Second only to the impact of classroom instruction, decades of educational research has demonstrated the important role school leaders play in supporting student success (Robinson, 2011). Leading for equity, however, often requires a different way of thinking about student success; one that recognizes that diverse contexts require decolonized and socially just approaches (Lopez, 2016). And so, leading schools is a socially complex and adaptive process, even in the “best” of times. The pandemic, coupled with social uprisings and a reckoning with our colonial past, has added additional layers of complexity that many school leaders are struggling to balance.
On the one hand, the pandemic has created a firestorm as school leaders grapple with new roles as “the other first responders” of the pandemic (Osmond-Johnson et al., 2020). Workload intensification and work-life balance have been an ongoing challenge for school-based leaders (Pollock et al., 2017). COVID-19 has exacerbated these issues, creating new accountability expectations around health and safety protocols that school leaders had little to no input in creating.
On the other hand, COVID-19 has also laid bare long-existing racial inequities that school leaders are compelled to address. Originally thought to be “the great equalizer,” according to McKenzie (2020), COVID-19 actually exploits differences between communities, using the existing “cracks in our system to get in, take hold and maintain its position.” In school reopenings, we have seen the continued proliferation of systemic inequities. A recent analysis of registrations in the Toronto District School Board, for instance, found that parents from low-income neighbourhoods comprised a much larger share of those opting for online learning. These neighbourhoods were also found to have a higher incidence of positive COVID-19 cases, larger populations of racialized families, and a higher percentage of multi-generational homes. So, while some can pay for personal in-home teaching and tutoring, “others who are fearful of sending their children back to school but cannot pay for private help are becoming test subjects for a new realm of online learning” (Bascaramurty & Alphonso, 2020).
White supremacy does not go away just because there is a pandemic. Rather, fault lines in an educational system that had been comfortably managing the status quo have been further exposed. In this sense, school leaders must understand the challenges and see the opportunities to ensure systems of white supremacy are challenged and dismantled. Complacency and wilful ignorance will no longer suffice.
If school-based leaders are to focus on equity, wellness, and dismantling systemic racism amid the complexities and challenges of leading during a pandemic, how can they operationalize that focus to ensure the needs of their students and teachers are being met?
First, school leaders must remain laser-focused, keeping equity at the forefront of their practice – not as something they do if they have time, but the lens through which they plan and engage in leading (Lopez, 2016). During COVID-19 this might include additional attention to pedagogy, particularly in the online environment. For instance, some students may not have spaces for online learning they want to share with others, and may not want to turn their cameras on. Educators should be mindful to not act on their own stereotypes and biases in such an instance, with school leaders supporting teachers in these endeavours.
Second, enabling the focus on equity necessitates a solid plan to deal with the most challenging aspect of leading at this critical juncture: the pace at which information, expectations, and directives are constantly changing. Within this context, a desire to plan with equity in mind is easily scuttled by the need to just survive the onslaught of new and often conflicting information. Developing a school-based communication plan as part of a distributed leadership model can help navigate the seemingly endless amount of “crucial” and “urgent” information leaders are tasked with addressing. This might include allocating specific responsibilities around various aspects of COVID communications to administrative support personnel and formal and informal teacher leaders within the school. Knowing when to defer to advice from public health officials is also important. This kind of distributed approach creates space for school-based leaders to also focus on the difficult work of addressing the systemic racism, educational inequities, and oppressive practices that have been made even more visible as a result of COVID-19.
Third, it is important that school leaders ask themselves what kind of spaces they are creating for teachers, students, and their families to dialogue about equity issues. This journey of change cannot be viewed as a series of tasks to be completed at the direction of a school district. Dismantling systemic inequities can’t be “workshopped” or managed with tips, tricks, and strategies. School leaders must explain the purpose of the work, connect it to a shared set of values articulated by the collective, and clarify the vision for moving the work forward. They must build a critical mass of support, encourage and empower those looking for opportunities to lead, and remain resilient and focused when challenged by those resistant to change. The moment we are currently in also provides school leaders with a great opportunity to build deep, lasting and respectful relationships with communities as a pathway to exploring the ways that white supremacy has been manifested by COVID-19 and to challenge the devastating effects the pandemic has on racialized students.
Finally, and perhaps most crucially of all, school leaders must honour the time, effort, and resilience required to engage in this work. Any leader who is prepared to invest time, energy, and resources into sustainable change knows that leading anti-racist work requires a focused and persistent long-range plan, driven by our students’ expectations for an education worthy of their desire to be academically challenged and socially engaged. It is important, then, that school leaders also engage in self-care to ensure they have the emotional and physical health to challenge white supremacy and its impact on their practice and their schools.
While it may seem safety protocols are the only thing school leaders have time for at the moment, it must be understood that wellness and equity are intrinsically linked. In this sense, school leaders must be prepared to centre equity as they lead through COVID-19; as Gaymes and San Vicente (2020) recently stated, “A crisis does not negate such responsibilities. It only enhances them.”
Photo: Adobe Stock
Bascaramurty, D., & Alphonso, C. (2020, September 5). How race, income, and ‘opportunity hoarding’ will shape Canada’s back-to-school season. The Globe and Mail.
www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-race-income-and-opportunity-hoarding-will-shape-canadas-back/
Gaymes, A., & San Vicente, R. (2020, March 27). Schooling for equity during and beyond COVID-19. Behind the Numbers. https://behindthenumbers.ca/2020/03/27/schooling-for-equity-during-covid-19/
Lopez, A. E. (2016). Culturally responsive and socially just leadership: From theory to action. Palgrave MacMillan.
McKenzie, K. (2020, August 13). Toronto and Peel have reported race-based and demographic-based data – now we need action. Wellesley Institute. www.wellesleyinstitute.com/healthy-communities/toronto-and-peel-have-reported-race-based-and-socio-demographic-data-now-we-need-action/
Osmond-Johnson, P., Campbell, C., & Pollock, K. (May, 2020). Moving forward in the COVID-19 era: Reflections for Canadian education. EdCan Network.
www.edcan.ca/articles/moving-forward-in-the-covid-19-era/
Pollock, K., Wang, F., & Hauseman, C. (2019). Proactively mitigating school leaders’ emotionally draining situations. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 190, 40–48.
Robinson, V. (2011). Student-centered leadership (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Among the many things that were interrupted by the pandemic shutdown in March was a cherished weekly food program for high-school students with developmental disabilities. Prior to the shutdown, the students in the program talked about nutrition and made grocery lists at the beginning of each week. On Wednesdays, they travelled to the grocery store where they used their numeracy skills to buy the groceries that they needed. Thursdays were for food preparation, and they spent Fridays cooking and eating their special meals. In addition to learning to prepare food and use money, the program provided opportunities for physical activity, collaboration, and planning – important life skills for these students!
The educational team decided that the food program, as a much-loved and beneficial component of the classroom, was too important to be allowed to wither at the start of the pandemic. Even though the students could no longer travel to the store and cook together, perhaps the teacher could use video conferencing software to host a class where everyone could see the cooking? And, if the students had the ingredients at home, could the students cook along with the teacher? It seemed simple enough. An easy workaround here, a little extra time and energy there, and soon enough everyone would be cooking together remotely. And yet, it was not to be.
The first challenge they faced was the security of the video conference software. The principal, Peg Harper (all names are pseudonyms), told us: “We weren’t supposed to use Zoom because it’s not safe, so then we had to get them onto Microsoft Teams.” But the safety features of the new software program came at the cost of “lots of layers of security.” For many of the students, the new video software was difficult to access and navigate.
Another challenge was finances. Not all families had the money to buy they groceries they would need, so Harper offered to pay for the groceries: “Let’s take away the equity problem… whatever you need, we will just buy it.” It would require quite a bit of extra work, but the teachers said they were willing to wear the masks, buy the food, and then deliver the ingredients to the students’ houses.
Having worked through challenges related to technology and equity, safety policies from the board office raised the final obstacle. Even if they used contactless delivery, teachers were not allowed to deliver groceries. As Peg Harper was told, “What if a teacher dropped off a bag of groceries at the door and then a student gets COVID… so no, you can’t do that anymore.”
In the end, the barriers were too much. In spite of creative problem solving and everyone’s willingness to contribute extra support, the food program ended. We could hear the frustration in Harper’s voice when she told us:
“My story has to do with all the barriers. You think it’s really simple, that you are going to create this experience for your students remotely, and then just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, everything was hard. I kept thinking, ‘Does it have to be that hard?’”
The story of this food program typified many of the stories we collected from principals across Canada about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic from March to June of 2020. We interviewed 38 principals to find out what it was like to lead schools during those first four months of emergency home-based schooling. We asked them specifically to reflect on their efforts to support students with special education needs (SEN). Many of the principals told us their success stories, of how the school rallied together to support the students and the community more broadly. But the principals also told us stories where even their teamwork and the best of intentions were not enough to overcome the complex interlocking barriers related to technology, equity, and safety.
It has long been recognized that principals work extended hours. Nearly 70 percent of Ontario principals recently reported that they work more than 50 hours a week, with one in five working more than 60 hours (Pollock & Wang, 2020). In fact, substantial literature on principals’ work intensification has demonstrated that principals find it increasingly difficult to keep up with the pace of work. And yet, in addition to the amount of work that already comes with the job, the principals we spoke with told us that the pace of work exploded during emergency schooling. Their efforts to develop meaningful educational spaces outside of the school building became a second full-time job, on top of their regular responsibilities. Sanaya Cresswell, a principal participant in our study, told us that emergency schooling increased her regular day of work by about 8.5 hours: “When this started to happen, [my day] was anywhere from 6:30/7 a.m. to 11 p.m. – I just seemed to be continuously trying to figure out how to create some consistency when there really wasn’t any.”
One of the first challenges that principals faced was getting the tools of school into students’ hands. “It took a while to mobilize these people, give them tools, tell them how to synchronize with the family technology, and everything,” said Lily-Mae Lord. Online schooling was especially difficult in rural areas, where access to high-speed Internet tends to be inconsistent or unavailable; many rural students had to use a parent’s cell phone as a hotspot hub to stream data to attend online class. The switch to online schooling was also difficult for students from homes with few digital devices: “If you’ve got three siblings in the house who are all fighting over one Chromebook, that becomes a challenge,” noted Priyanka Brookes.
The challenge was not just to provide the technological tools that one might expect students would need (laptops, microphones). The pandemic also interrupted programs set up by the schools to provide essential items and services for families, such as reams of paper, craft supplies, food vouchers, gift cards, and even food. “We have a hospitality program that often will feed kids during the day… so these things are absent to these families and we worry about that,” explained Brookes.
Students with SEN were at great risk of not being well served by the emergency schooling provided through online platforms. As one principal, Nicholas Cairns, stated, “These are the ones who are going to fall off the cart and get left by the wayside.” Watching students with SEN struggle was difficult on the school team: “[It is] really heart-wrenching to watch them go through this, and to listen to the parents who are calling almost in tears because they’re frustrated,” said Lochlan Figueroa.
Translating in-person learning experiences to online formats was a major obstacle, especially for students who rely on a familiar adult to assist with their learning. One principal, Christine Lynn, stated, “It hasn’t been easy to even try to meet those needs when we don’t have the young person in front of us physically.” Mia Foley told us that even though she was able to coordinate teaching and support schedules so that students with SEN worked with the caring adult with whom they were most comfortable, “It’s still not the same as having the child seeing that person who sits beside them.”
Complex problems require creative solutions. Murray Brandt told us that one of his teachers “Would do basically porch teaching with these students every week. Because [the students] could not manage the technology… and they needed someone to walk through it with them.” This illustrates the level of commitment that principals witnessed as educational staff sought to support students with SEN during emergency schooling.
In addition to maintaining academic programs during emergency schooling, the priority for many principals was the social and emotional well-being of their students. Principals shared examples of students who were sad, upset, and unmotivated because of the fears and anxieties that the pandemic had provoked in their households. Building relational connections required more effort during the pandemic, and principals told us that they had to find creative ways to connect with students: “It is easy to get lost in the paperwork and getting the stuff done, but it is that human connection that’s really missing,” said Figueroa. To support students with SEN who were feeling disoriented by the sudden absence of familiar adults, many principals prioritized regular check-ins with students with SEN and their families.
Principals also tried to protect their teaching staff. Percy Little organized individual meetings with his teachers to check in with them and try and alleviate some of the additional workload they were facing. By taking on more of the workload themselves, many principals avoided delegating additional tasks to their teachers. As Kelan Mueller said, “I have to recognize the fact that right now they’re overwhelmed with what they’re doing in their new role and supporting all the children as best they can, making phone calls, supporting parents.”
Principals also worked hard to maintain their own emotional reserves. Even for those principals who were experienced with emotionally draining situations, the pandemic magnified the intensity of their mental fatigue. Principal Jadine Lovell explained it this way: “There are times when you close the door, and you say phew! It’s starting to go too fast, the pressure is strong.”
We also asked principals what they learned from the first four months of schooling during the pandemic. The principals provided three major takeaways for the future.
Incorporate distance learning in regular schooling. For many students with SEN, learning online came with some benefits: “Some of the kids that we think don’t do well in school, for whatever reason, have actually succeeded with online learning. That distance model works well for them, that they are out of the classroom, out of the distractions,” said Griffin Gamble. Facilitating synchronous learning allowed for easily formed small group interactions. Being forced to consolidate programs of study for online schooling reduced the cognitive load for students with SEN. By strengthening cross-curricular connections, “you’re reducing the amount of work for kids, and realizing that you don’t have to overwhelm them,” observed Rhiannon Prosser.
Coordinate SEN support with parents. Many students with SEN relied on parents for support when navigating technology, self-regulation, and academic development. “If you don’t have the parent helping the child turn on the computer, encouraging them to sit and work through, managing their behaviour in their home setting, [learning] is just not going to happen,” said Carson Moran. Students with SEN required intense and ongoing supports to participate in online schooling, and underprivileged families had a harder time providing that support.
Emphasize human connections. Principals had to be more explicit when it came to developing the kind of human connections that tend to happen organically in face-to-face learning: “Students need to know that you care about them and you are dedicated to their success before you move on to sharing content,” explained Figueroa.
Peg Harper’s question, “Does it have to be that hard?” is one that school principals, teachers, and school board members will mull over for years to come. Many of the procedures and policies necessary for emergency schooling were in place by the time school resumed in the fall, but there is no doubt that those first intense, scrambling, anxious months took a toll on everyone in the school system, and perhaps none more than the principals at the helms of their schools. When most of us were locked in our houses and making signs to celebrate front-line workers, principals and their school teams were reorganizing budgets, scheduling virtual visits, and doing whatever they could to maintain consistency for the most vulnerable students in our system. Like bakers making cake without flour or eggs, school teams came together to make school without access to the buildings, learning resources, and in-person interactions that form the ingredients of Canadian schooling. In spite of the challenges, there is much to celebrate. After all, those months may have been messy and frustrating but, as the principals told us, students with SEN were never far from their minds.
Photo: Adobe Stock
Pollock, K., & Wang, F. (2020). Principal well-being: Strategies and coping mechanisms in times of uncertainty. OPC Register, 22(3), 22–27.
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.
When my family and I emigrated to Canada from England in 1987, we left behind a country with a deep-seated history of social class division and class-consciousness. Britain has long been obsessed with social class. My memoir, Moving (2020) – about growing up and being educated in a working-class community in Northern England – describes how social class differences affected every aspect of my own education.
My own struggles were with upward mobility – how to reconcile the culture of my selective grammar school with that of my working-class community. My two brothers had different struggles. At age 11, a standardized test marked them out for failure. I eventually made it to university on the other side of the country. They ended up in factories at the bottom of the hill. Social class mattered a lot in England then. It still does.
But in 1987, I was leaving all this behind. My Dean envied me. He had just returned from his first visit to Canada, the world’s first constitutionally bilingual, multicultural society. How lucky I was to be going there.
I arrived in a country that didn’t really talk much about social class at all. There were other serious sources of inequality to attend to instead. Race, immigration, language, poverty, and disability were foremost among these. Attention to inequalities in Indigenous and LGBTQ2+ communities would follow later. In our research, Dennis Shirley and I (2018) witnessed how assiduously Ontario educators addressed these issues from 2014–2018. But Canadians didn’t really seem to be concerned about social class at all. Working class inequality was a silent and invisible feature of the educational and social change agenda.
The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly brought the health and education of working-class people and their families to the forefront of our attention. They are the most likely to contract COVID-19, to have no one on hand to supervise them when they need to learn at home, and to live in overcrowded and unstable conditions unsuitable for learning or health.
What it means to be working class is a matter of debate, with some commentators defining it in terms of poor income or low level of education, for example. Traditionally, though, social class is about the kind of work people do and how that structures people’s opportunities and identities. In general, working class people do manual work (either skilled or unskilled), and/or have little control over their work conditions – think call-centre employees, people who have to work on contract in multiple care homes, or employees in the gig economy, for instance.
Social-class inequality is closely tied to student achievement and well-being, but compared to other causes of educational inequality, like race or poverty, it has received little attention. There are four explanations for this neglect and for why coronavirus is changing all that.
Why has Canada’s commitment to diversity not included social class? One reason is that acknowledging the struggles of the working class might be equated with acknowledging the white working class. That would risk associating whiteness with disadvantage instead of with its historic racial privilege.
The coronavirus crisis, though, has made clear that the working class is actually very diverse. Vulnerable, essential front-line workers include migrant farm labourers, immigrant care home workers, hospital cleaners, Uber drivers, and virtual shoppers. Whatever their race or ethnicity, they are all working class. They have the low pay, contractual insecurities, and vulnerability to COVID-19 to prove it.
In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality. Her study of battered women’s shelters (1991) showed that the experience of an abused white middle-class woman was different from that of a low-income immigrant woman speaking English as her second language. So, we had to examine the intersectionalities of oppressed women’s multiple identities. Working-class identity intersects with many other aspects of diversity. Social class needs to come back into our reckoning about inequality – and the coronavirus crisis is doing that with a bang.
Joan Williams (2017), author of White Working Class, says that the U.S. has become “clueless” about social class. Canada has its own (working class) cluelessness, expressed in the widespread belief that the vast majority of Canadians are middle class.
“Most Canadians think of themselves as middle class,” says Julie Cazzin in Maclean’s magazine (2017). Around 70 percent of Canadians self-identify as middle class, according to a poll conducted by the magazine. In another Maclean’s article, Shannon Proudfoot (2019) reflects on her own working-class background. She warns that “the way we elide, erase and ignore socio-economic class in Canada” makes it “like an invisible fact that shapes everything, but is acknowledged nowhere.”
Wolfgang Lehmann, Professor of sociology at Western University, has studied social class and education in Canada. The son of German immigrants, Lehmann grew up in a working-class family and, like me, still struggles with his identity as a middle-class academic. Lehmann’s research (2014) with 70 university students from working-class backgrounds shows how their experiences of educational success are corroded by “conflicting relationships with parents and former friends.” The upwardly mobile students’ new knowledge, experiences, and relationships set them apart from family members and friends in their former communities. They are also more likely to disengage or drop out from their studies. They feel caught between two cultures, belonging to neither one nor the other.
“Conflating class in Canada” and “making everybody middle class who isn’t rich” is “maybe dangerous,” says Lehmann. My own biography and 50 years of research support Lehmann’s findings that the particular culture of academic success is constantly tugging students away from their class identity. There has been a positive movement for schools to enable young people to retain pride in their race or gender identities, for example, as they strive to succeed. But working-class identity seems to be something that upwardly mobile students feel pressured to leave behind.
Our schools must accord as much dignity to the labour and values of working-class life as they do to other aspects of identity.
Coronavirus has witnessed displays of appreciation for front-line workers (many of whom are working class) on signs by the roadside and in pots being clattered on balconies. But we must do more. The hard work, labour, dedication, and sacrifice of these workers have kept the rest of us alive. Post-pandemic, we must no longer condemn workers in the gig economy to job insecurity and working multiple, contract-based jobs just to get by. Our schools must also accord as much dignity to the labour and values of working-class life as they do to other aspects of identity in a diverse and inclusive society.
Poverty continues to have massive consequences for student achievement and well-being. Several of the Ontario school districts that Dennis Shirley and I have studied instituted a wide array of anti-poverty strategies. But it is impossible to turn poverty on its head and celebrate it in the way we do with Black power, gay pride, and other kinds of diversity. And being working class is more than having a certain income level.
Until the 1970s, skilled manual labour had dignity and worth. Working-class labour and working-class communities were a source of collective pride. In Canada’s Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, for example, alongside the harrowing depictions of genocide and the inspiring tributes to champions of human rights, is a compelling display on labour rights that includes the women and men who founded the Polish Solidarity Movement in the 1980s.
What should our schools be teaching about working-class identity? Where in our curriculum is the history of labour, labour rights, and trade unions, alongside business entrepreneurship and financial literacy? We should teach the concept of class through literature, history, and interdisciplinary projects, as robustly as we do race, gender, and gender identity. How can and should our schools engage with the class culture of our students, as well as other aspects of their culture? If equity is now about inclusion, it should be about social class inclusion and addressing socio-economic privilege too.
One consequence of the pandemic will be that some manufacturing will come back home from overseas. The availability of essential goods can no longer depend on vulnerable global supply chains. These new, working-class manufacturing jobs will be highly technical and involve sophisticated training.
In Germany, vocational education for skilled trades has very high status. In North America, though, it has become a second-class alternative for those who have failed to get into university. Commitment to vocational education, traditionally a politically conservative priority, must now become a priority of all Canadians. The labour, culture, skills, and pride of the working class and its educational preparation must be acknowledged, not ignored.
If we say we’re all middle class, this doesn’t just mean we ignore the working class. We ignore extreme wealth, too. We’re all becoming familiar with how the richest 1 percent of the world’s population owns more than half of the world’s wealth. The revenue of any of the Big 5 tech companies is greater than the GDP of many European nations. During the pandemic, the profits of the Big 5 have increased by about one-third. Meanwhile, for 40 years, the bottom half of society has barely advanced in real income terms at all – despite working longer hours and taking on more debt to make ends meet.
In Plutocrats: The rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else (2012), Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, claims that more and more of the world is now a plutocracy of rule by the wealthy. Although many modern plutocrats worked their own way up from modest beginnings, they now protect these gains for themselves, their class, and their families. The meritocrats have turned into aristocrats, she says.
Along with a growing number of influential economists – most of them women – Freeland lists how the super-elite protect their wealth. They do this by tax avoidance, by lobbying parliament, by establishing not-for-profit foundations where they can shelter their wealth and champion their own causes, and by buying their children places in top global universities with sizeable “legacy” donations.
Plutocrats also hijack the global discourse of improvement and change by defining what is transformational and what is not. In Winners Take All: The elite charade of changing the world (2019), Anand Giridharadas interviews one of the key organizers for the vastly popular TED Talks. This organizer describes how TED Talks might address questions of how to reduce poverty. But one thing it absolutely won’t touch is economic inequality. Poverty and diversity get airtime. Wealth and inequality do not.
It’s time for this to change. Emboldened by the pandemic crisis, Freeland and other economists, like Joe Biden’s Economic Advisor, Heather Boushey (2019), propose a series of measures to combat the effect of extreme economic inequality on society. “Now is not the time for austerity,” said the Throne Speech on September 22. Instead there must be investment to support the vulnerable, restart public education, and create jobs that in turn will stimulate the consumer demand that will regenerate the economy. The new normal should be about prosperity, not austerity. The Latin origin prosperus means, simply, “doing well.” Prosperity is about reducing inequality and improving well-being and quality of life. In education, well-being should not be an afterthought or an add-on. It is integral to creating a prosperous society.
For too long, social class has been the masked face of inequity, disadvantage, and marginalization. We must no longer pretend we are all middle class. This ignores the privilege of extreme wealth and the profound struggles of the millions of front-line workers on whom all our lives depend. It also runs the risk of equating working-class identity with poverty and turning it into the only identity that has to be left behind in the struggle to improve. The role of front-line workers during the pandemic has taught us that working-class identity is part of diversity, not an exception to it.
To be fully equitable and inclusive, our schools must re-engage with working-class identity. They must teach working-class identity as a history and culture of pride involving the dignity of labour, solidarity with one’s fellows, the value of hard work, and the importance of self-improvement. They must resurrect and reinvent vocational education as a high-quality commitment. They must address socio-economic diversity as a fundamental aspect of inclusion, and must approach class inequality as something that entails the privileges of the extremely wealthy and not just the privations of the poor. They must teach students about wealth tax and tax avoidance as well as financial literacy and income tax management. They must, in other words, rethink everything they do on social class lines, as much as they have in relation to all other aspects of diversity.
Photo: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
Boushey, H. (2019). Unbound: How inequality constricts our economy and what we can do about it. Harvard University Press.
Cazzin, J. (2017, June 16). What’s middle class? It’s as much to do with values as with income. Maclean’s. www.macleans.ca/economy/why-everyone-feels-like-theyre-in-the-middle-class
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), Article 8. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. doi:10.2307/1229039
Freeland, C. (2012). Plutocrats: The rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else. Doubleday Canada.
Giridharadas, A. (2019). Winners take all: The elite charade of changing the world. Knopf.
Hargreaves, A., & Shirley, D. (2018). Well-being and success: Opposites that need to attract. Education Canada, 58(4), 40–43. www.edcan.ca/articles/well-being-and-success
Hargreaves, A. (2020). Moving: A memoir of social mobility. Solution Tree.
Lehmann, W. (2014). Habitus transformation and hidden injuries: Successful working-class university students. Sociology of Education, 87(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040713498777
Proudfoot, S. (2019, July 16). What does it mean to be working class in Canada? Maclean’s. www.macleans.ca/society/what-does-it-mean-to-be-working-class-in-canada
Williams, J. D. (2017). White working class: Overcoming class cluelessness in America. Harvard Business Review Press.
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
“I believe that education is the civil rights issue of our generation. And if you care about promoting opportunity and reducing inequality, the classroom is the place to start. Great teaching is about so much more than education; it is a daily fight for social justice.” – Arne Duncan
The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified inequities in our school system – barriers based within poverty, language, ability, and racism. But Stephen Covey argued that organizations could potentially arrive in a better place after a crisis than prior to it having occurred, a concept he called “opportunity solving” (2004). Will educational organizations make use of this opportunity? Through surveys and representative interviews of 1,668 Canadian teachers while they pivoted to remote learning and then back to the classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw examples of actions by teachers, administrators and parents that set the stage for a better, more equitable kind of Canadian schooling.
Teachers who participated in our study let us know that their foremost concern was for the welfare of their students. The stress caused by the quick pivot to remote learning and public displays of new online pedagogies in front of administrators and parents – along with their early stumbles and self-critique – was a distant second concern. One teacher told us,
“My biggest stress right now is not knowing about the well-being of all the students – how are kids coping, how are families coping? That’s another aspect of it that’s hard. I’m not even really worried about what we’re teaching – that’s the last of my worries in some senses.”
The priority placed by teachers on student welfare above instruction points to two important foundations of our current educational system. First, the role of “teacher” is much more than one of providing academic knowledge and skills to students, having become conflated with many other functions in children’s lives, such as ensuring they are physically and emotionally safe and healthy. Second, this responsibility is one that teachers and administrators willingly accept and embrace. Of her students’ reliance on her and the classroom community, one teacher said, “It’s nice how much they miss it.” The acceptance by teachers and administrators that they had a role to play in their students’ welfare was evidenced through their actions as well as their stated feelings, as will be shown in the examples below.
It became evident very early in the pandemic that some children’s needs – both in terms of education and well-being– were not being met. Teachers shared with us their concerns about inequities in access to online learning that challenged the sustainability of schooling for some of their students. These included children who lived in poverty, children whose parents were unable to assist due to work obligations and students with lack of access to the language of instruction. Teachers were also worried about students whose additional learning needs required specialized planning and programming, which was difficult to support outside the classroom and school.
Teachers and administrators organized quickly and creatively to address these needs. One teacher described how school buses in his province were repurposed to drop off and pick up homework. Other teachers participated in delivering hampers to students’ homes to replace the nutrition programs typically offered in their schools: As one teacher from the Maritimes explained, “There are a lot of families who are really struggling, and [the pandemic] has made it extra hard for them. They might not have a meal that day, so we’re reaching out to them and delivering food.” One administrator in Winnipeg quickly put the school division’s tablets into the hands of his students in their homes and then funded $40,000 for Internet for those homes. “Anything we can do to keep kids on pace with their peers, making progress, and socially engaged with their teachers and peers is just the right thing to do,” explained Brian O’Leary, Superintendent of Seven Oaks School Division. Additionally, a response planning team of Manitoba educators and administrators worked together with provincial officials to quickly gather resources to create an online repository for parents trying to support differentiated learning taking place at home. One team member said, “These plans, resources, supports, and activities adopted key messaging and practices to guide both educators and families during a time of uncertainty.”
These inspirational stories highlight the commitment and partnership of educators, families and communities, and it would be tempting to call them heroes. Indeed, their work is inspirational. However, the need for these “heroic” acts is prompted not by the pandemic, but by inequities revealed within the foundation of the wider social safety net. These “cracks” have for too long been silently filled by educators, and the broadening disparities continue to be addressed by the goodwill of caring education professionals during the pandemic. Nonetheless, teachers are tired. One told us, “I feel inadequate, if that makes sense, in my ability to teach over the phone.” Another said, “I found I was almost getting depressed and felt completely helpless basically – [from] the inability to help the kids like I typically would.” A common sentiment was that teachers just wanted to go back to the way things were before the pandemic: “Just let us go back to school. I miss [my students], and I want them to know that I miss them.” But to return to school as it was before the pandemic would be a mistake. While we collectively yearn to return to our former and familiar systems, we are now called upon to opportunity solve to ensure that the lessons taught to us by COVID-19 are used to build an enhanced, equitable, and more robust Canadian school system.
The pandemic has provided the opportunity and the impetus to transform our current practices in education. Change is uncomfortable, yet necessary for growth. In his latest book, The Catalyst, Jonah Berger (2020) explores barriers to change, and his findings articulate the factors that make it easy for us to be lured back to the past, especially after a worldwide pandemic. They include the endowment of value we place on what is familiar, our discomfort with the distance from past practice, and the uncertainty of moving forward in a new way. Given these barriers and teachers’ current “pandemic fatigue,” it just seems more comfortable to restore our former educational system rather than to try something different… once again.
Michael Mindzak (2020) challenges us to “shift our gaze to reconceptualise contemporary education.” Rather than looking at how we can return as quickly as possible to the way things were, he suggests we consider how things can be approached differently going forward. Mindzak encourages us to re-examine expectations in the current educational narrative – such as the myth of finite resources resulting in educators having to do more with less, and the belief that formal learning can only occur in a classroom or designated school building. Ultimately, he asks us to rethink the purpose of education within this re-framed context. Navigating a pandemic has allowed us to see first-hand the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in our current system. Likewise, Fullan et al. (2020) describe the opportunity for Canadian educators to harness this knowledge and move from a period of disruption and transition to “re-imagining” – not restoration. Rather than focusing on ways to return our educational organizations to places that clearly have structural challenges, we are called upon to opportunity solve new systems built on solid foundations of sustainable equity and well-being. With equity as a guiding principle, creating a new Canadian social/school system where every child is safe, nourished, cared for, and has access to technology is an action-oriented pathway.
The abrupt and disruptive changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have effectively propelled education from a zone of crisis and uncertainty to one involving learning and growth. Fullan et al. say that what has emerged in the process is recognition that we are no longer working on provisional solutions for the short term. Rather, educators are refocused on enduring, student-centred technological innovations that combine the most effective approaches for both classroom and remote engagement – a sustainable and dynamic hybrid learning model. In this regard, the pandemic crisis can be viewed as an opportunity taken for improvement in education, bringing the essential levels of creativity and inspiration to bear, and ensuring that school communities are in a better place both now and in the future.
“It’s the long game we’re in. And the way it’s played will keep changing. Adapt and respond. Use compassion and the best available science. Pivot quickly when necessary. Accept that life is different now. Keep calm and carry on. Reset not return.”
– Senator Stan Kutcher
Read a more detailed summary of the authors’ research survey here:
https://edcan.atavist.com/teacher-covid-survey
Berger, J. (2020). The catalyst: how to change anyone’s mind. Simon & Schuster.
Covey, S. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people. Free Press.
Fullan, M., Quinn, J., Drummy, M., & Gardner, M. (2020). Education reimagined: The future of learning. https://edudownloads.azureedge.net/msdownloads/Microsoft-EducationReimagined-Paper.pdf
Mindzak, M. (2020). COVID-19 and the ongoing problem of educational efficiency. Brock Journal of Education, 29(2), 18–23. https://journals.library.brocku.ca/brocked
Photo: Adobe Stock
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.
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
In the Odyssey, Homer writes of the fear that Greek mariners felt as they attempted to cross the narrow channel of water flanked by Scylla, the six-headed monster on one side, and Charybdis, the violent whirlpool, on the other. My circumstances were not as dire, but I can empathize with the pressure these ancient sailors felt. My dilemma between the proverbial “rock and a hard place” occurred during the heated 2014 contractual dispute between the B.C. Ministry of Education and the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, during which I walked an ethical tightrope between my responsibilities as teacher to my inner-city school, and as a representative of the Federation.
The educational landscape of British Columbia in 2014 was marked by extreme tension, with heated contract negotiations that escalated into a full-scale strike and lockout. The union ordered members to discontinue participation in extracurricular programs. At the time, I had taken on many extracurricular duties at my school, which was situated within one of the poorest socio-economic pockets of the Lower Mainland. Many of our families found themselves in a constant state of crisis as a result of chronic poverty. Many of our children were in and out of the revolving doors of foster care. Some families were refugees who had fled civil and political strife in their home countries. Opportunities were sparse for the children of this community. This is not to say that the parents did not care for their children – some worked two or even three low-paying jobs to provide as many opportunities as were accessible to them. As a professional, I found it gut-wrenching to balance my response to these competing claims on my loyalty.
On the one hand, I had a legal and professional responsibility to my union. Issues of key importance to me, such as benefits, working conditions, salary, student funding, and the overall integrity of public education had all been secured as a result of the tireless effort of the union. At a critical time when the union was engaged in negotiations, I recognized the importance of teachers presenting a united front. If the union needed us to withdraw extra-curricular activities and strike to pressure the government, I felt compelled to support their decisions. It was also clear to me that to maintain productive relationships with my colleagues, I needed to show the same level of commitment to the union as they did.
On the other hand, I also felt a strong sense of obligation to my students and the community. I was acutely aware that many of the children at my school were already marginalized. I thought their extracurricular opportunities helped to address the lack in their lives and provided these children, who were at constant risk of becoming statistics themselves, with rare opportunities to engage in enriching and constructive activities. My conscience told me that I needed to exercise compassion for those less fortunate. The care of one’s fellow humans is a responsibility that I feel we are born with and should not abdicate, and this lay at the heart of my dilemma.
I wrestled with finding a balance between the opposing claims. I believed in both! Was it possible to serve two masters when they were locked in conflict? This situation led me to a paralytic state of inaction. I was unable to make a move in either direction. The more I tried to find a way forward, the more paralyzed I became. Was it even possible to reconcile this ethical duality when the solutions were so mutually exclusive? How could I choose one side over the other, and how could I look at myself in the mirror after doing so? To choose one side would betray the other side and my ethical principles as well. These were unanswerable questions that preyed on my mind and put me in conflict with myself.
But ultimately my story had a happier ending. Like the mariners who found the narrow channel between Scylla and Charybdis, I finally found a middle path through my dilemma. I was able to connect our underprivileged students with a non-profit agency that would provide extracurricular activities during the strike, which allowed me to withdraw my own extracurricular services in better conscience.
Looking back, this dilemma did more good than harm for my practice, because it enabled me to clarify why I choose to teach and how I choose to do so.
Illustration: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2020
MONTREAL, September 2, 2020 – Students, teachers, parents and guardians across Canada have had to make major adjustments to their daily lives in the midst of a global pandemic. To support our youth and to help them thrive in their educational journey, Desjardins is proud to announce new investments and programs with Kids Help Phone and the EdCan Network. Additionally, Desjardins is expanding its Desjardins Foundation Prizes to further support our youth.
All told, over $1.4M will be invested to provide much-needed support to students as they prepare to go back to school.
“Supporting education is important to Desjardins. For 120 years, Desjardins has been supporting our communities and working alongside them”, said Guy Cormier, President and CEO of Desjardins Group. “As students, teachers, parents and guardians across Canada prepare for a year unlike any other we wanted to reaffirm our commitment to our youth’s academic success, which is so vital to our nation’s future.”
As some young people prepare to return to school and others continue to learn virtually, Kids Help Phone and Desjardins are working together to ensure they have the resources and support they need during this transitional time. Kids Help Phone expects to make 3 million connections in 2020 compared to 1.9 million in 2019 and a 200% increase in web sessions.
In addition to providing resources for youth, adults and educators, Desjardins is supporting programs such as:
“Young people across Canada, and the adults who support them, are experiencing a wide-range of emotions going back-to-school during this global pandemic. Kids Help Phone has been there every day and night throughout these uncertain times” said Katherine Hay, President and CEO, Kids Help Phone. “On behalf of the youth in every province and territory, thank you Desjardins, you have helped to ensure our e-mental health services will continue to meet young people wherever they are, for whatever reason they need, however they need to reach us – it could not be more important, now more than ever! No problem is too small and no problem is too big, Kids Help Phone is here for young people 24/7.”
As many students continue to learn virtually, equitable access to technology is crucial to their academic success. Desjardins and EdCan are working together to help students and schools that may need support in obtaining computers and other tech-based learning tools. A new three-year partnership will support students to help close the gap caused by the lack of access to technology.
“The ongoing pandemic has heightened the challenges of too many students who were already more at risk for marginalization,” says EdCan CEO Max Cooke. “Our network is pleased to collaborate with Desjardins to provide technology to as many of these students as possible so that they can thrive.”
In addition to new partnerships, Desjardins continues to support students and the community through Desjardins Foundation Prizes. These prizes are awarded to schools and non-profit organizations who need financial assistance to carry out projects that help elementary and high school students. Since 2016, over 1,000 projects have been supported with more than 150,000 youth positively impacted. In addition to Ontario and Quebec, the 2020 program has been expanded to also include Alberta and New Brunswick. The application window will be open from October 5th to 26th.
“Desjardins is taking concrete action and working with various partners and the community to stimulate the academic success of our youth. It’s crucial to our socio-economic future and we will continue to help students achieve their goals and dreams during these uncertain times,” said Guy Cormier.
About Kids Help Phone
Kids Help Phone is Canada’s only 24/7 e-mental health service offering free, confidential support in English and French to young people. As the country’s virtual care expert, we give millions of youth a safe, trusted space to talk over phone and through text in any moment of crisis or need. Through our digital transformation, we envision a future where every person in Canada is able to get the support they need, when they need it most, however they need it. Kids Help Phone gratefully relies on the generosity of donors, volunteers, stakeholder partners, corporate partners and governments to fuel and fund our programs. Learn more at www.KidsHelpPhone.ca or @KidsHelpPhone.
About the EdCan Network
The EdCan Network has maintained its 129-year tradition as the only national, nonpartisan, bilingual organization representing 110,000 educators across Canada. Our role as an intermediary connects K-12 education systems across the country by producing and disseminating authoritative and evidence-based, yet accessible content that is trusted by educators, parents, and policymakers alike. EdCan aims to improve education policies that heighten equity and support deeper learning (i.e. a combination of the fundamental knowledge and practical basic skills all students need to succeed), and expanding the reach of educational resources in an effort to bridge the research-implementation gap.
As Truth and Reconciliation educators, we recognize that one of our key tasks is to root the abundance of quality classroom resources in the places where we teach and learn. Papaschase Cree scholar Dwayne Donald characterizes North American societies and systems of education as “forgetful.” He traces how they are founded on the dual practice of forgetting that Western curriculum is “placed” – telling of a particular time, place, and ideal human transplanted from elsewhere – as well as omitting the ancient wisdoms and placed teachings that exist to instruct humans how to live well in our respective here-nows.
In response, we have developed a critical questioning framework that guides a place-based reconciliatory journey through children’s literature. It invites students to pivot between “leaning in” questions that consider the conditions of a text and related “leaning out” questions that focus on readers’ particular geographical location and the priorities articulated by local Indigenous Nations and collectives. We italicize the terms leaning in and leaning out throughout to emphasize the process of activating this framework within a teaching context. In this article, we model our leaning in/leaning out framework using the book Spirit Bear: Fishing for knowledge, catching dreams (see “Recommended Resources”). This text follows Spirit Bear as he learns about the history of First Nations children’s education and the activism that challenges ongoing underfunding of First Nations education by the Canadian government. We address five interconnected components of truth and reconciliation education (TRE): positionality, Indigenous land-based traditions, Canada’s Indian Residential School system, injustice that acts as a barrier to reconciliation, and counterstories.
nēhiyaw Elder and scholar Willie Ermine teaches that to enter into – or reconcile – any relationship in a good way, we need to know who we are. He explains that positionality is the act of identifying ourselves within all our relations. It involves knowing about our ancestors’ land, language, kinships, and knowledge systems. These parts of identity tell about our attachment to the universe.
Teachers can draw on Spirit Bear: Fishing for knowledge, catching dreams to scaffold relational positioning. Leaning in facilitates connections between one’s identity and actions: What does Spirit Bear learn about his family, land, language, and culture? How does he learn about these parts of his identity? How do these discoveries help Spirit Bear understand who he is and his responsibilities?
The book opens with Spirit Bear sharing his positionality with readers. Spirit Bear states that he is a “membear” of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council who currently spends most of his time on the lands of the Algonquin People in Ottawa. Spirit Bear links his work as a “Bearrister” to a teaching received from his mother, Mary the Bear; he has a responsibility to learn about injustices and help make things better. Through spending time with Uncle Huckleberry on their traditional Carrier Sekani territory, located near what is known today as Prince George, British Columbia, Spirit Bear gains a deeper understanding of his family history, culture, and knowledge systems. Specifically, Spirit Bear learns about traditional fishing methods utilized by the Carrier Sekani, and about pollution to the water of Lake Bearbine and disruption to the land caused by silver and gold miners on Carrier Sekani territory. When Spirit Bear asks about ways to help, Uncle Huckleberry offers some specific actions, such as supporting fish hatcheries, preventing forest fires, and learning how to care for plants and animals. Spirit Bear listens closely with the intention of passing this knowledge on to young cubs in his family, confirming responsibility to the relational teachings beyond the time and place of the exchange.
Leaning out invites students to draw on their communities to develop their own positionality: Where does my family come from? What are some of the teachings that teach us how to live well on our traditional land and in traditional kinship? What is the language of these relationships? (Where applicable) How did we come to call the place we now live “home”?
The goal of TRE is to establish respectful relationships characterized by concurrent and comparable valuing of both Western and Indigenous knowledge systems. Therefore, teachers must hold classroom space for Indigenous land-based traditions used to maintain good relations, restore harmony, heal conflict and harm, and practice justice.
Spirit Bear learns about traditional education from Uncle Huckleberry. Leaning in questions illuminate traditional education as a practice of maintaining good relations: What did education used to look like for First Nations kids? How was knowledge shared? Where did learning take place? What do you think the purpose of traditional education is?
Uncle Huckleberry teaches Spirit Bear that traditional education took place on the land, with Elders teaching children “all kinds of important things, like how to care for the animals, themselves, and others with kindness and respect.” In this traditional educational model where “the world was their school,” relationships and responsibility to kin were central to purpose, alongside the learning of skills and knowledge for survival and living a good life in that particular place. Uncle Huckleberry explains that Elders taught through storytelling, cooking, and other hands-on activities in their language that made learning so fun that recess was unnecessary.
Leaning out questions embed learning in students’ geographical context: Who are the local Indigenous Peoples and Nations? What does their traditional education look like? How is our schooling today similar to and different from the local Indigenous ways of teaching and learning? What are some examples from my own life where Elders were teachers? Where the world was my school?
Following the recommendation of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), a central component of TRE is comprehensive education about the history and legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential School system.
Leaning in to Spirit Bear, teachers can facilitate a critical analysis of the logics that undergird settler colonialism and paved the way for the creation of residential schools: How did the Canadian government feel about Indigenous Peoples’ traditional education in the story? Why did they create residential schools? What do the government’s actions tell us about their beliefs about Indigenous Peoples and Nations?
Spirit Bear learns from Uncle Huckleberry’s friend, Lak‘insxw, that the government created residential schools because “they wanted First Nations children to be like them, like non-Indigenous peoples.” With the intent to disrupt relationships, which are embedded in land and foundational to passing on knowledge, “people in the government decided they should take First Nations children away from their families.” Residential schools mandated the separation of families, inhibiting the transfer of knowledge and culture, and prohibiting the speaking of Indigenous languages. Inherent in the government’s actions is the belief that the government’s way of educating – learning in schools, instruction by priests and nuns, and reading English books that centre European stories – was more sophisticated than the traditional education Indigenous children were receiving from their Elders. The government’s belief in their cultural and spiritual superiority over Indigenous Peoples and Nations, along with disdain for difference and the desire to assimilate, were driving factors behind the Canadian government’s Indian Residential School system.
Leaning out connects Canada’s Indian Residential School system to local and contemporary contexts: Where was the closest residential school to my home located? When was it closed? What have authors, including the TRC, written about this school? How do residential school logics persist in schools today?
Part of TRE is investigating ongoing injustice that acts as a barrier to reconciliation. This component is essential because it can reveal how colonial relations of power are an underlying network that shape all systems and actions, including those deemed reconciliatory. Reconciliation is always multifaceted, complex, and ongoing.
Leaning in reveals how the Government of Canada continues to generate a gap in funding between First Nations schools and provincial schools in the era of reconciliation: What challenges were the students from Attawapiskat First Nation facing? How did these challenges impact students’ education and how they felt about themselves? What was the Government’s response? What work remains?
In the book, Spirit Bear learns that students in Attawapiskat First Nation were facing threats to their health because of a pipeline leaking diesel fuel underneath their school. The school closed in 2000, and the government set up trailers as a “temporary” fix, with the promise to build a new school. However, the government “didn’t keep their promise and the trailers started falling apart.” The students at Attawapiskat First Nation school faced intolerable conditions, such as ice on the inside of their classroom, mice eating kids’ lunches, and not enough books and gym and science equipment. These material realities impacted their ability to learn and desire to be at school, as well as shaped their sense of self; “it is hard for kids to… feel proud of who they are when their school is falling apart.” Shannen Koostachin, a student in Attawapiskat, recognized this injustice and started a campaign for a new school. As a result of Shannen’s activism, the government finally opened a new elementary school in Attawapiskat in 2014, but there are still many other Indigenous communities without safe and comfortable schools. Further, Indigenous students living on reserve still receive 30-50 percent less education funding than other students.1 On average, this works out to $4,000 less per student on reserve, compared to those who attend provincially funded schools – inequity that remains unaddressed.
Leaning out invites students to question and challenge injustice that acts as a barrier to reconciliation in the place they call home: What injustices generally and/or Indigenous education injustices specifically continue to exist in the place we call home? How do they endanger reconciliation? What actions are local Indigenous Peoples and groups calling on the government to take?
Truth telling in the form of survivors’ testimony of being abused by priests, nuns, residential school staff, and/or other students is an integral aspect of TRE. Counter-storytelling2 also plays an important role in moving beyond a single story of Indigenous victimhood. Counter-stories demonstrate how Indigenous individuals and collectives draw on strength from community and traditional teachings to resist settler colonialism and demand recognition of human, Indigenous, and treaty rights.
Leaning in examines Shannen’s activism as an extension of community resilience: What strategies did Shannen and her friends use to shine light on injustice in their community? Shannen said, “School is a time for dreams, and every kid deserves this!” What action was Shannon urging the government to take? How is Shannen’s advocacy connected to her ancestors’ vision of good schools where students could be proud of their cultures and speak their languages?
Shannen and her friends began by creating a video to illuminate the injustice in their community. In May 2008, Shannen met with government officials in Ottawa to appeal for a new school. She used her voice to not only advocate for a safe and comfortable school within Attawapiskat, but asserted that this should be the right of every First Nation community. This activism is connected to her ancestors’ vision for Indigenous education following the closure of the residential schools. The Elders knew it was finally time for official learning that centred traditional teachings that had been carefully protected by communities for decades. They visioned self-determined land- and place-based education where students could be proud of their cultures and speak their languages. Shannen demonstrated resilience by drawing on the strength and strategies of her community to extend this vision.
Leaning out inspires relational and creative action in place: What are important local Indigenous counter-stories? What do they teach us about the challenges the First Peoples of this place face? What unique strategies do they use to confront settler colonialism? Where do they draw strength and support from?
We have offered educators an approach for tailoring the education for reconciliation curricula they design to their specific geographical, historical, cultural, and political Indigenous education context. We encourage educators to learn from our curriculum development that braids the leaning in/leaning out framework, the children’s book Spirit Bear: Fishing for Knowledge, Catching Dreams, and five central components of TRE. This approach can be adapted or extended according to the education level, discipline, and the unique gifts and experiences of teachers and students in relation. Beyond contributing to an emerging conversation about what school-based truth and reconciliation education might look like in practice, we suggest that the timeliness and necessity of teaching about Shannen’s Dream and the struggle for equitable education funding for First Nations children cannot be overstated.
Image credit: First Nations Child & Family Caring Society
First published in Education Canada, August 2020
1 End the Gap: Fair funding for First Nations schools (2015). www.endthegap.org
2 B. Madden, “Indigenous Counter-stories in Truth and Reconciliation Education: Moving beyond the single story of victimhood,” Education Canada 59, vol. 1: 40-44.
Spirit Bear: Fishing for knowledge, catching dreams, by Cindy Blackstock (First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada, 2018). https://fncaringsociety.com
CBC News, “Did you live near a residential school?” (2017). www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/beyond-94-residential-school-map
End the Gap: Fair funding for First Nations schools (2015). www.endthegap.org
First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, Various educational resources (2020). https://fncaringsociety.com/educational-resources
B. Madden, “Indigenous Counter-stories in Truth and Reconciliation Education: Moving beyond the single story of victimhood,” Education Canada 59, vol. 1: 40-44.
Despite recent progress towards supporting LGBTQ2+-inclusive education, ensuring that both teachers and students who identify as sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) experience belonging, safety, and security in their schools and communities remains an ongoing challenge. A national survey of Canadian high school students found that 64% of LGBTQ2+ students reported feeling unsafe at school. Similarly, research has shown that LGBTQ2+ teachers are less likely to come out to their administration and 33% had been warned to not come out at school by family, friends, and other educators.
“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 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.”
-(Elementary school principal)
Although many school districts have SGM-specific policies in place, research points to the ongoing need for school districts to invest the time into building a genuinely accepting and accommodating LGBTQ2+-inclusive school culture that supports and promotes the well-being of LGBTQ2+ teachers and students. Taking a LGBTQ2+-inclusive approach to education is a shared responsibility and school leaders, colleagues, and parents all play an important role in understanding how to best support and learn from the experiences and perspectives of LGBTQ2+ teachers and students.
Grace, A. P. (2015). Part II with K. Wells. Growing into resilience: Sexual and gender minority youth in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Grace, A. P., & Wells, K. (2016). Sexual and gender minorities in Canadian education and society (1969-2013): A national handbook for K-12 educators. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Teachers’ Federation. (Published in English & French.) Taylor, C., & Peter, T., with McMinn, T. L., Elliott, T., Beldom, S., Ferry, A., Gross, Z., Paquin, S., & Schacter, K. (2011). Every class in every school: The first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in Canadian schools. Final report. Toronto, ON: Egale Canada Human Rights Trust. Tompkins, J., Kearns, L., & Mitton-Kükner, J. (2019). Queer educators in schools: The experiences of four beginning teachers. Canadian Journal of Education, 42(2), 385-414. Retrieved from: https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/3448/2727
References
Despite recent progress towards supporting LGBTQ2+-inclusive education, ensuring that both teachers and students who identify as sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) experience belonging, safety, and security in their schools and communities remains an ongoing challenge. A national survey of Canadian high school students found that 64% of LGBTQ2+ students reported feeling unsafe at school. Similarly, research has shown that LGBTQ2+ teachers are less likely to come out to their administration and 33% had been warned to not come out at school by family, friends, and other educators.
“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 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.”
-(Elementary school principal)
Although many school districts have SGM-specific policies in place, research points to the ongoing need for school districts to invest the time into building a genuinely accepting and accommodating LGBTQ2+-inclusive school culture that supports and promotes the well-being of LGBTQ2+ teachers and students. Taking a LGBTQ2+-inclusive approach to education is a shared responsibility and school leaders, colleagues, and parents all play an important role in understanding how to best support and learn from the experiences and perspectives of LGBTQ2+ teachers and students.
Grace, A. P. (2015). Part II with K. Wells. Growing into resilience: Sexual and gender minority youth in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Grace, A. P., & Wells, K. (2016). Sexual and gender minorities in Canadian education and society (1969-2013): A national handbook for K-12 educators. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Teachers’ Federation. (Published in English & French.) Taylor, C., & Peter, T., with McMinn, T. L., Elliott, T., Beldom, S., Ferry, A., Gross, Z., Paquin, S., & Schacter, K. (2011). Every class in every school: The first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in Canadian schools. Final report. Toronto, ON: Egale Canada Human Rights Trust. Tompkins, J., Kearns, L., & Mitton-Kükner, J. (2019). Queer educators in schools: The experiences of four beginning teachers. Canadian Journal of Education, 42(2), 385-414. Retrieved from: https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/3448/2727
References
With recent events in the U.S., the EdCan Network expresses our solidarity with the Black community and racialized individuals and acknowledges the damaging impacts of systemic racism and violence. As a national not-for-profit education organization, our mission is to ensure that each and every student thrives in our schools based on the values of equity, inclusion, and respect. As such, we remain committed to learning, listening, and knowledge sharing in support of the well-being of staff and students in our schools and education workplaces.
As we finalized the articles for this issue of Education Canada, schools and campuses across the country had been closed for about a month to reduce the spread of COVID-19. It looked like students would not be back in class anytime soon. And we were wondering how much sense it made to ship boxes of magazines to empty buildings.
Those closed schools are the reason we are not printing our May issue. Like the teachers and profs who have turned to online technology to connect with their students, we have created an online-only magazine. We invite you to enjoy the PDF version as you “shelter in place.”
In this issue of Education Canada we focus on the skilled trades, and specifically on the K-12 system’s role in connecting students to trades training.
So here’s the dilemma. While I still devoutly believe in the value of a liberal arts education, our world is full of highly educated young adults working precarious minimum-wage service jobs because that’s all they could find. Many of them never even considered skilled trades. Probably nobody ever suggested that they were worth looking into. Some students may have even been steered away from trades when they expressed interest.
Meanwhile, well paying, challenging, steady jobs are going unfilled in many trades sectors. While it’s not up to K-12 schools to qualify students for a trade, we think we could be doing a better job of introducing them to the trades as a desirable career path. We also need more options that allow secondary students to “try before they buy” (and ideally earn credits at the same time), and more fluid pathways that allow students to combine academic and skills-based training.
In our theme section, two innovative Canadian programs that give high schools students a great head start in trades (“TAP into Trades, p. 14, and “Youth Train in Trades,” p. 22) share how they fill that gap. And looking at the bigger picture, David Livingstone and Milosh Raykov (p. 18) discuss the need for expanded apprenticeship programs and better linkages between our education and apprenticeship systems. Paul Stastny (p. 25) examines our other big labour need – digital technology skills – and how the digitizing of many trades creates new opportunities, while Alison Taylor (on our website) argues for experiential and work-integrated learning programs as a means of breaking down “the binary between vocational and professional education.”
Perhaps it comes down to that old ideal of a “well-rounded education.” Shouldn’t an education include learning how to do things as well as how to know things? And can’t we, as Taylor suggests, educate students in a way that prepares them for both democratic citizenship and employability?
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, June 2020
On Instagram, a quote from Stuart Shanker’s Mehrit Centre pops: “It’s not misbehaviour, it’s stress behaviour and how you react will make all the difference.”
I philosophically believe the statement. As a Vice-Principal, I work with my staff to build a welcoming and understanding school. But I saw the true power of that message the day my daughter quit her job.
Sixteen was tough. For my daughter, it brought an utter disconnect from school. There were suspensions, missed credits, and daily attendance calls. We had loud fights, and I’d let her go for a walk afterwards because she needed it, even though I was scared she might not come home.
School has never been easy for her. At age eight, she was diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder, which affects the nerves running between her ears, blurring the sounds before they reach her brain. Because she can’t process sounds clearly, it is hard for her to decode words and writing is difficult.
In Grade 8, there was a test she didn’t study for and failed dismally. She told me it was on Lois Reilly and the Mets. I searched my brain for any knowledge of a Lois Reilly in Canadian History, and the Mets… all I could think of was the baseball team.
Slowly I connected the dots. “Do you mean Louis Riel and the Métis?”
That was it. In class, she had worked on writing the notes while the teacher had talked. She couldn’t focus on both. It was all in her Individual Education Plan, but her disability is invisible, and often people only see a disengaged teenager. People don’t understand her needs, so she shuts down.
Her work life was good, though. McDonald’s hired her, and she liked it. She loved the kitchen camaraderie and the money. McDonald’s was structured. First, she learned the deep fryer, then the grill, and then the prepping area.
This success gave me hope. With work, I saw the girl I’ve always known.
Then they moved her to the front counter. Some voices were easy for her, but some she couldn’t hear at all. Stress seeped into her workplace. I told her to explain her situation to the manager, but acknowledging differences is hard at 16. She started showing up late and missing shifts. Then she no longer had a job.
Months later, she was hired at Subway for one three-hour shift a week. When people ordered specialty sandwiches she couldn’t remember the toppings, and when she asked her co-workers for help, they told her to read the support sheet. But with a line-up of people, processing written instructions was stressful. The complaints about work began.
Circumstances didn’t help. She traded one shift, but her co-worker cancelled en route. The next week, she wrote her schedule down incorrectly. Her boss texted her halfway through the shift, and she was hysterical.
“I’m going to get fired. I’m not ready for a job right now.”
I managed to get her to text him back, but he wanted to speak with her.
“I’m going to quit,” she said. “I can’t do this.”
On the phone, she took full responsibility for missing her shifts. She apologized and then gave her two-weeks’ notice.
And instead of accepting her resignation, her boss asked her why. He told her she’d been doing a great job and that both customers and staff had said positive things about her.
She told him everything. She told him about her hearing and that reading instructions when there was a line-up was stressful. She said the shifts were too short and too few, so that she had to re-learn everything each time. She said she’d mentioned she couldn’t work Tuesdays but kept getting her shift on Tuesdays.
Then he asked her what she needed.
Her answer was simple: longer shifts, more of them, and Tuesdays off.
He said he would work on it.
I cried from the other room.
The impact of that simple “why” was monumental. His questions gave her dignity and respect. She was able to acknowledge her challenges and identify what she needed. He listened to and supported her.
I wish for that in her classroom. I wish her teachers would ask her why, and that she felt comfortable enough to share her reality, but it doesn’t happen. Yet as educators we have that power. “It’s not misbehaviour, it’s stress behaviour and how you react will make all the difference.” It’s truer than we know.
Illustration: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, June 2020
Luigi Iannacci’s Reconceptualizing Disability in Education elevates the discussion of how we “do” school for learners with disabilities and outlines pedagogical practices and discourses that favourably shape the identities of such learners.
Iannacci’s narrative style will appeal to all levels of educators, from elementary to graduate schools of teacher education, and to scholars working in the areas of inclusion, special education, and literacy. I have used this book in both an undergraduate class and a graduate class on personalized learning, to elucidate the connections among inclusion, 21st century notions of student-centered practices, and the implications of using multiliteracies to reach the needs of all learners. The pre-service teachers in my class were particularly moved by Chapter 3’s recounting of the story Evan’s Paper Crane, a transformative anecdote about a student who finds joy and empowerment in becoming the “knower” and “the skillful one.” My graduate class was taken with both the scope and boldness of the writing, as Iannacci explains why current practices for students with disabilities are woefully inadequate, and calls for a reconceptualization of disability in education
This carefully crafted book will inspire educators to develop an inclusive learning environment informed by multiliteracies. Eschewing prescriptive strategies for setting up such an environment, Iannacci points to foundational principles that involve immersion in a variety of multimodal texts that enable literacy development for all students by thinking about them in asset-oriented ways, then differentiating instruction to ensure their success.
The book’s special chapter for parents provoked a productive discussion in my classes of how to approach and support the families of these learners.
It is rare to find a “good read” that also serves as an excellent reference text for educators who are advocating for learners with disabilities. This book does just that.
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, June 2020
Lexington Books, 2018. ISBN-13: 978-1498542753
Also available on:
The authors’ qualitative survey asked teachers to explore what supported their commitment to reconciliation education and what stood in their way. Here’s what they found out.
Inspired by our graduate work in the Call to Action Program at the University of Calgary, we set out to determine what factors either support or limit teachers from implementing reconciliatory practices in their classrooms.
Our research uncovered commitment, collaboration and self-reflection as key factors in supporting education through reconciliation.
“84 percent of these teachers believe Indigenous education should receive greater attention in schools.”
Recognizing that Canadian teachers are poised at the forefront of responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Calls to Action (2015) and encouraged by strategies mandated by their school boards, in 2018 we conducted a survey of 90 teachers in our urban area.
Our survey revealed that 66 percent of these teachers are aware of the TRC’s Calls to Action, and 84 percent believe Indigenous education should receive great er attention in schools.
Teacher respondents also reported that they regularly engage in learning opportunities surrounding reconciliatory practices and Indigenous perspectives; however, these preparatory activities have not yet led to considerable shifts in their everyday classroom practices.
We followed up by interviewing self-selected teachers in order to gain a more thorough understanding of the specific conditions that support their efforts in engaging in reconciliatory pedagogy, along with an identification of barriers to this work.
“One-half of interviewees also reported a fear of making mistakes and of culturally appropriating.”
During interviews, teacher participants shared the challenges that they face in this work. One challenge was not having enough time to digest complex ideas. “There are a lot of resources out there but it takes time to think about them,” reported one interview participant.
Approximately one-half of interviewees also reported a fear of making mistakes and of culturally appropriating.
Other challenges identified by our peers were recognition of the emotional labour associated with taking up this work, along with resistance from either administration, students, parents, or teachers.
Still, fueled by their own ethical positioning and sense of moral obligation, these teachers were able to find a way forward by focusing on supportive relationships and maintaining a self-reflective stance in their pedagogical decisions.
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Findings from our study signal that it is a sense of personal responsibility from individual teachers that indicate a greater likelihood of their future and ongoing engagement with reconciliatory practices.
Not too surprisingly, teachers who volunteered for the follow-up interview identified themselves as having a strong commitment to reconciliation; in all cases, they were actively engaged in reconciliatory pedagogy motivated and driven by their own initiative.
Being already strongly committed to reconciliation meant that they were in constant pursuit of deepening their personal knowledge of Indigenous topics and perspectives, as well as ways to infuse them within their own classrooms. For example, interviewees shared that they are now taking a far more critical look at Canadian history, and asking their students to do the same by questioning how Indigenous peoples are portrayed in the media. They are also checking themselves against any tokenistic approaches to teaching.
Teachers in the survey who described themselves as self-reflective were far more likely to engage in reconciliatory pedagogy. This heightened sense of self-awareness forms a cornerstone of all good teaching, and is crucial to the ethical integration of Indigenous perspectives across the curriculum.
Teachers who described themselves as highly reflective were considerably more likely to reach out to Elders, and to incorporate Indigenous arts, literature, and cultural practices (such as sharing circles) into their classrooms.
All interview participants relayed the importance of having supportive administration, colleagues, and parents as essential to the continuation of their efforts in incorporating reconciliatory practices into their teaching.
In fact, both the survey and interviews found a strong correlation between supportive personal relationships within the broader school community and individual teachers’ attempts to integrate reconciliation through education. Collaboration with colleagues was one of the primary factors that increased the likelihood of engagement in a wide variety of reconciliatory practices, such as incorporating Indigenous arts and literature in their classroom. So while teachers can start this type of work on their own, they require a community to sustain their efforts.
Teachers who indicated that they formed and nurtured relationships with Elders also reported that they engaged in all reconciliatory practices that we researched: incorporating Indigenous literature and arts, cultural practices (such as circle protocols), professional development related to reconciliation, and land-based learning.
Interestingly, the teachers who collaborated with Elders were the only participants in the study who engaged in land or place-based education. In these cases, learning from an Elder went hand-in-hand with learning from the land, which is central to understanding Indigneous perspectives as a connection to Mother Earth is often given a prominent place in Elder teachings.
Survey results indicate teachers are receiving pre-service teacher training in the area of Indigenous cultures and contemporary Indigenous issues.
The vast majority of teachers with less than five years of experience have had these learning opportunities incorporated into their teacher education training.
This demonstrates that some post-secondary institutions are making good on their calls to action and creating change within their institutions.
Through anecdotal evidence, we know that these teachers are moving into classrooms and schools armed with knowledge to further education for reconciliation. However, we found that even though seeds are being planted at the university level, it takes personal commitment, self-reflection, and collaboration to nurture and maintain the growth of these commitments in the face of challenges inherent in all complex school environments.
Pre-service teacher training and professional development learning opportunities need to focus on the development of a teacher’s own commitment to reconciliation, self-reflective practice, and a desire to collaborate with others in implementing reconciliatory practices in their classrooms.
Furthermore, these learning opportunities need to be followed up with a culture of collaboration and trust within school settings.
We encourage teachers to step onto the path of reconciliation by embarking on their own journey of self-reflection around their responsibility to this important work. Then, to transform their emerging beliefs into action, teachers can share ideas with their colleagues and administrators, support each other, and collaborate.
First steps to take include:
There are many different points of entry into reconciliation, and there is no one way to work on it. What is important to remember is that it takes personal commitment, self-reflection, and collaboration to initiate and sustain reconciliatory efforts.
Illustration: EdCan
First published in Education Canada, March 2020
When maker-centered, community-based learning meets the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the resulting projects can be deeply meaningful to the students who created them. See how Brilliant Labs in New Brunswick supports students’ “hopeful action to build a better world.”
Young people can have tremendous agency and voice in influencing solutions to community problems if we ignite their creativity with a socially responsible mindset, and equip them with the entrepreneurial and digital skills necessary to leverage tomorrow’s technology.
With young people today becoming increasingly troubled and anxious with climate change, environmental degradation, social inequality, and other challenges impacting our world, it is important that we support student-driven projects that engage with these issues.
In doing so, we also acknowledge their personal autonomy and identity.
What if we approached this by challenging our students to take a good look at their world and have them ask: What does my world look like? Is my world missing anything? How can I be a changemaker, innovator and leader? What can I do now that will lead to meaningful changes tomorrow? We can inspire bold new thinking by students and give them a time and place to exercise their creative problem-solving, with innovative use of materials and digital technology-related skills.
Over the past five years, Brilliant Labs has engaged youth in more than 401,862 learning experiences that inspire and empower them to make an impact by addressing the urgent needs in their school and community. This impact has been, literally, made by applying the instructional philosophy of maker-centred learning, in which students are invited to create meaningful artifacts of their own knowledge, interests, and passions.
We provide students with agency and a supportive learning environment where they are encouraged to integrate new techniques and technologies with familiar materials, all while constructing authentic solutions to problems they identified in their own communities. The prototypes they develop often become incredibly viable solutions to addressing our society’s most intimidating problems.
In partnership with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in all four Atlantic Canadian provinces, Brilliant Labs has worked with tens of thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of students in support of a maker-centered learning approach that fosters hands-on, experiential, and inquiry- and project-based learning in classrooms throughout Atlantic Canada.
The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals – also referred to as the SDGs or the Global Goals – were adopted by Canada and 192 other members states of the UN in 2015.
The SDGs universally apply to all countries, and cover a wide range of sustainability issues intended to build a better world for people everywhere and the planet. All the countries agreed to implement the SDGs within their own country in order to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
By highlighting local, national and international priority areas, the SDGs strive to end all forms of poverty, improve health and education, fight inequalities, make cities more sustainable, and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left at a disadvantage.
Converging student-driven projects with the SDGs not only educates and engages them to support the Global Goals in real and meaningful ways, it also empowers them to transform that support into hopeful action to build a better world and contribute to Canada achieving its 2030 Agenda.
One framework that is particularly helpful when encouraging projects that address environmental sustainability is design thinking (see Figure 1). Popularized by the Stanford School of Design, design thinking can be used by students and teachers as an instructional methodology that brings some order to what can become a chaotic cycle of multiple iterations of their project throughout their design process. While Brilliant Labs provides support for students as they work through each component of the design and making process, it has been the empathize component of design thinking that has been most helpful in creating a culture of localized environmental literacy.
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There are many interpretations of the design process, and it is important to remember that conforming your instructional practice to any framework that is not your own may constrain the creative actions makers take as they move through the iterative process and construct a prototype.
For this reason, we have developed our own interpretation of the Design Thinking Process entitled “The [blank] process of making brilliant things.” We hope that inserting a personalized name into the title will inspire a sense of personal agency in whatever process teachers and their students choose to bring their constructions to life.
It is enormously meaningful to understand the culture of your community, your own identity and the identity of your audience prior to jumping into any prototyping. This way your process will be refined to the needs of your end-users in your target community.
Specifically, what is it that you will make?
It is important to know how your desire to make relates to the empathy you express for your community.
The definition of what you wish to make should be specific so that you can clearly communicate your intent with those same community members, for whom your project is intended.
This component of the process is where your imagination will run wild.
To ideate means to imagine all of the possible implications and functions of your project.
Brainstorming outside of the definition of your project or the time you have allotted for your project during the ideate phase will ultimately lead you to an exciting project design that leads you to keep asking. “What if…?” We encourage this unbridled ideation!
However, it can be valuable to have one group member recognize when the ideas fall too far outside your definition to keep you on track.
This is where you begin to make your ideas come to life.
Turn sketches into diagrams, with multiple views and precise measurements.
Discuss your ideas and design decisions with your intended community of end-users.
Live within the ambiguous constraints of low-cost construction materials like cardboard.
Embrace each prototype for the reflective opportunity its disposable nature provides.
Finally, never underestimate the value of any prototype. Time has a way of getting away from the best of us. Be proud of each of your prototypes.
This phase may be at the end of the diagram, but in the design thinking and making process there is never an end – it is recursive, iterative, and ever-changing.
The testing phase is similar to deployment. Take your current prototype, demonstrate it to multiple groups of end-users, take notes, discuss the user experience and decide whether you want to cycle back to an earlier phase of your process (the answer is often yes).
Atlantic Canadian youth are truly empathetic to their local community’s sustainability challenges and their resulting projects inevitably become projected onto the larger challenges framed by the SDGs and Canada’s 2030 Agenda. For instance, a middle-school classroom decided to join a local campaign to solve their city’s hunger and nutrition issues. This group of students were not only interested in positively contributing to the food available to the hungry but to ensuring that this vulnerable group had access to healthy, locally grown produce. After days of brainstorming, these Grade 8 students decided to build a series of hydroponic flood tables to grow as much lettuce as possible in their school.
The students continually refined their design to maximize the growth as well as their contribution. Brilliant Labs became involved in this project when one student who was particularly interested in chemistry, gardening and coding, requested our assistance in developing an autonomous, electronic system that adjusted the pH of the nutrient-rich solution that became the essential component to maximizing their lettuce growth.
Integrating students’ projects with the SDGs localizes them in their community to make them real. This framework also provides engaging and creative opportunities to further cement student learning about how their local position can relate to one much larger: both globally and for their own learning.
When constructing projects that consider sustainability, students often authentically express a number of SDGs, as well as global competencies that are critical to establishing themselves as life-long learners.
The pan-Canadian global competencies outlined by Council of Ministers of Education, Canada are:
Examples of this in Atlantic Canada include students at all levels:
Students in an Environmental Studies class at Fredericton High School developed a project in support of SDG Goals 15 (Life on Land), 14 (Life Under Water), and 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation). While learning about wetland ecosystems at Corbett Brook Marsh (a 3.64-hectare forested wetland), they combined drones, microcontrollers, 3D design and printing, robotics, and coding to collect water samples in a hard-to-reach wetland without further damaging the local ecosystem. The student-created prototype featured two detachable platforms that carried four test tubes and a sensor. When the drone came within 10 cm of the water surface, it automatically triggered a robotic mechanism that filled the test tubes with water.
The project was a success, tying for first place at the Regional Science Fair at the University of New Brunswick and also catching the attention of local conservation and technology communities. Ducks Unlimited Canada purchased a new drone for the school, with funding from the New Brunswick Environmental Trust Fund. The project not only far exceeded everyone’s expectations, it provided a creative, problem-solving opportunity for students to learn how to apply their unique interests, skills and talents in a meaningful way.
As students work to provide sustainable and environmentally responsible solutions within their schools and communities, we have a tremendous opportunity to engage them with the UN SDGs to develop their global competencies and support Canada’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Connecting students with projects and purposeful technology in an authentic and impactful context not only sparks learning through action, but will go along way to creating innovative solutions to complex and urgent problems, and develop a growth mindset.
Brilliant Labs is looking forward to continuing to support students, teachers and educators along this journey as we engage our young people to boldly solve real problems with innovative technologies. Our youth are the biggest and brightest hope to improve the lives of people everywhere and transform the world by learning about the SDGs and mobilizing Canada’s 2030 Agenda.
Formed in 2014, Brilliant Labs is a not-for-profit, hands-on technology and experiential learning platform based in Atlantic Canada.
In converging student-driven projects with the SDGs, our vision is to provide every child in Atlantic Canada, and beyond, with the opportunities to access, learn, and leverage new technologies and programming to create, innovate and inspire solutions for a sustainable and environmentally, socially, and entrepreneurially responsible future.
Photo: Courtesy Brilliant Labs
First published in Education Canada, March 2020