Never once as I sent my 18-year-old monozygotic twins off to commuter orientation at the University of Toronto last August did I think I would be spending this August celebrating a set of achievements for one of them that was completely unrelated to the history degree he had begun pursuing a year ago. 

And yet here we are. August 2023, Prince Edward Island. A year later, in a completely different province.

As the summer draws to a close, I am prompted to reflect on what has been an intensely rich season for both me and the manchild through which I have been learning vicariously over the past several months!

Although both boys started strong at the Faculty of Arts and Science of my alma mater last fall, Twin B soon found himself uninspired by the various tenets of the somewhat nebulous degree he was pursuing. By midwinter, it was clear that his enthusiasm was continuing to wane, and so we were somewhat alarmed but not really surprised when — with summer just around the corner — there was no clear plan about what was to come next.

The situation seemed particularly dire framed in the stark contrast of his brother’s summer which was shaping up to be a hectic smorgasbord of various jobs. From local and international tour guiding, to running a summer camp at a board game café, to teaching chess part-time to elementary school kids across the city, to jumping on the bandwagon with my wife’s bike lesson side hustle, Twin A applied for an endless string of jobs, was offered most of them, and seemed to accept almost all of the jobs he was offered!

We therefore threatened Twin B that if he did not apply for more jobs and become gainfully employed for the summer soon, we would haul his ass to PEI (where I've been living for the past few years), register him for a multi-day chainsaw training course, and put him to work cleaning up Fiona damage on our property and those of other islanders.

The little bugger called our bluff: “OK, great”, he calmly replied. 

And boy, am I ever glad he did! Thanks for the generosity of time and spirit of several friends and others across the island who took him on, and a very generous partnership program between the federal government, a private nonprofit and the local college, the child has learned basic sheet metal roofing skills, knows how to safely fell a tree, can tie seven kinds of knots and climb up a wind turbine, and is excited about getting his first “man kit“ as he calls it, the toolbox gifted it to him by the program he is about to complete as I write this! Not only that, but he’s finally on the road to getting his driver’s license, and has even made some friends here on the island.

The personal emotional growth both individually and in our mother-son relationship is in itself something to be celebrated. And from an Education perspective, Twin B has turned from an uninspired, at-risk university dropout into an interested, optimistic and engaged young man and who is looking forward to continued learning and exploration of potential career path both related to his summer endeavours and in other areas. In addition to the possibility of applying to a follow-up course for the wind turbine training he’s completed, the boy has also sought out and registered for an Investigative Security college program to begin in January. 

As an educator, it is an important reminder of how valuable hands-on learning and multiple pathways are.

Although in theory I always supported college or other non-university post secondary pathways for my former students and my own children, I realize now there was an implicit bias on my part. Although I was first in my family to do so, I had gone to university, and in addition to my undergraduate degree, I hold two post-graduate degrees. So I guess I just sort of assumed my kids would do that as well. I see now that for at least one of my boys, having continued blindly into second year university would have robbed him of a wealth of experiences that are shaping him into the interesting an interested young man he is becoming. 

If you are a parent of a young person fretting about their future, realize that they really are a multitude of ways to move from school to under school, and all of them are valid. The exciting challenge for you as a parent (and for your child) is finding and/or designing the pathway or pathways that will best develop and engage the skill set and affinities of the young person in question. ​

After a bit of a hiatus from formal teaching life to move part time to another province and take on a job as a post-secondary curriculum and instructional consultant, I find myself preparing to return to the classroom.  It will be my second sojourn into teaching post-secondary, and my first time teaching in the college context.  It’s also my first time teaching primarily online. 

I‘m excited, and have been preparing to practise what I preach in terms of using and sharing clear learning goals and success criteria, triangulating (and diversifying!) assessment, and offering variety and choice in learning activities. My first sessional at Holland College will — I hope — be as engaging and practical for my students as it is for me to prepare for it!

As I work to bring to life my syllabus for Communication and Technology in the Arts, the blended course I’ll be facilitating for first-year college students in the Fundamental Arts program this September, I am struck by an interesting realization:  Once again, I‘ll be teaching the same „grade“ as my own children! 

This will actually mark the third time in my career that I‘ll be working with students who are the same age as Alex and Simon. The first time I played this game was the year I taught a Grade 3 class: At the time, my own babies were in Grade 3, too (albeit at a different school), and I often compared mental notes to see how aligned my classroom was with theirs, developmentally.  The edu-stars aligned again a few years later, when I moved from a Grade 7 & 8 Math and Science gig to Grade 6 Core… the same year Simon and Alex moved into Grade 6! And once again, I followed with interest what their respective teachers were up to and compared it to my own teaching and learning journey that year. (The boys even came to visit my students one day, as their school board and mine had different PD day schedules.)

I was recently asked in a job interview what my philosophy of education was. I am embarrassed to admit that I was caught somewhat off guard; the job was not directly a teaching job, so I had not prepared a polished, well-thought-out response like I had with some other anticipated questions.  It's embarrassing because as a life-long educator, I should have a succinct answer at my fingertips.  So I stumbled around, talking about some of the things I know to be important, but never really pulled it all together.

After the interview, I thought about this question for a long time.  I had written a philosophy of education as part of my B.Ed a hundred years ago, and revisited it about a decade ago, when I completed my principals' qualifications. I remember being pleased that -- while my thoughts had matured somewhat with age and experience -- fundamentally, I was still on the same page I had been as a beginning teacher.

However, both of these assignments were too wordy.  At approximately six pages each in length, neither my new teacher nor my aspiring edu-leader approach could be expected to hold someone's interest for very long.  And so, I set out to re-write my philosophy in a more succinct manner.

Below is the result. As a word doc, it's a single page, and can be expanded on or further synthesized as needed.

Vera's Philosophy of Education, 2022

I believe that – given the right context – all students can and will learn to a high degree.
The “right” context is not the same, necessarily, as “ideal conditions”.  It simply means that students are motivated to learn, and are engaged in the learning.  This can be orchestrated by an educator’s attention to what we know about how the brain works.  

For example, we can engage a student’s limbic system in a positive way by attending to relationships and fostering an emotionally safe and inviting physical learning environment (including the “physical virtual” environment, where relevant).
​
Getting to know our learners, and then choosing materials, tools, strategies and content that reflect their lived experiences, affinities and interests, helps to establish and maintain trust over time.  This means that students are more likely to learn, even when occasionally a topic doesn’t appeal, or the manner in which material is presented is misaligned with an individual’s learning style.  Because they have an established and trusting relationship with their teacher. 

Building in predictable structures such as agendas and overviews, regular time to share and discuss learning goals and co-create success criteria, and frequent opportunities to reflect on and consolidate learning at the end of a lesson or unit further establishes and maintains trust. Students will know what to expect, so that they can use their brains for intended learning rather than focusing on the fight or flight mode that can accompany constant uncertainty. (Engagement of frontal lobe, rather than brain stem.) That said, the occasional “fun” activity that provides opportunities purely for mental or physical play allows for novelty, which the brain also seeks and thrives on.
​
Considering Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” ensures students are intellectually challenged rather than bored… though not so much that they are overwhelmed and unable to learn.  

Building in choice for assignments and learning activities helps learners develop metacognition so that they can participate in finding “the zone” for themselves. These should include choices about where/how to work and with whom (if anyone).

Being transparent with students about why you as the teacher are doing these things further helps develop trust and motivation for students, so that they can become independent learners.  (Independence in this case means they confidently make learning choices independently, not that they necessarily work on their own all the time.)

If students appear to not be learning, I believe the teacher has a responsibility to self-examine: Rather than blaming the students, their families or the system at large, we must consider what is within our control.  More specifically, what is it about our practice, approach or the way in which we have chosen to set up the learning space that is inhibiting students from achieving excellence? Who can we call on for support as we attempt to do better?

My philosophy of education assumes the teacher as a facilitator of learning rather than an expert on everything. Continuously learning about how the brain works, and using that information to make conscious decisions about what learning to facilitate, and how to facilitate it for the various individuals whose learning we support, will help educators ensure all students can and will learn to a high standard.

I tried to make a Bitmoji classroom this weekend.  I’ve been intrigued by the incredible creativity of many educators in response to the pandemic.  Not only did they step up to try and stay connected with students this past spring, but they did their best to keep learning germane and make their “suddenly virtual” classroom engaging for students, many of whom were themselves struggling with new and difficult realities at home.

I was particularly intrigued by the way in which collective knowledge building happened, as thousands of educators across the province, country and globe jumped online and collaborated with renewed vigour. Social media was abuzz with the sharing and answering of questions day and night, as teachers and other education professionals highlighted how they were solving some of the problems the pandemic had thrust upon them and the students they supported. 

Through this largely grass roots aspect of the pandemic response movement, I began to see more and more Bitmoji classrooms pop into my stream, and I knew that was something I’d jump right into, were I still a classroom teacher.  I easily dismissed the naysayers who soon took to twitter to denounce Bitmoji classrooms (their argument is that teachers should be spending more time on concrete lesson planning, and less time on making “pretty pictures” for their online learning space).

​I know ALL about classroom set up.  This is the season when, for nearly two decades, I annually spent way too much money at Staples, Scholar’s Choice and the Dollar Store, and way too many hours in a hot, sweaty classroom, making sense of the jumble of desks, chairs and other furniture left piled on one side of the room, putting up integer lines, reference posters and bulletin board borders, setting up a cozy and inviting reading corner (hello, IKEA pillows and stuffies!)... Hell, I even got written up for it once, when a full colour photo of me standing on a desk, painting one of my bulletin boards, was published in a teacher mag and a reader got upset about the health and safety ramifications of not using a stepladder. (As an aside, have y’all SEEN the rickety old stepladders at some of these schools?  Give me a good, solid table to stand on any day!!!)

But I digress.

The point is, I understand how for many teachers, a beautiful learning space has always been a critical first step before launching into serious “first week of school” and cross curricular planning.  I remember how the rubber plant really could not wait, and yes, I really did need to have all those colour coded bins before I could even think about planning for an implementing any strategies from the three guided and independent reading books I had read earlier in the summer!!!  Because before I can do my best thinking around culturally responsive pedagogy, integrated instruction, assessment and learning, I need to know that where I spend the vast majority of my day is a visually energizing and well organized space.

I imagine that a virtual teaching and learning environment is no different.  And so, when the Bitmoji classrooms hit the Twittersphere and Instafeed, I was right there, coveting people’s colourful, creative and engaging digital classrooms!

I decided that as an experiment, and in solidarity with the many teachers who were getting ready to “return to school” in a year where the meaning of that statement was not yet entirely clear in all jurisdictions, I would imagine what my Bitmoji classroom might look like, and then build a mock up.

When I left the classroom to work at the ministry of education a few years ago, I had just been getting started with things like virtual classrooms (to supplement my in-person space and support myself and any students with frequent absences).  Collaborative online docs and digital assessment tracking were new to me, and I was frequently a resistant adopter. I was in some ways ahead of my time with the cross-board and international partnerships I forged with other educators while colleagues still dusted off the same binder of laminated lesson plans from a decade ago, but compared to the many who had already been experimenting with this stuff for years, I was (and still am) in many ways a Luddite.

So I had to do a little research.

I found lots of amazing websites explaining what to do and how to do it... if you know what some of the basic vocabulary means, and if you already have an existing Google classroom (due to my non-classroom-teacher status, I don’t).

A few that bedazzled me include:

• Hello Teacher Lady’s blog post on how to put together your Bitmoji classroom
• Glitter Meets Glue’s post with 15 amazing ideas
• Erin Integration’s amazing blog with this post on Bitmoji Classroom Scenes

Alas, I soon found myself knee deep in options and customizations, and completely overloaded with choices and challenges.

After several hours of failed attempts, I am left with no personalized Bitmoji classroom, and heaps more respect for the many educators across Ontario who are feeling the uncertainty and trepidation of heading back to school this September, and who are nevertheless somehow finding within themselves the strength and courage to prepare a warm and inviting welcome for the students they will teach this year.  We are not out of the woods yet with this pandemic and its aftermath, and these teachers on the frontlines are the ones we need to learn from and listen to.

I often reminisce about my classroom days... The neat thing about public education is that there are a tonne of jobs you can do over the span of a career, but there is no role quite so satisfying (yes, also exhausting) as that of classroom teacher. The engagement factor with students, the memories you build together as a special learning community as you co-develop the road map of your group’s learning journey together... even if you teach the same grade or subject two years in a row, every year is different as you refine your craft and respond to the unique learning opportunities of that year’s current events.

With the current health pandemic and resulting school closures, I have frequently fantasized about some of the lessons I would do with my Grade 6s... or 7s... or Grade 3/4 class... or Grade 8s.

Regardless of what I were teaching, I think this time would be one of tremendous bonding for me and my students, were I still a classroom teacher.

Here are three imaginary lessons of the many I have cooked up in my mind over the past 7 weeks. If you’re in a classroom, feel free to try them out, and let me know if I’ve still got it, or if three and a half years have made me lose touch!

1. Media Literacy Lesson Using Memes (Grades 6 and up)

If you and your students are anything like me, you’ve probably spent a good deal of time over the past two months surfing social media, and having a little chuckle of the ubiquitous COVID-related memes making the rounds. Maybe you’ve also noticed some emerging themes.

Why not use this time to draw your students’ attention to how we, as a society, use humour to cope with anxiety-inducing situations? A media literacy lesson on the surface, one could easily incorporate writing, math, oral language, social studies, art, and much more!

Here are some ideas:

• Have students collect and share memes virtually. Use a class Padlet, slide deck, google doc, whatever, and invite students to contribute 2-3 memes each that they have noticed online.
  
• Ask students to choose 10-12 memes from the class collection and sort them into 2-3 groups. What themes emerge? (Some I see most often are hair-related, food or body-image related, toilet-paper and travel)
  
• Compare the themes students notice (could lead a synchronous virtual discussion using a video conferencing platform, or post the question as a discussion thread in your online class platform and invite students to contribute over the course of a few days)
• As a class, sort ALL the memes into the categories students came up with (maybe the teacher demos this via video?)
• Have students graph the the categories in two ways (bar graph and circle graph, for example) - which themes are most common?
• Some thinking questions for students to reflect on in writing, or in a conversation with their peers online or with family at home: Why do you thinks these themes emerge most often? What do these themes tell us about what we value as a society? If we were to invite a class in a different grade or another school to collect 100 memes, do you think they would find similar themes in the memes they collect? Why or why not?
• Using an online meme generator, students could make their own memes about this time. (Brainstorm ideas for what makes a “good” meme... also a great idea to talk about copyright.) Have students collectively post their memes on a class padlet or closed Instagram account - a good laugh for the whole class, and they can share them with their families, too.

2. Mini Math Lesson (Grade 3 and up)

I noticed the following signs recently while walking along the path outside my apartment building, and thought, “if I were a classroom teacher right now, I would SOOOOOO share this with the students and get them thinking about “COVID Math” they notice while out and about for a walk in the community, or online.

According to this sign, how many feet long is a single goose? If you were going to measure the length of a grocery store line with 14 people in geese, how many geese long would that line be? (Assuming everyone is practising proper physical distancing.) In Florida, they are saying the appropriate distance is one alligator’s length. Why do you think they use alligator and Toronto uses geese? What do you think they might use (and how many of them) to visualize distance in New Zealand? Nigeria? Brazil? Why? What can you find in your home that you could use one of to measure the appropriate distance you should keep from others during this time? Two of? 5? 10?

And so on....

3. Jane’s Walk

Speaking of walks, this past weekend cities around the world celebrated Jane Jacobs’ vision of walkable urban living. Usually this consists of engaging in neighbourhood walks with a guide and a group, and discussing things like accessibility, architecture, nature and so on.

This year, Jane’s Walk organizers have had to get creative with how they encourage people to celebrate.

Here are some things I might encourage my students to do, were I still in a classroom:

• Go for a neighbourhood walk with your family. What are some interesting buildings you notice? (Pay attention to rooflines, doorways, signs, building materials and colours, etc.)
  
• Design a neighbourhood walk for a classmate to complete. Choose a theme (nature/trees, architecture, or something else you think your peer would like). Take 3-5 photos and post them, along with a description of the route, for your friend to complete.
• Imagine a family member were coming from out of town. What would you want to show them? Choose 3-5 highlights, and plan an imaginary tour, stopping at each highlight to tell a little bit about the community history of that stop, or why it’s significant to you.
• How accessible is your neighbourhood for different “walkers”? Imagine a family with a stroller, an elderly neighbour or family member, someone in a wheelchair, etc.
• What highlights would you choose to include on a neighbourhood walk that is 1 km long? 3 km? 5 km? Map your route using google maps, and post it for classmates to complete (as a class, you could notice whether people chose similar highlights for their walks of different lengths)

Teacher Reader Homework:

Choose ONE of the suggestion learning activities above. What curricular areas does it connect to? Develop a learning goal, and work with students to co-construct success criteria to describe successful achievement of that goal. The criteria can be shared with families, too, so that everyone can take turns providing descriptive feedback to students as they complete the tasks.

Use this time of school closure, focus on assessment for learning rather than evaluation.

I seldom write about work since leaving the classroom in 2016.

This is mostly because my experiences with policy documents that took 24 tedious versions before final approval are far less exciting (to me and my readers, I assume) than the awesome math lesson I planned, or the kid who said something thought-provoking in class, the hilarious note I got from a parent, or the inspired curriculum map a colleague and I made, that expertly connected 17 gazillion subject areas into one cohesive piece.

But also I don‘t really write about work anymore because I now work as a public servant, and some of my work is of a sensitive nature, and I have a professional obligation to keep my mouth shut. (Like actually. When you go to work for the public service, you have to sign an oath.)

But I had an experience the other day that reminded me of my former ignorant innocence, and how little many people actually understand about what we who are paid to serve society’s collective interests actually DO!


And so, I thought I would take a risk and attempt to write a politically neutral explanatory blog post. I know that as a classroom teacher, I would have appreciated such a thing, especially given the stress and anxiety of the current circumstances.


So, here’s hoping I do it justice.


What We Do

If you’re an educator in the field right now, you might be wondering what the heck government workers at the ministry of education have been doing for the past month. While you’re scrambling to reconnect with your students and families during this highly unusual time, what are we public servants doing to support you and those families, the public?

First of all, it‘s important to note that unlike school boards, the ministry of education does not take “march break”. So when the announcement came about a month ago that school would not resume for the first few weeks after March Break, we at the ministry knew that work was about to kick into high gear.


Systems and Structures

The public service is comprised largely of policy folks; our ministry is somewhat of an anomaly because we bring in “outsiders” (educators from the field), either through secondments or in full time positions, to inform the policy work in education. While this is generally a good thing (because it means that people who have actually worked in classrooms, schools and school boards can help to shape the policies that guides, governs and funds the work that happens in those classrooms, schools and boards), it also means that a great deal of time is spent on conversations seeking to clarify and understand.

More specifically, we former educators in the public service spend a great many hours explaining to decision makers (who most often are NOT former educators) the potential implications of certain decisions on actual children and families, based on our particular past experiences in the field.

And then we spend at least as many hours realising that our own experience does not necessarily represent all the students across Ontario‘s 72 school boards, and that learning about our colleagues’ past experiences (which differ widely depending on their former school boards) need to be taken into consideration when making decisions that will affect the whole province.

We also spend a great many hours learning about the significance and structure of the democratic process of decision making within the public service, which is supposed to be politically neutral (regardless of whether we personally chose the government elected by the people, we are called to serve the public interest by providing our best advice — grounded in research and based on our previous field experience — to that government, who then makes decisions which we are called to initiate the execution of, through the school boards, who then presumably operationalize it all through their staff at various levels, ultimately the classroom teacher).


Checks and Balances

The last point is particularly salient, because it requires a decision making process that is multi-layered. As an Education Officer, I am in many ways at the bottom of a process that involves as many as 5 or 6 levels of approvals, often across multiple branches (or departments), depending on what’s at stake. This means that a document I draft will often have 20 or more sets of eyes on it before it ever makes it up the food chain to someone with the authority to say „yes, let‘s do this“ or „no, we‘re going to move in a different direction“.

My policy colleagues, or OPS “lifers” as I lovingly refer to them, have varying degrees of skill and patience when it comes to schooling us former educators in the ins and out of said approvals process, with all its decision notes, information notes, to-through memos and other policy “stuff” that comprise the operational tools of a democratic process with built-in checks and balances for its public service.

For those of us who are former classroom teachers or principals, and who are — to be quite frank — used to closing our classroom or office doors and doing whatever the hell we want, this multi-layered approvals process seems horrifically inefficient, and it takes us a long time to realize that it is this very process that upholds the democracy within which we seek to ensure equity for all.

In other words, it‘s painful, but necessary.

I’ll be honest, for an action-oriented practitioner like me, during the current global health pandemic, this decision making process has been even more frustrating. At the same time, I have now been at this public service stuff long enough (over three years!) that I have finally learned the value of checks and balances to ensure informed decision making, and realize that, ironically, it is precisely during times like this that we need all these checks and balances, so that elected officials don‘t make highly erratic and fear-based decisions.


Democracy During COVID

For me, this past month in the public service has meant reviewing policies like Growing Success 2010 (our provincial assessment policy) and brainstorming with other former educators in the Ministry for hours and hours, to anticipate which pieces of the assessment puzzle might be affected by the current remote context, and beginning as quickly as possible to develop potential contingency plans that would preserve the integrity of the school year as best as possible while not penalizing students from Kindergarten to Grade 12, in consideration of all the various possible realities those students are currently living in, for circumstances over which they have little or no control.

While my former colleagues in school boards all had a week off for March break, and then — in many cases — two additional weeks without classroom duties, to obsess over the COVID crisis and worry about what comes next, we public servants at the Ministry of Education were busily convincing senior decision makers of the merits of one direction over another when it came to things like report cards, expected hours of engagement with students online or through other methods of communication once “school” started up again, how best to support students with special education needs, what to do about number of hours required for teacher candidates to graduate, considerations for mandatory graduation requirements like 40 hours community service, Ontario’s Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT), etc.... and a plethora of other puzzle pieces that continue to emerge almost as quickly as we can dream them up ourselves. (And all of this on top of our regular work, only some of which can realistically be set aside during this current situation.)

For a system that serves about two million students, it’s no small task.

I myself have also been involved in helping to coordinate (and in some cases deliver) some of the initial virtual support for our province’s 160 000 + teachers.

With the desire to engage partner input from Ontario’s 72 school boards and 11 school authorities and their federation representatives, the task of preparing and delivering these initial supports (webinars, teleconferences, website with resource links, etc.) within the context of a democratic public service is almost unfathomable.

Things that typically require 18 months or more to operationalize have been set in motion within a three-week turnaround.

In order to accomplish such an impossible timeline, many of us have been working 12-14 hour days and many weekends for the past month.

I remember seeing an artistic tattoo, “beautiful disaster”, in stylized lettering, on someone’s arm a few years ago. If you looked at it one way, it seemed to read “beautiful”, and from the other perspective, it seemed to say “disaster”. I was mesmerized. How could something be both disastrous and beautiful?

And yet, here we are, in the midst of a global beautiful disaster. Around the world, people are both hoarding toilet paper and volunteering to shop for the elderly and otherwise vulnerable. People are both “stuck” at home under government- or self-imposed isolation, and taking glorious “social distancing” walks in large open areas, breathing in earth’s abundance like never before. Hospitals are inundated and overwhelmed, and some of the most smog-impacted places on earth are healing and clearing up due to the reduced CO2 emissions resulting from social distancing and the (temporary?) collapse of the airline industry.

If these are not examples of “beautiful disaster”, then I don’t know what is!

As an educator long interested in the possibilities of the internet and digital tools for collaborative, global learning, I personally am intrigued to see how those who have been saying, “we can’t” and “not yet” are now jumping to “we must immediately”!

While nervous for students and their anxious parents who are waiting to see what all of this means for “public education”, I’ve also been extraordinarily inspired by the many corporations and individual educators who are developing/co-developing and/or sharing for free some of the most creative resources I have seen in a long time.

The global implications of this beautiful disaster are profound, in education as anywhere else. Earlier this week I attended a webinar put on by an Ed Tech company, on the topic of “supporting remote learning”. The panel consisted of a principal, a Kindergarten teacher and a middle school tech teacher. In the chat pod, i counted over 150 participants, from at least 11 different countries. I found out about the session from an educator I follow on social media. I’ve never met her in person.

The big themes in that session, shared by the people on the ground, were threefold: First, a reminder that teaching is a highly personal profession. For all the systemic complaints some people may express, the truth is that Teachers usually have a lot of control over what they, personally, do with students and how they do it. Second, teaching well is about relationships. Relationship with students and their families, and relationships with one’s colleagues. If and as teaching moves to online, teachers will have to leverage new and existing tools to (re)establish and maintain strong relationships with the little (and big, in secondary) friends who often have spent more time with their teachers than their parents! Finally, differentiation. “Live where they are” said one of the educators on the panel, referring to the fact that — since the middle schoolers she taught “hung out” on Instagram — that was where she was posting her lessons. This women knew her clientele!

In our excitement to contribute, there will be a lot of “stuff” that continues to be created and shared. It will be a challenge for the average person, also dealing with the personal fallout of this pandemic (possible job losses, small abode with kids and other at home, lack of resources due to panic-buying, etc.) to critically select what’s worth pursuing, and what can be relegated to background “noise”. Now, more than ever, it will be important to consider the criteria by which we choose the things we expose our children to and share with our students. The choices we make in the coming days, weeks and months will set a precedent for whatever comes next. There is no “going back to normal”.

Like never before, we have an opportunity to work together to create something new, something more beautiful than disastrous.

Here’s hoping we get it right!

A friend sent some photos tonight, from the bridge that ties PEI to the rest of Canada. The Mikmaq there are standing with their Indigenous sisters and brothers in BC, as are so many indigenous groups and their Canadian allies, across Turtle island these days.

It’s hard to know where to begin this blog post.  On the one hand, what can I possibly contribute to this story?  On the other hand, it’s important to me that others do not mistake my silence as playing accomplice to a system I have benefitted from in many ways, despite the parts of my identity that are subject to oppression within it.  Some people are saying „it’s not our business“, and yet, as a white, settler Canadian, I believe what’s happening right now is very much our business, and we have a unique opportunity to decide which side of history we will stand on. I feel empathy for those who are severely inconvenienced by the trains being canceled, but rage for white, able-bodied, cis-gender male politicians who demand that it is the protesters who should „check their privilege“, while they themselves continue to support a system that does not provide adequate living conditions for citizens from certain cultural groups, and are selective about which laws to enforce and who to shield from both laws and crimes.

And so, as a Canadian by birth, I want to blog, and I hope you will join me in my discomfort as I bumble my way through what can only be described as a difficult state of affairs in our country right now.

Over the past several weeks, I have been immersing myself in (un)learning.

Now that protests have shut down the railroads across Canada, mainstream media is finally reporting on a story that I‘d become aware of some months ago already, largely because of a promise I’d made to myself to diversify who I follow on social media.  As a result of this promise, I began to follow a white „settler“ who speaks out fiercely and courageously in favour of indigenous folks.  Through her Instagram acct, I happened upon more and more accts that were telling the story of what was unfolding in BC, on land that — as it turns out — is unceded and in fact by Canadian Law itself was never traded to Canada, and therefore technically still under Indigenous law: 22 000 square km of Wet‘suwet‘en territory is not covered by any treaty with the Canadian State, and therefore not really subject to colonial rule (or, as Trudeau likes to call it, rule of law).

Well, depending on who you ask.

To be honest, it‘s a big, complicated mess, one made more complicated by the fact that many Canadians my age are wrestling with the realization that we were taught a history growing up that not only included huge gaps, but also potentially downright untruths.  Incorrect facts.  Corporate lies designed to keep up the myth of the colonialist state of Canada, along with its system of oppression for anyone who might interfere with the machine‘s path forward. So for some of us, it‘s a long, messy road to understanding the various salient details and diverse perspectives that contribute to (or in some cases actively hide) „The Truth“!

As those of us who avail ourselves of the opportunity to unlearn those lies re-educate ourselves through the images and text freely available through an increasing variety of social media and other outlets, we are shocked and appalled at what is unfolding here in our diverse and „inclusive“ country.

We shouldn‘t be shocked, however.  Oppression, as I am learning, is not new in Canada.

While I have known bits and pieces of our „not like in the US“ sham of a history, as 2020 unfolds, I am learning more.  And the details are disturbing.

White people and other „settler“ Canadians: If you haven‘t already done so, I urge you to pick up a copy of Desmond Cole‘s „The Skin We’re In“.  It‘s a must read for any Canadian.  Affirming for Black and Indigenous Canadians, and an important wake up call for those of us who are not.

The challenge is what to do once you know.  Because see, if you do nothing, then you‘re implicated. 

So I‘ve been reaching out to the few indigenous folks I know.  (The photos above are from a passage about people of colour generally, and black people in particular.  But Cole draws lots of connections to the plight of Indigenous people in Canada, and spends a full chapter specifically on that topic.)

Dinner last night with a student pilot friend who is studying at a school located on reserve here in Ontario yielded a reminder that even today, post-secondary institutions of knowledge - if they are geared toward First Nations - may not enjoy the clean water that most of us take for granted when we turn on the tap at home.  Yes, in this day and age in a „first world country“, her school has to provide bottled drinking water, and the poor woman has to shower in toxic stew while she studies here for four years!!!

My general message of support to a friend on PEI, my beloved east coast island, yielded in return a text with photos of the blockade she‘s supporting at the bridge. Confederation Bridge.  Named for something that most Canadians would think of as a unifying symbol.  And yet, we spend millions on bridges and pipelines while indigenous women are disproportionally sexually assaulted, kidnapped and murdered, while many of Canada‘s indigenous population continue to be relegated to insufficient, out of the way reserves with no access to clean drinking water, with crumbling or no schools past elementary, while indigenous people continue to be disproportionately represented in data on unemployment, illiteracy and incarceration. How can we then consider ourselves a „unified“ nation?!

We righteously shake our fists at the injustices we read about around the world, and write cheques to support poor children across the globe, while turning a blind eye to the systemic injustice and careful brainwashing and bias-building our own tax dollars support right here at home!

While the mainstream media is beginning to report on the uprising that has been building now for some months, they are careful to include nice, clean photos of protests, rather than the blood on the snow and heavily armed RCMP with guns in peaceful protester‘s faces that are captured in the photos from people actually on the front lines.

While articles like this one offer a good primer for those still new to the topic, they - like my history classes in elementary school - include lots of gaps! I therefore urge my fellow settler Canadians to check out websites like  Unist‘ot‘en  and It’s Going Down, and follow accts like @gidimten_checkpoint, @decolonizemyself and @settle_in_settlers in Instagram to get a more fulsome picture of what’s actually happening.

I‘ve recently started reposting accts mentioned above to my IG stories, and I worry a little that my friends, family and colleagues might be a little annoyed by the abundance of activism and protest posts. Or perhaps at best, just swipe through.  But I am pleasantly surprised by the refreshing and authentic messages I‘ve been receiving over the past few days, like the one below:

The amount of resistance that even the most activist social justice minded folks among us feel is not to be underestimated. Apart from the usual general apathy and unwillingness to give up our unearned privilege and inconvenience ourselves (and yes, I include myself in this!), there is the more altruistic grief, in a sense, of possibly losing the concept of Canada as this inclusive, diversity minded, hopeful social experiment, for those of us who consider ourselves pretty patriotic (again, me too - I sometimes cry when I hear a particularly moving rendition of our national anthem!)

When matriarchs burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation to be dead earlier this week, a piece of me died inside.  While many settler Canadians had not yet heard about it (it happened a day or two before the mainstream media picked up this story), those of us who had been following from afar already knew that we were entering a new reality, one which could not be navigated by simply rattling off the obligatory land recognition at the beginning of big, important meetings.

There is no going back.

Reconciliation as an official political policy may be dead, but I am hopeful that in this new age of instantaneous information sharing informed by an openness of some Canadians to a new (old!) way of being together, we can forge a new path forward.

Capital R Reconciliation may be dead, but reconciliation as a concept isn‘t. It‘s going to take a shit tonne of work and patience on all sides, especially as we bring along new supporters and gently but firmly leave behind those who refuse to be re-educated. But I am cautiously optimistic that if the Indigenous who continue to protect the important things on this land will also continue to teach those of us who want to be allies, and if we are willing to do the hard work, then there CAN be a beautiful new way ahead, together.

Who‘s in?