“DIVERSITY IS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENT”

FROM JUNE 2021 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

Toronto’s schools are steeped in colonial attitudes, and Black students are paying the price. But educators and advocacy groups are working to change the ways schools work to better serve racialized students

Few Torontonians face the impacts of colonialism more than racialized and particularly Black students. From a young age, they don’t see themselves reflected in their own classrooms, in everything from the history books that hang heavy on their shoulders to the national holidays they delight at taking off.

That is largely because the curriculum followed by much of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is Eurocentric, meaning it was formulated for a very specific and white demographic, to the detriment of Black students.

“Diversity is the minimum requirement,” explains Kearie Daniel, co-founder of Parents of Black Children (PoBC), an advocacy group that is working to tackle anti-Black racism in school boards across Ontario. “What we are looking for is inclusion and a dismantling of colonialism. If you have teachers giving students an assignment where they have to imagine themselves as Europeans and identify the pros and cons of ‘discovering’ Canada in 2021, we are doing something drastically wrong. We need to incorporate the experiences of Indigenous, Black and other racialized groups in textbooks – from their perspective.”

To get there, here are some examples of how educators are working to build a curriculum for all the students in the classroom.

Installing an identity-based curriculum

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO), a union representing teachers and education professionals, has taken the lead in fostering conversations on promoting progressive social-justice values in the classroom. It accomplished this by developing its own multi-year action plan called the 365 Black Canadian Curriculum, which centres the issues, voices and perspectives of Black lives; honours the work of Black Canadians throughout history; recognizes and addresses the complexities, diversities and inequities facing Black communities; and recognizes that slavery and segregation were practised in Canada, while also highlighting resistance to this oppression.

According to a spokesperson for the group, “Using both a culturally relevant and responsive approach allows students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum. It creates a space that allows them to ask questions about themselves and their ancestors, and engages the whole learner; it is no longer outside of themselves. It also builds understanding for contemporary challenges in society and engages learners as agents of change.”

Recognizing anti-Black racism in the system

Black students have a dropout rate that is twice that of white students, while their graduation rate is 15 percentage points below white students’. Black students are also more than twice as likely as white students to be suspended at least once during high school. This is why many educators believe an intentional approach is essential to not only rebuild the curriculum but dismantle anti-Black racism at the root of the system.

The ETFO, for example, supports the work of addressing and challenging anti-Black racism through the 365 Black Canadian Curriculum, which has been used by many educators across the province in public and private schools, including in the Toronto District School Board and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. The organization also offers initiatives that support members through Black and racialized leadership programs, anti-oppressive education and curriculum-focused resources.

Parents of Black Children has even developed an anti-Black racism reporting tool to create a safe space for sharing the inequities students are often exposed to. “We know there are educators intent on teaching through an anti-racist lens,” says Daniel. “We also know that often when they do, they receive pushback, or face barriers to [being promoted].”

This tool has been used by educators, who frequently offer to volunteer with the organization. PoBC’s other support services, including education system navigation and mentorship programs, are being used by parents from Toronto to Halifax.

Assessing mental health needs

The Ministry of Education, social work agencies and Toronto District Secondary Schools (TDSS) – an umbrella term for all of the schools that fall under this partnership – are working together to provide marginalized students dedicated spaces to learn, despite the circumstances in their lives that have made it difficult for them to attend traditional schooling. The program is designed to help students in need of care (those in hospitals, or young mothers), undergoing treatment (in child/youth mental health centres) or in the corrections system (in open detention/custody). Agencies provide mental health support and the TDSB provides academic support in an effort to help students eventually return to a traditional school or community setting.

So if a child has cancer and is receiving treatment, a teacher can come to their bedside. Or if the student is a young mother in need of childcare, she can attend a class at the non-profit Humewood House, where she is also provided with other supports, including meals, therapy, financial aid and childcare.

“We’re creating our classroom settings based on student voices,” explains Jessie Bhana, a teacher at the TDSS who is currently working at Humewood House. “Because we know that Black and Indigenous students are pushed out of school at higher rates and don’t have safe spaces to go to. And so while we’re building the curriculum, we’re building that rapport with our students, too.”

Michael Gibson, who is also a TDSS teacher, and is currently working at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) while training teachers on anti-Black racism. He says that destreaming is a key way the school is working toward decolonizing the system.

“Forty-nine per cent of Black boys in the TDSB do not graduate high school, and when we dig into the data, we also see those same Black boys are being suspended early, and they’re being streamed [placed in locally developed, applied programs] for their behaviour,” he says. “What has put them in that position are systemic racist barriers. So now there’s no longer going to be an applied program [at TDSS]. This is because, over the last 18 to 24 months, the world has shifted, and the board has seen [streaming] as a systemic barrier that is affecting non-white students in a really negative way.”

Incorporating diverse faculty and fostering unique skills

When she joined the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCADU) in 2016, Dr. Dori Tunstall became the world’s first Black dean of a design school. A key part of her role was de-colonizing the institution and creating space for Black, Indigenous and other marginalized communities.

One way of accomplishing this has been by hiring a more diverse faculty, which more accurately represents the student body and can help foster skills through a shared lens. For example, together, Black students, alumni and faculty created the Black Youth Design Initiative, which keeps youth interested in the creative process while having them build solutions to problems they face in the world as Black individuals.

Tunstall calls this outreach “intervention points,” as she and her team step in before students can become discouraged or face the impact of a school system that has not been designed with their futures in mind.

“At age eight, Black youth are already getting discouraged from drawing,” she says, explaining that arts programs can be both geographically and financially inaccessible; the artists and storytellers students learn about in school – like the Group of Seven, or Shakespeare – are rarely from diverse backgrounds, and public school resources are often too minimal and narrow to keep youth engaged. “So how do we keep them interested in our academic subjects? How do we create a summer program around that really vulnerable time of Grade 7 and 8 when institutional pressures begin to negatively affect their performance? How do we create structures of mentorship and community that keep them engaged in learning, and with design as the vehicle by which to do that? This initiative is really the collective mapping of what our students and faculty said needs to happen in order to bring in a long-term sustainable intergenerational pipeline of people.”

Eliminating standardized testing

Last year, Ontario’s Ministry of Education announced an investment of $200 million over four years to improve Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) math scores in elementary schools.

But in a 2020 Review of Education article, Ardavan Eizadirad, assistant professor of education at Wilfrid Laurier University, argues, “There is a hidden curriculum in school work that reproduces social class.”

In his research, Eizadirad has found that racialized students are the most impacted by EQAO tests – mandated in Grades 3, 6 and 9 – and often develop socio-emotional stress and anxiety around completing them.

“Standardized testing doesn’t have the flexibility and adaptability to meet the different needs of students. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning,” explains Eizadirad. “A place-based approach, which aligns with the needs of students is important, but also the needs of a community, because we know different communities are impacted by systemic issues from violence, poverty and lack of access to opportunities. But a standardized test does not take those things into consideration. It judges kids on a very individualistic equality-based approach when what we actually need is more of an equity-based approach.”

What that means is more longterm work, building relationships between parents, teachers and students, factoring in mental health and closing “the opportunity gap” by providing experiential opportunities for all students, because a truly good education depends on fair conditions.