tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/anti-racist-education-103332/articlesAnti-racist education – The Conversation2024-02-15T20:17:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2223182024-02-15T20:17:51Z2024-02-15T20:17:51ZTrauma-informed approaches to discipline matter for equitable and safe schooling<p>Schools across North America are increasingly implementing policies and practices to reduce suspensions and expulsions. </p>
<p>Yet the disproportionate application of school discipline for <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-adversity-impacts-the-disproportionate-suspensions-of-black-and-indigenous-students-177676">Black and Indigenous students</a> remains a significant concern. </p>
<p>Trauma and adversity <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.06.021">can have a significant and negative impact on student outcomes</a>. Due to systemic inequity, trauma and adversity also <a href="http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0749379715003190">disproportionately affects</a> Black and Indigenous students.</p>
<p>We wanted to understand what is already known about the contribution, role or prevalence of trauma and early childhood adversity for students who are disciplined at school. We found there is very little <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.06.021">research on the relationship between childhood adversities and school discipline</a>. </p>
<p>Without research on students’ experiences of adversity in school discipline, it is difficult for educators to recognize, understand and support students who are coping with adversity. Additional research — particularly from Canada — would provide schools with the knowledge necessary for evidence-based, trauma-informed and culturally attuned approaches to school discipline.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Students seen on a landing overlooking a foyer." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575100/original/file-20240212-28-tilkmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575100/original/file-20240212-28-tilkmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575100/original/file-20240212-28-tilkmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575100/original/file-20240212-28-tilkmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575100/original/file-20240212-28-tilkmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575100/original/file-20240212-28-tilkmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575100/original/file-20240212-28-tilkmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Educators need to understand how to support students coping with adversity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pexels/Norma Mortenson)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Lack of attention to adversity, trauma</h2>
<p>Trauma is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X231226396">negative impact that can happen when exposed to adversity, while adversity is a potentially traumatizing event or the absence of healthy stimulus</a>. While trauma and adversity are related, adversity does not always lead to trauma. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8">Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been associated</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104641">with negative health outcomes, even early death</a>. There have been calls to expand our understanding of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26296440">adversity</a> to include <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/trm0000425">school and community violence, racism and poverty</a>, noting the disproportionate impact of these. </p>
<p>Our research suggests that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231203674">disproportionate exposure to adversity may contribute to students experiencing school discipline</a>. However, how exactly this happens is not clear. </p>
<h2>Disproportion in school discipline</h2>
<p>Research shows that school discipline is disproportionately applied to students <a href="https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-Education-April-2017.pdf">who are Black, Indigenous</a>, <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/0/docs/Caring%20and%20Safe%20Schools%20Report%202017-18%2C%20TDSB%2C%20Final_April%202019.pdf">male</a>, have <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/page/school-suspensions-and-expulsions#section-10">identified special education needs</a> or live <a href="https://www.tcpress.com/closing-the-school-discipline-gap-9780807756133">in lower-resourced areas</a>. These students are more likely to be suspended, suspended for longer or expelled.</p>
<p>Considerable research about the <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-exclusionary-school-discipline.pdf">disproportionate use of discipline</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/black-girls-are-4-19-times-more-likely-to-get-suspended-than-white-girls-and-hiring-more-teachers-of-color-is-only-part-of-the-solution-188139">affecting Black</a> communities exists from the United States, with less attention to Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>There is very little Canadian research in this area, and yet existing research suggests the rate of disproportion to be on par with the U.S. </p>
<p>The 2017 report <em>Towards Race Equity In Education: The Schooling of Black Students in the Greater Toronto Area</em> documented <a href="https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-Education-April-2017.pdf">discipline disparities affecting Black and Indigenous youth</a>. Researchers in other regions have documented <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-contributes-to-poor-attendance-of-indigenous-students-in-alberta-schools-new-study-141922">how racism against Indigenous</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-a-fairer-education-system-get-the-police-out-of-schools-141552">and Black students</a> affects students’ school engagement or attendance. </p>
<h2>Discipline affects opportunities</h2>
<p>This disproportion is <a href="https://doi.org/10.17105/spr-14-0008.1">one of the factors contributing to a</a> <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-49290-001">documented gap in educational achievement</a> and an over-representation of Black and Indigenous people within the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2018.04.002">criminal justice system</a>. </p>
<p>Time away <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED515443">from school</a> through out-of-school discipline is a barrier to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spv026">academic success</a>. This <a href="https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/19/09/school-discipline-linked-later-consequences">affects opportunities</a> for post-secondary education and ultimately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027184">who has access to power, money and resources</a>. Therefore, there are grave implications of disproportionate discipline.</p>
<h2>Research on adversity or trauma and discipline</h2>
<p>In our article “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231203674">Exposure to Adversity and Trauma Among Students Who Experience School Discipline: A Scoping Review</a>” we detail how we searched for and analyzed articles about school discipline and trauma or adversity. We found only 49 peer-reviewed articles that met our inclusion criteria. </p>
<p>Of these 49 articles, 14 detailed original research on the relationship between adversity and school discipline. This research showed experiences of adversity or trauma play a significant and potentially contributing role in school discipline, including suspension and expulsion. </p>
<p>However, 14 studies is insufficient. It is even more concerning <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231203674">that there was only one article from Canada and few others from outside of the U.S.</a></p>
<h2>Canadian research matters</h2>
<p>Context matters when studying school discipline. In Ontario, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-agrees-to-end-zero-tolerance-school-policy-1.671464">Zero-Tolerance legislation was</a> removed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904812453994">in 2008</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/s06028">This followed the province’s 2006 legislation that students remain in school to age 18</a>. Related policies include “restorative practices” (emphasizing accountability for actions <a href="https://www.future-ed.org/restorative-practices-for-school-discipline-explained/">in a context of sustaining and repairing interpersonal and community relationships</a>) and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623730.2015.1088681">school-based mental health</a>.</p>
<p>In Ontario, <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/page/school-suspensions-and-expulsions">the rate of suspension decreased</a> from <a href="https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/suspension-rates-by-school-board">4.32 per cent of students in 2007/08 to 2.23 per cent in 2022. Expulsion decreased from 0.05 per cent, to 0.01 per cent</a>. The five-year graduation rate increased from 68 per cent to <a href="https://www.app.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/bpr/allBoards.asp?chosenIndicator=11">89.1 per cent in 2022</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An adult seen behind children at computers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575409/original/file-20240213-22-j7ta76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575409/original/file-20240213-22-j7ta76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575409/original/file-20240213-22-j7ta76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575409/original/file-20240213-22-j7ta76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575409/original/file-20240213-22-j7ta76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575409/original/file-20240213-22-j7ta76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575409/original/file-20240213-22-j7ta76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sustaining interpersonal and community relationships matters for students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Safe and Caring Schools’</h2>
<p>In contrast, the suspension rate in the U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.54300/235.277">was five per cent in 2017-18</a>. Zero-Tolerance policies are still active across many U.S. school districts. </p>
<p>Ontario students on long-term suspension or expulsion are now offered <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-021-09481-3">programs run through “Safe and Caring Schools” in every school board</a>. </p>
<p>While not explicitly trauma-informed, these programs provide significant support, including dedicated child and youth workers and social workers and a high staff-to-student ratio. These supports enable <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X231226396">connection with students and a different approach with students who appear to be coping with trauma</a>. </p>
<h2>Expulsions still disproportionate</h2>
<p>Yet the 2017 report, <em>Towards Race Equity In Education</em>, found Black students were <a href="https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-Education-April-2017.pdf">expelled at four times their representation and Indigenous students at over three times</a>. </p>
<p>To understand this disproportion and to develop effective policy and practice it is critical for educators in Canada to have more contextual knowledge. </p>
<p>People respond to situations <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/constructing-grounded-theory/book235960">based on how they understand them</a>. Educators who have not <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605211056724">experienced or been educated about adversity may not account for or recognize students who are coping with adversity</a>. </p>
<p>When discipline is <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/soc9010003">the response to trauma, it is likely to increase a student’s stress and anxiety and alienate them from necessary resources</a>.</p>
<p>This is particularly concerning in a social context of historical and ongoing systemic racism negatively impacting Black and Indigenous students <a href="https://theconversation.com/egerton-ryerson-racist-philosophy-of-residential-schools-also-shaped-public-education-143039">that was maintained through both anti-Black public schooling models and residential schools</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A student seen on a swing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575099/original/file-20240212-18-l41gm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575099/original/file-20240212-18-l41gm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575099/original/file-20240212-18-l41gm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575099/original/file-20240212-18-l41gm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575099/original/file-20240212-18-l41gm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575099/original/file-20240212-18-l41gm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575099/original/file-20240212-18-l41gm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When discipline responds to trauma, it is likely to alienate students from necessary resources.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Acknowledging adversity</h2>
<p>Expanded adversities were less often included in papers that detailed <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543231203674">original research and only seven papers overall included indicators of racism, discrimination and structural inequity</a>. </p>
<p>This is noteworthy given research identifying the disproportionate application of school discipline <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12384;%20https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124516644053">among non-white students, and the school-to-prison pipeline</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ontario-can-close-students-access-and-opportunity-gaps-with-community-led-projects-184301">Ontario can close students’ access and opportunity gaps with community-led projects</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>When researchers don’t identify expanded forms of adversity <a href="https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789463005852/BP000004.xml">like racism and poverty</a>, they are less likely to be recognized.</p>
<p>It is important that researchers <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-change-one-thing-in-education-community-school-partnerships-would-be-top-priority-188189">collaborating with educators and communities</a> generate Canadian-based knowledge to guide policy and practice.</p>
<p>We hope to foster acknowledgement of hidden and unaddressed trauma among students being disproportionally disciplined. We hope this can lead to a greater understanding of student lives — and evidence-based, trauma-informed and culturally attuned discipline.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Additional research and attention is needed — particularly in Canada — to provide schools with evidence-based, trauma-informed and culturally attuned approaches to school discipline.Jane E. Sanders, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, King's University College, Western UniversityAndrea Joseph-McCatty, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of TennesseeMichael Massey, Assistant Professor, National Catholic School of Social Service, Catholic University of AmericaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222532024-02-08T22:34:47Z2024-02-08T22:34:47ZRethinking masculinity: Teaching men how to love and be loved<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573917/original/file-20240206-16-s8urnh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1212%2C664%2C4275%2C2550&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to speak more about how to become the kind of man who can openly show love for others while accepting love from those who care. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How will young men learn to love when many messages seem to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-scolding-men-for-being-toxic-113520">either focused on what is wrong with them</a> — or how they can dominate? </p>
<p>Many masculinity critics speak of the dangers of traditional gender ideologies, rape culture or toxic ways of being male.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some men, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/social-media-misogyny-the-new-way-andrew-tate-brought-us-the-same-old-hate-191928">Andrew Tate, promote visions of masculinity based on misogyny and male domination</a>, while others, like Jordan Peterson, reinforce <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115920">traditional gender ideologies</a> as a misguided way of responding to men’s search for meaning and belonging.</p>
<p>My scholarship examines masculinity and critical race theory <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/797617">in both early modern drama</a> and contemporary Canadian literature, with a focus on Black <a href="https://doi.org/10.14288/cl.v0i239.191511">and Indigenous literature</a>. </p>
<p>I am a mixed-race (Black, Métis, and Scottish) cisgender scholar who teaches in Treaty One Territory, in the heart of the Métis homeland, on the University of Manitoba campus. I live in a world that shows more than enough hatred to Black and Indigenous men. I want to focus more on how Black and Indigenous men can love and be loved. </p>
<h2>Patriarchy, ‘interlocking’ oppressions</h2>
<p>Many of the ways of being male that are under scrutiny or that some men are trying to reclaim are connected to patriarchy. </p>
<p>The late Black feminist philosopher bell hooks defines patriarchy as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…"<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Will-to-Change/bell-hooks/9780743456081">a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating</a>, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence"</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hand is seen drawing on a black board next to symbols of the male and female genders." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=563%2C496%2C4514%2C2858&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573840/original/file-20240206-16-odyr5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of the ways of being male that are under scrutiny are connected to patriarchy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As hooks and other Black feminists have also noted, patriarchy, racism, sexism and homophobia can be interlocking systems of domination. For these reasons, my work on masculinity also comes out of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-curb-anti-black-racism-in-canadian-schools-150489">anti-racist teaching practice</a>. </p>
<p>My teaching builds on a long tradition within Black and Indigenous feminist traditions that understand Black and Indigenous men as people who experience racism and domination in the world, and who have to learn how to love their families, partners and children without recreating cultures of domination and control within communal settings. </p>
<h2>Lesser-discussed forms of masculinity</h2>
<p>As Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice notes in <a href="https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/W/Why-Indigenous-Literatures-Matter"><em>Why Indigenous Literatures Matters</em></a>, the stories settlers tell about Indigenous communities often amplify toxic stories of lack and deficit. Too often, such stories presume the perverse success of colonialism. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-stories-about-alternate-worlds-can-help-us-imagine-a-better-future-dont-call-me-resilient-ep-7-transcript-167520">How stories about alternate worlds can help us imagine a better future: Don’t Call Me Resilient EP 7 transcript</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The collection <a href="https://uofmpress.ca/books/indigenous-men-and-masculinities"><em>Indigenous Men and Masculinities</em></a>, edited by scholars Robert Alexander Innes, a member of the Cowessess First Nation, and Kim Anderson (Cree/Métis), considers what we know or could learn about masculinities in less-patriarchal societies.</p>
<p><a href="https://uofrpress.ca/Books/C/Carrying-the-Burden-of-Peace"><em>Carrying the Burden of Peace: Reimagining Indigenous Masculinities Through Story</em></a> by white settler scholar Sam McKegney explores “Indigenous literary art for understandings of masculinity that exceed the impoverished inheritance of colonialism.”</p>
<p>Likewise, Black feminist scholars like hooks have encouraged men to be better and suggested a central task of <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/feminism-is-for-everybody-bell-hooks/">feminist criticism ought to be articulating less dominating ways for men to preform their masculinity</a>. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Audre-Lorde">poet and author</a> <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198292/sister-outsider-by-audre-lorde/">Audre Lorde’s essay “Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response</a>” she reflects on mothering her son, noting: “Our sons must become men — such men as whom we hope our daughters, born and unborn, will be pleased to live among.” As a mother, Lorde says, “this task begins with teaching [her] son that [she does] not exist to do his feeling for him.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Brown hands holding a heart." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573954/original/file-20240207-26-r8t2em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What could we learn about masculinities in less-patriarchal societies?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Contempt and politics</h2>
<p>While I take the point of writers like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/books/pauline-harmange-i-hate-men.html">Pauline Harmange</a> or <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250193421/howtodatemenwhenyouhatemen">Blythe Roberson</a>
that misandry (contempt or dislike) can be politically useful, I fear the language <a href="https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780008457600/i-hate-men">of “hating men”</a> is unproductive — even when meant <a href="https://www.papermag.com/blythe-roberson#rebelltitem4">humourously</a> — and can turn men away from the very feminist work that aims to help them become better lovers, fathers, friends and brothers. </p>
<p>Stories we tell about Black and Indigenous men can create fear of them, and this can serve as a justification for racism. Racism, as political geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore notes, can be defined as “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242012/golden-gulag">the state-sanctioned or extra-legal production and exploitation of group differentiated vulnerability to premature death</a>.” </p>
<p>Stories representing Black men as inherently violent and prone to antisocial behaviour are part of a long racist tradition which <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyds-legacy-derek-chauvin-guilty-verdicts-could-spell-the-end-of-police-immunity-158194">places the lives of Black men at risk</a>. </p>
<h2>Love and tender feelings</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="The word 'Brother' in large white font on a book cover." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573921/original/file-20240206-24-jusf5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Brother’ by David Chariandy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(McLelland & Stewart)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Love can be a tool of anti-racist and decolonial education, but only if we encourage men (and women and non-binary people) to take the risk of expressing tender feelings for others. </p>
<p>I teach David Chariandy’s novel <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/26281/brother-by-david-chariandy/9780771023330"><em>Brother</em></a> and Cherie Dimaline’s <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/744474/the-marrow-thieves-by-cherie-dimaline/">The Marrow Thieves</a></em>. These writers depict men who are processing complex and inter-generational traumas. In these books, the characters Michael and French are imperfect men who struggle to show tender emotions. Their struggle, however, is the point. </p>
<p>Through trying to process their feelings within found families, these men are healing themselves. They are becoming emotionally available members of their communities who do not need to dominate others to prove they are real men. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A face seen with a white streak of paint and long black hair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574103/original/file-20240207-26-ssxbld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Marrow Thieves’ by Cherie Dimaline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Cormorant Books/HarperCollins)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Speaking of these men in terms of the struggle to love is, in itself, an anti-racist practice. Almost all of the young men I work with struggle to express tender emotions, and seeing these characters struggle helps them see Black and Indigenous men as emotional role models. </p>
<h2>Encouraging flourishing</h2>
<p>Through teaching such stories, my students and I discuss how learning to love is a way of learning how to be fully human. Love cannot come from places of domination or abuse, nor can it be maintained through cultures of power and control. </p>
<p>As analytic philosopher Harry Frankfurt argues in <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9781400826063/the-reasons-of-love"><em>The Reasons of Love</em></a>, love is an orientation to the beloved, whereby I care about doing thinks that encourage their flourishing as human beings. </p>
<p>Literature is a wonderful tool for opening these healing conversations about love and being loved. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-humanities-should-teach-about-how-to-make-a-better-world-not-just-criticize-the-existing-one-190634">The humanities should teach about how to make a better world, not just criticize the existing one</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Taking responsibility for thinking, loving</h2>
<p>In poet <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/On-Lies-Secrets-and-Silence/">Adrienne Rich’s essay “Claiming an Education</a>,” she distinguishes between the passive act of receiving an education and the active act of thinking of education as a responsibility to oneself.</p>
<p>Discussing love in curricula has the potential to be lifesaving, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-students-are-developing-solutions-to-the-problem-of-campus-sexual-and-gender-based-violence-210445">to help reduce instances of</a> physical, sexual or emotional abuse and to contribute to creating cultures of consent. This works best, I have found, when it comes from a loving disposition. </p>
<p>Teaching students with care while showing emotional attachments to works of literature allows me to reinforce, as a man, that it is OK to be a man and to express love and admiration in public. </p>
<p>If love is something we do, and not just something we feel, then it is something men can learn to do better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222253/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Paris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Encouraging men to take the risk of expressing tender feelings for others is part of relying on love as a tool of anti-racist and decolonial education.Jamie Paris, Instructor, Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180172024-01-21T12:59:10Z2024-01-21T12:59:10ZAnti-racist, culturally responsive French immersion: Listening to racialized students is an important step towards equitable education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562480/original/file-20231129-19-xh48rb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C12%2C4256%2C2765&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A study saw racialized students in Ontario French immersion programs write monologues and stories about their experiences, and also invited immersion stakeholders like teachers and parents to give feedback on
race and racism in Ontario immersion programs. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(CDC)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/anti-racist-culturally-responsive-french-immersion-listening-to-racialized-students-is-an-important-step-towards-equitable-education" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://education.macleans.ca/feature/just-say-non-the-problem-with-french-immersion/">Debates among researchers, educators and parents</a> continue about the successes and challenges with French immersion programs across English-speaking parts of Canada.</p>
<p>Programs are criticized for being elitist by some and praised for being exceptional by others. </p>
<p>My master’s research <a href="https://doi.org/10.37213/cjal.2023.32817">showed how Ontario and Toronto French immersion policies exacerbate inequities</a>, finding that program locations favoured middle-class students, curricula demonstrated a Eurocentric focus and colonial lens and program entry-points favoured established residents over newcomers.</p>
<p>My PhD work research has relied upon a collective creation research method known <a href="https://learninglandscapes.ca/index.php/learnland/article/view/1024/1040">as “playbuilding”</a> to propose ways French immersion programs can be more culturally responsive and anti-racist.</p>
<h2>Issues in French immersion</h2>
<p><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793612731/French-Immersion-Ideologies-in-Canada">Research about students in Alberta has shown</a> that language levels of French immersion graduates are low and many lack confidence in their French skills.</p>
<p>French immersion programs have been known to exclude many students, particularly those with <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/0/docs/TDSB%20French%20Programs%20Review%20Mar082019.pdf">special education needs, multilingual learners, immigrants and lower-income students</a>. In the past, some immersion programs even <a href="https://www.peelschools.org/documents/Elementary-FI-Program-Review.pdf/Elementary-FI-Program-Review.pdf">required IQ testing for admission</a>. </p>
<p>With <a href="https://doi.org/10.37213/cjal.2023.32817">immersion programs in Toronto mainly found in white, middle-class areas</a>, it is unsurprising that white, middle-class students are the most present in Toronto programs.</p>
<p>In the Toronto District School Board, research about French immersion enrolment shows inequitable demographics have been <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/0/docs/TDSB%20French%20Programs%20Review%20Mar082019.pdf">improving in terms of racial and multilingual representation of enrolled students</a>. However, it also shows programs remain dominated by white, middle-class, anglophone students with few learning exceptionalities. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Black student seen sitting and reading between two white students." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566494/original/file-20231219-29-8mt8ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566494/original/file-20231219-29-8mt8ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566494/original/file-20231219-29-8mt8ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566494/original/file-20231219-29-8mt8ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566494/original/file-20231219-29-8mt8ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566494/original/file-20231219-29-8mt8ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566494/original/file-20231219-29-8mt8ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">French immersion programs in the Toronto District School Board are still dominated by white students with few learning exceptionalities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Allison Shelley for EDUimages)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Documenting student experiences</h2>
<p>French immersion is a heavily researched program; however, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/glottopol.4039">research has largely ignored racial identity and racism</a>. </p>
<p>I invited French immersion stakeholders (like teachers, parents, staff and professors in teacher education programs) to engage with stories of racial minority students in Ontario French immersion programs, and my own experiences as a racialized French immersion teacher.</p>
<p>Firstly, my online study recruited two Black and one South Asian French immersion students from Ontario, aged 16–20. Over the course of two weeks, participants created monologues and wrote stories about their experiences as racial minority students in French immersion programs. Stories and monologues are <a href="https://mkunnas.wixsite.com/race-in-fi">available on our website</a>.</p>
<p>In the second stage of research, 39 French immersion stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, staff and professors in teacher education programs) viewed our website and responded to an online survey reacting to stories and suggestions for improving immersion. The findings from stage two support the findings from stage one.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A brown girl teen seen in discussion." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566682/original/file-20231219-29-bpakcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566682/original/file-20231219-29-bpakcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566682/original/file-20231219-29-bpakcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566682/original/file-20231219-29-bpakcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566682/original/file-20231219-29-bpakcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566682/original/file-20231219-29-bpakcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566682/original/file-20231219-29-bpakcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students wrote stories about their experiences as racial minority students in French immersion programs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Allison Shelley for EDU images)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cultural learning and representation</h2>
<p>Cultural learning is required by the <a href="https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/fsl18-2013curr.pdf">French as a second language (including French immersion) curriculum</a>. Each grade focuses on different local or global cultures to help develop students’ intercultural competence. </p>
<p>For example, Grade 1 French immersion focuses on local francophone communities, Grade 8 focuses on France and Grade 10 focuses on French-speaking Africa and Asia. No matter the cultural focus, the curriculum calls for the inclusion of “diverse French speaking communities” in every grade.</p>
<p>Students in my study recounted that they did not learn about diverse French cultures. In some cases, they were not discussing culture at all. Students’ own cultures and races were also absent from their learning. </p>
<p>The representation in students’ learning was overwhelmingly white and European or Québécois. The lack of diversity is not representative of the curriculum or the reality of the French speaking world, which is <a href="http://observatoire.francophonie.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/LFDM-Synthese-Anglais.pdf">over 50 per cent people of colour</a>. </p>
<h2>Unchecked racism</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-critical-race-theory-make-people-so-uncomfortable-176125">In a racially structured and racist society</a>, the presence of racism in immersion programs is hardly shocking. However, the participants revealed many instances where racism could have been interrupted and was not.</p>
<p>In general, participants’ schools had a culture of racism where racist acts and speech (committed by students, teachers and administrators) were allowed to continue unchecked. </p>
<p>In many cases, teachers were not willing to intervene when racist incidents occurred in their French classes. In one case, a teacher even let a student use a racist French term repeatedly. </p>
<p>A few participants expressed that some teachers and administrators interrupt racism. However, even these teachers were not integrating anti-racist teaching (that is, integrating diverse racial representations and empowering students to combat racism and oppression).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-youth-yearn-for-black-teachers-to-disrupt-the-daily-silencing-of-their-experiences-177279">Black youth yearn for Black teachers to disrupt the daily silencing of their experiences</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566505/original/file-20231219-27-w516e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566505/original/file-20231219-27-w516e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566505/original/file-20231219-27-w516e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566505/original/file-20231219-27-w516e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566505/original/file-20231219-27-w516e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566505/original/file-20231219-27-w516e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566505/original/file-20231219-27-w516e5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Educators have important roles in integrating diverse racial representations and empowering students to combat racism and oppression.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Allison Shelley for EDU Images)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Call for change</h2>
<p>Students should not be subjected to racism and should be learning about the diverse realities of the French-speaking world so they can see themselves as legitimate French speakers. </p>
<p>Listening to the voices of racial minority students in French immersion programs in dialogue with research documenting program inequities is an important step towards creating more inclusive French immersion programs and schools. </p>
<p>The preliminary findings of my study, in conjunction with earlier research documenting a Eurocentric focus and colonial lens in Ontario and Toronto immersion programs, point to the need for <a href="https://omlta.org/how-to-be-an-anti-racist-educator-series">supporting anti-racist</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FikFP9lnIcQ">culturally responsive teaching and intercultural awareness</a> to make programs more welcoming to all students.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218017/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marika Kunnas receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Listening to voices of racialized students in French immersion matters for creating more inclusive schooling.Marika Kunnas, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2132962023-09-28T21:20:31Z2023-09-28T21:20:31ZIndigenous-authored novels: 5 great contemporary reads for young adults<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/indigenous-authored-novels-5-great-contemporary-reads-for-young-adults" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://educationactiontoronto.com/articles/behind-first-voices-tdsbs-mandatory-course-on-indigenous-studies-an-interview-with-student-trustee-isaiah-shafqat/#">The Toronto District School Board</a> recently pledged to replace <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Home/ctl/Details/mid/42863/itemId/66">Grade 11 English courses</a> in all <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tdsb-indigenous-course-credit-1.6734437">110 of its secondary schools with the now-mandatory First Voices course</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/grade-11-english-course-with-focus-on-indigenous-voices-to-become-mandatory-in-london-region-1.6854926">First Voices</a> is a Grade 11 English course that replaces works by authors like Shakespeare <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-goodbye-great-gatsby-hello-rita-joe-thunder-bays-schools-bring/">and Fitzgerald</a> with texts authored by Indigenous writers like Cherie Dimaline and Richard Wagamese. </p>
<p>Since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report in 2015, schools across the country have been advancing curricula <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginal-peoples-documents/calls_to_action_english2.pdf">to align with calls for reconciliation education</a>. </p>
<p>Over the summer, our Indigenous literatures lab, led by Haudenosaunee scholar Jennifer Brant at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, examined contemporary Indigenous-authored young adult texts that are well-suited for the First Voices course. </p>
<h2>Importance of Indigenous perspectives</h2>
<p>With the replacement of long-read literature comes the task of selecting texts that centre Indigenous resurgence and what Indigenous <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210837/">literary scholar Gerald Vizenor refers to as survivance</a>. Survivance encompasses an active sense of presence, merging both survival and resistance.</p>
<p>We hope to see the stories in classrooms across the country that centre Indigenous community narratives from the voices of Indigenous Peoples. </p>
<p>Such stories may not always be happy or gentle, but they tell truths of Indigenous presence and visions for empowered futures. </p>
<h2>Upholding responsibilities</h2>
<p>As Cherokee author and scholar Daniel Heath Justice writes, good stories are needed that give “<a href="https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/W/Why-Indigenous-Literatures-Matter">shape, substance and purpose” to Indigenous Peoples’ existences</a> and shed light on how to uphold responsibilities to one another and to creation. </p>
<p>These stand in contrast to stories Justice discusses as “bad medicine,” stories often imposed from the outside, from the perspective of the colonizer. These stories are noxious and can poison both the speaker and the listener as they often perpetuate deficiency narratives about Indigenous Peoples.</p>
<p>This analysis speaks to the definitive need for Indigenous-authored texts in the First Voices course, and also for educators to pay attention to how these books are taught.</p>
<p>As interdisciplinary researcher Jennifer Hardwick suggests, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/topia.33.99">decolonizing narratives can be misread as colonial if readers do not have the knowledge-base to engage with them</a> … It is not enough to introduce Canadians to decolonizing narratives; decolonization needs to begin with a process of unlearning and re-learning.” </p>
<h2>Engaging with books</h2>
<p>Métis professor Aubrey Jean Hanson proposes a framework of resurgence and explains that this process <a href="https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/L/Literatures-Communities-and-Learning3">relies on the willingness of non-Indigenous students and staff to engage substantially with Indigenous literary texts</a>.</p>
<p>We encourage educators to take a strength-based perspective when discussing Indigenous literature, and also to take an anti-racist approach. Anti-racist approaches acknowledge varied experiences of racism, and would help <a href="https://theconversation.com/acting-out-theatre-class-where-students-rehearse-for-change-108396">students think critically about their own lives</a> in relationship to these books.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-critical-race-theory-podcast-183973">Why you shouldn't be afraid of critical race theory — Podcast</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Books featured here are highly acclaimed, and show narratives of Indigenous resurgence. All except one are recently published.</p>
<p>The Indigenous literatures lab will continue to review new literary material to support educators as they learn to engage with Indigenous-authored texts in ethical and relational ways. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A woman in a black dress with foliage patterning against a blue background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550752/original/file-20230927-25-2hsi10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550752/original/file-20230927-25-2hsi10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550752/original/file-20230927-25-2hsi10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550752/original/file-20230927-25-2hsi10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550752/original/file-20230927-25-2hsi10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550752/original/file-20230927-25-2hsi10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550752/original/file-20230927-25-2hsi10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Break’ by Katherena Vermette.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(House of Anansi)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://houseofanansi.com/products/the-break"><strong><em>The Break</em></strong> (2016), Katherena Vermette’s debut novel</a>, is the winner of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/katherena-vermette-wins-40k-amazon-ca-first-novel-award-for-the-break-1.4139287#">the Amazon.ca First Novel Award</a>, the <a href="https://www.writerstrust.com/authors/katherena-vermette/">Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award</a>, and was a finalist for other <a href="https://ggbooks.ca/past-winners-and-finalists">prestigious awards</a>.</p>
<p>It is a story about a Métis-Anishinaabe teen and her family who are drastically impacted by a violent crime in Winnipeg. As investigations uncover many unknowns, readers get meaningful insights into the realities of various characters whose lives are intricately woven together. </p>
<p>The book delves into themes of family, strength, womanhood, love and the power of generational resiliency. This novel provides a snapshot of the experiences faced regularly by Indigenous women and girls in Canada — and how systems (like policing and justice systems) often fail to protect them. Vermette’s rich and complex storytelling enthralls the reader, making this book a must-read.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A floral beading pattern seen against birchbark." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550753/original/file-20230927-25-oq4inq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1162&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Strangers’ by Katherena Vermette.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Random House Canada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/624145/the-strangers-by-katherena-vermette/9780735239630#"><strong><em>The Strangers</em></strong> (2021), by Katherena Vermette</a> is a <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Strangers-Katherena-Vermette/dp/0735239630#">No. 1 National Bestseller</a>, and winner of numerous awards, including the <a href="https://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/blogs/strangers-wins-atwood-gibson-wt-fiction-prize-and-other-winners">Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Prize for Fiction</a>. </p>
<p>Vermette is a Red River Métis (Michif) author from Treaty 1 territory. <em>The Strangers</em> is a sequel to <em>The Break</em>, but can also be read as a stand-alone novel. It explores the ways government systems (child welfare, health care, education and social services) are failing Indigenous Peoples, while at the same time expecting Indigenous Peoples to fail. </p>
<p>Vermette powerfully weaves the stories of four strong women to tell an inter-generational story about rage, trauma, memory, hope and the power of family as an anchor to home.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A woman in a yellow shirt with face turned up against a blue background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550754/original/file-20230927-27-3fon7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550754/original/file-20230927-27-3fon7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550754/original/file-20230927-27-3fon7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550754/original/file-20230927-27-3fon7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550754/original/file-20230927-27-3fon7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550754/original/file-20230927-27-3fon7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550754/original/file-20230927-27-3fon7q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Summer of Bitter and Sweet’ by Jen Ferguson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Heartdrum/HarperCollinsCanada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780063086166/the-summer-of-bitter-and-sweet/"><strong><em>The Summer of Bitter and Sweet</em></strong> (2022) by Jen Ferguson</a></p>
<p>Ferguson’s debut novel follows the narrative of a Métis girl, Lou, as she works at her family’s ice cream shop the summer before she starts university. Set in the Canadian Prairies, readers witness the complexities of growing up as a mixed-race teen in a part of the world where anti-Indigenous racism is prevalent. </p>
<p>Lou is forced to navigate this reality all while overcoming intergenerational trauma, mending broken relationships and discovering her own sexuality. Lou often relies on anger and secrets as a means of survival, but by exploring her identity, gaining a better understanding of her family’s strengths and their determination, she comes to understand what it means to be proud of who she is, where she comes from and the opportunities that await. </p>
<p>It is no surprise this book won the <a href="https://ggbooks.ca/#young-peoples-literature-text">2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature</a>!</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Two faces seen in profile with a butterfly motif." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550755/original/file-20230927-23-znesi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550755/original/file-20230927-23-znesi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550755/original/file-20230927-23-znesi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550755/original/file-20230927-23-znesi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550755/original/file-20230927-23-znesi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550755/original/file-20230927-23-znesi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550755/original/file-20230927-23-znesi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Firekeeper’s Daughter’ by Angeline Boulley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Henry Holt and Co./MacMillan)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250766571/firekeepersdaughter"><strong><em>Firekeeper’s Daughter</em></strong> (2021) by Angeline Boulley</a> is <a href="https://angelineboulley.com/">a <em>New York Times</em> bestseller</a>, winner of the <a href="https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2022/01/firekeeper-s-daughter-wins-2022-printz-award#">Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature</a> and <a href="https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2022/01/firekeeper-s-daughter-wins-2022-william-c-morris-award#">other significant</a> <a href="https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2022/01/aila-announces-2022-american-indian-youth-literature-awards">honours</a>.</p>
<p>This action-packed novel takes readers on a thrilling journey of an FBI investigation. The protagonist, Daunis, must use knowledge of her Ojibwe culture and identity to solve a mystery and murder in her town, while navigating high school, love and friendship, family and kinship, and hockey. </p>
<p><em>Firekeeper’s Daughter</em> is a great introduction to Indigenous ways of knowing, while addressing negative narratives that exist. This novel will keep readers on their toes.</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://canadianscholars.ca/book/ravensong-a-novel-03eb2330-04fc-4364-b05a-e2508aeb5660/"><strong><em>Ravensong</em></strong> (1993) by Sto:lo writer and award-winning author Lee Maracle</a> is set in a 1950s Pacific northwest coast community that borders a settler community referred to as white town. The protagonist, 17-year-old Stacey, walks into white town daily to attend high school as one of the only Indigenous students in a world defined by significantly different rules and roles than the ones she knows.</p>
<p>It is a coming-of-age story. The book calls upon readers to see the world through the eyes of Stacey, who witnesses the injustices faced by Indigenous communities — along with the dehumanization of women in white town whose world is governed by a patriarchal worldview. </p>
<p>This story reflects on racialized, sexualized, and gender-based violence and how the power and beauty of Indigenous matrilineal laws can provide contemporary solutions to the many ills we face. Maracle recalls matrilineal traditions as a path for imagining a future in which we all thrive. </p>
<p>Maracle followed <em>Ravensong</em> with <em>Celia’s Song</em>, a finalist in the 2020 <a href="https://www.cormorantbooks.com/celias-song">Neustadt International Prize for Literature</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Brant receives funding from SSHRC and the Spencer Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erenna Morrison, Gayatri Thakor, and Meagan Hamilton do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Researchers from an Indigenous literatures lab examine texts that are well-suited for a new Grade 11 course, First Voices.Jennifer Brant, Assistant Professor in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoErenna Morrison, PhD Candidate, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoGayatri Thakor, PhD Student, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoMeagan Hamilton, PhD Candidate, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2108492023-09-05T16:30:54Z2023-09-05T16:30:54ZVoices of Black youth remind adults in schools to listen — and act to empower them<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/voices-of-black-youth-remind-adults-in-schools-to-listen-and-act-to-empower-them" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The idea of inviting students into classroom conversations that teach them to define and express their concerns, ideas and opinions takes inspiration from the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child">United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)</a>. </p>
<p>The right to be heard is the general principle, and Article 12 of the UNCRC provides for children’s involvement in decision-making that affects their lives. It includes the right for children to express their views. </p>
<p>Many educators are increasingly concerned with the representation of <a href="https://www.edcan.ca/articles/why-student-voice-matters/">student voices</a> in kindergarten to Grade 12 classrooms. <a href="https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/cultivating-a-pedagogy-of-student-voice">In the words of educator Shane Safir:</a> “Educators should view students not as empty vessels for the transfer of information but as knowledge builders in their own right. We need to share influence in the classroom rather than hoard it.”</p>
<p>But this concern is not necessarily adopted by all teachers. Creating dialogue among educators and students, especially Black Canadian youth, regularly proves problematic <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/canadian-education-is-steeped-in-anti-black-racism/">because of the history of their negative schooling experiences</a>.</p>
<p>As an education researcher who examines schooling experiences of Black Canadian youth and their families, I have worked alongside Black high school students in grades 10-12 to engage youth voices at the <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/CEBSA/Black-Student-Summer-Leadership-Program">Black Student Summer Leadership Program</a>. This is offered through the <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/CEBSA">Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement</a> at the Toronto District School Board.</p>
<p><a href="https://yparhub.berkeley.edu/why-ypar">Youth Participatory Action Research</a> involves youth participating in their communities and in their own education to research issues that affect their lives. It also necessarily implies action on the part of receptive and understanding adults, willing and poised to help bring about changes youth need to see.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1692188559703265522"}"></div></p>
<h2>Struggles in and for ‘voice’</h2>
<p>One of the greatest struggles to allow for “voice” is the role of adults in these interactions and the hierarchical nature of schools. Paying attention to student voice involves changing fundamental values, norms and institutional practices, which means teachers need to be open to this shift.</p>
<p>The term youth voice has gained credibility since the early 1990s. Scholars and education researchers challenged school staff to stop seeing <a href="https://jyd.pitt.edu/ojs/jyd/article/view/244/230">youth as passive recipients of an education</a>. “Youth voice” describes the many ways youth might have opportunities to have a voice and active participation in decisions shaping their lives. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-change-one-thing-in-education-community-school-partnerships-would-be-top-priority-188189">If I could change one thing in education: Community-school partnerships would be top priority</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Positioning Black students as learners and collaborators will require a shift in educators’ attitude towards them. That is, changing perceptions that see them as a threat. </p>
<p>Educators need to acknowledge <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-curb-anti-black-racism-in-canadian-schools-150489">stereotypical perceptions of Black people and communities that often inform how schools and teachers interpret Black students’ behaviours</a>, and get to know Black students <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-top-scholar-students-really-so-remarkable-or-are-teachers-inflating-their-grades-191035">beyond their academic</a> or <a href="https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&context=cie-eci">extra-curricular achievements</a>.</p>
<h2>Black youth’s whole selves</h2>
<p>If schools desire genuine opportunities for students to be heard, educators must see Black youth as their whole selves. Teachers who view the validity in sharing power in classrooms will actively seek Black students’ input. This must be done outside of the formalized structure of student councils or associations where students are elected to represent student communities. </p>
<p>Change is needed in the way Black students’ voices are positioned in education, bearing in mind:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Black youth are not voiceless. They should be able to inform decisions. To include students’ input in the decision-making process fosters their growth and development. </p></li>
<li><p>There are many ways youth exercise their voices among their peers. For Black youth to negotiate education spaces safely, they often choose how to amplify their voices, including what to say, when to speak up and who to address.</p></li>
<li><p>Educators must remember they (we) are not granting Black students the ability to speak. Rather, we must strive to create classroom and school environments where Black students’ voices and ideas are welcomed and respected.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A youth in front of a bookshelf wearing overalls" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545408/original/file-20230829-15-2x840h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545408/original/file-20230829-15-2x840h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545408/original/file-20230829-15-2x840h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545408/original/file-20230829-15-2x840h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545408/original/file-20230829-15-2x840h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545408/original/file-20230829-15-2x840h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/545408/original/file-20230829-15-2x840h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Educators must see Black youth as their whole selves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/fQBVH6DBtD8">(Mike Von)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Youth Participatory Action Research</h2>
<p>When Black students work in an environment where they feel safe to express their concerns, this creates avenues for them to build transferable skills (like writing, community activism, research, public speaking and so on).</p>
<p>The TDSB’s Black Student Summer Leadership Program was originally created in 2019 through a partnership with the Jean Augustine Chair at York University, with graduation coaches for Black students at the helm. Since then it has evolved with the support of other departments at the board. Black students involved in this program <a href="https://tvo.me/tvo-media-education-group-welcomes-15-toronto-students-in-this-years-black-student-summer-leadership-program/">gain leadership opportunities</a> and positive relationships with adults and their peers while participating in research.</p>
<p>Participatory action research has been associated with revolutionary educational projects. It’s inspired by the work of education scholar Paulo Freire who wrote about <a href="https://freechild.org/2018/06/21/youth-and-popular-education/">popular education as a way of raising people’s consciousness and empowerment</a>. </p>
<h2>Youth as co-researchers</h2>
<p>The principle of Youth Participatory Action Research includes adults sharing the space with youth as co-researchers, sharing ownership in decision-making and supporting and empowering youth as agents of change. It is inquiry based. Topics chosen by students are grounded in their lived experiences either in school and community. </p>
<p>Together, or individually, Black students have learned how to engage in participatory action research using an <a href="https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864&context=tqr">Afrocentric research paradigm</a>. For research to be relevant to Black students in the summer program, they learn to use methods and choice of presentation tools that embodies their creativity, skills, lived experiences <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-intersectionality-all-of-who-i-am-105639">and intersecting identities</a>.</p>
<p>Black students learn how to become submerged in their own research, rather than experiencing themselves as the object of others’ research.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1692571900633817576"}"></div></p>
<h2>What shapes education</h2>
<p>Youth Participatory Action Research provides Black students with opportunities to discuss what shapes their education. In the summer program, Black students present research projects to education stakeholders. </p>
<p>Their findings include sharing practical solutions based on their experiences negotiating things such as: anti-Black racism, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/black-canadians-school-curriculum-1.5706510">lack of representation in curriculum</a>, <a href="https://www.edcan.ca/articles/colour-of-wellbeing/">mental health and well-being</a>, student-teacher interactions and relationships, <a href="https://cetl.udmercy.edu/preventing-linguistic-racism-and-discrimination/">linguistic</a> or <a href="https://mjlh.mcgill.ca/2022/09/08/afro-hair-and-the-law-the-state-of-american-and-canadian-law-on-race-based-hair-discrimination/">hair discrimination</a> and newcomer experiences. </p>
<p>Among their recommendations are carefully outlined considerations for school improvement efforts. For example, students have called for providing ongoing professional development training for teachers and school staff that is culturally relevant and responsive to Black students’ well-being and needs. Some research has highlighted the need for more accountability from staff, based on examining policies to protect their rights as students so they may be successful.</p>
<p>In order for change to be implemented, key decision makers need to be willing to engage youth and to act. Authentically empowering student voice requires that educators listen, validate youth knowledge and experience, and respond. </p>
<h2>A promising approach</h2>
<p>Youth Participatory Action Research is a promising approach for <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Equity-Anti-Racism-and-Anti-Oppression/Black-Student-Excellence/The-Impact-YPAR-Had-On-This-Westview-CI-Graduate">creating avenues to support Black students’ self-determination and agency</a>. </p>
<p>Amplifying youth voice in alignment with the mission and values of school communities is significant for an empowered path forward. Such a path does not see decisions being made for and about Black student lives as an afterthought. </p>
<p>Rather, as outlined in the UNCRC, commitments to participatory action research acknowledge Black youth as competent to act, experts in their own daily lived social realities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanitiã Munroe works for Toronto District School Board. </span></em></p>A leadership program for Black youth sees students participate in research related to their communities and education to propose solutions to issues that affect their lives.Tanitiã Munroe, PhD candidate (ABD) and researcher, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2023852023-03-23T20:37:35Z2023-03-23T20:37:35Z‘Salam, Ramadan Mubarak!’: 4 ways schools can bring Ramadan into the classroom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517251/original/file-20230323-1493-yxzkdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C98%2C5973%2C3691&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fostering Ramadan awareness is a stepping stone to nurturing deeper connections that matter for affirming Muslim student identities and stopping anti-Muslim sentiments.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/-salam--ramadan-mubarak----4-ways-schools-can-bring-ramadan-into-the-classroom" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>As Muslims begin observing Ramadan, it’s a good time to consider the importance of building a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.13141">strong sense of belonging</a> at school. Affirming the identities of Muslim students and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3264">all minoritized and racialized learners</a> is a way of creating a positive classroom culture.</p>
<p>Fostering opportunities to understand inequities, going beyond stories of racism and spotlighting greatness and achievement all matter.</p>
<p>Over the last 10 years, I have led workshops on Ramadan, Muslims and Islamophobia with district school boards, at universities and at community events. </p>
<h2>Need to educate against Islamophobia</h2>
<p>In the past two years, I have received a considerable number of requests for workshops and presentations. Unfortunately, I believe, it took the death
of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57390398">four members of a Muslim family in London, Ont., in a “premeditated” vehicle attack in June 2021</a>, for significant strides to be taken to educate Canadians about Islam and Muslims, and to substantiate that Islamophobia or anti-Muslim sentiments are real. </p>
<p>School boards have started to pay more attention to their Muslim students’ identities, and also to the existence of <a href="https://angusreid.org/islamophobia-canada-quebec/">strong explicit and implicit anti-Muslim biases</a> among students <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamophobia-in-schools-how-teachers-and-communities-can-recognize-and-challenge-its-harms-162992">and teachers</a>.</p>
<p>Muslim youth need spaces in their communities, including their schools, where they are free to be themselves and do not have to worry about facing prejudice. Youth need their schools to be safe havens to build their positive sense of self.</p>
<h2>Growing Muslim population</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="decorations seen in a classroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517242/original/file-20230323-1586-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517242/original/file-20230323-1586-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517242/original/file-20230323-1586-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517242/original/file-20230323-1586-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517242/original/file-20230323-1586-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517242/original/file-20230323-1586-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517242/original/file-20230323-1586-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ramadan classroom window decor from Tarbiyah Learning Academy, an Islamic school in Ottawa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Tarbiyah Academy)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though Muslims are the <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/survey-shows-muslim-population-is-fastest-growing-religion-in-canada">fastest-growing religious group</a> in Canada, a recent study from the Angus Reid Institute found “<a href="https://angusreid.org/islamophobia-canada-quebec/">unfavourable views of Islam prevalent</a> across the country.” Results were based on a February 2023 online survey among a representative randomized sample of 1,623 Canadian adults.</p>
<p>In 2021, Islam was reported as the second-largest religion in Canada. In the past 20 years, the Muslim population of Canada has more than doubled, <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221026b-eng.htm">from two per cent in 2001 to 4.9 per cent in 2021</a>, now totalling nearly 1.8 million Muslims. </p>
<h2>Identity-affirming activities</h2>
<p>In Ontario, Muslim students account for over 20 per cent of the student body in some school boards. The <a href="https://www.peelschools.org/documents/Overall-board-municipality-infographic.pdf/Overall-board-municipality-infographic.pdf">Peel District School Board has the highest concentration</a> of Muslim students in the province.</p>
<p>And yet, as a parent with a child in a Peel daycare, I’ve noticed sparse identity-affirming activities offered in classrooms. This is in contrast to festivities during Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Halloween, such as wearing different colour outfits to commemorate the day and lots of arts and crafts.</p>
<p>When this is the case, Muslim children’s non-Muslim counterparts are not engaged in challenging their Islamophobic perceptions. </p>
<p>I am not saying that such inclusive diversity-related practices should become an <a href="http://www.edchange.org/publications/Avoiding-Racial-Equity-Detours-Gorski.pdf">equity detour</a> or a replacement for confronting inequities and anti-Muslim sentiments. Affrming cultural activities are merely entry points to help schools start the ideological work required to combat Islamophobia.</p>
<h2>Inclusive public school education</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A door seen decorated with a hanging crescent moon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517243/original/file-20230323-28-cv1nhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517243/original/file-20230323-28-cv1nhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517243/original/file-20230323-28-cv1nhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517243/original/file-20230323-28-cv1nhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517243/original/file-20230323-28-cv1nhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517243/original/file-20230323-28-cv1nhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517243/original/file-20230323-28-cv1nhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Students need to see their identities and cultures recognized at school.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Tarbiyah Academy)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Research from 2012 in the United States found that the lack of identity-building in public schools is one of the reasons for <a href="https://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/2013_18_1_12_clauss_ahmed_islamic-school.pdf">a rise of Islamic schools</a>.</p>
<p>Holidays (days away from school) also coincide with Christian festivities. Such inequitable practices <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/holiday-guide/canadian-schools-struggle-with-what-to-do-about-christmas/article1357339/">exclude all other cultures and traditions.</a> </p>
<p>In the U.S., <a href="https://theconversation.com/students-lead-more-public-schools-to-close-for-islamic-holidays-182197">more and more districts</a> are including <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2016/0115/Why-some-US-districts-are-adding-Muslim-holidays-to-the-school-calendar">Muslim holidays in their school calendar</a>. </p>
<h2>Team approach needed</h2>
<p>In Canada, should Muslim students attend Islamic schools to experience the spirit of Ramadan and Eid? </p>
<p>I am a proponent of public schools, and I believe public schools can be spaces for all students from all cultures and backgrounds to feel a deep sense of belonging.</p>
<p>Cross-cultural exchange can be complex and challenging for teachers. Building a positive school culture, especially around celebrations, needs to be a team effort by all educational partners: teachers, administrators, parents, students and community members. </p>
<p>Here are four ways educators in public schools can develop the identities of Muslim students and create a positive school culture during Ramadan:</p>
<p><strong>1. Help students feel the spirit of Ramadan in their public schools.</strong></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Paper cutout of a crescent moon and star are painted gold." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517236/original/file-20230323-1571-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517236/original/file-20230323-1571-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517236/original/file-20230323-1571-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517236/original/file-20230323-1571-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517236/original/file-20230323-1571-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517236/original/file-20230323-1571-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517236/original/file-20230323-1571-p1bn8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ramadan decorations can help lift the spirits of Muslim students during the month of fasting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Classroom or hallway decorations, and Ramadan songs in the announcements, can help lift the spirits of Muslim students during the month-long fast. </p>
<p>Decorations of the crescent moon can work as a culturally appropriate decoration in public schools: it signifies the beginning of a month in the Islamic lunar calendar. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/these-young-londoners-got-real-artsy-to-prepare-for-the-month-of-ramadan-1.6784141">Lanterns are another example</a>. In Muslim-majority countries, lanterns are hung from windows, balconies and in public spaces and create a magical milieu. Music can provide positive <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X19843001">transcultural learning</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Intricate white paper cut-out lanterns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517255/original/file-20230323-22-cvjh3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517255/original/file-20230323-22-cvjh3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517255/original/file-20230323-22-cvjh3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517255/original/file-20230323-22-cvjh3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517255/original/file-20230323-22-cvjh3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517255/original/file-20230323-22-cvjh3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517255/original/file-20230323-22-cvjh3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lantern decorations and crafts are one idea for schools.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Educators can also use the language of a student’s culture to greet them on the day of their celebration. Studies suggest using a <a href="https://etfovoice.ca/sites/default/files/ETFO_Voice_Curriclum_Fall2016.pdf">student’s home language</a> provides a deeper connection between students and their school experience.</p>
<p>For example, educators could say: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Salam [student name], Ramadan Mubarak.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It means: “Hello … Happy Ramadan,” in Arabic. Salam means “peace” and is used as a greeting by many Muslims even in non-Arabic speaking countries. Learning <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Ui1aRfOLC4">the specific greetings used</a> in students’ cultures would be a good idea.</p>
<p>Another way to ignite the Ramadan spirit is to enlist the help of Muslim parents, or partner with local mosques, to create loot bags filled with inexpensive items children might receive at a birthday party. These could be for Muslim students (and also non-Muslims who would like one). </p>
<p>This activity would also enhance Muslim school-community engagement. Schools could explore the best way to offset costs to ensure this is accessible to families.
Connecting with local Islamic schools could be another potential partnership. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-change-one-thing-in-education-community-school-partnerships-would-be-top-priority-188189">If I could change one thing in education: Community-school partnerships would be top priority</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>2. Provide spaces for students during lunch and recess.</strong> Fasting can be difficult for most kids, and doing it alone <a href="https://ing.org/resources/for-educators/other-educator-resources/religious-practices-of-muslim-students-in-public-schools/">while they see other friends eating</a> can make it more challenging.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/louise-arbour-ramadan-club-1.6408922">One school in London, Ont.</a> made a fasting club and attracted 15 students to provide camaraderie, and offered activities to help students keep their minds off hunger.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-ramadan-and-why-does-it-require-muslims-to-fast-180139">Explainer: what is Ramadan and why does it require Muslims to fast?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>3. Send a letter to the school community about Ramadan.</strong> </p>
<p>Informing parents of the day-to-day activities of the school, especially those pertinent to <a href="https://sunypress.edu/Books/F/Families-and-Schools-in-a-Pluralistic-Society2">minoritized or racialized families</a>, may increase the likelihood of parental engagement. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Decor seen in a school hallway of a sign saying 'Ramadan Kareem' with two smiling figures and presents in front of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517247/original/file-20230323-1493-of83q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517247/original/file-20230323-1493-of83q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517247/original/file-20230323-1493-of83q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517247/original/file-20230323-1493-of83q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517247/original/file-20230323-1493-of83q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517247/original/file-20230323-1493-of83q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517247/original/file-20230323-1493-of83q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Informing a school community about Ramadan can promote inclusivity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Tarbiyah Academy)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A school in Milton, Ont. sent a letter to parents last year informing them about Ramadan and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-eid-al-fitr-and-how-do-muslims-celebrate-it-6-questions-answered-118146">the celebration that follows it: Eid</a>.</p>
<p>A parent shared this letter with me in appreciation of the school’s work affirming Muslim identities and creating intercultural understanding.</p>
<p><strong>4. Holding <a href="https://thebutlercollegian.com/2022/04/muslim-student-association-hosts-campus-wide-fast-a-thon/">Fast-a-thons</a>:</strong> Fast-a-Thons offer opportunities for non-Muslims to experience Ramadan with Muslim friends or colleagues, and are typically planned around sharing iftars — the meal eaten after sunset during Ramadan. </p>
<p>Community iftars where Muslim and non-Muslims break their fast together instils a feeling of <a href="https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1292&context=nsudigital_newspaper/">camaraderie and overcoming a challenge collectively</a>. <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ramadan-primer-high-school-students-1.5984005">Muslim students</a> and their parents can be invited to speak about what Ramadan means to them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman seen smiling at a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517254/original/file-20230323-22-4mg88f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517254/original/file-20230323-22-4mg88f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517254/original/file-20230323-22-4mg88f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517254/original/file-20230323-22-4mg88f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517254/original/file-20230323-22-4mg88f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517254/original/file-20230323-22-4mg88f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517254/original/file-20230323-22-4mg88f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Muslims can be invited to speak about what Ramadan means to them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Granted, the lack of intercultural understanding is not always the root of Islamophobia. </p>
<p>Islam and Ramadan awareness may not stop anti-Muslim sentiments for some, however, these are stepping stones to starting deeper conversations and connections.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asma Ahmed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Educators in public schools can develop the identities of Muslim students and create a positive school culture during Ramadan by fostering community partnerships and introducing school activities.Asma Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Department of Education, Niagara UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1992922023-02-07T21:10:32Z2023-02-07T21:10:32ZFirst Voices: New Grade 11 English courses can support reconciliation and resurgence by centring Indigenous literature<p>Last week, trustees from the Toronto District School Board voted in favour of replacing <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tdsb-indigenous-course-credit-1.6734437">the mandatory Grade 11 English course with</a> a course about <a href="https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/curriculum/secondary-first-nations-metis-and-inuit-studies/courses/nbe3u/introduction">understanding contemporary First Nations, Métis and Inuit Voices</a> called First Voices.</p>
<p>This comes as welcome news. Since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its final report in 2015 <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginal-peoples-documents/calls_to_action_english2.pdf">and called for reconciliation education</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/ontario-indigenous-curriculum-writing-cancellation-1.4739691">the Ontario government has been lagging</a> on prioritizing this. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/research/Professor_Jennifer_Brant_Shares_her_Work.html">As an Indigenous scholar who belongs to the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, and teaches courses on Indigenous literatures</a>, I am delighted students will be exposed to texts that are unapologetically Indigenous and carry readers forward on a powerful journey of both reconciliation and resurgence. </p>
<p>I also know that for these new courses to be successful, <a href="https://theconversation.com/reckoning-with-the-truths-of-unmarked-graves-of-indigenous-children-education-systems-must-take-action-166151">commitments to funding and resourcing teacher training and professional development</a> are a must. </p>
<p>So are commitments to redressing a deep history of <a href="https://theconversation.com/reckoning-with-the-history-of-public-schooling-and-settler-colonialism-190386">structural and colonial violence in education throughout all levels of schooling</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hkXaCffTYkk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">CityTV news video on TDSB vote.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>About First Voices</h2>
<p>First Voices is among courses that have been developed to respond to the TRC’s call urging ministries of education to develop and implement K-12 curricula on Indigenous history and the legacy of the residential school system in Canada (Call No. 63). </p>
<p>Several <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tdsb-indigenous-course-credit-1.6734437">Ontario school boards</a> have already rolled out First Voices. The course replaces the mandatory Grade 11 English course and the study of texts written by authors such as <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-goodbye-great-gatsby-hello-rita-joe-thunder-bays-schools-bring/">William Shakespeare and F. Scott Fitzgerald</a> for the works of Indigenous authors such as Tanya Talaga, Lee Maracle, Katherena Vermette, Cherie Dimaline and Richard Wagamese. </p>
<p>The beautiful storyline presented in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/katherena-vermette-1.4033273">Katherena Vermette’s <em>The Break</em></a>, and the timeless work of <a href="https://canadianscholars.ca/book/ravensong-a-novel-03eb2330-04fc-4364-b05a-e2508aeb5660/">Lee Maracle’s</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/ravensong-1.4025998"><em>Ravensong</em></a> are the very texts that will support students on their journey toward truth and reconciliation. </p>
<p>So will engaging with the contemporary realities eloquently expressed in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/son-of-a-trickster-by-eden-robinson-1.3975938">Eden Robinson’s Son of a Trickster</a>. This book connects past-present-future continuums in a literary genre that literature scholar <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/daniel-heath-justice-404793">Daniel Heath Justice</a> refers to as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-stories-about-alternate-worlds-can-help-us-imagine-a-better-future-dont-call-me-resilient-ep-7-165933">Wonderworks</a>. </p>
<h2>Much investment and work needed</h2>
<p>It’s critical to understand that Call 63 is not just about developing new courses but “building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy and mutual respect” and “identifying teacher-training needs relating to the above.” </p>
<p>This suggests the need for a multi-tiered approach that includes Indigenous community consultations and professional learning opportunities. </p>
<p>With the federal government’s failure to launch a national strategy to implement reconciliation education, quality Indigenous education and effective responses to the national calls for Call 63 rest within the social and political will of each province. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a-kMSpMfdRA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">English and film studies professor Keavy Martin discusses Indigenous literatures.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 2020 and 2021 Yellowhead Institute Accountability Reports on Canada’s progress towards satisfying the TRC’s Calls to Action document superficial commitments to truth and reconciliation. As I expressed in an interview for the 2020 report, the effective rollout of newly developed Indigenous courses requires a <a href="https://yellowheadinstitute.org/calls-to-action-accountability-a-2020-status-update-on-reconciliation/">“structured and effective network that seamlessly connects education for reconciliation in teacher education programs, with ministries of education and school boards</a>.” </p>
<p>Among those who will teach the First Voices course are teachers who recently completed an Indigenous literatures course I <a href="https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ctl/emphasis-indigenous-education-and-decolonization">developed and teach at the University of Toronto</a>. </p>
<p>In this graduate course, teachers read some of the texts that will be taught in First Voices. They learn about the <a href="https://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/1029-9781772126006-troubling-truth-and-reconciliation-in-canadian-education">importance of teaching through frameworks</a> that centre cultural identity and community narratives of strength, and what Indigenous literary scholar Gerald Vizenor <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803210837/">refers to as survivance</a>.
Survivance is about more than survival: It encompasses an active sense of presence merging both survival and resistance.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-communities-come-together-virtually-during-coronavirus-despite-barriers-and-inequities-138601">Indigenous communities come together virtually during coronavirus despite barriers and inequities</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Designing more courses</h2>
<p>As increasing numbers of school boards institute mandatory Indigenous courses, it is vital to ensure they are carefully designed.</p>
<p>They must also be delivered in ways that attend to anti-racist teaching practices
that acknowledge varied experiences of racism in a settler colonial society,
and be concerned with liberatory thinking, reflection and action as well as <a href="https://opentextbc.ca/indigenizationcurriculumdevelopers/chapter/creating-cultural-safety">cultural safety</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-critical-race-theory-should-inform-schools-185169">Why critical race theory should inform schools</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Indigenous cultural safety can be described as environments where individuals feel respected, safe and free to express their cultural identities without shame and discrimination. </p>
<p>With this context in mind, the new courses have the power to disrupt settler colonial narratives and promote cultural safety within classroom environments.</p>
<p>Teaching through an <a href="https://blogs.uoregon.edu/uoteachingcommunity/about/anti-oppressive-pedagogy-study-circle/anticolonialism-pedagogy/">anti-colonial</a> lens that counters colonialism and supports ethical dialogue requires Indigenous cultural safety and ethical commitments to be at the heart of the new First Voices course. </p>
<h2>Redressing violence</h2>
<p>While the First Voices course is an important step, we need to see this kind of commitment threaded throughout primary, junior and intermediate courses as well.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/reckoning-with-the-history-of-public-schooling-and-settler-colonialism-190386">Reckoning with the history of public schooling and settler colonialism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>By the time students get to Grade 11, they have already been exposed to years of <a href="https://theconversation.com/national-day-for-truth-and-reconciliation-universities-and-schools-must-acknowledge-how-colonial-education-has-reproduced-anti-indigenous-racism-123315">colonial discourse</a> and insensitive content about Indigenous Peoples. </p>
<p>This is true even of <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/06/26/two-indigenous-scholars-read-a-history-textbook-chapter-on-residential-schools-this-is-what-they-would-change.html">recently updated textbooks that cover the residential school system in Canada</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0AttZD8LVqA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">BlackCoffeePoet video ‘Indigenous Literatures Matter: A Talk With Daniel Heath Justice.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Change in cultural climate</h2>
<p>When I first developed a love for Indigenous literatures as a graduate student and was inspired to develop and teach my first Indigenous women’s literature course over 10 years ago, such courses were unpopular. I recall many students being unaware of the human rights abuses that were a core theme threading the texts we read.</p>
<p>A strong focus of my course was on racialized, sexualized <a href="https://opentextbooks.uregina.ca/femicide/chapter/17-indigenous-womens-literature-the-power-and-truth-of-our-words/">and gender-based violence against Indigenous women, girls, trans and Two Spirit peoples.</a> </p>
<p>I encouraged students to <a href="https://www.uap.ualberta.ca/titles/1029-9781772126006-troubling-truth-and-reconciliation-in-canadian-education">engage in reflective practice, and make important societal connections.</a>. </p>
<p>Today when I teach these courses, students are more familiar with the genocidal history of this land. For this reason, I take a teaching approach that calls them to action. </p>
<p>I encourage students to understand the stories by Indigenous authors through noticing <a href="https://canlit.ca/article/storying-resurgence/">strength and community resurgence</a> and connecting the texts to what is happening in their communities outside the classroom. I also encourage students to allow their reading to inform how they hold social structures accountable for injustices, and to resist seeing the texts through a “deficit” lens.</p>
<h2>Indigenous-authored texts</h2>
<p>Ten years ago, I could not find Indigenous-authored texts in most bookstores and certainly did not see them reflected in K-12 curricula or post-secondary syllabi. </p>
<p>Today, I can walk into a bookstore, the <a href="https://twitter.com/TheDHTaylor/status/1475091765006946304">gift store at an airport</a> or the local drug store or supermarket and immediately see beautiful artwork adorning the covers of Indigenous-authored texts. </p>
<p>Through an ethical and anti-racist engagement with First Voices, I am confident students will make necessary connections to the world around us as the contemporary realities threaded throughout the novels support students in developing their own sense of justice, of belonging and connections to this land.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Brant receives funding from SSHRC and the Spencer Foundation.</span></em></p>For Indigenous literature courses to be successful, Indigenous cultural safety must be centred, and commitment to teacher professional development is a must.Jennifer Brant, Assistant Professor in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1819942022-05-24T15:25:22Z2022-05-24T15:25:22Z5 ways school boards can address racial injustice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463803/original/file-20220517-21-9d6uqq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=320%2C1716%2C2131%2C1119&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Parent activism for racial justice in schools is parent engagement. How are school boards valuing and supporting this? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Schools and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/review-of-prince-george-schools-finds-clearly-discriminatory-and-systemically-racist-practices-1.6156868">school boards</a> struggle to respond to racism — and continue <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7732377/black-students-racism-lethbridge-schools">to fail to dismantle</a> systemic barriers that affect Indigenous, Black and racialized students and families.</p>
<p>These barriers affect not only student learning, but student, family and staff well-being and sense of belonging.</p>
<p>Amid debates about school board effectiveness, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/nova-scotia-education-reform-lessons-for-manitoba-1.5952505">some provinces across</a> Canada have abolished or changed public governing structures overseeing school boards, or are debating doing so: for example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/quebecs-bill-40-further-undermines-the-provinces-english-language-school-system-131595">Québec abolished school boards in 2020</a> and <a href="https://www.thestar.com/halifax/2018/09/30/nova-scotias-public-education-system-has-no-one-holding-their-feet-to-the-fire.html">Nova Scotia abolished boards in 2018</a>. In April, New Brunswick’s minister of education <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/dominic-cardy-district-education-councils-1.6414183">defended plans to eliminate current district education councils</a> and replace these with a provincial board and regional councils.</p>
<p>But school boards matter if they are places where parents and community members can engage in democratic discussion and decision-making, and <a href="https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/fast-facts-nova-scotia-education-overhaul-cautionary-tale-manitoba">respond to the needs of communities that have been historically excluded in public education</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AcvMO4WHHwc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Should Ontario Scrap Elected School Boards? from TVO’s ‘The Agenda.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Boards under review</h2>
<p>In Ontario, over a number of years, <a href="http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/new/peel-district-school-board-review.html">several school boards</a> have <a href="http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/new/2017/reportyrdsb.html">been under review</a> by the Ontario Ministry of Education <a href="http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/new/2015/reportTDSB.html">to address challenges</a> in governance and racial injustice. </p>
<p>School boards have been facing demands for greater transparency and accountability. </p>
<p>Parents or community groups are rallying against <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/09/09/change-is-long-overdue-for-black-students-in-ontario-these-parents-arent-waiting-on-the-government-to-make-it-happen.html">anti-Black racism</a>, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2020/06/16/students-teachers-parents-feel-the-sting-of-islamophobia-in-peel-schools-they-share-their-stories.html?rf">Islamophobia</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7301741/asian-parents-anti-asian-racism-schools">anti-Asian racism</a> and other forms of racism against students, families and educators. </p>
<p>We have also noticed a rise among some white and middle-class families, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/local-oshawa/news/2022/01/25/durham-trustee-calls-proposed-school-board-human-rights-policy-dangerous.html">school trustees</a> <a href="https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/levy-teachers-should-focus-on-things-like-math-lessons-not-white-privilege">and media personalities</a> resisting or criticizing anti-racist efforts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People sitting in discussion in a meeting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463822/original/file-20220518-21-smsr6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463822/original/file-20220518-21-smsr6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463822/original/file-20220518-21-smsr6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463822/original/file-20220518-21-smsr6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463822/original/file-20220518-21-smsr6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463822/original/file-20220518-21-smsr6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463822/original/file-20220518-21-smsr6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">School boards matter if they are places where communities can engage in democratic discussion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Anti-racism research hasn’t had significant impact</h2>
<p>With our colleague Joseph Flessa, we <a href="https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/article/view/73144">synthesized and reviewed research about school board reform</a>. We found that even though substantial research exists about anti-racism education in Ontario, it hasn’t had a significant impact on Ontario’s district policies and practices over the past two decades. </p>
<p>We also interviewed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10526846221095752">12 superintendents of education</a> in five Ontario public school districts who are engaging in anti-racist leadership. These leaders were Black, South Asian and White. Some held equity portfolios, and some were responsible for families of schools. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-white-educators-need-to-fight-racism-every-day-82550">Charlottesville: White educators need to fight racism every day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In addition, one of the authors of this article, Vidya, with our colleague Diana Grimaldos, interviewed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221095004">13 parents</a> (11 Black, one South Asian and one Latinx) who are fighting for racial justice in their schools, boards and the larger community. </p>
<p>Based on these different studies, we’ve come up with five approaches to change. These approaches position school boards as places where inter-generational and collective transformation can happen through shared struggle and where critical democracy can be realized. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Graphic showing a circle of connected parts, with one part outside pointing in another direction." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463827/original/file-20220518-25-rnreyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463827/original/file-20220518-25-rnreyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463827/original/file-20220518-25-rnreyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463827/original/file-20220518-25-rnreyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463827/original/file-20220518-25-rnreyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463827/original/file-20220518-25-rnreyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463827/original/file-20220518-25-rnreyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Research on anti-racism education in hasn’t had a significant impact on Ontario’s policies and practices.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. Challenging neutrality</h2>
<p>Our research <a href="https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/article/view/73144">shows school districts must recognize that</a> no aspect of schooling is neutral.</p>
<p>How people understand and experience learning, mental health and well-being, success and failure, leadership, curriculum, student voice <a href="https://theconversation.com/too-busy-for-the-pta-but-working-class-parents-care-104386">and parent and community engagement</a> are all influenced by social identities and positionality. </p>
<p>When school boards assume that there is a standard everyone should meet, they reinforce a status quo that serves the interests and needs of those with greater social power. </p>
<p>School boards should examine how students, families and staff are racialized through every structure, policy, curriculum approach and practice — and how racism continues to operate even as they aim to disrupt it. </p>
<h2>2. Accountability structures</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10526846221095752">Leaders in our study stressed the importance of</a> school boards collecting demographic data based on Indigeneity, race, socio-economic status, the spectrum of gender and sexual diversity, place of birth, disability and more. </p>
<p>Boards could then disaggregate data on student achievement and engagement, school processes and student and staff experience and well-being to identify <a href="https://theconversation.com/racialized-student-achievement-gaps-are-a-red-alert-108822">gaps students experience in opportunities</a> that affect achievement.</p>
<p>This data can help boards understand and dismantle structures in schools that disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous and particular groups of racialized students, students marginalized by poverty and disabled students. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-adversity-impacts-the-disproportionate-suspensions-of-black-and-indigenous-students-177676">How adversity impacts the disproportionate suspensions of Black and Indigenous students</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Boards can also create structures that reverse harmful patterns and pathways, and ensure new approaches are adequately funded and supported. </p>
<p>Community leaders must be involved meaningfully at every stage and data must be shared publicly and regularly. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10526846221095752">The leaders we interviewed called for school boards to</a> create structures to hold both the system and educators to account. </p>
<p>Accountability structures include arms-length advisory committees with representation from historically excluded communities, and repercussions for educators who don’t uphold the rights and dignity of students and families. School boards must demonstrate a clear commitment to using a rights-based approach to make decisions and respond to situations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A smiley face backpack." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463821/original/file-20220518-15-g2f83z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463821/original/file-20220518-15-g2f83z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463821/original/file-20220518-15-g2f83z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463821/original/file-20220518-15-g2f83z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463821/original/file-20220518-15-g2f83z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463821/original/file-20220518-15-g2f83z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463821/original/file-20220518-15-g2f83z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mismatch exists between what Black and racialized parents experience and what educators say concerns them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Rethinking parent and community engagement</h2>
<p>Our research also examined <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00420859221095004">the harm endured by Black and racialized parents who challenged racist educators, policies and practices</a> in school contexts where educators claim they are concerned with the experiences of excluded families and respond to requests for change.</p>
<p>School leaders must ensure they are heeding parents’ experiences and acknowledging families’ expertise in school board decisions. They will also need to develop structures with accountability measures to prevent continued harm. </p>
<p>They must find concrete ways to value and support parent activism for racial justice and other forms of social justice, and to affirm this work as fundamental to parent engagement. </p>
<p>School boards need to support leaders in developing the capacity to respond to families and communities who benefit from the status quo and advocate against anti-racist reforms. They can do so by steadfastly committing to change practices that privilege groups that are already privileged.</p>
<h2>4. Anti-racist leadership</h2>
<p>Leadership is fundamental to transforming schools and boards. Models of leadership that don’t value anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-oppressive skills, knolwedges and capacities <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/10526846221095752">replicate various forms of oppression</a>.</p>
<p>We need to <a href="https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading">support leaders in undoing and unlearning the ways</a> in which they have been socialized into leadership. <a href="https://www.yorku.ca/edu/unleading/">The UnLeading Project</a> launched at York University is a website and podcast series that has this aim.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VyGw-X2VXUg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">About The Unleading Project at York University.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leaders we interviewed stressed there needs to be a fundamental shift in criteria for hiring, developing and promoting aspiring and established school administrators or leaders. The shift must put anti-racist and anti-oppressive competencies and capacities at the centre. </p>
<h2>5. Recognizing school board limits</h2>
<p>Our research shows there <a href="https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/article/view/73144">are limits to what school boards can do alone</a>, in part because they operate within larger inequitable structures. Schools and school boards need partnerships with communities, universities, non-profit organizations, journalists and above all, with students, families and staff. </p>
<p>School boards need to realize that marginalized communities are fed up with performative acts and structural inaction.</p>
<p>They need to acknowledge educational institutions’ and schools’ histories of excluding <a href="https://theconversation.com/egerton-ryerson-racist-philosophy-of-residential-schools-also-shaped-public-education-143039">historically oppressed communities, and their roles in advancing colonialism and white supremacy</a>.</p>
<p>These are reasons why, in dialogue with communities, some school boards are supporting the development of alternate learning spaces in school boards and beyond. For example, the Urban Indigenous Education Centre in the Toronto District School Board “infuses Indigenous perspectives across the curriculum,” and “provides direct wrap-around supports to enhance <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Community/Indigenous-Education">the overall achievement of First Nation, Métis and Inuit students throughout the TDSB</a>.”</p>
<p>We envision that in considering these approaches, perhaps boards will invest less energy in maintaining images of perfection, innocence, security and control, and instead welcome critique and acknowledge past and present failures. Perhaps they can come to view generative conflict as opportunities for transformation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181994/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vidya Shah does consulting work with various school boards and organizations in Ontario. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gisele Cuglievan Mindreau receives funding from SSHRC and OGS. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nada Aoudeh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rethinking accountability structures, how to engage parents and the community and how to support anti-racist leadership competencies all matter.Vidya Shah, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, York University, CanadaGisele Cuglievan Mindreau, PhD Candidate, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of TorontoNada Aoudeh, PhD Candidate, Education, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1695922021-12-06T19:01:46Z2021-12-06T19:01:46ZDismantling anti-Black racism in our schools: Accountability measures are key<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434805/original/file-20211130-22-1mur6z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C108%2C5526%2C3450&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Until Black children and youth feel accepted, respected and protected, our work is not done.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Education is built on the belief that people can be more. In the words of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois">the 20th-century American sociologist and writer W.E.B. DuBois</a>, an important anti-racist leader and figure in the development of African American education, “<a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL416206M/The_correspondence_of_W._E._B._Du_Bois">what people are depends on the way they have been educated, the way … their possibilities have been developed and drawn out</a>.” Du Bois’s speeches and writings on the education of Black students were part of his larger concern about Black children’s well-being and the uplifting of Black communities. </p>
<p>In other words, for education to be truly a <a href="https://infed.org/mobi/what-is-education-a-definition-and-discussion">process of encouraging and embracing discovery</a>, everyone needs to be accommodated in the classroom. </p>
<p>Canada is <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40708421">known for its excellent education</a>, but this reputation can hide the realities of its Black students. <a href="https://www.pluralism.ca/what-we-do-2/education/talking-racism/">With ample data</a> <a href="http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/new/review-peel-district-school-board-report-en.pdf">demonstrating the effects of systems</a> that <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/black-canadians-school-curriculum-1.5706510">undermine educational opportunities of Black students</a>, it’s clear that access to education in Canada isn’t equitable and inclusive. Canada’s kindergarten to Grade 12 education systems should receive a failing grade until anti-Blackness is addressed.</p>
<h2>Way to improve</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/cebsa">Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement</a> offers a way to improve with a new targeted approach to addressing anti-Blackness. The centre offers a model based on strategic community engagement that school boards across Canada can learn from and enact. </p>
<p>I am a PhD student researching Black youth and families’ experiences in education, and I support research for this TDSB initiative <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/06/01/a-milestone-tdsb-launches-centre-to-improve-outcomes-for-black-students.html">proposed by Black community members and education stakeholders</a>. </p>
<h2>Mutual relationships</h2>
<p>Decades after DuBois, Brazilian educator Paolo Freire argued that <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/pedagogy-of-the-oppressed-9781501314162">in order for learning to happen, relationships need to be mutual</a>. Unfortunately, for Black students in Canada, this has rarely been the case.</p>
<p>Even <a href="http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/policyfunding/equity.pdf">as governments develop policies</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/teachers-anti-racist-education-young-learners-1.6044605">some teachers shift their practices</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/black-canadians-school-curriculum-1.5706510">anti-racist educators and scholars demand more from classroom teachers</a>, the schooling experiences of Black children and youth reveal an ongoing struggle with anti-Black racism. </p>
<p>Behind this failure stand governments and school boards that have fallen short on accountability measures that ensure no Black child or youth is left behind in fulfilling their potential.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-wont-canada-collect-data-on-race-and-student-success-106689">Why won’t Canada collect data on race and student success?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Given that <a href="https://en.unesco.org/news/what-you-need-know-about-right-education">education is a human right</a>, our education systems and communities must continue to address the systemic and institutional barriers that prevent Black youth from claiming it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Chalk writing is seen on the edges of stairs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434551/original/file-20211129-27-13dzqsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434551/original/file-20211129-27-13dzqsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434551/original/file-20211129-27-13dzqsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434551/original/file-20211129-27-13dzqsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434551/original/file-20211129-27-13dzqsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434551/original/file-20211129-27-13dzqsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434551/original/file-20211129-27-13dzqsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Articles from the UN’s Declaration on Human Rights are seen chalked on a staircase.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(University of Esssex/Flickr)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reducing barriers in education</h2>
<p>At the Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement, the aim is to develop an education system where anti-Blackness is dismantled with targeted anti-racist policy and practice. This involves introducing accountability measures to counter the full spectrum of <a href="https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-Education-April-2017.pdf?x60002">educators’ discriminatory practices</a> that devalue Black life.</p>
<p>The TDSB launched this initiative as one response towards developing solutions and responding to ways Black students and families continue to encounter barriers in education. Community members and education stakeholders in dialogue with the board identified <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Media/News/ArtMID/2750/ArticleID/1475/TDSB-Creates-New-Centre-of-Excellence-for-Black-Student-Achievement">nine mandates</a> to pursue. These include combatting anti-Black racism, identifying ways to improve Black students’ success and achievement and access to resources like scholarships, networking and mentoring from within the community.</p>
<p>More importantly, many of the <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/cebsa">programs and initiatives </a> offered to Black students reveal a commitment to improving <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/ward8/docs/Shelley%20Laskin/2020%2007%20Supporting%20Black%20Student%20Achievement%20and%20Dismantling%20Anti-Black%20Racism.pdf">students’ academic outcomes </a> and overall well-being across the TDSB. Through evidence-based research, staff document student responses to programming, and then amplify student voices to improve educators’ work in classrooms, and to enhance student learning experiences. </p>
<h2>Black students’ well-being</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/CEBSA/About-Us">the Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement</a> continues to grow its staff, the current team including graduation coaches and kindergarten to Grade 12 learning coaches. The latter support schools and staff with building an inclusive and anti-racist approach and practice to support Black students’ well-being. </p>
<p>Staff understand that improving Black students’ education involves a system-wide targeted approach. Together we look for and create opportunities to build educators’ understanding of practising anti-racism in the classroom and school environments. We provide strategies, instructional programming and resources through ongoing professional development.</p>
<p>With the support of the program co-ordinator and principal, the team developed several programs for Black students. For example, there is a <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/CEBSA/Programs">Black Girls’ Book Club and a Saturday program affiliated with York University and the University of Toronto</a> that sees Black students learn about youth participatory action research. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black students are seen working at a computer with a Black teacher in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434779/original/file-20211130-19-1kyr4e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434779/original/file-20211130-19-1kyr4e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434779/original/file-20211130-19-1kyr4e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434779/original/file-20211130-19-1kyr4e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434779/original/file-20211130-19-1kyr4e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434779/original/file-20211130-19-1kyr4e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434779/original/file-20211130-19-1kyr4e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A system-wide approach is needed to improve Black students’ education.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/#">(UKBlackTech)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a summer leadership program to provide Black students with experiential learning opportunities. This is done <a href="https://www.tvo.org/about/tvo-collaborates-with-tdsbs-centre-of-excellence-for-black-student-achievement-for-the-black-student">in collaboration with various community organizations and businesses</a> to support Black students to develop their leadership skills, build networks, improve job readiness skills and knowledge about various careers. </p>
<p>Black students engage with universities to learn more about STEM programs. One such <a href="https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Equity/Black-Student-Excellence/Summer-BSAE-Program">initiative with the Faculty of Engineering Secondary School at the University of Ottawa</a> provided students the opportunity to take computer science courses while gaining credits toward their Ontario Secondary School diploma. </p>
<h2>A call to action</h2>
<p>Facing anti-Black racism and committing to addressing it means teachers and administrators are called on to develop school plans, curriculum, safe classroom spaces and policies, as well as teacher education, to ensure Black students receive the same access, resources and support as their white counterparts. This emphasis on sameness is important because it supports the fight for rights to education under the law. This is key to aiding Black youth in their academic success.</p>
<p>Equal education opportunity for Black youth is a fundamental human right.</p>
<p>If the majority of the white and racialized teachers graduating from teacher education programs having no previous experience using anti-oppressive, anti-racist or decolonial practices, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/training-courses-teachers-black-anti-racism-1.6074119">their teaching</a> will continue to harm Black students’ well-being and academic outcomes.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/afoMbd_pOys?wmode=transparent&start=458" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Taking Action to Address Anti-Black Racism in Canadian Schools, video from Global Centre for Pluralism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Increase Black children’s engagement</h2>
<p>School boards in Canada have the opportunity to take many steps to focus on the experience of Black people in the curriculum, and increase Black children’s civic engagement and success in school. </p>
<p>These steps could include creating Black studies courses, <a href="https://www.hmhco.com/blog/racial-literacy-a-call-to-action-for-teachers">developing teachers’ racial literacy</a> and using <a href="http://www.inclusioncanada.net/culturallyrelevantpedagogy.html">culturally responsive teaching practices</a>.
As part of their commitment to disrupting anti-Blackness, teachers can commit to critically <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2019.1698871">transforming their own understandings and practices to transform Black students’ learning experiences</a>.</p>
<p>The problems Black youth encounter in education are real. Researchers and community advocates have have identified educational disparities, and we are beholden to take action to solve them. Until Black children and youth feel accepted, respected and protected, our work is not done.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tanitiã Munroe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Accountability measures matter for addressing the urgent problem of anti-Black racism. A new Centre of Excellence for Black Student Achievement at the Toronto District School Board is taking action.Tanitiã Munroe, PhD student and researcher, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1699372021-11-29T22:29:58Z2021-11-29T22:29:58ZSchools need to step up to address Islamophobia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433528/original/file-20211123-21-300cu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=445%2C50%2C4724%2C2959&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are many ongoing silences and erasures around anti-Muslim hate and violence in education systems. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The inspiration for this article was born of frustration and heartache. It follows the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-vigil-london-muslim-family-attack-1.6058519">murders of four intergenerational members</a> of the Afzaal/Salman family that left a nine-year-old child injured and orphaned in London, Ont., on June 6, 2021. </p>
<p>It also follows ongoing injustice related to <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/bill-21-resulted-in-racism-towards-student-teachers-mcgill-research-finds">state-sanctioned racism of Bill 21 in Québec</a> and a rash of hate attacks in Alberta, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/07/04/they-only-call-it-a-hate-crime-after-you-get-killed-as-muslim-women-are-attacked-in-alberta-a-community-asks-can-canada-face-its-islamophobia-problem.html">most of them targeting Black Muslim women in hijab</a>. </p>
<p>This year <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/a-string-of-hate-motivated-attacks-muslim-women-in-edmonton-reveals-a-complicated-history">at least nine attacks in Edmonton were reported to police, seven of which resulted in criminal charges</a>.</p>
<p>There is ongoing silence and erasure when it comes to anti-Muslim hate and Islamophobia in the education systems we and our loved ones inhabit. </p>
<h2>Islamophobia: A form of racism</h2>
<p>Although there is no one static understanding or definition of Islamophobia, we recognize it as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920514531606">form of racism, structural and individual, that is rooted in long histories of empire and colonization</a>. </p>
<p>The events of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States have had deep, long-lasting reverberations for Muslims globally. While western narratives have framed Islam through the lens <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4740907M/Orientalism">of orientalism</a> for centuries, 9/11 triggered renewed forms of Islamophobia across sectors.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A person holds a sign that says 'standing with Muslims against Islamophobia and racism'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433330/original/file-20211123-21-10l7cdt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People hold signs during a demonstration in Montréal in March 2017 in support of Parliament’s motion to condemn Islamophobia, systemic racism and religious discrimination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We should examine multiple dimensions of Islamophobia that build and shape <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-International-Handbook-of-Islamophobia/Zempi-Awan/p/book/9780367783914">realities of Muslim people through policy, social and economic structures and public representations</a> across institutions and around the world. These manifestations shape the representations of Muslims, and their embodied experience of “Muslimness” in Canada.</p>
<p>It’s important to consider Islamophobia not only in daily hate crimes but also in daily indignities, silencing and injuries to Muslims’ sense of self and well-being. </p>
<p>There are common ways that educators, boards, senior leadership and the policies and curricula they support maintain the reality of Islamophobia in schools. These “evasions” are ways of escaping or avoiding addressing Islamophobia that allow us to maintain a sense of innocence and goodness, while denying complicity in perpetuating harms against Muslims.</p>
<h2>Evasion 1: Excluding Islamophobia from discussions of racism</h2>
<p>One way schools avoid addressing Islamophobia is by <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/2/14452388/muslim-ban-immigration-order-islamophobia-racism-muslims-hate">neglecting to explicitly name and address it in larger discussions of racism</a>, xenophobia and oppression.</p>
<p>Common understandings of racism maintain narrow definitions of race as solely related to biology. But as sociologist Saher Selod explains, “racialization” is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920513516022">process and act</a>. It is articulated and enforced through cultural, political or legal narratives. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920514531606">Islamophobia is an outcome of the racialization of Muslims</a> as an “other.” </p>
<p>While Islamophobia is a form of racism, it must also be understood that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.2001.32.4.399">Muslim students hold multiple identities</a>, including their socio-economic status, ethnicity and linguistic identity, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680600788503">as well as their</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243220932156">gender</a> and sexuality, along with other forms of <a href="http://tessellateinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Black-Muslims-in-Canada-Systematic-Review-FatimahJacksonBest.pdf">racialization</a>. As such, the specific way a Muslim student may experience Islamophobia is through the interaction of their multiple identities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrating-diversity-isnt-enough-schools-need-anti-racist-curriculum-140424">Celebrating diversity isn't enough: Schools need anti-racist curriculum</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Such interconnected aspects of identity are related to broader systems of oppression, and as education researcher George J. Sefa Dei notes, <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/anti-racism-education">anti-racist education should seek to respond to complex oppressions</a> through <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later">intersectional</a> analysis.</p>
<h2>Evasion 2: Asserting we have a ‘secular’ society</h2>
<p>The implicit belief that Canadians <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1220008">exist in a secular society with secular public institutions</a> is widespread. But the institutions of Canadian society, including our schools, were built and now operate as if being Christian is the norm. Mainstream educational institutions continue to marginalize <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/04/19/why-calls-for-secularism-in-education-is-a-facade-opinion.html">students (and their families) who are non-Christian as outside of national identity</a>. </p>
<p>Public school curricula occasionally teaches <em>about</em> a religion, but <a href="https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29546">largely avoids discussion rooted in faith and spirituality as part of identity and lived experience</a>. Countering Islamophobia requires a critical examination <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/islam-in-the-hinterlands">of white supremacy, its Christian hegemony and racial power hierarchies</a>.</p>
<p>Educating about Islam can be valuable in countering misinformation, but is insufficient to challenge Islamophobia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large crowd of people is seen marching on the street, next to a line of cars." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433325/original/file-20211123-21-1ffb1ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thousands of people march through the streets of London, Ont., on June 11, 2021, in a Multi-Faith March to End Hatred after four members of a Muslim family were killed in a hate crime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Geoff Robins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Evasion 3: ‘We don’t have any Muslim students’</h2>
<p>Naming, addressing and dismantling Islamophobia does not require the presence of Muslims. The assumption of “no Muslims here” should also be held lightly, as some families choose not to disclose their faith identity for a myriad of reasons, including protecting their children from anticipated racial targeting. </p>
<p>While the presence of self-identified and identifiable Muslim students and staff may mean there is an increase in instances of explicit Islamophobia, their visible presence in a school isn’t a precondition for the commitment to recognize and address this form of racism.</p>
<h2>Evasion 4: ‘We have faith accommodations’</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-based-creed/9-duty-accommodate">Faith accommodations</a> can be viewed as an improvement from the explicit <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2013.765681">exclusion of Muslims from public spaces through claims of secularism</a>. But “accommodating” within existing structures won’t address the Islamophobia in curriculum, policy or institutional culture.</p>
<p>Faith accommodations are often approached as a procedure (at best) or sometimes as a nuisance to “integrate” minority students. Rarely are they viewed as <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/beyond-accommodation">an opportunity to build relationships, to learn together</a> or to transform schooling. </p>
<h2>Evasion 5: ‘We don’t know enough’</h2>
<p>Author and education scholar <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622408/we-want-to-do-more-than-survive-by-bettina-love/">Bettina Love</a> writes that if people believe that teaching against racism is important, they will commit to doing the work — including unlearning, learning and not waiting to be taught by people within communities who experience different forms of intersecting violence. </p>
<p>Too often, Muslim students and colleagues are forced to become “ambassadors” of their faith tradition because the adults around them assert that they don’t know enough about Islam and Islamophobia.</p>
<h2>Evasion 6: Excusing Islamophobia as ‘free speech’</h2>
<p>Muslim scholars, feminists, theorists and clergy have long engaged in study, analysis, debate and critique in understanding Islamic scripture, practices and histories. As in all faith communities and traditions, there has always been and continues to be vibrant dialogue and reflection within Islam. Muslim communities hold a plethora of understandings and modes of religious practice. Insisting that Muslims homogeneously subscribe to a fictional singular (medieval) understanding of Islam is a cornerstone to Islamophobia. </p>
<p>Too often an invitation to debate “about Islam” and “Muslim life” in classrooms is informed by sources promoting this perspective. This results is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1757743818790276">Islamophobic targeting</a> and harassment — <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/29/515451746/muslim-schoolchildren-bullied-by-fellow-students-and-teachers">sometimes even led by or in the presence of teachers</a> — that is dismissed as “free speech.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People are 'standing against Islamophobia' signs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433571/original/file-20211123-15-1tl8416.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=615&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People gather for a vigil in Toronto held for victims of the New Zealand terror attack in March 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New stories urgently needed</h2>
<p>These evasions are just some of the ways Islamophobia is perpetuated through silences and omissions in school systems. Potential ways of living out different stories in school systems include:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Recognizing how Islamophobia is present, even when Muslim students and staff aren’t. Like other forms of racism, <a href="http://tessellateinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Examining-Islamophobia-in-Ontario-Public-Schools-1.pdf">Islamophobia is always operating in various structures, curricula, language and beliefs</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Addressing and removing barriers to meaningful inclusion. Go beyond accommodating and move towards designing spaces and systems in ways <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622408/we-want-to-do-more-than-survive-by-bettina-love">where every student feels they belong and matter</a>. This necessarily entails co-creating life-giving and sustaining spaces that affirm spirituality and faith, even when schools claim to be secular.</p></li>
<li><p>Teaching against Islamophobia needs to be explicit, purposeful and integrated in anti-racist work. We believe all educators have an ethical responsibility to work towards becoming co-conspirators and disrupt anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic and ableist systems. School systems cannot wait for this to happen organically. Anti-racist and anti-oppressive education must become a guiding ethic and expectation in all educational institutions.</p></li>
</ol>
<h2>Commit to doing the work</h2>
<p>In planning this article, we asked, “What will it take for education systems (and the people leading and within them) to finally take Islamophobia seriously?”</p>
<p>Too often, being Muslim is seen as being incompatible with public life in Canada. We want better for ourselves, our children and all children, youth, families, caregivers and educators who live and work within these systems.</p>
<p>Educators and school systems cannot continue to evade facing, interrupting and dismantling Islamophobia. They must step up and commit to doing the work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tackling Islamophobia as a form of racism even when Muslims aren’t visible is key.Nada Aoudeh, PhD Candidate, Education, York University, CanadaMuna Saleh, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, Concordia University of EdmontonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1582892021-09-13T12:14:33Z2021-09-13T12:14:33Z6 big changes in standardized tests – including less focus on grading students and more on learning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418966/original/file-20210901-26-1mifxb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C5304%2C3375&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Today's tests have more potential to facilitate student learning, rather than just monitor it.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/student-works-on-her-laptop-at-sunkist-elementary-school-in-news-photo/1312167255">Paul Bersebach/Orange County Register via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The standardized tests given to children in schools today are a lot different from those their parents might remember. </p>
<p>For example, students today might take a standardized test at home on a laptop or other digital device. That test is <a href="https://www.curriculumassociates.com/access-and-equity/embracing-antiracism-work">more likely</a> than before to incorporate content on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12429">diverse cultural heritages</a>. And students taking a test may not even be aware they are being assessed, as more tests are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2017.1382343">blended with instruction</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qrGroqMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">psychometrician</a> who has designed, evaluated and researched educational tests for over 25 years, I believe this new era of school testing is a great improvement. It means tests have more potential to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12370">facilitate student learning</a>, rather than just monitor learning or penalize students. And it shows that, after years of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12415">growing public distrust</a> in educational testing, standardized tests are no longer just tools for accountability – the public is now <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12415">holding test makers accountable</a>. </p>
<p>Here are six ways standardized tests are evolving.</p>
<h2>1. Less common in admissions</h2>
<p>The federal <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml">No Child Left Behind Act</a> of 2001, and its successor, the <a href="https://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn">Every Student Succeeds Act</a> of 2015, require states to periodically test all students in grades 3-8, and once in high school, in math, reading and science. These mandated tests are used to <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203781302">evaluate teachers</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.7275/15558737">assign performance labels</a> to children, such as “inadequate” or “minimal understanding.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/making-sense-of-opt-out-movement-forum-levy-scott/">“opt-out” movement</a>, in which parents and their children organized and refused to take these tests, arose in response. As a result, over a dozen states in 2015 <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1002/ets2.12101">did not meet the federal requirements</a> to test at least 95% of students.</p>
<p>High school and college admissions tests have also been targets of criticism and are declining in use.</p>
<p>In 2020, the University of California decided to phase out ACT and SAT testing requirements due in large part to the impact these scores had on <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/05/26/university-california-votes-phase-out-sat-and-act">denying admissions</a> to Black and Hispanic students. Similar complaints surround admissions tests <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-elite-virginia-high-school-overhauled-admissions-for-gifted-students-heres-how-to-tell-if-the-changes-are-working-164850">for competitive high schools</a>. For example, a March 2021 lawsuit against New York City and the state claims that the high school admissions process “<a href="https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=jHAVRjM/0VBF2bxhnEz7aA==">denies equal opportunity and protection to students of color</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A student stands up in middle of crowd of seated high school students" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419350/original/file-20210903-13-1xjs8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419350/original/file-20210903-13-1xjs8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419350/original/file-20210903-13-1xjs8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419350/original/file-20210903-13-1xjs8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419350/original/file-20210903-13-1xjs8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419350/original/file-20210903-13-1xjs8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419350/original/file-20210903-13-1xjs8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York City public school students met with board of education officials in January 2020 and demanded an end to standardized testing in the admissions process, among other things.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-york-city-public-school-students-meet-with-board-of-news-photo/1203098845">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Taken at home on different devices</h2>
<p>For over a century, standardized tests involved students seated at desks in front of a proctor watching the clock. The tests were administered under stringent conditions to ensure all students were tested on the same content and under the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12377">same testing conditions</a>. </p>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic changed that and made it nearly impossible to administer educational tests in classrooms or other school settings. This prompted <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12377">more flexible tests</a>. In 2020, students began taking high-stakes tests such as <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/03/college-board-offers-home-ap-exam-details">Advanced Placement</a>, <a href="https://www.princetonreview.com/business-school-advice/gmat-online-faq">the Graduate Management Admission Test</a> and <a href="https://www.doe.virginia.gov/remotetest/about.shtml">statewide exams</a> at home. Some tests require a proctor to watch students <a href="https://www.princetonreview.com/business-school-advice/gmat-online-faq">via their computer’s camera</a>, or they use additional software to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/style/testing-schools-proctorio.html">flag suspicious behavior</a> that may indicate cheating.</p>
<h2>3. Integrated with other education software</h2>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic prompted an emphasis on technology to not only deliver tests digitally and remotely, but to also integrate them with a wide array of instructional software.</p>
<p>One familiar example of such integration is the <a href="https://www.duolingo.com">Duolingo app</a>, which teaches foreign languages by <a href="https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/game-based-learning-analytics-in-physics-playground/17159198">constantly testing users</a>. Testing companies are also <a href="https://www.nwea.org/instructional-connections/">partnering with curriculum companies</a> so that the results from tests can be used to suggest what students and teachers should focus on next. Other developments use technology to assess students <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12374">while they are learning</a>. This integration makes the tests more useful because teachers and learners can benefit from more tailored instruction, or instruction <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2017.1382343">embedded in the assessment</a> itself. </p>
<h2>4. Recognize cultural diversity of students</h2>
<p>The new generation of educational tests are beginning to reflect more diverse material to which students from different groups can relate.</p>
<p>For instance, a test today might <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12429">mention topics</a> like the Black Lives Matter movement or immigration reform to acknowledge the presence of racism in society and honor students’ cultural heritages.</p>
<h2>5. More personalized</h2>
<p>More tests are using technology to <a href="http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2354/w3paper1.pdf">personalize assessments and encourage student engagement</a>. For example, the <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED562580.pdf">difficulty of the test can change</a> based on how well students are doing while they take it. And new research funded by the U.S. Department of Education aims to <a href="https://ies.ed.gov/funding/grantsearch/program.asp?ID=2118">transform tests</a> so teachers, employers and students can design their own tests for specific purposes such as diagnosing student needs.</p>
<h2>6. Emphasize learning over competition</h2>
<p>Finally, the new tests will deemphasize comparing students to one another and instead highlight the knowledge and skills students have demonstrated, in addition to pointing out what they should work on.</p>
<p>Moreover, new tests being designed will not interrupt instruction – they will be part of it. To best inform learning and instruction, <a href="https://www.education.ne.gov/assessment/nscas-growth/">shorter tests, targeted to recent instruction</a>, will be administered, and students’ performance will be reported quickly. Teachers will be guided on how to use the results to <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1111/emip.12415">inform and improve their instruction</a>.</p>
<p>By incorporating technology to engage students and integrate testing with instruction, and by making test materials relevant to a wider diversity of students, I believe the new educational tests will better serve education. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158289/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Sireci receives funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. </span></em></p>Public outcry against standardized testing, along with adjustments required by COVID-19, have led to a new generation of academic tests.Stephen Sireci, Professor of Psychometrics, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1629922021-08-09T15:04:09Z2021-08-09T15:04:09ZIslamophobia in schools: How teachers and communities can recognize and challenge its harms<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415015/original/file-20210806-17-18lqoxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=179%2C26%2C5811%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Islamophobia shows itself not only in obvious hate acts, but in seemingly innocuous attitudes and assumptions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent overt attacks against Muslims <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-family-killed-in-terror-attack-in-london-ontario-islamophobic-violence-surfaces-once-again-in-canada-162400">in London, Ont.,</a>, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8024358/hamilton-police-investigating-anti-muslim-hate-crime-in-ancaster/">Hamilton</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/muslim-women-attacks-edmonton-1.6081152">Edmonton</a> have surfaced and exacerbated <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/3523535/hate-crimes-canada-muslim/">the fear that Canadian Muslims</a> have been living with for many years. </p>
<p>A few weeks ago, I porch-visited a friend. I was about to knock when her daughter opened the door and said she was off to have ice cream with her friend. She said “Goodbye!” and left her home without her hijab. I was heartbroken. Even though my friend lives in a part of Missisauga, Ont., <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2020/05/06/a-small-gesture-of-compassion-for-muslims-during-the-pandemic-unleashes-ugly-torrent-of-intolerance-in-mississauga.html">a densely Muslim-populated city</a> in Canada (also referred to by its Muslim residents tongue-in-cheek as “Muslim-sauga”), she and her three daughters do not feel safe.</p>
<p>They are afraid to be <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/13/why-are-muslim-women-living-in-fear-in-this-canadian-city">visibly Muslim</a> for fear of being identified and targeted for their religion. </p>
<p>I’m an <a href="https://doi.org/10.29173/assert16">anti-Islamophobia researcher</a> and educator focused mostly on Islamophobia in schools. My research suggests that Islamophobia is not only manifested as isolated incidents or overt attacks. Islamophobia shows up frequently in covert ways. </p>
<h2>Seemingly innocuous attitudes</h2>
<p>Here are five seemingly innocuous attitudes that educators and school communities can learn to spot and address.</p>
<p><strong>1. “I treat all students the same” or “I don’t see colour.”</strong> A comment I hear often from teachers and administrators is “I am not always aware of Muslim students as Muslims,” or “All students are the same,” or “I don’t see colour.” When I probe and ask more questions, I notice the fear of being perceived as an Islamophobe, or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-873X.2009.00463.x">harbouring Islamophobic sentiments</a> is camouflaged and wrapped up in such statements. <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-fair-is-not-equal/2019/11">Research shows</a> that treating students the same means that all students receive the same treatment irrespective of their needs. </p>
<p>To have a <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-educators-must-disrupt-colorblind-ideologies/2020/02">“colour-blind” approach</a> is rooted in the notion that being “different” is a deficit. Emphasizing “same treatment” and “colour-blind treatment” means covering implicit biases. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-curb-anti-black-racism-in-canadian-schools-150489">How to curb anti-Black racism in Canadian schools</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>2. “Muslims in Canada are more respectful and civilized than Muslims in other parts of the world.”</strong> In my doctoral research, I explored the experiences of Muslim students in an urban public high school in Ontario with a reputation of having a large Muslim student presence. I found that teachers generally have positive relationships with the Muslims in their school communities. Yet something strange happens when they process the all-too-often <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814707326/arabs-and-muslims-in-the-media/">negative narratives</a> of Muslims in the media as suspicious, dangerous and backwards. </p>
<p>A teacher I interviewed for my research asserted that Muslims who live in Canada are very different from Muslims outside of Canada. Such views reflect and replicate what literary and cultural critic Edward Said identified as an <a href="https://www.sam-network.org/video/orientalism-as-a-tool-to-justify-colonialism-1-4">“orientalist” and colonial</a> narrative that living in the west (in this case, Canada) is “civilizing” Muslims.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman in hijab smiles and holds two pieces of fruit over her eyes like binoculars." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415024/original/file-20210806-19-5q57cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415024/original/file-20210806-19-5q57cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415024/original/file-20210806-19-5q57cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415024/original/file-20210806-19-5q57cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415024/original/file-20210806-19-5q57cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415024/original/file-20210806-19-5q57cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415024/original/file-20210806-19-5q57cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The view that Muslims living in Canada or the West are somehow different than Muslims elsewhere reflects colonial attitudes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Pexels/Harun Benli)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>3. Muslim students are considered spokespersons for their religion.</strong> Just as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43133788">Muslim organizations are </a> expected to be first to condemn any terrorist attack, Muslim students also find themselves called upon to condemn attacks, defend their faith and speak on behalf of their faith: “Does Islam oppress women? What does Islam say about homosexuality? Why are ‘Muslim’ countries in such disarray?”</p>
<p>Similarly, one teacher concerned about student academic integrity asked me “… does the Qur’an say that cheating is OK? Because in most religions that is not right.” The teacher could not fathom that a student who was wearing a hijab could also cheat in their class. The pressure of representing an entire religion, in its best form, is a daunting task for an adult, let alone for a student.</p>
<p><strong>4. Divisive and dangerous Islamophobic narratives.</strong> Such narratives repeated in the media have a very strong hold in the societal psyche and <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/5301549/racism-poll-canada">negatively affect Muslims</a>.</p>
<p>Some of the very first questions any visible Muslim female student gets asked is “Did your husband/father force you <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-truths-about-the-hijab-that-need-to-be-told-63892">to wear hijab</a>? Is your father/husband <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.15365/joce.1003082013%22%22">strict or controlling</a>?” And irrespective of the answer, students feel that some teachers will not change their way of thinking no matter what evidence is presented. </p>
<p>Another example I encountered in my research is when a student spoke about his teacher. The student said the teacher “is fair in everything.” But when it comes to topics like Islam and terrorism, the teacher “holds on to his opinions…. Muslims in the class kept saying ‘this is not Islam,’ but I don’t think our message was received.”</p>
<p><strong>5. Speaking about Muslims as if they are not “Canadian.”</strong> This is part of viewing any practice outside of a white settler normative culture as not “Canadian.” Students are contending views, such as those of one teacher, in my interview, who claimed: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Parents [of the Muslim students] do not want to accept the norms of the Canadian culture.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The “norms” the teacher was referring to were white settler norms. </p>
<p>Students find themselves pressured to frequently profess their sense of belonging to Canada and assert their religious practices and beliefs are part and parcel of the Canadian mosaic. Similarly, when a 2016 <a href="https://www.environicsinstitute.org/projects/project-details/survey-of-muslims-in-canada-2016">survey of Muslims</a> by the Environics Institute was released, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-muslim-canadians-environics-1.3551591">media focussed on reporting</a> mainly about the sense of belonging and “Canadianness” of Muslims.</p>
<h2>Worried for Muslim students</h2>
<p>It is clear that <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483385686.n15">classrooms and teachers are not insulated from these broader negative narratives and media points of view</a>. </p>
<p>I am worried for Muslim students navigating a system with embedded Islamophobic sentiments. Some young women are <a href="https://broadview.org/taking-off-the-hijab/">taking their hijabs off</a>; other Muslim students may struggle with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3195968">academic disengagement</a>, <a href="https://cmha.ca/news/muslim-womens-mental-health-a-study">mental health issues</a>, difficulty <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.2001.32.4.399">reconciling their Muslim and Canadian identities</a> and <a href="http://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.1813">suicide, </a>to name just a few issues. </p>
<p>I am also worried that teachers, with their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2018.1544551">work intensification</a>, do not know how to support their Muslim students.</p>
<h2>Get to know each other’s communities</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="People hold signs reading, 'United against Islamophobia.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415017/original/file-20210806-19-1ax6bem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415017/original/file-20210806-19-1ax6bem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415017/original/file-20210806-19-1ax6bem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415017/original/file-20210806-19-1ax6bem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415017/original/file-20210806-19-1ax6bem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415017/original/file-20210806-19-1ax6bem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415017/original/file-20210806-19-1ax6bem.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When we know each other, we support one another. Here, people gather at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto after the New Zealand mosque shooting in March 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael_Swan/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As I was winding down that day, images of my friend’s daughter’s forced smile haunted me. I opened my Qur’an to find solace and comfort. I came across a verse I use frequently that <a href="https://theconversation.com/islams-anti-racist-message-from-the-7th-century-still-resonates-today-141575">Prophet Muhammad shared in a climate of racism 1,400 years ago</a>: “We have … made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another” <a href="https://quran.com/49/13?translations=43,19,101,85,84,21,20,17,95,22,18">(49:13)</a>.
This notion has served as one of the powerful takeaways in my workshops to teachers and faculty members about how to actively be an anti-racist. </p>
<p>Racist beliefs cannot find root in the minds and hearts of those who genuinely and frequently get to know each others’ communities. Knowing each other helps allow for the unlearning of <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/five-charts-that-show-what-systemic-racism-looks-like-in-canada-1.4970352?cid=ps%3A921">racist conditioning that we have been saturated</a> in. </p>
<p>When we know each other’s communities, we understand and we support one another. We <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/ibram-x-kendi-discusses-antiracism-in-education/">strive to be anti-racist</a>, and thus amass the force needed to dismantle systemic and institutionalized racism in our spheres of influence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asma Ahmed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Racist and Islamophobic beliefs cannot find root in the minds and hearts of those who genuinely and frequently get to know each other’s communities.Asma Ahmed, Adjunct Professor, Department of Education, Niagara UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1591912021-04-20T23:05:14Z2021-04-20T23:05:14ZFederal budget 2021: 7 actions to ensure Canada’s ‘child-care plan’ is about education<p>The 2021 federal budget <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-budget-freeland-tasker-1.5991137">promises new investments of up to $30 billion over five years</a>
and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-budget-freeland-tasker-1.5991137">$8.3 billion per year after that</a> to create a <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2021/04/budget-2021-a-canada-wide-early-learning-and-child-care-plan.html">Canada-wide early learning and child-care plan</a>.</p>
<p>Funds committed by Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland could create a made-in-Canada early childhood education system comparable to <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/153399345.pdf">those offered by non-English speaking G7 countries</a>. The federal government says it will work with provincial, territorial and Indigenous partners.</p>
<p>As Canadian researchers with more than two decades of teaching and researching early childhood education, we believe it is critical for people in Canada to know and understand what is possible in early childhood education beyond the provision of safe and affordable care for children while adults work.</p>
<h2>Children as participants</h2>
<p>We are part of an <a href="https://www.earlychildhoodcollaboratory.net">Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory</a>: We bring together collaborative research in a virtual “laboratory” dedicated to researching early childhood curriculum. We are a cross-Canada network interested in supporting children and educators <a href="https://www.disorientatingearlychildhood.net/">as active participants facing the political, economic and social complexities of contemporary Canada</a>. </p>
<p>As legislators, advocates, educators and families come together to make decisions about the details of the 2021 federal budget, we do not want to miss the opportunity to create a system that ensures early childhood education is indeed about education.</p>
<p>If governments see early childhood education as a service for working parents, they miss out on understanding the rich educational experiences in children’s lives that also shape our collective future.</p>
<p>If we are serious about creating a national system that acknowledges child care for the educational project it is, more is required than mere replication of service-based models.</p>
<p>Our early childhood collaboratory advances the <a href="https://childcarecanada.org/documents/research-policy-practice/20/12/conditions-moving-beyond">following seven actions as vital for envisioning a national program</a>. We believe these actions provide people across Canada with a framework to imagine vibrant educational and inclusive spaces that young children deserve.</p>
<p><strong>Action 1:</strong> Create provincial curriculum frameworks to provide a vision for early childhood education that responds to 21st-century challenges. Early childhood curriculum frameworks need to prioritize education as an undertaking far more complex than simply socializing young children. Such frameworks focus on supporting children to be creative thinkers, able to create more liveable worlds for all. </p>
<p><strong>Action 2:</strong> Advocate for better wages for early childhood educators and provide them with opportunities to earn university degrees. Early childhood educators should receive compensation that allows them to sustain their critical role in early education. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-covid-19-child-care-plan-must-start-with-investing-in-early-childhood-educators-157553">Canada's COVID-19 child-care plan must start with investing in early childhood educators</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Educators are inventive, dedicated and intellectually rich people. Systematic research <a href="https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/report/2015/working-conditions-social-policies/early-childhood-care-working-conditions-training-and-quality-of-services-a-systematic-review">consistently points to the correlation between educational requirements and working conditions of educators</a>. When early childhood educators hold (at a minimum) a bachelor’s degree and have the opportunity to participate in meaningful professional learning, they are more likely to prioritize educational practices in early childhood centres.</p>
<p><strong>Action 3:</strong> Urge early childhood education centres <a href="https://www.earlychildhoodcollaboratory.net/our-ethos">commit to particular educational values</a>.
Values define the purposes and processes that orient educational decisions. Alongside a provincial curriculum framework, values guide educators and children as they respond to specific local challenges. </p>
<p><strong>Action 4:</strong> Consider how educational values link the early childhood education centre to broader issues and concerns. In <a href="http://commonworlds.net/">today’s complex world</a> many educators are concerned about our environmental crisis and global inequities, and <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374032">are committed to educating for future survival</a>. Values for early childhood education should be locally generated and <a href="http://www.fikilenxumalo.com/lab-members.html">grounded in community knowledges</a>. They should respond to current global injustices including food insecurity, inclusion, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429427480">ongoing colonization</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2019.1592837">systemic racism</a>, poverty, <a href="http://www.climateactionchildhood.net/">climate change</a> and pandemics. </p>
<p><strong>Action 5:</strong> Consider how values can be enacted through curriculum processes carefully created to sustain inquiry, thinking and collective learning. To create an early childhood system that takes seriously children’s ideas, experiences and relationships, the curriculum cannot be composed of unrelated activities designed to merely entertain children. Together, <a href="https://www.earlychildhoodcollaboratory.net/images-of-communities-and-families">families</a>, <a href="https://www.earlychildhoodcollaboratory.net/imagesofeducator">educators</a> and <a href="https://www.earlychildhoodcollaboratory.net/images-of-childhood">children</a> create curriculum that emphasizes relationships and spaces of collective investigation, where educators and children are in dialogue <a href="https://movingpedagogies.blog.ryerson.ca">with each other and with the world</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Educators with children." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396046/original/file-20210420-15-1k918we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396046/original/file-20210420-15-1k918we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396046/original/file-20210420-15-1k918we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396046/original/file-20210420-15-1k918we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396046/original/file-20210420-15-1k918we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396046/original/file-20210420-15-1k918we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396046/original/file-20210420-15-1k918we.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Young children and educators in dialogue with each other at the Children’s Centre at Capilano University in Capilano, B.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Sylvia Kind)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Action 6:</strong> Encourage educators to engage in the practice of what early childhood researchers and educators call “pedagogical documentation” to co-create curriculum with children. Through this practice, educators <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/journeys-3">consider their everyday work with children, and propose engagements that further their shared questions, ideas and experiences</a>. It is also a practice of collective memory that <a href="https://pedagogistnetworkontario.com/on-becoming-a-pedagogist-brief-thoughts-on-pedagogical-documentation">makes educational processes visible</a>, inviting families to engage with ideas, questions and concerns pertaining to education for young children. It can also feed into larger research processes, and <a href="https://encounterswithmaterials.com/">invite the broader public to have a deeper understanding of early childhood education</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kindergarten-scrapbooks-arent-just-your-childs-keepsake-theyre-central-to-learning-117066">Kindergarten scrapbooks aren't just your child's keepsake — they're central to learning</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Action 7:</strong> Create the conditions for educators to closely work with pedagogists.
Pedagogists are professionals who support early childhood educators; their work is inspired by the <a href="https://www.ibs.it/educatori-pedagogisti-tra-formazione-autoformazione-libro-silvana-calaprice/e/9788835109310">Italian “pedagogista”</a> tradition <a href="https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/">in the Reggio Emilia style of education</a>. These professionals don’t follow a doctrine or a pre-determined practice, but they are immersed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8bUUkTshhM&ab_channel=CommonWorldsResearchCollective">in early childhood education programs and work alongside educators</a> to support curriculum. Unlike early childhood educators, they do not work directly with children. </p>
<p>This is a <a href="https://www.ecpn.ca/about/pedagogists-role">new role in Canada</a> that scholars in our collective have been involved in creating with the Ministry of Children and Family Development in British Columbia. The role is rooted in and related to similar roles seen in early childhood education in other countries like Italy, Belgium and Sweden. </p>
<p>Across the country, pedagogists now serve some Indigenous communities in B.C. through the <a href="https://fnpn.ca/">First Nations Pedagogies Network</a>. Groups of educators in <a href="https://www.ecpn.ca/">B.C.</a> and <a href="https://pedagogistnetworkontario.com/">Ontario</a> are also <a href="https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs.v44i1.18785">working alongside a pedagogist</a>. However, the role of the pedagogist can be part of a new Canadian early education system that strives for equitable curriculum that is locally meaningful. </p>
<p>Early childhood education holds enormous potential as a conduit for transformative social, cultural and political change. Realizing this potential requires provincial governments to fund and sustain a public system similar to the one already in place for school-age children. </p>
<p>Canada has an opportunity to become a world leader in early childhood education. With monumental federal support, this is the time to build a sustainable and relevant early education system responsive to the concerns of the 21st century.</p>
<p><em>These ideas were generated by the members of the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw receives funding from BC Government (MCFD) and SSHRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Berry receives funding from SSHRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cristina Delgado Vintimilla receives funding from SSHRC</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fikile Nxumalo receives funding from SSHRC</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen Kummen receives funding from BC Ministry for Children and Family Development (MCFD) and SSHRC</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Kocher works for Capilano University. Receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Land receives funding from SSHRC and Ryerson University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvia Kind works for Capilano University. Receives SSHRC research funding.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cory Jobb, Kelly-Ann MacAlpine, Meagan Montpetit, Narda Nelson, and Randa Khattar do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Canada has an opportunity to become a world leader in early childhood education. With monumental federal support, this is the time to build a sustainable and relevant early education system.Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Professor of Early Childhood Education, Western UniversityAlex Berry, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education, Western UniversityCory Jobb, PhD candidate, Curriculum Studies, Western UniversityCristina Delgado Vintimilla, Assistant professor, Early Childhood, Faculty of Education, York University, CanadaFikile Nxumalo, Assistant professor, Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoKathleen Kummen, Chair, Education and Childhood Studies, Capilano UniversityKelly-Ann MacAlpine, PhD student, Faculty of Education, Western UniversityLaurie Kocher, Associate professor, Department of Early Childhood Care and Education, Capilano UniversityMeagan Montpetit, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education, Western UniversityNarda Nelson, PhD student, Faculty of Education, Western UniversityNicole Land, Assistant professor, School of Early Childhood Studies, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityRanda Khattar, Adjunct professor; Faculty of Education, Western UniversitySylvia Kind, Associate lecturer, School of Education and Childhood Studies, Capilano UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.