Creating A SAFE Space for All Students

“I don’t know where this journey will take me, but I know where it starts.” – Michael Cappello

On Friday, I was mandated to attend the Social Justice & Anti-Racist Anti-Oppressive Forum on Education (SAFE), which was being held for the first time at the University of Regina as part of my program. If I could, I would relive this day over and over again, going to each and every session and listening to the keynote speakers, Michael Cappello and Shauneen Pete, share their wisdom and conversations with me each and every time.

During the keynote, I was so mesmerized by the conversation and the learning taking place that I completely forgot to take notes, but luckily I have connected with a great group of classmates, who I will mention later on in this post, that reminded me through conversation about the most memorable moments. Michael and Shauneen started the keynote talking about March 2014, when the University of Regina cheerleaders made headlines for dressing up as Cowboys and Indians for their last practice and posted the pictures to Twitter. The result of this media attention was a mandatory ‘sensitivity training’ for the cheer team with Dr. Pete. She spoke of this training during the keynote, talking about how the cheerleaders adamantly stated that they were “good girls” in the session. They were “good girls” who volunteered, kept their grades up, and never meant to hurt anybody. But who is allowed to be good girls? Who is allowed to infantilize themselves in order to shirk responsibility for their actions? By simply saying that they were “good girls” they were displaying an unconscious dominance over Indigenous women who are often sexualized and treated as women throughout their childhood. Who gets the privilege to dress up as ‘Indians’ and play fantasy, and who has to wear the scars that come with that term every day?

After they had asked these critical questions, Mike and Shauneen started to talk about the impact that this anti-racism education, or as the university called it ‘sensitivity training’ affected them. Mike started by saying something that I connected deeply to: “This work does not cost me enough.” As a white woman, if I don’t fight for anti-racist and anti-oppressive education, nobody will really notice, but the moment that I do, I am given an “ally cookie”, as Mike called it. This cookie hails me as some sort of hero, fighting for the rights of others when I could choose to ignore inequality, but this is not a cookie I want. Since when has it become a job worthy of hero status to believe in equality? What kind of society do we live in when fighting to raise others up and let their voices, their stories, and their perspectives be heard is worthy of reward? This should be normative, but it’s not. This doesn’t mean that I will stop fighting for anti-racism and anti-oppression within schools and the broader society, it just means that I now realize that these rewards are a form of dominance in themselves. Shauneen, however, brought it home to all of the people that I spoke with during the day. She talked about the reaction of the cheerleaders to the training, how they discredited her as too emotional and too angry. She brought Mike with her to meet the cheerleaders so that he could offer his perspective on the events as well, and this led the cheerleaders to think that she was ill prepared and they were not the only ones. Shauneen was also made out to be a villain by the media, with one interviewer continually trying to reinforce that the cheerleaders were “good girls”, and why were they being forced to pay for a simple mistake?

The conversation continued to a response to the situation from one of Mike’s friends, who asked him “So if six-year-olds play Cowboys & Indians, is that racist?” The answer was a resounding “Yes!” Racism is often not the result of individual behavior; it is systematic. The fact that six-year-olds know these stereotypes is proof that racism exists within society. Six-year-olds playing Cowboys & Indians should be used as proof that racism and the stereotypes that come with it run rampant within society, not a way to try to fight this thinking. Throughout the day, I kept thoughts of this keynote and the many lessons that it taught me at the forefront of my mind.

For my first session of the day, I attended Teaching Students with Significant Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities: How to Make a Choice presented by Dr. Scott Thompson. Teaching students with special needs is something that is close to my heart because of my past experience with Campus for All students and the Big Sky Center for Learning and Being Astonished, so I wanted to attend a lecture on this subject to become more knowledgeable about how this relates to social justice. Two main lessons came out of this lecture. First, Dr. Thompson spoke about the assumptions that people hold about students with disabilities. He noted that often the expectations for these students are either over or under estimated simply because of the disability that they have. We need to give our students the best educational experience possible, regardless of disability. The way that we can do this is getting to know where each student is at and scaffolding the experiences that we give them to ensure that they feel confident in their learning. The second lesson that Dr. Thompson taught us was to make sure not to talk about students with special needs in front of them as if they cannot hear or understand what we are saying. All that this does is promote aggression and learned helplessness. Every person has the ability to make choices and to learn, but if they are continuously treated like they do not have this ability, they will no longer try.

The second session that I attended was Place-Conscious Teaching for Social and Ecological Justice presented by Karen McIvor. I was interested in this session because place-conscious teaching is something that I see as very valuable and I wanted to know how I could relate this to social justice. Place-conscious education brings together critical pedagogy, which focuses on deconstructing dominant narratives and ways of living, with place-based education, which brings the environment into learning experiences. One important lesson that I learned from Karen in this session is that it is not enough to simply take students to a space; we must deconstruct the places that we take students in some of these experiences. Deconstruction takes place by asking questions like: what has happened here, what is happening here, and what could happen here? Place-conscious teaching doesn’t have to involve big adventures to gain knowledge, it can happen in our own backyards or in our school grounds, but it is important to provide students with these experiences to enhance their school experiences. This work is very important to connecting youth to the community around them, as evidenced in Heartwood’s Circle of Awesomeness, and is used by Karen to help students at risk within her school gain credits for any number of classes while learning through experiences that are meaningful to them.

For my third and last session of the day, I attended Unsettling Treaty Education and Anti-Oppressive Education: Theory into Practice presented by Chauntel Baudu and Tamara Smith. This was one of the sessions that I was looking forward to the most, since treaty education and anti-oppressive education are two aspects of my education that I am very passionate about, but I haven’t gotten much instruction on how they actually work in a classroom. Chauntel started this session off by talking about anti-oppressive education, which she describes as creating togetherness rather than separation in school environments. She started on her path to anti-oppressive education in much the same way that I have. She was taking classes at the university and imagined having the same deep conversations about anti-oppressive education that were occurring in her class with her students and she made it a reality. One key lesson that I learned from Chauntel is that if I want to talk about anti-oppression within my classroom, I need to give students the tools to unpack their ‘invisible knapsacks’ effectively. If students are to talk about oppression, they need to know the forms of oppression that affect them, whether it is a positive or negative affect. It is important to teach critical literacy and have students identify whose voice is heard and whose voice is silenced within texts so that they can identify the oppression that exists. Another key aspect of anti-oppressive teaching is reflection, not only for teachers but for students as well. We need to reflect to figure out where we come from, what we know, why we know it, and what has changed over time to figure out what students need from us as anti-oppressive educators. Chauntel stated that anti-oppressive education doesn’t have to be overwhelming; you don’t have to make dramatic leaps and bounds to make a difference within your classroom. Anti-oppressive education is simply about increasing your knowledge of oppression and working to fight it in ways that you feel you can because when we know better, we can do better.

After Chauntel’s presentation, Tamara took the floor to talk about treaty education. Tamara spoke about the importance of teacher initiative in treaty education. Even though it is mandated in Saskatchewan, many teachers we will meet in schools choose to remain ignorant of treaty education in an attempt to retain innocence when thinking about the past of colonialization in Saskatchewan, but at what point does this ignorance become unacceptable? Often in social studies and history classes, the focus is on the ‘strength of the homesteaders’ while the strength and benevolence of the Indigenous people is ignored. We claim ignorance to avoid the trauma of admitting uncomfortable truths, but we need to ask ourselves who benefits from this ignorance and who is oppressed by it. If you are going to begin teaching treaty education, you must first be open to growth and learning and you must accept that you may feel alone on this journey, but you must not give up. If the support does not exist in the school that you find yourself working in, and even if it does exist, there are supports to help such as the Office of the Treaty Commission, elders, and leaders within the area of treaty education. Many teachers fear treaty education because they do not want to make mistakes, but this is where your own initiative in discovering knowledge and your humility becomes essential. We must learn to admit that we are not perfect, that we are humans that make mistakes, because this is what makes any subject that we teach real to our students.

To close the day, I had a discussion with some of my classmates about what we took away from the many sessions that we sat in during the conference. We took the opportunity to introduce a group that five of my classmates and I have started on campus with the support of Michael Cappello, called STARS Regina, which is dedicated to blogging resources for future and practicing teachers as well as providing professional development sessions revolving around social justice education. Our group met up for supper after these conversations with our classmates and some of the presenters and talked about our main takeaways from the conference and where we will move forward as a group. Throughout our discussion, our main focus was our passion for anti-racism and anti-oppression within our teaching. In one of the sessions that I attended, the presenter continually told us to teach with our passion and even if you feel alone at first, those people that think similar to you will find you and those conversations will be available for support. During the times when the work seems to hard to go on, we need to keep in mind the ripple effect that our efforts have on our students and the community surrounding us.

As we moved forward from the keynote at the beginning of the day, we were asked to consider what we were going to do to start accepting the gifts of knowledge and culture that First Nations and Metis people have been offering for years. By the end of the day, I was asking myself what had held me back from going to ceremonies and having conversations that led me to learn more about First Nations and Metis culture, I realized that more often than not, it was fear of being the only white person at these events and disrespecting their traditions and culture simply because I do not know enough. When I catch myself in these thoughts in the future, I hope that I will have the voice of Sheena Koops, a new friend that I met two weeks ago with my classmates in STARS Regina, in my head telling me “Go forth and be awkward”. Embrace the situations that you feel uncomfortable with, because that is where you find new knowledge that transforms your thinking. More often than not, your willingness to learn about the knowledge and the culture of First Nation and Metis people will not be seen as a sign of respect, and if you do blunder, there will be someone there to teach you how to do better at the next event that you attend. Make those important connections, go to the ceremonies and events around your community, get involved; even if you stumble, there will be someone there to catch you and you will become a better teacher for it.

Dealing with Tragedy in the Classroom

Yesterday, when I heard about the shooting that was happening in Ottawa, I was on my way to hang out with my new Kindergarten friends and take some time to teach them a lesson on kindness. As I sat in my car, I realized that this is one of those moments that nobody can prepare for. Either I would be sitting in the classroom all day, knowing that a tragedy was occurring, but not having any updates on the situation, or I would be talking to the students about what was going on and trying to help them through this tough situation.

I am no stranger to dealing with tragedy in the school environment. I went through the tragic loss of my cousin when I was in high school. In my field experience as part of ECS 100, one of the students who had moved on to a nearby high school but had close ties to the school through relationships with teachers and younger cousins in the school was killed. These two experiences couldn’t have been handled more differently. When I was going through the grieving process, I pushed people away because I felt like I had to deal with it myself, but while I was in my ECS 100 placement, so many people in the school community had ties to this student so it was a community effort to overcome the tragedy.

When I was talking with my cooperating teacher before school, we decided that if the students knew about the shooting when they came to school, we would address it and do what was needed to make sure that they felt safe and secure, but we would play it by ear. The shooting wasn’t mentioned in the morning or the afternoon groups, but something interesting did come up in the carpet discussion with the afternoon group. Since it was Career Day at the school today, my cooperating teacher asked the students what they wanted to be when they grew up and was giving them ideas on how they could dress up. One of the students within the class mentioned that she either wanted to be a teacher or a police officer when she grew up. Without hesitation, one of her classmates advised her that she didn’t want to be a police officer because “people are crazy and will try to shoot you”. He proceeded to explain that three police officers were shot in the summer by a crazy person, obviously referring to the Moncton, New Brunswick shooting. I didn’t know what to do in this situation. How do you explain something so tragic to a group of five-year-olds?

I reflected on this quite a lot since yesterday because it was so unexpected. It wasn’t until my Aesthetics Education class that I realized that these comments should not simply be ignored. My professor put it simply: be honest with your students. If this situation is something that they are upset about, the best thing to do is to explain what is happening and reassure students that they are safe. Obviously, since the students are very young, we should not be graphic in our explanations, but students will know about these tragedies and it is part of our roles as teachers to make sure that students know that it is our job to make sure that they are safe and that we will try our best to protect them from all harm.

The hardest part of these conversations is the initiation. I know that I, personally, would feel like I was taking some of the innocence away from my students by being honest with them about tragedies such as yesterday’s shooting, but if the carpet discussion taught me anything yesterday it’s that my professor is absolutely right. Kids know more than we give them credit for sometimes – whether their parents are being honest with them about what is going on in the world around them or they simply hear news stories on the television or radio – and we need to be sure that when these situations arise, we are prepared to discuss them with students in order to make sure that they feel safe and supported in the school environment.

First Pre-Internship Reflection

Last Wednesday, I had the great opportunity to begin the first part of my pre-internship in a kindergarten classroom located on the east side of Regina. There is both a morning and an afternoon group that my teaching partner and I will be working with. Our cooperating teacher has a high focus on inquiry learning and the use of technology within the classroom, which is something that I am very excited about! Throughout my university career, I have heard about the importance of inquiry and how technology is being integrated more and more into classrooms, but I had never learned real, applicable ways in which I could use this knowledge in a classroom. Even though the students are less than two months into the school year, it is amazing to see how far they have come with embracing technology.

After reflecting on my first week in the classroom, one thing that continues to amaze me is how little the students sit in desks. Students have no assigned seating; the only times students are really sitting at the desks in the room is during center time and in this time they can choose to play in sensory bins, color, or do a number of other activities that the teacher has set out for them that week. Up until last year, I was under the illusion that all ‘real’ learning had to take place in desks with rows, but ever since entering the Elementary Education Program, my mind has changed drastically. I can visually see within this Kindergarten classroom how the teacher is hitting outcomes and how the students show her that they are ready to take their learning one step forward.

My cooperating teacher has a method to how she starts off the school year in the best way that she can think of. Instead of diving into structured lessons on each subject area, she focuses in on social studies and health curriculum to promote respectful friendships between her students. Since she lays this foundation knowledge on how to get along with others first, she is able to hit different outcomes in less formal lessons on the carpet such as incorporating patterns into the calendar, teaching students to count to 100 by counting each day they are at school, and reading stories to students while encouraging deeper learning.

When I returned to the school this week, I was already able to see development within the students when I observed them at center time. My cooperating teacher had switched the learning centers before the students came in the morning and it was amazing to see how excited the kiddoes were. The sand table was Halloween themed, so there were ghosts, bats, spiders, and eyeballs within the sand in the table. With the morning group, I observed different math indicators when many of the students creating their own patterns with the toys in the table and I also witnessed one boy taking initiative to sort out each toy so that they could be found easier. With the afternoon group, I observed more English Language Arts indicators being met when students made the bats superheroes that saved each of the other toys and using some creativity to create pictures in the sand with the toys.

Now that I have started forming relationships with the students, one major aspect that I need to consider is classroom management. Since I am pre-interning in a Kindergarten class, this is one of the most important things to develop since the attention span of the students is shorter. One thing that I have in my arsenal for classroom management is simply the rapport that I have developed with the students already. At first, I was a little self-conscious about the way that I approached teaching the students, since both my cooperating teacher and teaching partner are extremely animated when they are teaching and I am very calm, but after post-conferencing with my cooperating teacher I’ve learned that this is something that she appreciates because my calm demeanor rubs off on the students and their attention span lasts longer than she expects when I am teaching my lessons with the students. I have been learning a lot about classroom management from simply watching my cooperating teacher while she is teaching the students because her management techniques work wonders with the kiddoes.

As I progress through my pre-internship, there are a few goals that I want to work on: 1) Continue to learn more about effective classroom management strategies; 2) step outside of my comfort zone with the curriculum – I am very comfortable with Social Studies, Health, arts education, physical education, and ELA, so I hope that I will be able to find the courage to step outside these subjects and teach math and science lessons; 3) further develop the relationship I’ve started with the students – teacher-student relationships are essentially important to me and my cooperating teacher fully supports this; and 4) focus on digging deeper with my questions to students – these first two weeks, I’ve accepted one word answers to questions when some answers could have easily been expanded on.

I am absolutely thrilled to be teaching Kindergarten for my pre-internship because this is a completely new experience for me. My past experience teaching has centered around Grade 3 and 4, so this age group is much younger than I’m used to, but I have been placed with an absolutely wonderful cooperating teacher who has already taught me so much within two days in the classroom. I am excited to see the students progress to the point where they can start an inquiry project – probably around March when my teaching partner and I return for the second part of pre-internship – and progress through the use of technology because my cooperating teacher has told me that the result at the end of the school year is something that needs to be seen to be believed. I can’t wait for my future visits to this classroom, since I know that I have a lot to learn not only from my cooperating teacher, but also my teaching partner and the students themselves.