Moving Paradigms

In a recent article, candidate for Burnaby school board Laura-Lynn Tyler Thomson is quoted as saying  that she was scared and cried every day when she attended a school in the Arctic where, as “the only white, blonde girl”, she “stood out like a sore thumb”.

When most of the dolls on the toy store shelf look like you, when entire rows of magazine covers have faces that look like you, when people who look like you have occupied multiple positions of power and influence for centuries, it takes a convoluted cognitive sequence to see yourself as a victim of the descendants of people who were starved to death and treaty-tricked out of the land you live on.  

It’s not really convoluted though. It’s just regular racism but with a particularly Canadian nicety:  implied, not stated.

Given what Tyler Thomson has said about her experiences in the Arctic, what can the 3% of Burnaby’s student population who identify as Aboriginal expect from her if she was elected trustee? Probably not any acknowledgement of the role of education in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

Students who identify as trans or queer are supposed to expect that she will “love them to pieces” even while she denies their right to be educated about what all humans have in common: a sexual orientation, a gender identity.

As a teacher I’m curious about what Tyler Thomson means by us not being trained “to help students dealing with gender identity”. 

Does she mean that teachers should ignore the 2016 directive from the B.C. Ministry of Education that  “all B.C. school districts and independent schools are required to include specific references to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in their anti-bullying policies”?

Does she mean that teachers are not trained to create safe learning environments for all students?

Does she mean that teachers should ignore the fact that “lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are seven times more likely than heterosexual youth to attempt suicide” ?

How exactly does one teach “manners, reading, writing and arithmetic” to students who are feeling unsafe?

How does one reduce bullying without educating students about human rights?

There is nothing ideological about teaching students that all humans have a sexual orientation and a gender identity just as there is nothing ideological about teaching students that all humans have a brain and a heart.

Some brains are different, some hearts are different. Sometimes one’s biological identity matches with one’s gender identity. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Why would anyone not want youth to know this?

Why would anyone, let alone a school trustee, want to deny students access to information that would reduce discrimination and increase safety, respect and acceptance in schools?

What purpose is served by keeping students ignorant of what it means to be a human with a sexual orientation and a gender identity?

Voters in the October municipal election should ponder these questions when they make their choices for school board trustees.

Schools should be safe places for all students.

All students.

No child should feel scared at school.

Not students who are the descendants of the First Peoples to occupy this land.

Not students who are blonde or brown or bisexual.

If you don’t believe that, you should not be running to be a school trustee.

Dear Minister Fleming,

I wish I could also experience the optimism you expressed in your recently published op-ed but I’m burdened by the memory of my dashed hopes over the past school year and also quite distracted by the absence of any acknowledgement of the work of teachers to ensure that our province continues to be a “world leader in education”.

I know that you are quite familiar with the work that teachers do because you had been the education critic since 2013 when you were appointed education minister in July 2017. I was thrilled when that happened because finally there was someone who did not have to be convinced about what teachers and students needed. You had regularly raised our concerns at the Legislature and had made compelling arguments for the needs in our public education system. Your appointment felt like we teachers were finally within sight of the finish line after running an exhausting marathon.

When you said there were urgent priorities we expected you to aggressively move to recruit teachers as soon as you occupied your new office in Victoria.  But when the new school year began, recruitment of teachers seemed to have slipped off the urgent list because hundreds of students started the year without teachers.  Although 3,700 teachers were eventually hired, there were too many students who had had to wait over 100 days before they had a teacher assigned to them.

On your watch, there were months of lost learning opportunities for students who had been eager to begin learning on the first day of the school year.

That this happened took us by surprise but we hoped that things would get better.

When 2018 was already a few months old and we were still waiting to benefit from our Supreme Court win through the full implementation of the Memorandum of Agreement, we suppressed our frustration. It was like we had won the race but could not claim a trophy because there weren’t enough teachers teaching on-call to relieve those who had been working through their prep time for months. 

While we were desperately trying to cover the gaps created by a shortage of teachers, we were also being expected to implement the new curriculum. 

Because you’ve listened to us for so many years, you must not have been surprised by one of the key findings of the Curriculum Change Survey: implementation of the new curriculum has been extraordinarily demanding on teachers. As one teacher who participated in the survey said:

I just want to note that I spent hundreds of hours developing content and instructional materials this year.  I work part time and spend most of my days off working on school materials.

Surely you see that the continued teacher shortage coupled with a lack of supports for the new curriculum leaves teachers in an untenable situation?

It’s bad enough that we are not provided enough time to learn this massively changed curriculum, but we are also expected to teach the new curriculum with outdated textbooks and without the necessary equipment.  

We don’t quite know what to say to students who notice their parents’ name in their social studies or science textbooks.  

We are told by principals that we should consult “the Internet” for learning resources.

Particularly distressing is that after so many years of listening to us talk at our meetings about how underfunding was impacting our students, you did not included a single teacher on the Funding Model Review panel. 

Not a single teacher.

I had a kind of déjà vu experience when I listened to you recently on the CBC Early Edition interview of 20 August 2018.  During that interview, I was dismayed that you dismissed concerns about outdated resources by saying that there may be “some anecdotes” of old textbooks but that most schools have what they need.

I wonder where your information comes from when the Curriculum Change Survey shows that teachers rate their access to necessary instructional materials at a 4 on a scale of 0 – 10.  

More and more these days you sound just like our previous four education ministers who often shared their enthusiasm for new technologies without demonstrating any clear understanding of the challenges of the infrastructure of our classrooms or the composition of our student populations.  Did you forget all the concerns we expressed about this when you were listening so intently at our meetings?  

Last September I was looking forward to you turning your criticisms of the previous government into actions that would dramatically change what our students had had to endure for 16 years.  

But then, on your watch, students with special needs have had even less support than they did before you were Minister of Education. It’s unlikely that that awful situation is going to be much different this year given that there are currently over 100 unfilled positions in the same school district, days before the start of a new school year. 

Perhaps you can understand why I can’t share your optimism?

It’s because I remember the past year quite differently. 

While I try to overcome my disappointment in your Ministry, I will continue to work hard to ensure that my students get the best education possible.

It’s what teachers do.

Still hoping,

Teaching BC

Dear Premier John Horgan,

Because we believed you when you told us during the 2017 election campaign that you were committed to supporting all students in public schools, dozens of us spent hundreds of hours canvassing for your candidates in the nine ridings that fall within our school district.  We moved making calls on behalf of your candidates to the top of our priority lists, above the myriad tasks we normally have as parents and as teachers.

We were highly motivated to do this because we could not bear the thought of yet another year of inadequate resources and overcrowded classrooms, yet another year of looking into the faces of our students who struggled to learn without the supports they desperately needed in their classrooms.  

Before 2002 when our collective agreement was shredded by the BC Liberals, students in Surrey who needed help with their learning, whether they were designated or not,  had access to resource rooms and tutorial rooms. There were also enough Learning Assistant Teachers and Education Assistants to support all students who needed it.

As you well know, almost all of that support disappeared during the 16 years that the BC Liberal government was in power.

And so, while we knocked on doors and spoke to voters in spring 2017, we hoped that, if an NDP government were in place, the level of support needed for our students would, at the very least, be restored to what it had been in 2001, the year before the BC Liberal government gutted funding.  

On election night, we were thrilled when six out of the nine ridings in Surrey were won by your colleagues. We were especially ecstatic about the ousting of the former Minister of Education, Peter Fassbender, who had been deaf to our multiple appeals for support on behalf of our students. By the end of the school year in June 2017, we excitedly anticipated that our students’ suffering was time-limited, that there was light on the horizon.

There was indeed some light in the new school year. Your government announced more funding for a new school in our district where students had been subjected to gross overcrowding for too many years. We also happily welcomed all the newly hired teachers and looked forward to the relief they would bring to our schools.  

But now, it’s a been a year since your Minister of Education said that it was an urgent issue to restore supports and funding to our schools and we are distressed that the situation for students with special needs in our district has gotten worse than it ever was under the BC Liberals!

We are shocked that your government has allowed BCPSEA to avoid fully implementing our restored language.

We are deeply disturbed by the number of students who are left without supports daily while their Learning Specialist Teachers are called to cover classes because of a shortage of teachers. 

We are dismayed by the number of teachers who have had no prep time for weeks because they’ve had to cover other classes.

And we are extremely perplexed by your government not doing all that it can to honour the Memorandum of Agreement, the document that is meant to guide the restoration of what was lost in 2002. 

Why are you not pressuring all stakeholders to take the actions necessary to remedy the situation in schools, not exacerbate it by preparing to monetize the lost hours of support that too many students endured for far too long?   

Even in our worst nightmares we never thought we’d have to debate the morally repugnant issue of “cash for kids” with your government.

But here we are.

Where do we go next, Premier?

Sincerely,

Voters who teach in Surrey.

Starting this month, there’s going to be an historic demolition of a building in Vancouver. Historic not only because it’s the tallest building to be demolished in the city but also because it’s going to take concrete-crushing robots over a year to turn the Empire Hotel, floor by floor, into a pile of dust and debris.

Since March is also when we celebrate Women’s History and acknowledge International Women’s Day, news of this revolutionary form of demolition got me wondering about how long it’s been taking to dismantle the edifice of patriarchy.

It’s been 226 years since the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, just over a 100 years since White women in Canada got the vote, 58 years since First Nations women could vote, two years since Canada saw the first gender-balanced cabinet and a week since the unveiling of a “gender conscious” federal budget.

It may be 2018 but patriarchy is not yet archaic.  

On the contrary, patriarchy is very much alive and kicking along with its conspirators, colonialism and misogyny.

Patriarchal structures continue to exist because they’ve been perfectly disguised as what passes for normal.

For many people here in North America, the perversion of patriarchy is not overtly visible. Stories of marriage by abduction, female genital mutilation (FGM)  and the abandonment of female babies are horrors that happen in other places.

Over here patriarchy is like that car you don’t notice until you buy one and then you see it everywhere.

Once you know what to look for, you’ll become aware of patriarchy everywhere.

The predominant face of power in corporations and in government is male.

Children still need to have their father’s last name to be considered legitimate.

Teen girls in high school who have sex are sluts but boys who do are players.

Working women, whether in minimum wage jobs or in Hollywood, are paid less for doing the same work, with many still making 87 cents for every dollar a man earns.

You will also notice that not even unions, those bastions of social justice, are immune from patriarchy’s persistence. The BCTF has had just 8 female presidents in 100 years, 5 of them since 1986. Progress yes, but … .

Although we should be encouraged by the recently-started systematic remodelling of structures within the BCTF to include spaces for equity-seeking groups, we need to acknowledge that there is still a lot of work to be done to reveal how male privilege is interwoven into the way our union works.

Most often this male privilege goes unnoticed. For example, a colleague recently shared that, during an important meeting with a school board, he echoed a comment that a female colleague had just made but he didn’t notice that he was carefully listened to while she was ignored.  He only realized that this had happened after she pointed it out to him later.

That’s the thing about male privilege in a patriarchy. It’s so carefully disguised as normal that it’s not even noticed. For many people, living in a patriarchy is like what water is to a fish. It’s so normal it’s invisible.

Perhaps this is why pointing out male privilege invokes a visceral reaction in some people. It’s a shock to realize that you have not actually been seeing what is right there in front of you. Like an elephant in this Magic Eye image. Can you see it?

Exposing male privilege is not to say that men never experience prejudice. Male teachers are well aware of the need to take extra precautions around female students because they remember stories like that of teacher Sean Lanigan whose life was torn apart after being falsely accused of molestation. Others who are routinely called upon to do the heavy lifting and snow-shovelling may also bristle at the suggestion that males are privileged.  Male kindergarten teachers also have stories to share about how they are sometimes negatively received.

However,  these examples of bias cannot discount the entrenchment of the power of males in decision-making positions across all sectors of our society.  Discrimination among people may exist in a multitude of ways but the power to make decisions that affect entire populations within systems, whether political, financial, judicial or educational, is still largely controlled by males.

The 2017 BCTF AGM saw the passing of historic resolutions aimed at creating a space at the executive table for people of colour. It marked a time when many people agreed that the exclusion of people of colour from decision-making power could no longer be tolerated. This is commendable.   

On the other hand, motions limiting the role of males on the executive failed by a large margin of the vote. This was disheartening.  

Delegates at this month’s AGM, happening in the middle of Women’s History month, will once again be presented with resolutions aimed at limiting the roles of males on the executive committee of an organization whose membership is about 75% female.  

What are the chances that delegates, inspired by this Women’s History Month’s stories of the long struggle to demolish the edifice of the 10 000-year-old patriarchy, will vote for an executive that, instead of concentrating power around males, disperses that power in favour of members from equity-seeking groups?  

I hope delegates will see that, for male privilege, time is up.

It’s beyond time to build a new normal.

Less than a year before his untimely death, I was lucky enough to be in the audience at a  presentation by Ojibway wordsmith Richard Wagamese . What I remember most about his talk was not only laughing a lot at his incisive humour, but also thinking deeply about what he said about the role of smartphones in the lives of our children. He said that we should not allow smartphones to satisfy the need our children had to gather around a fire to hear stories. He said we should build a new, alternative fire to gather our children so that they could hear from us the stories that would teach them who they were.

I think about that talk a lot these days when I hear about the research that correlates the use of smartphones with high rates of sleep deprivation and depression amongst teens.

I also wonder what Richard would say about the fact that the government of California has, since 2014, been spending millions on ads that encourage parents to talk, read and sing to their children.

Does that fact shock you as much as it did me when I first heard about it? Are you surprised that millions of dollars are being spent to encourage parents to talk to their children? Given how reluctant most governments are to spend money on any kind of social program let alone one that benefits those too young to vote, the consequences of parents not talking to their children must be dire enough to warrant the spending.

California is not alone in taking action. The government of New Brunswick has also launched a campaign to encourage parents “to sing, talk and read to their children under five“. The Clinton Foundation also provides funds to organizations that will expect parents they support to take a pledge to spend time each day talking, singing and reading to their children. There are many other organizations, big and small, focused on the same project of ensuring that parents speak to their children so that they learn the words they’ll need to navigate the world.

Navigating iPad screens is an increasing popular skill among toddlers. Have you noticed how often screens are being used by harried parents to keep their children quiet for hours?

Do you worry like I do about the consequences for society when millions of toddlers grow up to be teens who do not know how to hold a conversation , who do not have the words to express how they feel but who are quite skilled at sending emojis?

This scary future may already be here. Recently primary teachers have been voicing concerns about kindergarteners not being able to manage their emotions and not being able to “use their words”.  Perhaps it’s because they may not have enough words from which to choose.

What are the societal consequences of having children “be quiet” all the time? Will we lose the power of words to weave stories that show us who we are?

I’m very grateful that we have the First Peoples’ Principles of Learning to remind us what Indigenous Peoples have known about learning for millennia.  The third of the First Peoples’ Principles of Learning states that learning involves recognizing the consequences of one’s actions. I wonder if we adults, who are the hosts to the children who have newly arrived on this planet, fully recognize the consequences of spending so little time talking to our children that we need to be reminded to do so through public service announcements?

Monday, 20th November is Children’s Day, the 58th celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The  United Nations hopes the anniversary will inspire people  “to advocate, promote and celebrate children’s rights” and to begin “dialogues and actions that will build a better world for Children”.  I have no doubt that there will be lots of money spent on encouraging such “dialogues” and “actions” but I also know that it would cost nothing at all if knowledgeable adults everywhere fully accepted, as per the fourth principle of learning, their roles and responsibilities,  and put down their phones and instead picked up conversations with children.

If they did, the consequences will be priceless.

 

Education literature is well-populated with articles on the centrality of relationships in learning but there is very little discussion on how difficult maintaining healthy relationships can be.  

Relationships are always easy when things are going well, when there’s no conflict. They’re really difficult when things are not going well. And if there’s ever a place where relationships can get into trouble, it’s in classrooms and in schools.

In her explanation and background to the principle of holistic learning among First Peoples, Jo Chrono provides lots of examples of what the integration of this principle may look like in a classroom. Teachers who have already incorporated regular field trips, reflective journalling, experiential learning, place-based learning, and project-based learning into their classroom practice will easily be able to connect their teaching to this learning principle. But what I want to focus on here is something else that she mentions: the critical importance of relationships inherent in this learning principle in particular.

A few months ago, three students who were very angry with me waited to talk to me after school. They wanted the four of us to use a process I teach to all my students to help them to work through any conflict they may experience in their relationships. It took some time but at the end of our excavation of the incident we all realized that we had each interpreted what we saw and heard in completely different ways thus resulting in different stories about what had happened in the classroom earlier in the day.  

Over the past decade, students have told me how this process, The Communication Model, has helped them not only to repair but also to sustain relationships amongst friends and family. Emily, a former student, has written about how she used it to de-escalate conflict between an adult and some students in our school. Countless others have talked about how their relationships with siblings and with parents have been strengthened through using the model.

I’m partial to the Communication model because, unlike other models for the resolution of conflict, its experiential method creates the possibility for a relationship to be strengthened through deepening mutual understanding.

The core premise of The Communication Model is that through examining our perceptions and interpretations, we can discover what we may only unconsciously hold dear.

Another premise is that we are never angry about the thing we think we’re angry about. In other words, anger rears its head when we sense an attack on what we deeply value, what is critically important to our sense of self.

The problem is that other people are often completely unaware of what is important to us and so there are multiple instances each day when they may inadvertently trigger this biological self-defense system. Most often we can brush off incidents quite easily by taking a breath and moving on, but sometimes that’s not easy to do.

At this point I want to stress that anger in and of itself is not a bad thing. Perhaps because the expression of anger in our society is so often associated with violence, there is little acknowledgement of anger’s value in helping us to understand why we do the things we do. As I tell my students, anger provides a direct pathway to our core beliefs, our deepest sense of self.

It’s also interesting to note the differences in the way children are taught about anger in various cultures and within social classes. From a modern western European cultural perspective, the expression of anger is certainly gendered: it’s okay for men to express violent anger but not okay for women to do the same.

I am curious about Indigenous perspectives on the experience and expression of anger and conflict. I would like to learn about how conflict was resolved before colonization and whether there are other examples of it being resolved through games like slahal.  With consensus being a common decision-making process amongst First Peoples before contact, there’s no doubt that we have much to learn from them about how to work through conflicts to arrive at a common understanding. 

When those three students processed their anger that day, we all learned a lot about each other. We learned what we each deeply valued and we realized that we all wanted the same thing: to have fairness and a sense of community in the classroom.

There is a lot of conflict in a world of systemic racism, gross inequality, and climate change impacts. If our children can learn how to work through anger to discover the values and aspirations they have in common with others with whom they are in conflict, the troubles ahead will be much easier for them to navigate.