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?

With all the commentary on toxic masculinity and patriarchal resentment in the media these days, I thought I’d weigh in it with my own perspective on the topic, from an aviation standpoint.

I recently read a comment on an Instagram photo posted by a male pilot, which applauded his misogynistic stance, and ridiculed the hashtag “girlpilots” that women in aviation sometimes use when posting aviation related photos to Instagram or other social media. What surprised me about the support of comment was that it had been written by another female pilot!

It reminded me of a story I heard not too long ago, from the leader of a women’s support group at a regional airline, about how some female pilots were quite resistant to joining said support group. It seemed as though they didn’t want to be treated any differently from their male peers, she noted, and they resented the spotlight being shone on them as women in a non-traditional Aviation role. They had fought so hard to get where they had gotten, they were afraid, almost, to discuss this reality with their female peers, and just wanted to be seen as “one of the boys”.

But we #GirlPilots are NOT like the boys we often have to fly with!

It’s not uncommon, even in 2018, for female pilots to be harassed either directly (think derogatory comments or inappropriate touching by male captains to female first officers) and indirectly (where “the boys“ make sexually inappropriate, jocular comments about the women they share the cockpit with, not knowing that those comments may be overheard by their female colleagues or males not comfortable with this sort of toxic masculinity.)

As I heard first-hand at a dinner celebrating the accomplishments of women in aviation the other night, this sort of nonsense still happens frequently. But rarely if ever the other way around. (Seriously, aviation friends, when was the last time you heard a female captain discussing with her peers the size of her first officer’s cock, and how that must’ve played a role in his getting hired?! Actually, let’s just leave it at the first part, when was the last time you heard a female captain? Case in point!)

The aviation and aerospace industry is still stacked strongly against women. 50% of the human population is represented in only 6% of most airline cockpits, and this imbalanced percentage is often reflected in other non-traditional aviation roles as well: aviation engineers, mechanics, flight instructors, rampies, etc.... Not surprisingly, it’s even lower for women of colour or other intersecting identities.

Having being a student pilot in a flight school overrun by disrespectful ground school peers and male instructors who were clueless at best and in some cases downright misogynistic, I know I’m not the only one who chose not to plow through that minefield and continue on to a career in the field of aviation once I finally earned my coveted PPL. There are only so many sexist “jokes” and comments you can take with a smile and and apparently nonchalant come back before wanting to poke your eyeballs out with hot skewers rather than go back voluntarily for more, just so that you can fly an airplane!

No, I stuck with my nice, safe, gender-appropriate profession (I’m a public educator with more than 20 years of teaching experience, surrounded largely by women)!

I can’t believe that all men are naturally misogynistic pigs, though. In fact, among the many examples of jerks I had to put up with while earning my PPL, were some shining examples of decent human beings. Young men who were doing their best to just teach flying and earn some hours so that they could go fly bigger planes. And I’ve seen enough very young boys to know that – – no matter how early the dangerous socialization begins – – humanity grows up with the potential to be nurturing, caring, fair and equitable, regardless of their sex.

Gender socialization, and the promotion of “strong men“/boys who don’t cry, and who discard femininity as worthless, is taught. It’s taught by the adults – – men and women – – that surround a young child. And its effects are so powerful, that many women themselves believe, albeit sometime subconsciously, that they are the inferior sex.

Personally, when I post an aviation related photo of myself, I often use #GirlPilot, not to show off, but rather to find my sisterhood. As a student pilot, I endured plenty of horse shit from the boys I had to deal with along the way, and although I did not make flying a career, I can imagine that with the industry average standing at just 6%, most fellow #GirlPilots who also happen to be #CommercialPilots are not likely to find that sisterhood among their immediate collegial circle!! So when I click the hashtag after I post, I’m immediately virtually surrounded by other girls who – – like me – – swam through the sea of toxic masculinity and patriarchal resentment, and earned their stripes!

It’s exciting and encouraging.

I saw another post on Instagram recently, too. It was a photograph of a young boy holding a sign. The second “boys“ in “boys will be boys“ had been crossed out and replaced with “good humans”.

Imagine a world where the approximately 50% of the population that identifies as male is not feared, despised and/or disrespected by the other 50%, but rather revered and respected, because they are decent humans who in turn revere and respect as valuable and necessary their female fellow humans, rather than seeing the as worthless pawns provided by some great deity for their personal sexual enjoyment, whether in aviation, or in any field. Imagine if a man‘s power came from his choice to be decent, kind and respectful, rather than to oppress.

In such a world, perhaps some of us would no longer feel the need to hashtag our aviation posts with #GirlPilot because we could just be #Pilots.

I am appalled at the mediocrity of my writing.  Once inspired, and at times even funny, my blog posts have become average at best, mundane in actuality.

Even the quagmire of mediocrity through which they wade is a sham, the tired if apt phrase stolen from other writers, me being too uninspired to craft my own unique insult with which to describe my miserable work of late!

Why, tho?

It used to be the case, when I was swamped with students and the endless marking, lesson planning and social problem solving that accompanied them, that I felt constantly inspired.  Exhausted, yet excited about my work, I was frequently eager and somehow found the time and energy to share my various classroom experiments. 

The world before and after school also seemed more blog-worthy, somehow, and the words found themselves more readily in my mind, and worked their way more effortlessly onto the keyboard where they danced together to form ideas reasonably worth crafting so that others, too, could be inspired while reading.

Whereas I used to easily spin out a blog post several times a week, I am hard pressed now to find the time or inclination to write and post something more than once a month at best.

Is it because I am no longer a classroom teacher, then, that I feel a loss of material worth writing about?  How so?  The world has not changed so much as my place in it... surely even if I feel my contributions are less directly valuable than they once were, there is still inspiration to be found in the world outside of work...?

Or has the world changed, and is that the cause of my inertia? 

One thing I have noticed is the sheer abundance that colleagues and strangers produce: Before the age of twitter, instagram and facebook, before snapchat was ubiquitous, before in order for something to count, it had to have three hashtags and at least 250 likes, before followers were virtual and strangers were "friends", back at the dawn of the internet, when I was one of the few teachers in this country who had a blog, and by the very virtue of its existence, I was considered tech savvy (ha, ha, ha!) and my colleagues and students thought I was famous (tee hee), it was easy to get motivated to write.  Without competition, I felt the urge to get out there and self-publish!  Teachers needed me!  My dashboard showed they were searching critically important key words on my blog, and I had so much more to tell them about those themes and ideas!

But now, now there are a hundred thousand plus people who can say it better, with greater clarity, and with more awesome photos than I can. 

It seems as though every educator has a blog, a TPT acct and a social media following that rivals the Kardashians.  What can I say that hasn't already been said, and with greater eloquence and more recency?  And not just about teaching -- so what if I went to Cuba and spent two days off-resort with my kids?  A gazillion other travelers have beat me to it, and described it with breathtaking verbal imagery and panache. My recently-begun Salsa class is also nothing to blog about -- unless people are interested in a blog post about two left feet.  (And even that has been done and overdone.) So what if I periodically fly airplanes? #girlswhofly has 12 656 posts on IG. Even #queerparenting has over 1000, and I can tell by the pics that those parents are better looking, healthier, cooler and happier, and that their kids are all way more well-adjusted than ours!!!

It feels like I have nothing to offer the world, and that everyone out there on the internetz has me beat in every category.

My kids are becoming teenagers, but I'm the one suffering the adolescent existential crisis!

The superfluous content with which the world seems virtually stuffed, and the speed with which the it produces said content, is overwhelming.  To be honest, the pace at which I feel called to keep moving makes me question my ability to discern quality and authenticity in any form of content -- mine or others!  And I find myself not only lacking the inspiration to write, but often also the mental and emotional energy to participate at all.

If I stop to think about it, I have to wonder whether my writing, once a hallmark of my skill and imagination, has been replaced with other forms of creativity. Perhaps my ability to orchestrate six people's summer plans harmoniously across two or three households, or to coordinate a group of educators and policy makers by leading from behind is less public and glamorous than a well written blog post once a week but equally impressive and important.

But I sure would like a way to continue to develop these new skills while simultaneously growing as a writer. 

Perhaps a mindfulness exercise I will endeavor to undertake will be to notice small things worth writing about, and then to capture them in a few words.  Longer than a tweet, but shorter than the diatribes I used to write. A focused lens, an appetizer rather than a meal, a verbal salad.

Stay tuned.

Not long ago, a colleague of mine came back from a workshop and shared with me an image she had seen.
​
“I have something to show you!” she gasped, almost breathless with excitement.  “I know how much you love equity, and I think you’ll really like this.”

The image she showed me served as a stark reminder of the long road ahead of us.

While I have nothing against this image as a starting point for engaging the blissfully ignorant in a conversation about equity vs. equality, her excitement in thinking she had uncovered something new to share with me made me realize how naive I had been, in terms of people’s general exposure to many of the concepts I take for granted.

While my colleague was engaging with the fence image for the first time, I had moved on to reading articles like this one, that challenge its limitations.

A Literal Interpretation

For a long time, I’d been struggling with the fact that proponents of the fence image seemed to be implying that anyone should be able to see a professional sports game for free (yes, literally)... And while I myself am not much of a sports fanatic, I was wrestling with the concept of implying that we (or some) should not have to pay to watch a professional performance.

Yes, yes, I know that in general professional players in sports are HUGELY overpaid in the larger scheme of things -- but apply the analogy to a arts performance then, dance, or a group of local musicians… how are people supposed to make a living if everyone should just get to enjoy their talents for free?!

Making Space for Everyone

Around the same time as I was wrestling with this conundrum, I’d been reviewing a monograph on culturally responsive pedagogy, which included a quote by George Dei:

(It’s also quoted in Ontario’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, btw.)

At the time, it seemed like a nicey-nice, lofty statement. Lately, though, I’ve been meditating on it a lot.

What does it mean, exactly, to make a new space?  I mean, why wouldn’t we want to bring people into our great space that already exists?  Don’t we want “them” to have access to “our” sporting (arts, etc.) events?

It’s what I’d been trying to do for most of my career, open access for the students I taught (“them”) who might not have typically had access to the variety of resources and opportunities that I do.

And yet, if I examine the way my own classrooms unfolded over the two decades I taught, I am beginning to realize that together with the students in my care, I did in fact increasingly create new structures, systems and spaces.  Any remaining barriers (class size, lack of thinking and planning time, access to reliable wifi or digital devices and other resources, etc.) were products of the larger system, over which I had only limited control. (More on that later.)

Relinquishing Power

Creating a new space together with the students meant that as the person in the classroom on whom power and privilege had been conferred, I the teacher had to make way for the kids to develop some power, some real power.

It meant that when a colleague and I began exploring the concept of centres as a way to teach math with my Grade 7 and 8 math classes a few years ago, we asked for feedback… and then listened to that (often brutally honest!) feedback the students provided, and modified our approach.

It also meant that the following year, when we started a social studies based, cross-curricular inquiry together in Grade 6, and some of the students wanted to move in a direction with their learning that I had not envisioned, I had to give them the freedom to follow that learning, and support THEIR learning from the side rather than demand from the front what I thought it should be all about.

In my experience, Middle school students who have been raised in fairly traditional classrooms have become very “comfortable” (complacent?) with their lot. While perhaps unfulfilled and possibly bored, they generally do what they are supposed to -- including acting out and “misbehaving” in ways that are expected -- perhaps because they don’t know any other way.  They’re like prisoners who have lost their scope for the imagination of any better reality!

So when you introduce a new way of doing business (“You can write about it or show me by taking a picture of your work and recording a verbal explanation”, or “will you choose to work on your own today, or with a partner?”, or “are you ready to come and talk with me about your assignment, or do you want to get some feedback from your group first?”) middle school students (and heck, even adults!) can get very antsy.

They’re not used to being treated like capable, competent people with potential!

​They’re not sure what to do with the freedom and the ability, nay, the provocation, to think!  This is hard work, they realize, this participating fully in my learning....  And at first, they rebel.

Using the structure of a classroom circle early and often as we got to know one another as co-learners helped… as did regular read-alouds (yes, middle school kids still love a good read-aloud, especially when Ms. Teschow cries at the sad parts, as she notoriously does!!) 
​ 
Surfacing challenges, discussing and sharing people’s feelings and behaviours openly, honestly and matter-of-factly, and sharing ideas for next steps helped -- in my experience -- to validate all members of the class.  (As an added bonus, our regular community circles really built their learning skills and work habits, and helped me get to know kids more personally, which was a huge bonus come report card writing time!!)

Eventually, fear at this “new” way anxiety was replaced with pride and commitment.  Pride their classroom family, and commitment to working hard (both academically and socially) for the benefit of all.

Discomfort was replaced with safety, and students flourished, even the most “unlikely” learners!

Scalability

Now, after 18 years in the field, I’ve become part of that larger system I mentioned earlier, the one that sets up barriers that directly impact kids in classrooms… and I still only have limited control!  (I thought working at the ministry of magic would enable me to change the world in six months or less -- ha!)

But while the systemic work is different than I thought it would be, and the workplace MUCH larger than I had imagined, the need to co-create new space together exists here as anywhere. Systems and structures that worked at some point in history for some group(s) of people are being challenged as new technologies disrupt the status quo and allow (and indeed encourage) an increasing diversity of voices in the workplace.

I’m interested how those in power in this large system approach their leadership role.

I’ve observed that some try to include by bringing people into an existing culture.  Others actively seek out newcomers that will help to shape a new space, a space where everyone is welcome, even if it means that they (the leader) will need to rethink their pre-existing assumptions. Still others speak of making space, but are reluctant to relinquish the comforts afforded to them for so long by their positions of privilege and power.

​So, I went to plastic surgeon for the first time today… No, I'm not having a nose job or breast augmentation done. I wanted an educated opinion on the progress of my burn, which is three months and two days old today, and my GP thought this would be a better referral than the burn clinic at Sunnybrook.

I'm not particularly concerned about the cosmetics of my slow healing burn; it's more the incessant itching and ongoing redness in a few remaining patches that I've been feeling worried about these past months. 

I have to confess, I held some bias against plastic surgeons; I just assumed that all they dealt with was cosmetic surgery, or that at least mostly that was what their work encompassed. As it turns out, they actually know quite a lot about skin, and about burns in particular, go figure!

For the first time since the day I poured hot water all over myself like an idiot at the office, I actually felt like I was talking to someone who knew what they were talking about.  Instead of desperately searching the Internet for answers, I was able to have an informed conversation with someone in the know.

Granted, the surgeon himself was rather a handsome man (all natural?  I didn't ask!), but he really knew his stuff, as did his student doctor.  I was able to ask my million questions with confidence, and have my fears alleviated in under an hour, all courtesy of OHIP!

The itchiness, it turns out, is unfortunately quite common with deeper burns, and can last six months or more.  It's one of the biggest challenges for burn victims, after the emotional stuff. An antihistamine was recommended. 

The good news is that all my self-care and witch-doctoring in the early months seems to have paid off, and my wound was continuing to "heal well", according to both student and resident. The reason for the dryness, apparently, is that oil secretion glands were damaged.  These take some time to heal.  Use creme, they said.  Any kinds, they said.  Bio-oil is good, they said.  Massage helps too, they said.  press hard.

The best news?  I can go swimming in Cuba next week.  Ocean and pool!  Just keep it out of the sun, they told me.

​I already knew that.