Category: Uncategorised (Page 1 of 3)

Harm Reduction Health Unit

The cover page below will link you to a unit I created to teach the basics of harm reduction based substance use education in intermediate through high school classrooms. This unit is an alternative to the classic “just say no to drugs” units still offered in many schools, and is in keeping with both my ethics and the evidence on preventing deaths from toxic drug supply. The unit is just a starting place, and this is heavy content so teachers will need to be prepared to talk through the learning with students in a compassionate and patient way. Some of the questions my students had with this unit required that I slow down and work through their thinking with them. Additionally, this might be initially difficult for students to wrap their head around if they have spent many years surrounded by abstinence based substance use education, this was certainly my experience with the class this unit was created for. I am hopeful that this unit will be helpful to someone and am happy to answer any questions folks may have.

In clicking the photo, you will be linked to the unit in full.

Standard 8 – Professional Contribution

Standard 8: Educators Contribute to the Profession

Much like standard 7, I believe that standard 8 speaks to something most teachers would like to do given sufficient time for planning and reflection. As an early career educator, I feel that my ability to offer many of the things described in standard 8 (such as professional development or college instruction) is limited. However, having worked as a child and youth counselor for five years prior to this career change, I feel there is prior experience I bring to education that is worth sharing. I am lucky to work in a school that values this type of prior experience and am grateful to have colleagues who are seasoned teachers who are willing to ask my thoughts on challenges that my experience might help with. 

As my professional experience and learning as a teacher expands, it is absolutely a professional goal of mine to share that learning in more formal capacities. This could look many different ways, but in the long term I would love to contribute by educating at the college level with not just future teachers, but future EAs and school based child and youth counselors as well. I feel that when we consider how educators might contribute to the profession, collaboration and co-education with other professionals who work in schools has the potential to be invaluable, and I would love to be a part of that process.

Standard 7 – Professional Learning

For this reflection, I wanted to take some time to make a list of the types of professional learning I would like to engage in over the coming years. There is a broad range of areas that I would either like to begin to learn about or further my learning in. I think that many teachers probably similarly are curious about a wide variety of things, however it is hard to find the time to sit and reflect and I believe that in using this opportunity to do just that, I will be more likely to seek opportunities for these areas of professional learning in the future. So without further ado, my professional learning wishlist at the moment is:

  • Functional ASL for teaching deaf and non-speaking students
  • AAC (augmented and alternative communication) devices
  • Evidence based and culturally informed health education
  • Respectful incorporation of local Indigenous languages in the class setting
  • Multilingual childhood and adolescent language acquisition 
  • Play based and outdoor learning in the older grades (gr. 5 and up)
  • Gradeless classrooms
  • Student self-evaluation
  • Whole class literacy instruction in the older grades
  • Student led literacy instruction that follows the science of reading
  • Creating access to elective programs in rural communities (music, arts, metalwork, etc.)
  • Trauma informed praxis in the classroom
  • Lifeskills and sustainability instruction in the classroom
  • Community x Classroom integration
  • AI use in education

I am hopeful that in the coming years I will have the opportunity to engage in learning in some or all of these areas, either in a Pro D, workshop, or graduate capacity. There are so many directions my curiosity takes me when it comes to education, and as corny as it sounds, I truly hope to never stop seeking to learn.

Reflection on Standard 2

BC Standard for Educators 2 reads, “Educators act ethically and maintain the integrity, credibility, and reputation of the profession.” This is something we’ve reflected on many times throughout our preparation for teaching, and I find it to be one of the most complex standards to grapple with. Ethics are, by any measure, subjective. We know that the legalities of this issue are also applied unevenly, depending on location and the ethics of a community. This means that in one context or community teaching about queer and trans history could be considered highly ethical and valuable, while in another context it may be seen very differently. The same is true of critical race theory, social emotional learning, and issues of Indigenous sovereignty – all elements of my own personal ethics as an educator that are important to me. 

While it is tempting to argue that teachers who believe in these ethics should simply live in places where the community believes similarly, it is also unfair. Some of the most radical activism comes from places with the most vocal oppressors. More than that though, queer and trans kids are everywhere, white supremacy is everywhere, the mental health crisis is everywhere. And regardless of histories of genocide and displacement, wherever we go, there we are on stolen Indigenous land. It is not so simple as to leave a place, because the students being left behind deserve depth and diversity of instruction regardless of the community’s beliefs.

Truthfully, I do not have an answer for this issue. There are ways that I have stood up for my beliefs in the past that likely would not meet the ethical barometer of many communities. Despite that, I have the privilege of presenting, at least on the surface, like many teachers – I am white and a woman – my queerness, my disabilities, my political beliefs – these are mostly invisibilised by the structures that surround them. In this context that benefits me, because on first glance most parents, school administrators, and communities at large would not think twice about my suitability as a teacher. And for what it’s worth, I believe I am suitable to be a teacher. I believe that all sorts of people are suitable to be teachers and that children deserve to encounter a variety of world views presented in an honest way. And yet, I do continue to struggle with standard two, not because I believe educators shouldn’t be held to ethics and integrity, but because I question who decides how those words are defined.

Standard 6 and 9, and the BC curriculum

This year I am teaching a grade four and five class at a small band school on the northwest coast. In this context I had the opportunity for the first time to use the BC curriculum to create a full year of units and lessons. In doing this planning, I became well acquainted with the curricular “Big Ideas” for both grade levels. In particular I struggled with the ideas expressed in the social studies curricula for both grade levels, and found it difficult to reconcile these ideas with the teaching standards to which I am held – especially standards six and nine. 

BC Standard for Educators six reads, “Educators demonstrate a broad knowledge base and an understanding of areas they teach.” It goes on to describe a requirement to teach Canadian, Indigenous, and Global perspectives on the curriculum. Then, it requires that we teach about Canada’s democratic and inclusive society. The curriculum at the grade four level requires that as a big idea we teach that, “British Columbia followed a unique path in becoming a part of Canada.” At the grade five level we are required to teach that, “Canada’s policies and treatment of minority peoples have negative and positive legacies.” While these two Big Ideas exemplify the fiction of Canada’s “democratic and inclusive society,” as described in the educator’s standards, I find them to be at odds with the assertion that educators must “demonstrate a broad knowledge base and an understanding of areas they teach.” 

That is to say, I believe that anyone who has a broad knowledge base and understanding of the history of colonialism, ethnocentrism, and discrimination in BC and Canada, could not meet the requirement of demonstrating that knowledge and understanding while upholding the concept that BC followed any legitimate path in “joining” Canada as a settler nation-state. Similarly,  I believe that teaching imagined “positive outcomes” of Canada’s treatment of minority peoples reveals a shallow or incomplete knowledge of the areas we are tasked with teaching.

Further irreconcilable with these curricular ideas, is standard nine which reads, “Educators respect and value the history of First Nations, Inuit and MĂ©tis in Canada and the impact of the past on the present and the future. Educators contribute towards truth, reconciliation and healing. Educators foster a deeper understanding of ways of knowing and being, histories, and cultures of First Nations, Inuit and MĂ©tis.” If we are to respect Indigenous knowledge, culture, and by extension legal orders and sovereignty, it seems impossible to simultaneously perpetuate settler-colonial fictions of British Columbia belonging in any meaningful way to Canada, and by extension the British Crown (typically via the Royal Proclamation of 1763). In contrast to the mythology of Terra Nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery as perpetuated by the aforementioned structures and institutions, the maintained and continuous sovereignty of Indigenous nations on the land claimed by BC has been proven under legal test in court decisions including the Calder case (1967), Delgamuukw (1997), and Tsilqhot’in (2014). 

This is something I grappled with when creating my year plans, and that I suspect to grapple with for the remainder of my career. How do we meet standards that are at odds with the fictions perpetuated by curricula written within the contexts and frameworks of colonialism and ethnocentrism? Truthfully, I don’t have a great answer yet, but I hope to continue exploring it in the years to come.

Educators Value the Success of All Students – Reflecting on Standard 1

“Educators value the success of all students. Educators care for students and act in their best interests.” – Professional Standards for BC Educators, 1. 

This standard has been on my mind as I begin my work in schools and continue on my practicum journey. I am interested in the word “value” as it is used in this phrase. It is my observation that what lacks in many cases, especially in small northern communities, is not necessarily a valuing of success but rather a belief in the possibility of it. Teachers largely seem to care for and value the students in front of them, however there is a prevalent pedagogy of low expectations, particularly when it comes to disabled students and Indigenous students. 

Despite increasing traction for movements focused on meaningful inclusion, disabled students are often still othered in a way that not only devalues their success, but seems to more broadly reveal a general dehumanization. Many disabled students are not centered in their own learning, their goals and dreams are not considered (and at times it is not even acknowledged that they may have goals and dreams for themselves), and their success is secondary to the ease and success of abled and neurotypical students. This results in disabled and neurodivergent students being left to do work away from their peers, below their skill levels, and with inadequate support to facilitate growth. I should note that while individual teachers have a responsibility to disrupt this cycle, it is often a part of a larger structural void where teachers and EAs are insufficiently supported (and staffed) to facilitate the success of all students, and disabled and neurodivergent students are frequently one of the first sets of learners to be left to fail.

Indigenous students experience a similar othering on a systemic level. It has been my observation that in many schools Indigenous students are not offered a presumption of competency. One area in which this is particularly evident, is the allowance of high rates of functional illiteracy despite strong evidence that the vast majority of students are capable of learning to read. We know that low literacy rates correlate to higher incidences of incarceration, homelessness, food insecurity, and experiences of violence, yet it is seen as a natural or acceptable condition for Indigenous students. If we were to presume competency, then the onus would be on us as teachers to be effective in our teaching of reading (and on the system to provide teachers adequate resources and education to that effect). Instead, students fall through what I’d sooner call an earthquake than a crack. 

I do not mean to imply that teachers do not care about their students. I believe that on an individual level the vast majority of teachers care deeply about each young person in front of them. What I believe is lacking, is a broad understanding of the deep systems of oppression and violence that follow students through their education and color the ways we interact with students despite any care we have for them. I believe that as teachers we value the idea of success for our students, but especially when it comes to students who have been marginalized, and in this region more specifically disabled and Indigenous students, teachers must force themselves to not just value success, but to believe it is possible.

Standard 9 and Teaching about Residential Schools

The above poster was the collaborative summative evaluation generated entirely by my grade 4/5 students at the Haisla Community School. Students spent a month learning about residential schools, and the colonial and genocidal contexts in which they were created. Students discussed the ways these systems continue today, and how Indigenous communities are actively undoing the harms that were done to them. It is worth noting that almost all of my students are Indigenous and living on or near their traditional territories.

This unit was, for me, the product of significant reflection on the grade 4 curriculum, on how to appropriately teach in the lead up to orange shirt day, and on standard 9 of the Standards for Educators. I knew it was my responsibility to teach this history honestly and I was also cognizant of my positioning as a white woman standing in front of students who largely have personal intergenerational trauma as a result of the subject matter being taught.

I am particular struck by one sentence in Standard 9, which reads, “Educators contribute towards truth, reconciliation, and healing.” I felt equipped to teach the truth, and I’m not quite sure how I personally understand the word reconciliation, but contributing towards healing felt like an enormous endeavor. What I could not have anticipated was the way my students undertook that component themselves.

In their reflections on the jobs of Indigenous peoples in the word of undoing the harms of residential schools I was particularly struck that they chose to write about reclaiming joy. As they expanded on what healing looks like, they spoke of family, feasting, dancing, but also resting and playing. My students showed me in this unit that when asked, Indigenous people, even kids as young as nine and ten years old, know what is needed to heal – if they can be given a safe and supportive place to undertake that work.

All Students Have Needs

This is a post that reflects something I think about all the time in my classroom. I have been grateful to learn about this in disabled community, from disability justice activists, and from youth I’ve worked alongside. Everyone has needs. Some needs are met by dominant society (I can’t just jump through my front door, I need steps. I can’t read in the dark, I need lamps. Etc.] Disabled students often have needs that aren’t met by dominant society. This is because dominant society was built for and by primarily able bodied, neurotypical people due to the systemic exclusion and institutionalization of disabled and neurodivergent people and the prioritization of economic growth over community care.

We are not obligated to accept that as teachers. In my classroom all students have access to noise canceling headphones and earplugs. The tables are set up for easy navigation with mobility aids. Students can choose what type of seat they need. Eye contact isn’t assumed to be synonymous with attention. Verbal communication doesn’t take priority over AAC or written communication. These are small ways I disrupt the idea that some needs are special or additional.

All students have needs, and because I see teaching as community driven labour, I believe the needs of the entire community deserve to be met. Meeting these needs isn’t additional or special. It is essential.

[ID: a graphic of three people holding flags. The two people on the outside stand, the person in the middle is in a manual wheelchair. Above the picture in large letters it reads All Students Have Needs. Below that in smaller letters it reads Some needs are just already being met. Below the picture reads in even smaller letters Disabled students do not have “special” or “additional” needs]

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