our inclusion within society and, by extension, our vulnerability to epidemics.
As educators and policymakers reimagine education and schooling in a post-pandemic era, there is a growing awareness that the experiences of the pandemic and the lessons learned should serve as motivation for radical new and alternative approaches to teaching, learning, and leading. Calls to “get back to normal” by some ignore challenges and structural inequities across all sectors of society that have been laid bare and exacerbated by the pandemic.
Students, educators, and community members all want teaching and learning to return in fulsome ways; however, those from global majority communities say “getting back to normal” must not include returning to oppressive policies and practices that prevent racialized students from achieving positive educational outcomes. The pandemic widened gaps that already existed for Black, Brown, and Indigenous students. Students and communities are demanding new approaches and policies that centre their lived experiences and will no longer tolerate educational policies and practices that oppress them and negatively impact their futures. The pandemic has magnified historic systemic failures affecting Black students, families, and communities, causing increased racial trauma, issues of mental health and well-being for educators and students, and the erosion of trust in schools and institutions (Horsford et al., 2021). As a result, many children and youth have experienced disengagement, chronic attendance problems, declines in academic achievement, and decreased credit attainment during the pandemic, with the impact far deeper for those already at risk (Whitley et al., 2021). “The pandemic has not only added to the social and educational inequities among young people, it has exacerbated the racial injustice with which racialized and Indigenous youth must contend” (James, 2020, p.1), and this reality cannot be overlooked.
Against this backdrop, educators and policymakers are called on to reimagine education and schooling, to name and challenge the ways in which students are marginalized, and to question practices, policies, and “norms” of a pre-pandemic era that must not return. The lessons of the pandemic must be learned and there must not be a return to business as usual. Instead, those most impacted by the pandemic are calling for inequities to be acknowledged and a commitment made to lasting systemic change.
To this end, critical educators see the pandemic as an opportunity not only to question oppressive educational policies and practices, but to take action and offer new and alternative approaches. One key issue that this article examines is the notion of student success. Measures of student success have traditionally focused on such areas as grades, credit accumulation, engagement in the school environments, and so on. What the pandemic (as well as student and community advocates) has highlighted is that student success is also about well-being, having a sense of belonging, and the ability to survive and thrive academically, emotionally, and spiritually. In this article I argue for rethinking student success through an anti-oppressive and decolonizing lens. To do so means naming systems of oppression and the ways coloniality and colonization continue to be perpetuated in educational practices, policies, and the framing of notions such as student success.
Student success has been a long-standing goal of educators. Nonetheless, the term carries a variety of meanings within education, though it has commonly been identified with various forms of measurable student outcomes. Schools in their school success plans often define and contextualize student success to set organizational goals. In broad terms, student success has been understood in terms of outcomes such as academic achievement, graduation rates, persistence, increase in self-efficacy, increase in engagement, and initiative (Weatherton & Schussler, 2021). Research shows that there are differences in how teachers and students understand student success. Racialized students, for example, tend to define success for themselves, which often aligns with what matters to them and the kinds of supports they need for their educational advancement (Oh & Kim, 2016). Weatherton and Schussier (2021) argue that current discourse around the meaning of student success is maintained in part by social hierarchies that can be examined through the lens of hegemony and critical race theory, and which often hinder the success of certain student populations who may not define success in the same way.
Many have argued that markers of student success have been created to serve a predominantly white student population and do not sufficiently reflect or meet the needs of a diverse student population. Students from global majority communities are no longer willing to be labelled as “unsuccessful,” “disadvantaged,” “at-risk,” and other markers of deficit in school while their educational, mental health, and well-being needs are not met, and racism and other forms of oppression that impact their educational outcomes persist. For example, throughout the pandemic students from low-resourced families could not participate effectively in the shift to online learning, as some did not have adequate access to the internet and computers. The failure of the system to provide adequate resources for students must not be laid at the feet of vulnerable students and used to render them as unsuccessful. Instead, questions must be asked about what success means for students from global majority communities, and what policies and practices need to be put in place in order for them to survive and thrive. Resiliency has emerged in the discourse when discussing success of students, and in particular students from Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. While resilience is a worthy endeavour, students should not be called on to be resilient in the face of ongoing oppression. Oppressive systems, policies, and practices must change, instead of calling on some students to be more resilient.
Anti-oppressive and decolonizing education, which identifies structural inequities and practices grounded in coloniality and the resulting gaps in student outcomes, provides a framework for advancing equity that challenges all forms of oppression. This should be seen as foundational to student success.
Reimagining student success grounded in anti-oppressive and decolonizing approaches must prioritize the following elements:
These suggestions do not operate in an isolated linear fashion, but overlap and are interconnected.
Research shows that students often have different notions of what success means. In addition to grades, students want to feel that they are being heard. As well, students from global majority communities see success as being able to thrive academically and without spirit injury – not having to endure racism and other forms of exclusion that stand in the way of their academic success and well-being. In Canada, we have read story after story of Black students experiencing anti-Black racism in schools and Indigenous students experiencing anti-Indigenous racism in schools. In response to community and parental advocacy, some school boards have put policies in place to address anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, but there is more work to be done.
Student-centred approaches are not new; however a student-centred approach grounded in anti-oppressive and decolonizing education requires educators to examine their relationships with students through the lens of power, whiteness, white supremacy, ways that systemic forms of oppression can be manifested in those relationships, and ways in which practices grounded in colonial thinking and mindset define markers of success. Wells and Cordova-Cobo (2021) argue that it is impossible for educators to be student-centred, to engage in a holistic education focused on students’ social and emotional needs, without also being anti-racist. This approach means that success cannot be seen within paradigms of meritocracy, but instead through supports they need, acknowledging the impact of racism and other forms of oppression on their educational experiences. For educators in classrooms, this might mean examining assessment practices, pedagogical approaches, and curriculum context. For administrators this might mean examining discipline policies that penalize students instead of learning about what else might be happening in students’ lives.
Anti-oppressive and decolonizing education cannot be treated as an add-on to teachers’ and school leaders’ everyday work, but must instead be embedded in everyday practice. It must become the norm. Students must experience curriculum, pedagogy, and school practices that reflect their lived experiences, address their needs holistically, and identify forms of oppression in all aspects of teaching, learning, and leading that stand in the way of their progress. Students’ school experiences must be wholesome and fulfilling, both academically and spiritually. Seeing the impact of COVID-19 on racialized students, educators must commit to this work and be provided ongoing support to make it a reality, not just theory. This will require educators to examine activities that they engage in on a daily basis, including morning greetings, conversations with students in the hallways, meetings with families, resources that are purchased, and knowledge used to frame decision-making. For example, examining the influence of Eurocentric knowledge in relationship to students from global majority communities; and asking questions about the use of deficit narratives to construct students’ experiences and success or lack thereof. Anti-oppressive and decolonizing education also requires the examination of self – for educators to examine their positionality and how this intersects with that of students; and to look for the tensions in the relationship and include student voice and experience as they work through these tensions. Educators must also be committed to ongoing learning, unlearning, and relearning. This is critical for anti-oppressive and decolonizing work to be sustained and create the lasting change needed.
Students’ mental health and well-being has been a consistent conversation throughout the pandemic. For racialized students who are already experiencing racial violence and trauma in schools, the impact has been devastating. In addition to the already heightened challenges on their mental health and well-being, many students from low-resource families and communities work to earn extra family income, and thus shoulder an added layer of stress. These issues, illuminated and exacerbated during the pandemic, must now form part of the discourse, policy and practice as we reconceptualize student success. The impact of these experiences should not be constructed as deficits when examining student success, but instead as a result of embedded structural inequities. I am suggesting here that when discussing student success, questions must be asked about students’ economic well-being and how that impacts their educational outcomes. Students’ economic lives are not separate from their educational lives; they are intertwined. New conceptualizations of success must include providing supports for students to overcome these challenges. These should be envisioned as the “new normal” and markers of success in a “post-pandemic” world.
As we begin to rethink education, schooling, and what student success means through an anti-oppressive and decolonizing lens, relationships with communities must be seen as central to student success. Connection with their community deepens educators’ understanding of students in holistic ways and fosters greater understanding of their needs. This also means building into curriculum and pedagogy knowledge that students bring from their communities, what Gonzalez et al. (2005) refer to as Funds of Knowledge. They suggest that families, especially those who are working class, can be characterized by the practices they have developed and the knowledge they have produced and acquired in the living of their lives. In other words, how is community knowledge part of the conversation about success? How are the formal and informal activities that students engage in at the community level taken into account when discussing student success? Decolonizing approaches to education require educators to examine and disrupt notions about certain communities constructed and maintained through colonized frames, that disregard local knowledge as valued and valuable (Lopez, 2021). This knowledge is valuable to schools in supporting students’ learning and bringing about positive educational outcomes. We also need to support students to engage in cultural border crossing – drawing on knowledge from their own experiences, and getting to know students who are different from themselves – and to see other cultures through an affirming lens. Building positive relationships with community is a cornerstone of anti-oppressive and decolonizing education.
Education in a “post-pandemic” era calls for radical action. Student success can no longer be conceptualized only in terms of measurable outcomes and indicators such as graduation rates and marks. While it is important that students graduate and move to the next level, other markers of student success must be seen as equally important – such as how well students are thriving in teaching and learning spaces free from oppression and marginalization. The relationship between students, community, and school, should become central to student success policies and practice. The moment we are currently in provides educators with a great opportunity to build deep, lasting, and respectful relationships with communities, examine ways that COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated structural inequities, and construct alternative approaches and practices. This will prepare students to be successful in a fast-changing and diverse world.
Photo: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, March 2022
Horsford, S. D. et al. (2021). Black education in the wake of COVID-19 & systemic racism: Toward a theory of change and action. Black Education Research Collective, Teachers College, Columbia University. https://www.tc.columbia.edu/media/centers/berc/Final-BERC-COVID-Report-20July2021.pdf
González, N., Moll, L., Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Lawrence Erlbaum.
James, C. (2021). Racial inequity, COVID-19 and the education of Black and other marginalized students. In F. Henry & C. James (Eds.) Impacts of COVID-19 in Racialized Communities (36–44). Royal Society of Canada. https://rsc-src.ca/en/themes/impact-covid-19-in-racialized-communities
Lopez, A. E. (2021). Decolonizing educational leadership: Exploring alternative approaches to leading schools. Palgrave Macmillan.
Oh, C. J., & Kim, N. Y. (2016). “Success is relative”: Comparative social class and ethnic effects in an academic paradox. Sociological Perspectives, 59(2), 270–295.
Osmond-Johnson, P., Lopez, A. E., & Button, J. (2020, November 20). Centring equity in an era of COVID-19: A new twist on an existing challenge. Education Canada. www.edcan.ca/articles/centring-equity-in-the-covid-19-era
Reyes, N. V. (2020). The disproportional impact of COVID-19 on African Americans. Health and Human Rights, 22(2) 299–307.
Weatherton, M., & Schussler, E. E. (2021). Success for all? A call to re-examine how student success is defined in higher education. CBE – life sciences education, 20(1), es3. doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-09-0223
Wells, A. S., & Cordova-Cobo, D. (2021). The post-pandemic pathway to anti-racist education: Building a coalition across progressive, multicultural, culturally responsive, and ethnic studies advocates. The Century Foundation. https://tcf.org/content/report/post-pandemic-pathway-anti-racist-education-building-coalition-across-progressive-multicultural-culturally-responsive-ethnic-studies-advocates
Whitley, J., Beauchamp, M. H., & Brown C. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on the learning and achievement of vulnerable Canadian children and youth. FACETS 6(1), 1693–1713. doi.org/10.1139/facets-2021-0096
It seems the one thing we can be certain of is uncertainty; COVID-19 has been a stark reminder that change is part of our lives. It’s difficult to predict what our formal education system will look like post-pandemic. Nevertheless, we can say that in this new normal there will certainly be a need for open exchange of views among all stakeholders in education. This article describes a model of school and community engagement, the Gathering Model, that may prove useful. In presenting this model, we share a set of equitable best practices that teachers, schools, and school boards can use as a template for parent and community outreach initiatives and to offer a resource for addressing the new normal.
Toronto’s York Region is one of Canada’s most diverse school districts. While 90 percent of its residents are Canadian citizens, one in two were born outside Canada. The languages spoken at home include Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Russian, Farsi, Italian, Tamil, Korean, Urdu, Spanish, Punjabi, and Gujarati. When we consider these changes, it becomes clear that we need to think differently when talking about community building. Community building based on goals and principles of sameness does not achieve inclusion. Community building has to be fostered through inclusive practices and processes. This applies in all our school communities, as populations across Canada are increasingly more diverse.
The Gathering Model is based on an ongoing, 15-year collaboration between the York Region District School Board (YRDSB) and the Faculty of Education at York University. In 2005, they partnered to pilot a new model of community engagement. Scott Milne, Manager of School and Community Projects at YRDSB, and Dr. John Ippolito, Associate Professor at York, were invited to serve as leads. Armadale Public School was selected as the pilot site because it was the largest and most linguistically diverse school in the YRDSB, in a neighbourhood experiencing pronounced demographic shifts. The thinking was that the initiative could both capitalize on emerging assets within the changing population and respond to new challenges. Since this time, multiple versions of the model have been implemented in over a dozen YRDSB schools.
This model goes beyond community engagement to explore the potential for family voices – including the voices of marginalized parents – to support school and community improvement. The model responds both to recent patterns of migration and to extensive research on the positive impacts of parents taking an active role in their children’s education.1
The Gathering Model supports a cycle of community dialogue. This dialogue centres on after-school/evening events involving parents, administrators, teachers, students, researchers, and community service agencies. In most of our sites, the role of community agencies has been limited, but in some schools their role has been more significant, even if only to highlight the services they offer. These events (anywhere from one to four per year at participating schools) address issues parents think are important to their families’ experience of public schooling. At some schools, the event now includes a separate student dialogue.
Clearly, the pandemic has put these in-person events on hold. As with education more generally, our participating schools have experienced a fracturing of community, leaving students and families feeling disconnected from their schools. However, this forced time-out is being put to good use in revisiting initiatives the model has piloted over the years, such as parent-driven research, parent and teacher research groups, and online discussion forums (Ippolito, 2012, 2018), and in exploring more recent online conversation platforms such as ThoughtExchange. We look forward to making innovative links between these online platforms and in-person events, which will, at some future point, become possible. This interplay of in-person and online resources will remain defined by the cycle of community dialogue outlined below (see Figure 1).
A fundamental component of the Gathering Model is a formalized planning team consisting of staff, families, and community partners. While everyone is invited to the planning team, a deliberate effort is made to engage individuals, community members, and organizations that represent marginalized voices. The aim is to have at least three community members present for each meeting, though the community members do not have to be the same at each meeting. In these instances, new members are welcomed into the planning discussion with a brief synopsis of previous work. Rotating membership for community members and flexibility in the timing of meetings encourages community engagement. This planning team is involved in every stage of the cycle, from pre-event planning, to event design, to post-event data analysis, to data mobilization in school, and system planning. Through this process, the model becomes a regular and ongoing formalized process.
Unlike traditional parent involvement approaches, where families are encouraged to participate in their children’s schools but where the agenda and decisions lie in the hands of the school, this is a model of community engagement where schools evolve in relation to family needs and where the community shares responsibility and power in determining agendas (Ippolito, 2010). In developing an agenda and topics for the discussion forums, the goal is to have at least half of each event’s agenda determined by students, families, and community partners on the planning team. The questions used to collect data for school and system improvement must be generated with community input, as with the following:
The structure and frequency of planning meetings are flexible and depend on the context and availability at each school. However, planning teams meet twice per month in the three months preceding an event. Some timelines to consider include when to send out invitations to the community to provide sufficient time to RSVP and when to contact local food vendors.
Community dialogue events begin with a shared meal. Schools have held this event in school gymnasiums and libraries/learning commons. Some schools have organized the event in local community spaces, such as a neighbourhood mosque. When planning the menu and selecting vendors for a shared meal, it is important to be culturally responsive and to consider dietary needs of the community. Since childminding is also provided, schools consider opportunities to partner with community organizations to provide students and families greater awareness of local resources. In addition, planning the physical space requires consideration of religious accommodations, including prayer spaces. The shared meal, childminding, and any other expenses are funded through the school, removing barriers for families wanting to take part in the community dialogue.
Tables are set up and all stakeholders are invited to sit with each other, regardless of their roles. This encourages community building by removing the barriers of formal titles like administrator, school staff member, community organization leader, parent, or student. The purpose of the shared meal is to provide time and space for people to get to know each other through conversation. At the end of the meal, children are directed to various childminding spaces and activities. Some schools have encouraged student performances of dance, poetry, and music to open and close the shared meal and bring families together in celebration of students. Student performances are welcomed, but care is taken so they don’t take up too much time. The goal is to ensure that table-based discussions of the agenda items constitute roughly three-quarters of the time of each event.
The community dialogue engages stakeholders in open-ended conversations while removing potential barriers for participation. One such barrier for many families is language. Intentional steps are made to lessen this by providing translation technology and on-site translators reflecting the home languages of families. In addition, designated tables are assigned for conversations in preferred languages, with additional support of translators as needed. Another barrier is posed by power differentials between various stakeholders within education. These differentials can influence what gets shared and what is kept silent. To disrupt this, the event is set up to encourage discussion of agenda items between stakeholders in the same role, rather than across stakeholder groups. This provides each group an opportunity to speak openly about their thoughts and experiences.
A defining feature of the Gathering Model is a commitment to collect and mobilize data generated through various forms of community engagement. This research work is done by the formalized planning team consisting of staff, families, and community partners. Planning teams also have access to research expertise from the Faculty of Education at York University.
At the community dialogue events, data is recorded at each discussion table with Chromebooks equipped with multilingual software. Having the data digitized enables translation into English for the purposes of data analysis. The digitized data is prepared for analysis following qualitative methods for text-based responses (e.g. Glesne, 2015; Lichtman, 2013). Focusing on the core questions that shape the agenda for a community dialogue event, data is coded to summarize and condense key themes or issues. This search for patterns in the data moves from the level of codes to categories to themes and, potentially, to theory generation. The overarching aim of data analysis is to measure the impact of community engagement, which can include student engagement through participation in co-curricular activities, and to generate recommendations for school planning and further mobilization of findings.
The school must update the community in a timely fashion on how data have been used to improve school and/or system operations. Community members must see and hear evidence that their efforts are moving the school’s culture and practices forward. These updates often take place at subsequent community dialogue events and serve to link a previous event to a current one. The school, school board departments, and senior management may present information of benefit to the community, or data may generate key questions for gathering further data to help the school and system serve students and families better. This is also an opportunity for the community to ask follow-up questions about school and system priorities and how to better support student learning and community development.
A core challenge in mobilizing this process is sustaining the involvement of community throughout various stages of the process. Currently, families and community partners are mostly engaged as participants in the community dialogue. Community participation is substantially reduced or absent during data analysis, mobilization of data, and decision making. This highlights a mindset prevalent among system staff that community is not an integral partner. While schools welcome community voice, they continue to hold decision-making power in how narratives are shaped and what is prioritized and acted upon.
This lack of full involvement by community members means that realizing the model’s potential for change lies disproportionately in the hands of staff. In many cases, staff have neither the skills nor knowledge to seize upon this opportunity, so schools often choose to take action on items that are easiest to address rather than on what is identified by the community as most urgent and needed.
Additionally, school responses can sometimes be surface-level actions (such as inviting a one-time guest speaker, without further follow through or commitment to looking at implications of their own school policies and programs) that lack depth or sustainability. In this way, a checklist mentality becomes a barrier to the model’s potential for change. This way of thinking is reinforced by the system’s emphasis on timing and accountability that pressures schools to sacrifice the quality of the process in exchange for completion.
Addressing this core challenge requires full focus on the key determinant of success within the Gathering Model, namely, inclusion of community voice and agency. This input must occur in a formal way through participation on the planning and research team, and not through ad-hoc, informal conversations with school and/or system staff. Having said this, participating schools are encouraged to seek out partnerships with internal system departments such as Research Services, Planning, or Special Education, and with external community-based agencies.
Schools wanting to implement the Gathering Model effectively must ensure this level of community input. Community is more than just a physical and geographic similarity. It is also a feeling of safety and belonging. Identity and community cannot be separate and belonging must be defined through a lens of equity and justice. These priorities are well-served by the open exchange enabled by the Gathering Model and will prove useful to us in the new normal.
Illustration: iStock
First published in Education Canada, June 2021
By Hirosh Abeywardane
The Gathering Model has made an impact on our community in ways beyond what I can explain in words. It has given a voice to marginalized parents and caregivers and helped bridge a communication gap between school and home. It eliminated the language barriers for many parents and caregivers and allowed them to express their concerns freely. It has helped build relationships, not just between school and the community, but also among parents and caregivers. The gathering has made it possible to transform ideas and suggestions into implementable solutions because the end result is a collective perspective of students, staff, and the community.
The gathering has become a tool to help parents and caregivers understand the importance of engagement and the impact it will have on their child’s well-being and education. Most importantly, it taught the school community to think beyond just their own child’s experience in the school and aim to improve every child’s experience in the school.
The gathering event has allowed the school community to trust that the school staff and administration will listen to their concerns, ideas, and suggestions because they know that, unlike a typical survey where you will never see a visible result, those concerns, ideas, and suggestions will be converted into solutions, and those solutions will be implemented as visible actions.
My various involvement with the school and the school board has given me a unique perspective of the event. As a parent, a school council co-chair, and as a PEAC (PIC) Co-chair, I am truly humbled to be part of the planning process of the gathering event at my school. It was amazing to see the students, parents, caregivers, school council, and staff building partnerships and working together for a common goal. It would be almost impossible to organize a successful event like the gathering without those partnerships. During the data mining process, it was unbelievable to see the same reaction and expressions from different groups of individuals who are reading the same feedback forms. It is truly remarkable to see an event like this connecting students, teachers, and the community.
1 Included here is stronger academic achievement, more consistent attendance at school, higher rates of graduation, a strengthened sense of self-worth, and a more positive outlook on education (Henderson & Mapp, 2002). More recently, these positive indicators are reiterated at primary levels (Wong et al., 2018); secondary levels (Gordon & Cui, 2012); and post-secondary levels (Palbusa & Gauvain, 2017).
Glesne, C. (2015). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction (5th ed.). Pearson.
Gordon, M., & Cui, M. (2012). The effect of school-specific parenting processes on academic achievement in adolescence and young adulthood. Family Relations, 61(5): 728–741.
Henderson, A., & Mapp, K. (2002). A new wave of evidence: The impact of school, family, and community connections on student achievement. National Center for Family and Community Connections with Schools.
www.sedl.org/connections/resources/evidence.pdf
Ippolito, J. (2018). Learning in schools and homes: Successes and complications in bringing minority parents into conversation with their children’s school. In Y. Guo (Ed.), Home-school relations: International perspectives (pp. 57–71). Springer.
Ippolito, J. (2012). Bringing marginalized parents and caregivers into their children’s schooling. What works? Research into practice. Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, Ontario Ministry of Education. www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_MarginParents.pdf
Lichtman, M. (2013). Qualitative research in education: A user’s guide (3rd ed.). Sage.
Ippolito, J. (2010). Minority parents as researchers: Beyond a dichotomy in parent involvement in schooling. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 114, 47-68.
Palbusa, J. A., & Gauvain, M. (2017). Parent-student communication about college and freshman grades in first-generation and non-first generation students. Journal of College Student Development, 58(1), 107–112. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1127388
Wong, R., Ho, F., Wong, W., et al. (2018). Parental involvement in primary school education: Its relationship with children’s academic performance and psychosocial competence through engaging children with school. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(5), 1544–1555.
BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) K-12 students and staff experience lower levels of wellbeing. Yet, a growing focus on wellbeing approaches such as mindfulness, social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and self-regulation can have harmful effects on racialized students and educators and may lead to cultural appropriation (i.e. adopting aspects of a culture that’s not your own). These approaches to wellbeing often don’t take into consideration the unique experiences and perspectives of BIPOC students and staff.
Wellbeing is systemic. When wellbeing is understood as one individual’s experience, it fails to account for the harmful effects of systemic racism, White supremacy, and colonialism that create unwelcoming, exclusionary, and unsafe environments for BIPOC students. This approach absolves systems from taking any responsibility in creating and perpetuating harm, which could look like:
1) There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Place identity – such as race, gender, sexuality, abilities, social class, and faith – at the center of approaches to student and staff wellbeing.
2) Avoid taking individual approaches to wellbeing that place both the source and solution of wellbeing with individuals and instead take a more systemic approach. This includes identifying and disrupting structures and policies that have had disproportionate effects on access, opportunity, and outcomes for BIPOC students and staff.
3) Connect with students, staff, families, and communities in meaningful ways to understand the experiences of institutional harm (e.g. residential schools).
4) Embed multiple understandings and approaches of wellbeing that value the physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual needs of students and staff.
By not acknowledging the depth and breadth of systemic racism, we end up focusing on symptoms rather than the root causes of achievement and wellbeing, while expecting individual students and staff members to overcome the numerous structural barriers placed before them. When schools take a systemic approach, they instead identify and take action to change the ways in which student and staff wellbeing is impacted by anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and other forms of racism. Every student and educator deserves to feel safe, valued, and know that they belong at school.
Anti-racism: the active identification and elimination of racism and intersecting forms of oppression, by changing systems, structures, policies, practices and attitudes, for the equitable redistribution of power and resources.
Streaming means that students are placed into groups defined by their ability levels. Students may be grouped by ability either for a subject (for example for mathematics or reading) or for all or almost all their instruction. Students’ assignment to an ability group may be temporary, changing during the year, or relatively permanent.
White supremacy refers to a political, economic and cultural system in which Whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of White superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of White dominance and non-White subordination are daily re-enacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings (Ansley as cited in Gillborn, 2016, p. 48).
Colonialism: systems and practices that seek to impose the will of one people on another and to use the resources of the imposed people for the benefit of the imposer. Colonialism can operate within political, sociological, economic and cultural values and systems of a place even after occupation by colonizers has ended (Assante, 2006).
Dei, G.J.S. (2008). Schooling as community: Race, schooling, and the education of African youth. Journal of Black Studies, 38(3), 346-366.
Dion, S. (2014). The listening stone: Learning from the Ontario Ministry of Education’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit–focused collaborative inquiry 2013-2014. http://www.ontariodirectors.ca/downloads/Listening_Stone/Dion_LS_Final_Report%20Sept_10-2014-2.pdf
James, C. E. (2012). Students “at risk”: Stereotyping and the schooling of black boys. Urban Education, 47(2), 464-494.
James, C.E. & Turner, T. (2017). Towards race equity in education: The schooling of Black students in the Greater Toronto Area. https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-Education-April-2017.pdf?x60002
Thompson, R. (2020, Sept. 29). Addressing trauma in the K-12 workplace: The impact of racial trauma on Black and non-white educators. https://www.edcan.ca/articles/addressing-racism-in-the-k-12-workplace/
Canada is internationally known as a bilingual country. Twelve years ago, when I moved here from Brazil to complete my graduate studies, I thought that most Canadians would speak both English and French, but I quickly realized that that was not the case. I lived in Toronto, Ont., and when I met people who had grown up there, they mainly considered themselves Anglophones, even if they spoke some French. Others who had immigrated to Canada were plurilingual: they spoke two, three, or four languages at different levels of proficiency. Despite having Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Italian in my repertoire, I have never been considered bilingual in Canada because I do not speak French perfectly yet. The popular discourse of being bilingual here places value on the two official languages only, and even if you speak both languages, you need to sound like a native speaker or you will have your bilingual identity stripped away from you. This issue causes language insecurity and anxiety and demotivates people to learn languages. It is time to rethink what bilingualism means, recognize that Canada is a multilingual country, and focus on innovating language education.
Canada is no longer a bilingual country. It is multilingual. In fact, it has been multilingual since pre-colonial times. In addition to the two official languages, 60 Indigenous languages and more than 140 immigrant languages are woven into the Canadian landscape. Recently, in a span of only five years, Canada witnessed a 13.3 percent increase in the number of people speaking an immigrant language, and nearly 20 percent of Canadian residents speak more than one language at home (Statistics Canada, 2016). With recent announcements that the federal government plans to welcome more than 1.2 million immigrants by the end of 2023, this multilingual reality will continue to grow (Harris, 2020). In fact, multilingualism is a global phenomenon and is now in the spotlight because of recent trends in mobility, travel, internationalization of education, language revitalization efforts (UNESCO, 2019), and online work demands during the COVID-19 pandemic. All of these factors contribute to people using different languages at home, online, and in their various communities.
The youth in Canada are accustomed to linguistic and cultural diversity, at least outside of the classroom: they can read a book in English, listen to K-pop, mix languages while interacting with others in online role-playing games, and listen to their grandparents speak in their heritage languages. They may not have high proficiency levels in these languages, but they are certainly exposed to them. Multilingualism is on the rise, in Canada and elsewhere, and so we must innovate how we teach languages and how teachers view their students. Indeed, preparing the youth to learn only the two official languages of Canada is not enough. Canada needs to go beyond English/French bilingualism and move toward equipping youth to have plurilingual and pluricultural competence; to encourage students not only to be tolerant of linguistic and cultural diversity, but to be active agents of social change, learn new languages, and be advocates for a world that is more linguistically and culturally inclusive. One of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals for a better future is to provide inclusive, equitable, and quality education for all and in language education, one way to accomplish this is to implement a plurilingual approach in the classroom.
First, what is the difference between multilingualism and plurilingualism? A useful distinction is offered in a 2020 publication by the Council of Europe, which states that multilingualism is the coexistence of different languages in a society, while plurilingualism is the dynamic development of an individual’s linguistic repertoire. In Canada, we have more than 200 languages in our society (multilingualism), while individuals may have several languages in their repertoire (plurilingualism). For example, one person may speak English fluently, understand different Englishes (e.g. from Newfoundland and South Africa), speak some Cree and a little bit of Spanish, and may be currently developing basic French and its different varieties (e.g. French from France, Quebec, and Haiti). In education, a plurilingual approach will encourage the development of this repertoire along with the cultures related to these languages; languages and cultures have long been suggested to be inseparable (Galante, 2020), that is, when learning a language, we also learn about related cultures, traditions, behaviours, beliefs, and how language is used across cultures and contexts.
This approach may sound complicated, but it is not. In fact, some educators may already teach, at least implicitly, through a plurilingual approach, but they may not be exploring its maximum potential. They may still view their students as simply language learners (e.g. English language learner), or bilinguals, but not as plurilingual and pluricultural citizens. So, what can educators do to start? Here are three initial ideas:
Figure 1. Linguistic Portrait, taken from Galante, 2019
These three examples may already look familiar among some teachers, but others may find them radical. But why should teachers even attempt to use a plurilingual approach? In the first part of this article, I provided a rationale based on the increase of multilingualism in Canada and in the world. Below, I will provide some arguments based on recent research.
Many studies conducted in different language classrooms (ESL, FSL, immersion, bilingual programs, etc.) and countries suggest several benefits of a plurilingual education, including language development, empathy, self-esteem, cognition, and motivation, among other factors. In my own research (2020), I have investigated teachers’ perceptions of a plurilingual approach in the English-language classroom compared to a monolingual approach (English-only). Seven teachers participated in the study and they taught two classes using two different approaches: plurilingual with one class and English-only with another class, for a period of four months. The content was similar but the approach was different, and the teachers did not have to change their entire curriculum to apply a plurilingual approach. In fact, they introduced one plurilingual task per week, for about 30–40 minutes in one class, while the other class had similar content but used one English-only task per week. After I interviewed the teachers at the end of the program, they unanimously reported preference for a plurilingual approach compared to English-only. For these teachers, a plurilingual approach:
The teachers also highlighted that they did not have to speak several languages themselves to use a plurilingual approach, and that even teachers who think of themselves as monolinguals (speaking one language only) can and should try to implement it in the classroom.
Given the current multilingual trends in Canada and recent calls for the provision of inclusive education to all students, innovative pedagogical approaches that prepare them to communicate across languages, cultures, and contexts are now needed. People will continue to communicate face-to-face and online, and being able to use their repertoire to understand how language use and culture may vary across contexts, be open to more language and cultural learning, and advocate for linguistic and cultural inclusiveness in schools and other spaces is paramount for an inclusive society. If we want to better prepare our students for current and future Canadian realities of multilingualism, change needs to happen soon. Canada has a unique opportunity to remain a leader in language education, but it needs to go beyond bilingualism and encourage Canadians to become plurilingual speakers. Supporting plurilingualism will not take away from the languages already existent in Canada; it will add openness to the English/French bilingual dichotomy and the popular discourse that the country is bilingual. Canada is much more than that.
For more research and resources, visit McGill University’s Plurilingual Lab.
Banner Photo : Adobe Stock
Read other articles from this issue
Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of References for languages: Learning, teaching, Assessment. Companion Volume. Council of Europe Publishing.
www.coe.int/lang-cefr
Galante, A. (2020). Plurilingual and pluricultural competence (PPC) scale: The inseparability of language and culture. International Journal of Multilingualism.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2020.1753747
Galante, A. (2019). “The moment I realized I am plurilingual”: Plurilingual tasks for creative representations in EAP at a Canadian university. Applied Linguistics Review, 11(4), 551–580.
Galante, A., Okubo, K., Cole, C., Abd Elkader, N., Wilkinson, C., Carozza, N., Wotton, C., & Vasic, J. (2020). “English-only is not the way to go:” Teachers’ perceptions of plurilingual instruction in an English program at a Canadian university. TESOL Quarterly Journal.
https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.584
Harris, K. (2020, October 30). Federal government plans to bring in more than 1.2M immigrants in next 3 years. CBC News.
https://bit.ly/2IsfpJW
Statistics Canada. (2016). Linguistic diversity and multilingualism in Canadian homes.
https://bit.ly/3kAzFpn
UNESCO. (2019). International literacy day 2019: Revisiting literacy and multilingualism, background paper.
https://bit.ly/2IBL23B
United World Schools. (n.d.). UN sustainable development goals: Our role.
https://bit.ly/2IzVFDF
The Marguerite-Bourgeoys School Service Centre (CSSMB) is located in the west end of Montreal. Covering over 100 schools and institutions, it is Quebec’s second largest school service centre (CSS). The territory served is divided into seven networks, each encompassing one or two high schools and their feeder elementary schools. This structure ensures consistency in the interventions for client groups living in relatively homogeneous areas. Administrators and educators from both levels maintain close ties, facilitating the students’ transition from elementary to high school. An example of this is Amène ton parent au théâtre, an initiative in which elementary students, accompanied by their mother or father, are invited to attend a bullying prevention activity presented by high-school students.
In addition, the CSSMB relies on the insights of a small team of statisticians who closely monitor hundreds of indicators, notably those associated with the 17 goals listed in its Plan d’engagement vers la réussite (Commitment to Success Plan). This information is valuable because it helps us quickly identify and address our students’ academic and social vulnerabilities.
The activities carried out in the CSSMB’s 102 institutions interconnect with many of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations. In this article, we will focus primarily on Goal #4: Quality Education.
Quebec’s student population has changed dramatically in the past few decades, especially in Montreal. In the CSSMB’s elementary and high schools, over 80 percent of students are first- or second-generation immigrants. This diversity creates a number of challenges when it comes to organizing educational services. For example, many recently arrived immigrants are unable to speak French, their new language for school and socializing. During the 2019-2020 school year, 4,500 students attended “welcome” classes, which are designed to teach French while fostering the academic and social integration of non-French-speaking young people.
If we are to provide a quality education to all (SGD 4), notably students with diverse cultural backgrounds and life experiences, we must rethink the way in which educational services are delivered. This process requires in-depth reflection, adapted tools and, ultimately, a review of existing practices. We have successfully met this challenge because we have the highest graduation and qualification rates of any Quebec school service centre – not bad for a CSS where students speak over 150 different mother tongues!
To efficiently coordinate the activities of all the experts working with our students, we have created reference documents and frameworks to define everyone’s role. These resources are inspired by research in various areas to ensure that best practices are integrated and applied. In 2015, we published Vivre-ensemble en français (Living Together in French). This document offers guidelines for learning how to live together in French, clarifies some key concepts, and provides tools to better focus activities (CSMB, 2015, p. 9), while taking into account the school’s diversity, which is integral to providing all students with access to a quality education.
Together, our reference documents and frameworks have enabled us to implement a shared vision of an organization that supports the school experience of all its students, which is our primary objective. These tools establish a culture of accountability and co-operation among those who work to support the success of all students. In this way, the responsibility for teaching and monitoring learners does not fall to a single individual.
Some of our reference documents are also inspired by the tiered approach to intervention. This model, also known as Response to Intervention (RTI), is a system that prevents problems, identifies necessary interventions and improves the chances of success for all students (Bissonnette et al., 2020).
Although educational success includes success in school, it involves more than just obtaining a diploma or qualifications. It means encouraging children to reach their full potential intellectually, emotionally, socially, and physically. It also aims to instil values, attitudes, and obligations to help students become responsible citizens who are prepared to play an active role in society (Government of Québec, 2017).
As mentioned earlier, a majority of our students come from linguistically and ethnoculturally diverse backgrounds; increasingly, our staff reflect this diversity as well. While immensely enriching, this reality generates some everyday issues. To address these issues, the CSSMB created the Centre for Pedagogical Intervention in Diverse Environments (CIPCD, cipcd.ca) in 2012. Initially serving the “living together in French” orientation of our 2014-2018 strategic plan, the CIPCD then shifted its orientation to “provide an inclusive, welcoming environment open to the world and the future” in accordance with the CSSMB’s 2018-2022 Commitment to Success Plan. This innovative initiative is unique because we are the only CSS to have our own applied research centre affiliated with various partners.
The CIPCD has six working groups to study challenges related to ethnocultural and linguistic diversity in schools, each with its own priority focus. A university researcher and CSSMB administrator or educational consultant are assigned to each group, which has three primary mandates: research, transfer of scientific knowledge, and training.
Focus 1: Teaching French in a multi-ethnic and multilingual environment
Since 2012, various projects have been carried out to address issues of diversity at the CSSMB. Working Group 1 was created because of the very linguistically diverse student population. French is not the mother tongue of over 60 percent of our elementary and high-school students. This working group focuses on the overall problem of adapting pedagogical practices when teaching French to bilingual and multilingual learners for whom French is a second, or even third, language.
In 2015, the CSSMB and Université de Montréal launched a continuing education project called Taking Action in Multi-ethnic and Multilingual Environments with Preschool and Daycare Students. One outcome of this initiative was to increase staff awareness of the importance of recognizing and acknowledging the different languages spoken by students (e.g. Festival “Pluri-Pluri”). This project has changed our perceptions of languages of origin and the need for inclusive practices.
Focus 2: Academic success and school-family-community relations
As noted earlier, over 80 percent of our students are first- or second-generation immigrants. For a variety of reasons related to their migratory experience or that of their parents, these students may face numerous social vulnerabilities and/or academic challenges. Working Group 2 concentrates its activities on the twofold challenge of academic success and school-family-community relations.
In the last few years, the group has organized a number of activities. Several CIPCD-affiliated researchers carried out a study entitled Intercultural Climate and Educational Success of Immigrant Students. This research aimed to evaluate the state of the intercultural climate in several multi-ethnic schools in Quebec (including two at the CSSMB) and examine the impact of this climate on the educational success of immigrant students. Ultimately, a diagnostic tool must be developed to help administrators assess their school’s intercultural climate, as it is a key factor in supporting the educational success of immigrant students.
Focus 3: Vulnerable immigrant populations and psychosocial intervention in educational settings
Recent immigrant students entering the Quebec school system sometimes arrive with emotional baggage that includes grief and trauma. Working Group 3 studies the psychological well-being and academic success of these students, particularly those in psychological distress.
During the 2016-2017 school year, an action research project provided insight on the academic and social integration of young Syrian refugees. Discussion groups were formed in welcome classes to help these students develop a sense of well-being and belonging. At the end of the project, a guide on organizing discussion groups in schools, Mener des groupes de parole en contexte scolaire (2017), was published for school practitioners. Professionals in many of our schools now use this guide to organize such groups so students can express themselves on various topics like death and violence. These groups are designed to foster the psychological well-being of young people in school and, consequently, their educational success.
Focus 4: Inclusive education and intercultural understanding
Working Group 4 was created to address the interpersonal relationship challenges generated by the diversity of our CSS. Its work focuses on making the concept of “living together” a reality in our schools, notably by explaining the foundations of the inclusive perspective. It also looks at activities to promote intercultural understanding and seeks to document their impact.
In 2015, this working group developed a pedagogical guide to help school staff who would like to discuss sensitive topics with students: Aborder les sujets sensibles avec les élèves. This practical tool can be used on a daily basis to discuss topics, whether related to diversity or not, that can provoke discomfort or sometimes heated class discussions.
Focus 5: Socio-professional integration of recently immigrated staff and work relationships in a multi-ethnic environment
More and more CSSMB staff members have been educated outside Quebec, a reality that creates challenges with regard to their socio-professional integration and the school climate. In the last few years, teachers have been trained as peer mentors to help welcome their foreign-trained colleagues, and school administrators have been invited to awareness training on the topic. Teachers educated outside the province have also taken part in group discussions to learn more about the profession in Quebec (challenges and advantages). Finally, this work has led to the publication of a guide for school administrators on facilitating the socio-professional integration of foreign-trained teachers: Faciliter l’intégration socioprofessionnelle du personnel enseignant formé à l’étranger (2019).
Focus 6: Vocational training for youths and adults with an immigrant background
Ethnocultural and linguistic diversity is also increasingly present in vocational training (VT), raising a number of issues particular to this educational sector. In addition to studying the pathways of VT students from ethnocultural minority groups, the members of this working group examine the problems these students face when acquiring skills and trying to enter the job market. In the last few years, the group has led projects to raise awareness of the realities experienced by young people from immigrant backgrounds and revisit the practices supporting their occupational integration, for example, in internship settings.
***
The makeup of our student population has been transformed over the past few decades. Children named Bertrand, Roberge and Lauzon now sit alongside those named Traoré, Chang and Hernandez, primarily because the Charter of the French Language dictates that the majority of new immigrants must attend French-speaking schools. These students come from around the world. Upon arrival, many of them spend one or two years in a welcome class, discovering the language of Félix Leclerc, before joining a regular classroom where they will be successful.
This is possible because we have taken measures to ensure their success, notably by creating more partnerships with university academics. We offer these experts a vast testing ground and, in return, they share what they learn with us. The results speak for themselves: at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, the graduation and qualification rate of our students was ten points higher than the average for all French-speaking school service centres in Quebec. We can therefore safely infer that we are on the right track!
Photo : Adobe Stock
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Bissonnette, S., Bouchard, C., St-Georges, N., Gauthier, C., & Bocquillon, M. (2020). Un modèle de réponse à l’intervention (RàI) comportementale : Le soutien au comportement positif (SCP). Enfance en difficulté, 7, 129–150.
Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys (2015). Référentiel d’accompagnement vivre-ensemble en français. Service des ressources éducatives.
www.csmb.qc.ca/~/media/Files/PDF/CSMB/veef/Referentiel_Vivre-ensemble.ashx
Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys (2018). Plan d’engagement vers la réussite 2018-2022. https://www.csmb.qc.ca/fr-CA/csmb/pevr.aspx
Festival « Pluri-Pluri » à l’école Terre-des-jeunes.
www.elodil.umontreal.ca/videos/presentation/video/eveil-aux-langues-et-aux-cultures-a-lecole-ter/
Government of Québec. (2017). Policy on educational success: A love of learning, a chance to succeed. Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur.
www.education.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/site_web/documents/PSG/politiques_orientations/politique_reussite_educative_10juillet_A_1.pdf
Hirsch, S., Audet, G., & Turcotte, M. (2015). Aborder les sujets sensibles avec les élèves — Guide pédagogique. Centre d’intervention pédagogique en contexte de diversité, Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys.
https://cipcd.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CSMB_-Guide_sujets-sensibles_final.-1.pdf
Amène ton parent au théâtre.
www.mfa.gouv.qc.ca/fr/intimidation/prix/Pages/Ecoles-secondaires-Saint-Georges-Saint-Laurent-2018.aspx
Morrissette, J. (2019). Faciliter l’intégration socioprofessionnelle du personnel enseignant formé à l’étranger. Guide à l’intention des directions d’établissement. Centre d’intervention pédagogique en contexte de diversité, Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys.
https://cipcd.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/GuideFaciliterInte%CC%81gration_VF_HauteRe%CC%81so_190708_pagesSimples.pdf
Papazian-Zohrabian, G., Lemire, V., Mamprin, C., Turpin-Samson, A., & Aoun, R. (2017). Mener des groupes de parole en contexte scolaire. Guide pour les enseignants et les professionnels. Centre d’intervention pédagogique en contexte de diversité, Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys et Université de Montréal.
https://cipcd.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Mener-des-groupes-de-parole-en-contexte-scolaire-Guide-pour-les-enseignants-et-les-professionnels.pdf
In the spring of 2020, schools were closed to limit the spread and impact of COVID-19 across Canada and beyond. As a result, students were suddenly at home with family, where most stayed for many months. Depending on the province and even school board in question, a range of distance and online options for academic learning were offered and/or required.
Those learning at home included about one million students, from Kindergarten through Grade 12, requiring special education services. These students included those who are gifted as well as those with disabilities, including learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, and mental illness. A range of programs, supports, and placements are typically offered in schools across Canada to meet the needs of these students. These include accommodations and universally designed teaching approaches provided in general education classes, as well as specialist supports and therapeutic services provided within general and specialized classes and schools (Hutchinson & Specht, 2020). So, what became of these approaches and supports when the learning context shifted from school to home, and what implications did this have for students and families?
In spite of the tremendous efforts of superintendents, principals, and educators to facilitate what would be known as “emergency” distance learning, we weren’t ready as a school system or as a society. We hadn’t planned for this pandemic and we were at various stages of readiness with respect to infrastructure and professional skill sets. What we learned during those months, however, has important implications for our planning going forward – for all students, but in particular for those with special education needs (SEN). Many students with SEN often require human supports at school to navigate daily life, flourish socially and emotionally, and progress in their academic development. It has been a challenge for systems to provide differentiated and appropriate at-home learning opportunities.
In the spring of 2020, we launched a study exploring the experience of families supporting students with special education needs at home during school closures. We surveyed more than 265 parents from across Canada about the learning and social-emotional supports they received, their self-efficacy in supporting their child’s learning, and their own stress levels. We also conducted in-depth interviews with 25 parents and we continue to collect stories about the ways in which families and schools have worked together to meet the needs of students, whether virtually or in face-to-face settings.
Our research over the past several months has documented stories of families supporting students with SEN in myriad ways. Two interconnected learnings arose from our study: at-home learning magnified what already existed, and relationships are key. We offer these learnings to guide our future efforts to create the most accessible learning opportunities possible, whether virtual or in bricks and mortar settings.
It will not be a surprise to anyone familiar with the complex institution of public education in Canada that there are areas to celebrate and areas for improvement. At-home learning shed a bright light on the strengths, cracks, and tensions that already existed within the education system. These were evident in areas such as instructional and pedagogical approaches, inclusive school communities, and the roles and resources of families.
Parents of students with SEN described this magnification of strengths and cracks through their stories of at-home learning in the spring. If inclusive approaches and differentiated instruction were evident in the classroom and school prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents saw evidence of these in the at-home learning efforts. If those approaches were not previously in place, they were even less apparent during at-home learning. Some parents we spoke to described the ways that their child’s educators continued to support them when schools closed, based on their deep understanding of the needs of the individual child. For example, one teacher videotaped herself going through the typical morning routine and shared it daily in order to provide consistency and familiarity for students. Another teacher provided options for assignments so students would all have work available at their level of readiness. Multiple parents described regular, personalized video interactions with their child’s teacher or education assistant as the most valuable offering, allowing for social, emotional, and academic support. Other parents said they disengaged from the at-home learning options because they felt that the offerings were poorly suited for their child, resulting in a sense of exclusion from the learning community.
The magnification effect also applied to the skills, resources, and relationships of families supporting students with SEN. Many parents – typically mothers – who were skilled advocates with experience in navigating the school system, were able to seek out and organize school-based resources to support their child during school closures. Those who had financial, work, or health challenges, or who had fewer resources to draw upon, described an abrupt end to services, which increased stress for the family and the child.
For some families, therapeutic services such as applied behaviour analysis, occupational therapy, or speech/language therapies are typically provided through or by schools. When schools closed, therapies stopped. In some communities, creative solutions were found to continue offering coaching for parents to be able to provide some services, and a few examples of direct service via video were noted. Many parents described the weight and stress of having to provide learning and therapeutic supports for their child(ren), often while facing financial pressures or while working at home.
And yet, while many children and families struggled, others flourished. Many families told us about the positives during school closures. Some parents learned an incredible amount about their child – their academic needs and the ways they learn best. Gains were seen by some parents in their child’s social and academic skills, largely because of the efforts made by the parents themselves. Others watched their child grow calmer, happier, and more rested away from the stresses of school schedules and social anxieties. A small number of families we spoke to were prompted by their child’s positive experience to consider leaving the public-school system altogether, either to home-school or to explore private schooling options. This response was more typical among well-resourced parents of young children.
Equity issues such as these are well known within education research and policy, but bubbled to the surface in more obvious ways during school closures and at-home learning.
Relationships – with school staff, with community-based service providers, and for students in particular, with peers – mattered in so many ways for families. Positive, productive, and personal connections served as the crux of successful at-home learning experiences.
Many parents pointed to the regular, personalized check-ins, by email, phone, or video chat, that were offered by their child’s education assistant and/or teacher as the most beneficial support they received from schools. Other parents felt the absence of this connection with their child’s teaching team.
Parents who had struggled to build or maintain strong, collaborative relationships with school staff prior to school closures described frustration and helplessness as these deteriorated even further. Conversely, examples of effective at-home learning experiences always included descriptions of the working alliance that existed between parents and school staff.
Peer relationships were also raised as important by parents. For many students with SEN, particularly those with more significant disabilities, connections with peers exist only at school. During school closures, many families in our study worried about the social and emotional well-being of their child – even more than they worried about them falling behind academically. We heard from families that very little attention was being paid to connecting peers with each other during at-home learning.
So what next? What are we learning about the roles that schools play in the lives of students with special education needs and their families? About the inequities within our systems that privilege some of these families over others? About the ways in which inclusion is experienced by children in school and in virtual settings? And about the relationships that serve as the foundation for the work we do in building communities of learners, educators, and families?
Within and after the pandemic, planning with difference as the driver, and collaboration the vehicle, is one path to greater equity and inclusion.
Relationships mattered in so many ways for families. Positive, productive, and personal connections served as the crux of successful at-home learning experiences.
What does this look like? Imagine that we are Grade 5 teachers, planning our virtual class of 30 students. We know that there are a few students reading below grade level, others who need support to sustain attention, and some who are struggling with feelings of worry or diagnoses of anxiety. We could prepare our activities and lessons for the day, and then consider what we could do differently to accommodate these students. Or we could think about what is required for these students to be successful and for them to be able to participate fully in the lesson. Do they need frequent movement opportunities? A visual schedule that maps out the online time? Options for working without video? Small group meeting rooms to share ideas and solve problems with less public risk? A range of options to show their work? And with our universal design for learning hat on, we know that these approaches are necessary for some students, but helpful for all students.
We use the term “collaboration” in schools often. The value of collaborative pedagogy is embedded in our policy documents, in our mission statements, and in our specific guidance regarding special education services. And it’s one of the toughest things to accomplish in any kind of authentic sense. We are inspired by the stories we were told of families, school staff, and community partners working together, with the voice of the student at the core. We need more of these, and we need to learn from them to tease apart elements we can replicate across the country.
The term “working alliance” has typically been used to describe clients and therapists working together in counselling settings. It has been used recently in education to capture not only the emotional aspect of relationships but also the cognitive aspect of the goals and tasks mutually agreed upon by students and teachers, and by teachers and parents (Knowles et al., 2019; Toste et al., 2015).
Building a working alliance and the key relationships that allow for this collaboration is complex and challenging. We often have the assumption that relationships just happen – as if they are outside of our control and we are at their mercy. Students requiring special education services don’t have the luxury of happenstance when it comes to relationships and collaboration – these need to be in place for them to thrive or even survive.
Focusing on the skills required in collaborating and building working alliances is one step. This skill-building can be done in BEd and continuing teacher education programs – particularly, but not exclusively, those focusing on inclusive classrooms. This idea is not new – collaboration has been listed as key to special education service delivery for decades. But given our findings, renewed attention is warranted.
This collaborative skill-building can best take place within systems that support and foster a focus on partnerships. Are there processes in place that prioritize authentic participation of students, families, and school staff in decision-making? Are there individuals in schools who have specific training in mediation and collaborative problem solving? Are these kinds of interventions considered to support students, families, and school staff in working together? How can some of the virtual approaches we’ve learned about be leveraged to increase participation? Collaboration is emotional work. Do school staff feel that they have the organizational resources they need? What about the emotional well-being of school staff? Is this being attended to and seen as a priority? Are there approaches in place to make sure that staff have the capacity and supports to engage in difficult conversations?
We were caught off guard by the switch to emergency schooling in the spring of 2020. Such an abrupt change of modality was unexpected and system-wide. But in what ways are we better prepared going forward? We are told that waves of viral pandemics may be the norm. We have also learned that virtual options are a great fit for some students, and we should consider opportunities for developing online learning offerings that are truly accessible for all students, including those with SEN. Considering the multiplying effect that emergency schooling had on the strengths, cracks, and tensions of the system, we need to use this time to identify and address the inequities that have been present in the system for decades. Effective, ethical emergency schooling requires a foundation of effective, ethical (non-emergency) schooling.
The pandemic has shifted our reality and much of what we’re experiencing, from wearing masks in classrooms to connecting by way of pool noodles in physical education classes, is new, different, and in many cases, uncomfortable. But what the pandemic has brought to light is what already existed when it comes to the education of students with special education needs. We have seen creative, inclusive efforts by many educators that we can learn from in continuing to build practices that support the participation of as many students as possible – particularly by planning with difference in mind. We also need to attend to skills and structures to ensure that students, families, and school staff are well-supported and resourced as they engage in the challenging work of building effective collaborative relationships.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
Hutchinson, N. L., & Specht, J. A. (2020). Inclusion of learners with exceptionalities in Canadian schools: A practical handbook for teachers (6th ed.). Pearson Canada Inc.
Knowles, C., Murray, C., Gau, J., & Toste, J. R. (2019). Teacher–student working alliance among students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 38(6), 753–761.
Toste, J. R., Heath, N. L., McDonald Connor, C., & Peng, P. (2015). Reconceptualizing teacher-student relationships: Applicability of the working alliance within classroom contexts. The Elementary School Journal, 116(1), 30–48.
Societal inequities are replicated in schooling along the lines of Indigeneity and race, gender, gender identity and sexuality, class, disability, citizenship, place of birth, faith, and more, and become more layered and complex when we consider intersecting identities. We see these long-standing inequities play out in practices such as academic streaming; disproportionate levels of punishment, suspension and expulsions for Black students; curricular violence that exists in the erasure of the histories, realities, and resistance of Indigenous, Black and racialized people in Canada; disproportionately higher proportions of White, middle-class students in gifted classes, French Immersion programs, specialty arts programs, and other “programs of choice”; limited accountability measures to address often persistent and traumatic experiences of discrimination and harassment for students, families, and staff that are racialized and marginalized; and more.
In times of greater crisis and strain on systems and structures, long-standing inequities are simply exacerbated. In this time of a global pandemic, we see growing gaps between the ability of private and public schools to support the safety and well-being of children, we see massive inequities with regards to student access to technology and Wi-Fi, and we see the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on racialized families and communities and families marginalized by poverty.
Many families and communities on these lands have been living through another pandemic that we have yet to name as a society. White supremacy and settler colonialism have existed in this place that some refer to as Canada, long before March 2020. The question is: Why haven’t we seen these oppressive structures as a global crisis? It makes me question which lives are deemed worthy and which lives are deemed disposable. Whose pain and suffering is avidly attended to, and whose pain and suffering is erased? In this current moment, we are seeing an upsurge in awareness of how Whiteness and White supremacy have and continue to construct anti-Blackness and perpetuate anti-Black racism politically, economically, socially, mentally, emotionally, and academically.
How might this time of global upheaval, massive uncertainty, and racial reckoning influence who we choose to be and how we choose to live? How will it influence the how and why of schooling in ways that will both challenge and perpetuate historical barriers to educational access and opportunity?
Perhaps a better question is: Who will view this time as an opportunity for collective transformation and freedom, and who will view it as opportunity for self-interest and self-protection?
We have seen many examples of “opportunism” in the last few months. For example, the rise of pandemic pods, in which small groups of children from different families learn together outside of traditional school settings, similar to homeschooling or private schooling, demonstrate increases in privatization in education, which provide “choice” for more privileged families and result in disproportionately negative impacts for historically marginalized populations (Winton, 2020). We were already seeing calls for greater moves to e-learning prior to the pandemic, and the redirection of large amounts of public education dollars to private technology companies. As we move into an era of unprecedented online learning, we have to be vigilant about efforts to normalize a form of schooling that was developed in response to a pandemic. While educators are doing their best to recreate community and rich learning experiences online, mass efforts to increase online learning in a post-pandemic era will increase inequities in access and de-emphasize the importance of relationships, creativity, co-constructing knowledges, and developing critical consciousness that are such crucial aspects to the learning experience. This is all against the backdrop of an analysis by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, indicating that Canada’s top billionaires “added $37B to their fortunes since the pandemic started, during six of the most economically catastrophic months in the country’s history” (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2020).
Crisis has the potential to breed opportunism, which has historical roots in colonialism, White supremacy, and capitalism, as well as contemporary manifestations in the form of grave injustices. But crisis also has the potential to return us to more just, humane, and compassionate approaches to schooling and society. We might seize this opportunity to resist traditional educational discourses, legitimize marginalized knowledges, and imagine future possibilities.
Resisting traditional educational discourses requires an active acknowledgement of the ways in which schooling has historically stratified students according to perceived abilities, social class, race, and gender and continues to underserve historically marginalized populations of students. Possibilities emerge when we make the distinction between education and schooling, with the former having transformative and liberatory possibilities, and the latter being a site of social reproduction and socialization (Patel, 2016). We might resist:
Legitimizing marginalized knowledges requires an acknowledgement of the knowledge systems that are on the periphery of traditional schooling discourses. Their erasure constitutes a form of curricular violence for particular populations of students whose identities, histories, and worldviews are not represented in classrooms, creating a social, emotional, and mental disconnect. It’s a continuous reminder for particular students and educators that these spaces are not for them, that they do not belong here, and that they must conform to particular logics to be granted access, opportunity, and safety. We might legitimize:
Imagining future possibilities involves a critical eye to what needs repair, healing, truth, and justice in our current realities. It simultaneously requires a hopeful heart as we imagine the worlds we may create together. Oftentimes, the act of imagination can be a painful process when we consider current realities, but it is that place of critical hope that keeps us working toward new possibilities, different realities, and heightened levels of consciousness. We might imagine:
In the midst of these two global pandemics, one new and one centuries old, may we find the individual and collective courage to centre relationality, community, and collective care above our individual fears, insecurities, and self-interest. Students depend on it, our schools depend on it, and our futures depend on it.
“When we leverage texts, we open up mirrors that reflect the lived experiences of children and windows that enter the lives of others, while sliding doors allow us to interact within the worlds of one another.”
– Rudine Sims Bishop, 1990
Kenisha Bynoe and Gail Bedeau are both Early Reading Coaches with the Toronto District School Board. They have collaborated with educators and invited them to situate who they are based on the intersections of their social identities and that of their learners. By using texts to reflect and honour the lived experiences of learners and themselves, educators came to realize that who we are influences how and what we teach. The Kindergarten-level activity described below is one example of how we can support the development of belonging, contributing, and well-being, as learners come to new understandings about themselves, others, and the world in which they live in.
Book: I Like Myself (also in French), by Karen Beaumont
This book is about a little girl who loves everything about herself, from her ears to her toes. It does not matter what others think or say because she has a strong sense of self and embraces all that she is, inside and out.
Question: How do you see yourself?
Materials: Skin-tone paint, paint brushes, mirrors, vials with chickpeas, cinnamon, cocoa powder, brown sugar, and Rice Krispies, Sharpie markers
The pandemic has further brought to light the inequities and injustices faced by marginalized groups. For Black and other racialized students in a North Toronto middle school, face-to face-class discussions on matters of anti-Black racism were replaced with virtual community circles. The highly publicized murder of George Floyd and subsequent outcries for justice for Black lives presented educators with an opportunity to critically unpack and explore these lived experiences. Above all, it was critical for all educators to listen to students and encourage social action in their local communities.
Creating a socially distanced Public Service Announcement (www.youtube.com/watch?v= JOW5z3JmaFQ) was an opportunity for students to express, through poetry and spoken word, their deep-rooted trauma, hurt, anger, and resolve as they reflect on their very beings, representations of “Blackness,” and all this encompasses in society.
Photos: courtesy Vidya Shah
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
Akomolafe, B. (2019, Oct. 22). KWIC 30th Anniversary Keynote: Adebayo Akomolafe [Video]. YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7pauBaL_UE&t=6s
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (2020, Sept. 16). Canada’s top billionaires are $37 billion richer since start of the pandemic, CCPA report finds [Press release]. www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/billionaires-wealth-pandemic
Patel, L. (2016). Pedagogies of resistance and survivance: Learning as marronage. Equity & Excellence in Education, 49(4), 397–401.
Winton, S. (2020). Pandemic pods may undermine the promises of public education. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/pandemic-pods-may-undermine-promises-of-public-education-145237
Inclusion, specifically in terms of disabilities, affects all teachers, students, and classrooms. Within Canada, roughly 13 percent of K-12 students are considered disabled, a number that climbs to 25 percent when taking into account students requiring significant learning supports (Alberta Teachers’ Association, 2018). Commonly, preservice teachers receive training on policies, procedures, and strategies for inclusion as part of their teacher education. Armed with this training, teachers (novice and experienced alike) are expected to “do” inclusion and support a gamut of diverse student needs. Teaching practices are shaped by this training combined with teachers’ own beliefs, values, and experiences, yet there is less clarity in academic literature on how teachers integrate their perspectives and training in coming to understand inclusion. This crossroads was the focus of my research as both a contribution to scholarship and to support preservice teachers themselves in developing an understanding of inclusion.
As an instructor of a Bachelor of Education course on inclusion and having worked with students with disabilities over the years, I wondered how preservice teachers grappled with and made sense of their training and what they thought inclusion meant from their own perspectives. Having seen first-hand how a teacher’s understanding of inclusion can impact students’ experiences and learning, I knew this was an area that warranted further investigation. Much of the literature I reviewed considered teachers’ overall beliefs, sentiments, and attitudes toward inclusion and disabilities. However, I was struck by the limited attention paid to the finer-grain aspects of preservice teachers’ perspectives and how they came to develop their understanding.
Although I have not defined either disability or inclusion, these terms have likely evoked from readers (such as yourself) a swirl of meanings and assumptions. In the same way, without explanation, my mention of a typical K-12 Canadian classroom likely prompts a common set of assumptions about what a classroom is, what happens there, and who is there. Chances are most people would imagine a classroom having a teacher, students, desks, and chairs. In such a classroom, students likely take part in learning activities and assessments, and are expected to follow established behavioural norms. While the details of these characteristics will differ from person to person, the commonalities make up what Dorothy Holland (1998) and colleagues called a “figured world.” This concept encapsulates the socially negotiated and recognized, taken-for-granted assumptions about an environment, its participants and activities, and what outcomes are valued over others within a context. Figured worlds vary in scope and type, such as a figured world of schooling, parenting, corporate accounting, or Alcoholics Anonymous. Importantly, figured worlds shape how people engage with daily life and are useful for understanding how people assume orientations to participate in a given context. They are how a person can know what to expect and do within a classroom versus, say, a zoo. (Of course, classrooms and zoos can sometimes feel like they have a lot in common!)
Figured worlds are durable but not static. They are in a continuous process of being refigured and renegotiated by their participants, thus making it a useful framing given that neither inclusion nor teaching and learning occur in a vacuum or strictly follow a script. As well, a person’s experiences and participation in one world influence how that person comes to understand and participate in another. This space, where preservice teachers negotiate previous understandings of inclusion and/or develop new ones, was the focus of my research. I wanted to pull back the curtain on what preservice teachers understood inclusion to be and how they formed that understanding. In addition, I wanted preservice teachers themselves to reflect on their perspectives and discuss them with peers, learn from each other, and couch their perspectives among their peers.
To help make this process visible, at least partially, my colleagues and I tasked the 350+ preservice teachers enrolled in a Bachelor of Education course with creating drawings of inclusion. Intentionally, the task was open-ended. Students were supplied paper and markers and had approximately 30 minutes to create their drawings. Why drawings? The goal was to encourage preservice teachers to go beyond repeating inclusive buzzwords. Moreover, drawings offered a tangible way to externalize students’ thinking and acted as a tool to think with when discussing their ideas with peers. In addition, drawings are unique in showing multiple ideas and concepts in relation to each other simultaneously on a page, compared to a written form where ideas are presented more linearly. For instance, a drawing can more easily show how different groups of students and resources might be positioned in a classroom in relation to each other and the teacher.
Given the range of drawing skill sets among the preservice teachers, they were also asked include a written description to explain ideas or concepts they were attempting to convey through the drawing. In small groups, the preservice teachers shared and discussed their drawings. All drawings were scanned and uploaded to an online gallery accessible to everyone enrolled in the course. The instructors and I reviewed the drawings to get a glimpse into students’ thinking and we referred back to them during in-class discussions.
The drawings were delightful, ranging from depictions of classrooms to abstract shapes and metaphors. They were diverse but also shared common themes.
Accommodations and resources were common among drawings of classroom environments. These included supports such as wheelchairs, access to print and audio versions of books, visual magnification devices, various types of seating, and options to use visual or tactile learning materials. These depictions took a predominantly tool-driven approach to inclusion by offering students resources. Perhaps unsurprisingly, such approaches echo traditional perspectives toward disabilities that continue to underpin systemic structures and practices within education today – specifically, the medical model of disability that relies on matching diagnoses to supports and developing individualized education plans to document and track students’ progress. Critically, such diagnoses are often necessary to prove eligibility for resources and access to government funding.
Also common to the drawings were students depicted as holding hands or collaborating on learning activities. This framing of inclusion tended to emphasize togetherness and a sense of belonging among diverse people. Collaboration was also conveyed in two ways: as students helping one another and as a way to strengthen learning and benefit everyone by combining people with different attributes and experiences. These ideas seem to align with contemporary theories of education such as social constructivism and generally fostering interactions among people as part of learning.
In contrast to these, several drawings took a more holistic perspective by describing inclusion as a system. For instance, drawings of a forest as a metaphor for how each student represented various elements of a forest (e.g. rocks, stumps, trees, shrubs, soil) and each element was interconnected and collectively made up an ecosystem of inclusion.
In terms of what inspired their drawings, in interviews after the course, the participants often referenced their own experiences of schooling. Some spoke of challenges they noticed or experienced as students themselves and used the drawings to contrast or improve upon them. Others spoke from the perspective of being parents and noticing their own children’s experiences and how their children’s classrooms looked and what resources were available to support student needs. Still others admitted limited experience or knowledge of supporting disabilities and inclusion.
Between the course and the interviews, preservice teachers completed a four-week practicum placement at a school where they planned and taught a portion of lessons. During the interviews, I asked the participants about their experiences around implementing inclusive practices during practicum. One hurdle they repeatedly described was taking into account social dynamics when trying inclusive practices. For instance, one participant described an activity where students had to collaborate to solve math problems. The preservice teacher did not realize one student often had negative interactions with peers, making collaboration difficult. In another case, a participant designed a lesson where students worked in groups and did class presentations, but two students had selective mutism and struggled to participate in the activity given its interactive nature.
Having seen first-hand how a teacher’s understanding of inclusion can impact students’ experiences and learning, I knew this was an area that warranted further investigation.
Some participants also encountered school cultures and norms that resisted certain inclusive practices. In a school that prioritized traditional direct instruction and individual seat work, when a participant offered students multiple options to show their learning – such as thorough multimedia or forms other than written text – all students elected to use a written format because it was the normative practice of that learning environment. In another case, a participant explained how in upper grades, there was often a strong focus on preparing students for diploma exams and other teachers in the school questioned learning activities that strayed from the formats used in exams.
Not all participants encountered challenges in their practicum, though. Several described classes where students had agency to use resources as desired to support their needs. The teacher had established norms and inclusive practices that aligned with the preservice teachers’ perspectives toward inclusion. Similarly, one participant noted how their placement classroom had norms around students supporting each other, reducing the onus on the teacher to foster inclusive practices.
At a base level, all the participants conveyed a positive sentiment towards inclusion. All acknowledged diversity among students and their needs, and communicated ways to support those needs. Reflecting on the findings, some key takeaways emerged.
First, traditional, medically-oriented approaches to disability continue to be top of mind for many preservice teachers entering the profession. Given that the medical model underpins much of the systemic processes and supports, teachers must learn to navigate and leverage these systems so students can access funding and resources. At the same time, students are more than a diagnostic label and inclusion should approach students as holistic beings with an array of attributes, strengths, and needs. Contemporary models such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL) aim for such a holistic approach, and many teacher education programs (including the one in this study) and ministries of education promote their use. Acknowledging that current funding models and systemic structures can impose pragmatic challenges, training teachers on models such as UDL is key in encouraging teachers to move beyond mere accommodations and take comprehensive approaches to supporting students’ needs.
Second, the participants’ common portrayals of students collaborating or interacting as part of an inclusive environment aligns with contemporary theories of learning as a social process. The participants were less clear on how collaborative approaches worked together with accommodation strategies, suggesting a need for more explicit training and/or scaffolds as part of teacher education and professional development to help teachers integrate individualized supports within social models of learning.
Third, as some participants experienced in their practicums, there can also be tensions between inclusive practices and school cultures and priorities. Pressures such as diploma exams can constrain the types of teaching practices and learning activities that are offered to students. Importantly, inclusion and diversified practices that better support a range of student needs are a benefit and not a compromise or detriment. Approaches such as UDL can enhance and enrich learning for all students while enabling a greater range of students to learn and participate in education. While it may be challenging at times, new and seasoned teachers alike should remain vigilant and reflective about their practices and resist following traditional ways of teaching for the sake of status quo, instead focusing on pedagogies that are inclusive and enriching to all students. Similarly, teacher educators can integrate opportunities for preservice teachers to critically reflect on their perspectives as part of their training.
This study has shown a wonderful breadth in how preservice teachers are thinking about inclusion. While the implementation details were still emergent for some participants, their ideals hold promise. The study also points to opportunities to scaffold ways for teachers to make linkages across different aspects of inclusion (e.g. individualized versus class-wide supports) during their training and when they take on classrooms of their own. As well, given the array of ways preservice teachers think about inclusion, incorporating opportunities to explicitly discuss those perspectives in their teacher education can support them in developing durable understandings of inclusion.
Inclusion is a broad and complex topic with many interconnected elements, much like the drawings involving forest metaphors, so it is heartening to see the next generation of teachers actively considering its many facets in an effort to foster an accessible, robust, and resilient education system for all students.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
Alberta Teachers’ Association (2018). The state of inclusion in Alberta schools. www.deslibris.ca/ID/247446; Statistics Canada (2018). Canadian survey on disability: A demographic, employment and income profile of Canadians with disabilities aged 15 years and over, 2017. www.statcan.gc.ca
Holland, D., Lachicotte Jr., W., Skinner, D. & Cain, D. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Harvard University Press.
I still live with hurtful memories of being a timid and apprehensive gay boy who was bullied mercilessly and suffered immense mental anguish during junior and senior high school. I was subjected to incessant name calling and targeted by packs of boys on school buses and school grounds. Later, as a teacher, I was perpetually in fear of being outed as gay and losing my job. I dealt with unrelenting stressors, like finding pictures of naked men left under wiper blades on my car windshield in the school parking lot. These indelible memories are my impetus for wanting to make life better now for sexual and gender minorities (SGMs or LGBTQ2+ persons) in our schools. In Canada today, there is an established basis for doing this, bolstered by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Vriend v. Alberta in 1998, which granted equality rights to sexual minority Canadians, there have been continuous changes in law, legislation, and educational policy that have abetted recognizing and accommodating SGMs in school culture and curriculum. More recently, Bill C-16, An Act to Amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, which became law in 2017, provided gender minorities with protection against discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and expression.
With such movement forward, what is it like for SGMs to have SGM-specific policy in place in our schools as social spaces where students learn and teachers work? I took up this question in research1 I conducted in a large urban school district in western Canada that had had a standalone SGM policy, rather than merely an umbrella or general equity policy, in place for five years. Having SGM-specific policy is far from the norm in school districts in our country, so I interviewed key interest groups that included students and teachers to learn about their experiences. Students were asked to discuss everyday stressors and supports as they talked about school culture, climate, curriculum, principals, and teachers. Teachers were asked to discuss the importance of having SGM policy and practice that impact the recognition, accommodation, and well-being of SGMs. Here, I share some of their perspectives.
Students’ perspectives: What teachers do matters
The high-school students I interviewed commonly spoke about the need to educate others about SGMs and our issues and concerns. One student who was president of his high-school GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance or Gender-Sexuality Alliance) spoke pragmatically about this:
“I think having more education would be helpful because when people are uneducated, they don’t like what they don’t understand or what they don’t perceive to be normal. I think having education is a really big aspect. Incorporating LGBTQ+ case studies into courses would be really helpful.”
Another high-school student spoke about her former faith-based school where sexual orientation was still a taboo topic. She related, “It was never spoken about. There were no comments on it, and anything you did to try to bring it up, they’d put you down.” She spoke positively about the SGM-inclusive culture in her current school, stating, “I find it very welcoming. You see same-sex couples in the hallway, and there’s nothing – nobody blinks an eye.” She spoke about the teachers, saying, “One of my friends had a teacher who used their preferred pronouns and names. So that’s one teacher I know who’s very accepting. I’m pretty sure there are multiple other teachers who would as well. On the first day, they read off the attendance list and, of course, that’s your legal name. But if you ask, there are multiple teachers who will use the student’s preferred name and pronouns.” Another high school student also spoke about the naming issue, using an example to indicate how students can be negatively impacted in a public way: “One thing that sucks is for Valentine’s Day, they do the hearts. They write everyone’s name on a heart and put them in the lunchroom downstairs. But because they use the attendance list to do it, it’s birth names and legal names. So that can cause anxiety.” One trans-identified student who uses he/him pronouns provided this particular concern regarding naming and roll call. He recounted, “A big issue that you need to work with is substitute teachers. My legal name and the name that I go by are not the same, so I always need to talk to the substitutes ahead of time. That’s a bit stressful. Sometimes they forget. They always try, but you can’t remember everything.” Regarding his teachers in general, this student pondered, “I wish there was some way for the teachers to understand how significant it is to respect pronouns and labels and titles because I feel like some of them don’t understand some of the consequences. The first few times don’t bother you that much, but the more it happens, the more it bothers you. Most of my teachers don’t seem to understand how much it affects me. It makes me feel crappy.” Like other students I interviewed, this student spoke about the need to educate teachers:
“I feel because teachers are directly interacting with and impacting queer youth, it should be part of training them on a PD day or something, just to take a crash course on understanding. I don’t know if those things do happen or what the situation is with that. I just wish in general that people knew more about us and just the facts and less of the perceptions. I don’t know specifically what would be available to them, though. I do wish there was more information that was commonly known. Overall, I think our teachers are pretty supportive – some more than others – just because they’re more educated on everything. And some really try to learn with you, which is helpful. They want you to tell them stuff that they don’t know. There’s still a lot of improvements that can be made, a lot more information that can be shared. With more knowledge, there’s less misunderstanding, there’s less judgment, and everybody can just live together more peacefully and not be angry at each other or confused.”
Teachers’ perspectives: Knowing school culture, being an advocate
Supportive teachers I interviewed saw schools as social spaces where they engaged in strategic actions to advance SGM inclusion. One high-school teacher provided this perspective on what constituted an SGM-inclusive culture in her school:
“The school is very welcoming and comprehensive in terms of how staff accept students and how students themselves are perceived around the school. There isn’t a lot of discussion that we have to do because the SGM policy dictates behaviour. It’s more about creating a culture: We’ll do it because that’s what people do. This results in fewer students seeking out the GSA on a regular basis because the culture of the school itself is so open and accepting that everywhere is a safe place. The school encounters zero parent resistance to pink shirt day and other GSA events. The administration is very vocally supportive of the students wherever they are in their identity journey. They want to put those students first, ahead of any reservations of parents or complaints from community members. Everyone realizes that comfort is not covered under our provincial human rights legislation, but lack of discrimination and the ability to exist in your identity are covered.”
Of course, creating a genuinely accepting SGM-inclusive school culture takes time. Another high school teacher spoke about his GSA work to help non-heterosexual boys become more comfortable with their sexual identities: “In the GSA, it’s always more girls than guys – substantially. It’s probably 80 percent girls and 20 percent boys, if not lower. I’ve talked to other GSA teachers, and they’ve seen the same thing. Many times, I’ve heard girls say that they felt safe. I haven’t really heard a boy commenting either way. Maybe that’s why fewer boys come to the GSA meeting. There generally is more of a stigma for them, especially in high schools.” Paralleling this perspective on non-heterosexual boys’ discomfort, another high school teacher provided this observation: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any boys holding hands, but I’ve seen lots more girls holding hands – girlfriends. That’s now just as okay as heterosexual couples walking down the hallway.” A junior high school teacher offered a similar perspective, indicating it is not just a high-school issue: “The girls seem to be far more comfortable at the junior high age for sure compared to the boys. Absolutely, I don’t think boys are quite there yet at this stage, which is sad. It’s unfortunate.”
Many teachers spoke to the importance of having a standalone school district policy on sexual orientation and gender identity to fortify the work to create an SGM-inclusive school culture. In this regard, one teacher working in an all-grades setting provided her perspective on living out this policy in word and action:
“It’s about a district level of support that starts with leadership. It’s about letting all staff know that it’s about not having prejudice and discrimination based on a student’s perceived or actual sexual orientation or gender identity. It’s about being appropriate with our responses as a staff if we encounter that, whether it’s in behaviours, comments, or the actions of other students. But it goes so much deeper. It’s in the way you would group students, in washroom use and locker use, in language use in the classroom, and in resources and approaches. So, it’s really helpful in building on safe and caring schools. It gives us something to work toward so we’re all consistent. We have a policy and we have the support of our district to continue to do that.”
In sum, teachers provided an array of reasons why a standalone SGM policy is a good thing. One high-school teacher saw it as assurance enabling SGM inclusion when teachers couldn’t rely on the school principal. He concluded, “Putting a policy on this was a good thing because you’re not always going to have an understanding administrator, a forward-thinking administrator.” A junior high school teacher felt the policy enabled him to start a GSA, which subsequently contributed to more SGM inclusion in his school. He said, “I’ve had students say how much better it is in the school since we started the GSA. I used to hear students say, ‘That’s so gay’ – constantly. I can’t even remember the last time I had to say something to a student about that. It’s just known that that’s not acceptable to do anymore. Those sorts of things to do with language and what’s acceptable in schools – I think a lot of that has to do with the policy.”
A standalone SGM policy that is consistently implemented… is a clear indicator that a school district has the backs of SGM teachers and allied teachers.
Considering whether the standalone policy made a difference for teachers in her district, a teacher working in a K-12 school responded, “I think by our surety that we’ve got our backs covered, that makes us stronger in what we’re trying to achieve.” She also saw the policy as effective in assisting SGM students who require basic accommodation that includes having their physical needs met: “I know last year, one student would go home to go to the bathroom. Of course, they wouldn’t come back. Washroom access is something so simple and so painful at the same time.”
Supporting SGM teachers, creating an SGM-inclusive school
Increasingly today, young SGM teachers choose to be vocal and visible at work, which is enabled when there is policy in place to protect them. However, many SGM teachers in our country still navigate homophobia and transphobia in their schools. Their challenges and concerns are well documented in The Every Teacher Project on LGBTQ Inclusive Education in Canada’s K-12 Schools.2
Importantly, a gay junior high school teacher spoke about the significance of having the policy in terms of SGM teacher welfare:
“I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s awesome. When it got put in place in our school district, it just seemed quite far advanced from where the rest of the province was. Just being able to know you’ve got the backing of the board is huge. Knowing that you can go in and ask these questions and do these things and not be petrified is massive. Not that it ever felt like there was a lot of homophobia in my district. I know people have encountered pockets of it here and there. I know of some horror stories, but I came out in my second year as a teacher. It was never a big deal, but it’s still nice to know that the board has your back.”
Indeed, having a standalone SGM policy that is consistently implemented and periodically reviewed is a clear indicator that a school district has the backs of SGM teachers and allied teachers engaged in SGM-inclusive work. Such specific policy can nurture an SGM-positive school culture and encourage principals to lead the way in being there for SGM students and teachers. In the end, policy is protection and its purposeful implementation is true recognition and accommodation of SGM students and teachers.
In terms of being there for SGM teachers, here are three constructive ways to be accommodative: First, show support. Notably, having strong support from school leaders can create a more open dialogue and space whereby SGM teachers feel safe to deliver and engage in SGM-inclusive education. Second, develop inclusive workplace policies. At the school district level, standalone anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia policies covering SGM staff and students – rather than generic equity policy – should stand alongside workplace harassment policies and be implemented to protect and support SGM staff. Third, create a professional and/or informal network. SGM teachers within the district can form a professional GSA where they meet to share their experiences, learn from one another, and develop trusting and supportive professional relationships.
As well, teachers – including SGM teachers needing mentors – students, principals, and parents can learn from the good work that openly LGBTQ+ educators do. Here is an excerpt from an interview I conducted with an openly gay elementary school principal in the school district who spoke about his work to be a change agent and advocate in his school:
“What do I do at my school? Certainly, we have our safe-contact teachers identified. We also have the safe and caring rainbow stickers. There’s one right as you enter the school, and there’s one on my office door, my assistant principal’s door, and on the classroom doors of the safe contact teachers and other supportive teachers. I’ve had many conversations with my parent council around the work we’re doing in order to have their support for the SOGI [sexual orientation and gender identity] work in our school. Our library collection is also growing as we find more and more stories that depict the LGBTQ+ youth and their families and same-sex families. I also have conversations with my staff about heteronormativity, the gender spectrum, and the language we use with students. So, is it working? I certainly know that my staff is very aware. Also, my sexuality is not hidden from my staff, so my staff know who I am. I also let them know that my partner is male and he’s a grade one teacher. I do it because I want them to know that I believe in the normalization of sexuality and gender in our schools, that it is no big deal. It is just who we are.”
Illustration: Diana Pham
First published in Education Canada, September 2020
1 The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded this research.
2 C. Taylor, T. Peter, C. Campbell, et al., The Every Teacher Project on LGBTQ-inclusive Education in Canada’s K-12 Schools: Final report (Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Teachers’ Society, 2015). http://egale.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Every-Teacher-Project-Final-Report-WEB.pdf
Students have been subject to some of the most egregious and gross forms of racism that no one should ever experience, much less a child. In Ontario, two fairly recent examples of racist violence that students face have been documented in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board and the Peel District School Board. On June 15, 2020, the CBC reported that Anne Stewart,1 a teacher at Notre Dame Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario, used the N-word in class while teaching students. Stewart was reported to the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT), which concluded that the teacher had indeed used the N-word. However, Stewart only received a verbal reprimand and her case was not sent to the OCT’s discipline committee. The second case worth mentioning happened in 2016, when staff at an elementary school in the Peel District School Board called in the Peel Regional Police to address a situation where a six-year-old Black female student was in mental distress. The two white officers who arrived proceeded to shackle the hands and feet2 of the little girl. She remained shackled and placed on her stomach for 28 minutes. The case was referred to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and, in 2020, the Tribunal ruled that the girl’s human rights were violated and that race was a factor in the way the police responded.
What we must understand is that both of these cases were traumatizing events for the students involved; they will likely require mental health support for a long time as a result of the racial trauma they experienced. The same can probably be said about the many students who have also come to be aware of too many of these stories in which Black and racialized students, friends and family, experience racist violence in the school system. Students and their families are also re-traumatized when they find out that those who committed these racist acts are rarely held accountable for their actions.
Since school districts are in the business of serving students, we can understand why we need to address these issues so that students can have the opportunity to be successful and not be under the threat of racial violence when they are expected to be learning and getting an education. But there’s another part to this conversation that often does not get the attention it deserves: the racism that Black, Indigenous and racialized staff experience in school districts across the country. The system of anti-Black racism that Black students are fighting against and resisting is the same anti-Black racism that Black staff have to contend with and navigate while they are expected to be teaching at a high level. A report titled The Voices of Ontario Black Educators, covered by the Toronto Star in 2015,3 stated that one-third of the Black teachers, principals and vice-principals who participated in the study indicated they were passed over for promotions because they were Black, 27 percent indicated that racism at work impacts their day-to-day work life, and 51 percent believed anti-Black racism impacts who gets promoted.
School districts that want to take up the work of dismantling systemic racism to enhance student success and address the disparity in student outcomes must also address and dismantle the racism that Black and racialized educators are experiencing in the K-12 workplace. This can only be done by taking a comprehensive approach to staff mental health and well-being, and by drawing the connection between systemic racism, racism and anti-Black racism in the workplace and well-being in the workplace. The premise of this discussion must be that our education system, and by extension our school districts, are all inherently racist and anti-Black. The conversation should not be about, “Is racism operating in our school district?” The evidence and research detailing a variety of ways that racism and anti-Black racism impacts the education system is too strong and comprehensive for us to still be looking for more proof to establish its existence. The conversation must be about, “How we can gain a better understanding of how racism is operating in our sector or school district so that we can address the disparities that Black and racialized staff are experiencing?”
It is important to note that although all racialized groups experience racism, not all racialized groups experience racism in the same way. When we examine outcome data, what we clearly see is that anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism, across all sectors, produce the most significant negative outcomes among non-white populations. Disaggregated race-based outcome data is what should drive where and how school districts focus their attention and resources when doing anti-racism work. Anti-Black racism and systemic racism is a deeply entrenched problem in the education sector across the country, which has roots in the legacy of enslaved people in Canada.4 This is a very important point, because it is through a comprehensive understanding of colonialism and Canada’s participation and relationship with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, that you will understand how all of our major institutions, laws, social norms and such have been built on this foundation and reflected in present-day realities. However, as serious as the problem is, it is not readily understood in terms of its impact on stress, anxiety, trauma and overall well-being in the workplace. If school districts are serious about addressing anti-Black racism and systemic racism, then they must see it as one of the most pressing mental health challenges of our time that requires concentrated effort, attention and resources if our schools, classrooms and workplaces are to be safe and nurturing work and learning environments.
Research indicates that teacher stress is directly linked to student performance and effective class management strategies. Teachers who are under chronic stress have been shown to have less effective classroom management,5 lack clear teaching instruction for students and have a lower ability to create safe and nurturing classrooms for all of their students. Research also shows that teachers who view and experience the demands and stress of teaching as outweighing the resources and support provided to them, are less likely than their peers with lower levels of stress to say they would still choose teaching if they had the chance to choose their career again.
Now, imagine you layer the stress and anxiety that comes with managing a classroom with the stress, anxiety and trauma caused by anti-Black racism and systemic racism that Black and racialized educators experience in the workplace. Racial violence can lead to racial trauma. Dr. Erangler Turner defines racial trauma as “experiencing symptoms such as anxiety, hyper-vigilance to threat or lack of hopefulness for your future as a result of exposure to racism or discrimination.” The impact of racial trauma shows up not only as anxiety and stress but also as depression, low self-esteem, poor concentration and irritability.6 Research on racial trauma also indicates that as a result of anti-Black racism, Black people experience less sense of control over their own lives, as well as internalized racism and avoidance of valued action. Chronic stress related to anti-Black racism predisposes Black people to a variety of health problems, including memory impairment, neural atrophy and heart disease. Some research has also pointed out that anxiety can be more persistent among Black people compared to their non-Black counterparts, which researchers attribute to the intensity of anti-Black racism. The impact of anti-Black racism and racism in the workplace also has negative physical impacts on Black and racialized staff. Most notable is that chronic and prolonged stress related to racism can lead the body to release high levels of cortisol, which can impair the body’s ability to reduce inflammation. This in turn can impair the body’s ability to heal. This is what Black, Indigenous and racialized educators are having to contend with in the workplace, and much of these negative mental health and well-being outcomes are directly connected to school districts’ refusal to see racism as a mental health and well-being issue, along with their inability to effectively address racism for both staff and students.
Anti-racism is integral to staff well-being
Most school districts have some form of well-being plan. This might include a paid staff role that is responsible for coordinating and rolling out mental health and well-being programs and initiatives. There may also be a well-being committee made up of staff who help to direct the school district’s well-being initiatives.
Although many staff well-being initiatives have value and help to improve the mental health and well-being of educators, the fact is that the vast majority of these programs take a race-neutral approach. Racism tends to not be factored into program design, and this type of approach only serves to further entrench anti-Black racism and other forms of racism in the workplace. By making anti-racism work a central feature of mental health and well-being plans, school districts will be centering the voices of those most vulnerable in the system and keeping the conversation about racism in the workplace at the forefront. These are both seen as best practices when doing anti-racism work.
It is well established that better mental health leads to positive outcomes for organizations. When educators experience high levels of well-being and low levels of stress, this not only results in higher student well-being and educational outcomes, but it also improves:
School districts may roll out a variety of services and training opportunities, such as benefits programs that provide health supports like mental health counselling, massage or physiotherapy, or workshops that help educators communicate better, create a healthy work-life balance, and so on. From a mental health and well-being perspective, these initiatives are important and have value. They can and do have a positive impact on staff mental health and well-being. However, the problem with looking at workplace well-being solely through this lens is that it puts the onus of well-being on the staff, which fuels the idea that if staff can just learn a new skill or develop better coping mechanisms, then they can achieve optimal mental health and well-being. This approach lets school districts off the hook.
Anti-Black racism is systemic and operates in every aspect of school districts’ operations, policies and programs. This can and does have a detrimental impact on Black and racialized staff. If your plan to disrupt racism in the workplace is to essentially develop programs that aim to help Black and non-white staff deal more effectively with their oppression, then you do not have much of a plan! (See “Anti-Racism Basics” below.) School districts that take this approach are complicit and perpetuate racist violence against Black and non-white staff; the onus of disrupting anti-Black racism in our K-12 workplaces falls on the shoulders of school district leadership. It is also not enough for districts to devise ways to address the racism that students face while neglecting to turn their attention towards how Black and racialized staff are also impacted by racism. All students can see the racial hierarchy of school settings, where Black and racialized educators are scarcely in positions of leadership such as principal and vice-principal. They can see what bodies are in positions of leadership, they can see what bodies are not in leadership roles, and they can see what bodies are less present overall in school spaces. They can see what bodies are valued and what bodies are not.
If school districts are serious about staff well-being in the K-12 workplace and truly desire to have better student outcomes, then they must see anti-racism work as mental health and well-being work. School districts’ anti-racism work must include both staff and students. It is clear that when staff have lower stress and anxiety levels, they perform better as educators, which leads to better student outcomes. But workplace racism inflicts an additional level of stress, anxiety and racial trauma on Black, Indigenous and racialized staff. We know that racism and anti-Black racism has significant mental, emotional and physiological impacts on Black and other non-white educators in the workplace. This additional “tax” can and does lead to teacher performance being negatively impacted, which ultimately will impact student outcomes. Only a systemic approach to doing anti-racism work (that includes the needs of both students and staff, frames anti-racism work as a mental health and workplace well-being issue, and includes accountability) will turn our schools and districts into spaces where learning can happen and where Black and non-white staff can bring their whole selves to work – without having to shoulder the weight of systemic and anti-Black racism.
Illustration: Diana Pham
First published in Education Canada, September 2020
A comprehensive discussion of effective anti-racism programs for school districts would require a whole other article. But as a starting place, they should feature:
1 Shanifa Nasser, “High school teacher who used N-word in class allowed to keep working after apologizing,” CBC News (June 15, 2020). www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/brampton-teacher-notre-dame-n-word-1.5607961
2 “Race was a factor in handcuffing of 6-year-old black girl in Mississauga school, tribunal says,” CBC News (March 3, 2020). www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/human-rights-tribunal-peel-police-girl-handcuffed-1.5483456
3 Louise Brown, “Black teachers still face racism on the job in Ontario,” Toronto Star (May 29, 2015). www.thestar.com/yourtoronto/education/2015/05/29/black-teachers-still-face-racism-on-the-job-in-ontario.html
4 Natasha Henry, Anti-Black Racism in Ontario Schools: A historical perspective (Turner Consulting Group Inc., Research and Policy Brief No. 1, May 2019). www.turnerconsultinggroup.ca/uploads/2/9/5/6/29562979/policy_brief_-_no_1_may_2019.pdf
5 Sarah D. Sparks, “How Teachers’ Stress Affects Students: A research roundup,” Education Week – Teacher (June 7, 2017). www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/06/07/how-teachers-stress-affects-students-a-research.html
6 Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez, “The Little-Known Health Effect of Racial Trauma,” The Cut (June 7, 2017). www.thecut.com/2017/06/the-little-understood-mental-health-effects-of-racial-trauma.html