Experiences with Anti-Racist Teaching
My Context
I completed my teaching practicums in Grassland Public Schools. Grasslands makes up the public schools of several rural towns in Southern Alberta, with its head office located in Brooks. I have taught in two elementary schools in Brooks and Tilley School in Tilley. Brooks, especially, has unique racial demographics. Being located in Southern Alberta, a large portion of the population is made up of white farming families. The city is also home to the JBS meat packing plantation which employs a large population of immigrants, many from Africa and Philippines. This creates a mixed population of white students from a farming context, African Muslim students, and Filipino students, with a mix of other national and ethnic backgrounds. This unique student population is combined with a vast majority of white staff. This ethnic imbalance between students and teachers opened my eyes to the fact that many students of colour are not represented racially by those whose job it is to educate them. If these students are not represented, how can they feel safe and secure in the classroom and thus optimize their learning? The answer is that white educators need to educate ourselves.
I completed my teaching practicums in Grassland Public Schools. Grasslands makes up the public schools of several rural towns in Southern Alberta, with its head office located in Brooks. I have taught in two elementary schools in Brooks and Tilley School in Tilley. Brooks, especially, has unique racial demographics. Being located in Southern Alberta, a large portion of the population is made up of white farming families. The city is also home to the JBS meat packing plantation which employs a large population of immigrants, many from Africa and Philippines. This creates a mixed population of white students from a farming context, African Muslim students, and Filipino students, with a mix of other national and ethnic backgrounds. This unique student population is combined with a vast majority of white staff. This ethnic imbalance between students and teachers opened my eyes to the fact that many students of colour are not represented racially by those whose job it is to educate them. If these students are not represented, how can they feel safe and secure in the classroom and thus optimize their learning? The answer is that white educators need to educate ourselves.
Navigating the English Language Learning (ELL) Classroom
My PS1 experience was at Griffin Park School in Brooks, AB. Griffin Park serves a large population of new Canadians, and therefore requires a lot of support for ELL students. I had the opportunity to be placed in an ELL pullout classroom. The way this works is that from each grade level, a handful of ELL coded students who were identified as needing extra language learning support would come to my teacher advisor's class for a half hour period each day. Students would come with their grade level peers, meaning that my TA and I got to see students in grades 1 through 6 at different time throughout the day. My approach to anti-racist teaching in this context was to approach my students with an open and empathetic heart. I attempted to be understanding of their needs and the gaps in their cultural knowledge within the Canadian context. I also opened up opportunities for students to share about their culture and context. One example of this was a lesson on holidays when each grade one student shared the holidays celebrated in their home and the unique traditions that accompany these. I also attempted to be aware of cultural barriers for students - in some cases this meant food. A large population of my students were Muslim. Knowing this, whenever I brought in snacks for students I made sure to "certify" these treats as halal. Being able to announce with certainty to my students that the classroom treats were halal brought them joy. Simply because they knew that their teacher had done the research to recognize their needs and made an effort to meet those. This was not a difficult task, as I made cookies and only had to make sure I didn't include any items that contained gelatin. Sometimes anti-racist teaching is as simple as bringing in cookies for the class |
A Multicultural Lens Without Multiculturalism
My PS2 placement was in Tilley, AB. Tilley is a small town with a K-9 school which brings in roughly 100 students each year. Tilley School is home to the Tilley Hockey Academy, meaning many students attend this school for the purpose of playing hockey. Being a rural Southern Albertan school, many of the students come from Mennonite families. Without any sugar coating, this is a very white school. In my grade 5/6 class of about twenty-five students, three of them were not white. After my overwhelmingly multicultural PS1 experience, this was a culture shock for me. I was suddenly faced with the questions of "how do I make these three kids feel seen without alienating the rest of the class?" The answer came to me surprisingly quickly, as I realized that the peers of these three students had nothing to lose from a multicultural lens to their education. White students need to learn about diverse cultures and the unique experiences faced by people of colour. I realized also, that being people of colour in a rural, overwhelmingly white community, these students most likely felt alienated the vast majority of the time. It was my duty to make them feel seen and heard in the classroom and if it made their white peers uncomfortable at times, that was simply an unavoidable consequence of gaining a wholly necessary anti-racist education. White teachers and students alike need to feel uncomfortable at times if we can hope to be allies to teachers and students of colour.
My PS2 placement was in Tilley, AB. Tilley is a small town with a K-9 school which brings in roughly 100 students each year. Tilley School is home to the Tilley Hockey Academy, meaning many students attend this school for the purpose of playing hockey. Being a rural Southern Albertan school, many of the students come from Mennonite families. Without any sugar coating, this is a very white school. In my grade 5/6 class of about twenty-five students, three of them were not white. After my overwhelmingly multicultural PS1 experience, this was a culture shock for me. I was suddenly faced with the questions of "how do I make these three kids feel seen without alienating the rest of the class?" The answer came to me surprisingly quickly, as I realized that the peers of these three students had nothing to lose from a multicultural lens to their education. White students need to learn about diverse cultures and the unique experiences faced by people of colour. I realized also, that being people of colour in a rural, overwhelmingly white community, these students most likely felt alienated the vast majority of the time. It was my duty to make them feel seen and heard in the classroom and if it made their white peers uncomfortable at times, that was simply an unavoidable consequence of gaining a wholly necessary anti-racist education. White teachers and students alike need to feel uncomfortable at times if we can hope to be allies to teachers and students of colour.
Implicit Anti-Racist Teaching
When I met with my teacher mentor before beginning my PS3 placement, I was overjoyed when she asked me to teach a novel study unit on the book Underground to Canada. This was all about diversity and fighting against institutional racism - kind of content I live for. However, I felt my heart catch in my throat when she told me "the n-word is used quite often in this book". I glanced over her classroom in front of me, how was I going to teach a book like this to a room full of 10-year-olds, especially those four black students who unavoidably stood out among their light-skinned peers? I went home that day and went right to university library website and began pouring over articles that covered strategies for teaching black students about slavery. My biggest realization was that I wasn't allowed to be afraid of this topic, I wasn't allowed to shy away from it, I had to approach it with my students head-on and I had to do it with an element of vulnerability and humbleness. For my non-black students, I needed to have the confidence to make them understand the seriousness of the topic. For my black students, I needed to enter the classroom with an open-mind. I needed to be ready to listen to them, to feel empathy for them, to be their teacher but also to be willing to learn from their experiences - experiences which I will never come close to having because of the colour of my skin. On my very first day of teaching these students I delivered a lesson on the historical and contemporary uses and implications of the n-word. We discussed why this word came to be and why it is a horrible word to use, we discussed the reason that this word is used with a much different meaning among black communities, and we set very clear rules stating that this word was not to be used in the classroom under any circumstances. For my non-black students, I demonstrated that this word is harmful and that there is never an excuse to say it, I completed the first step in showing them that there is no room for racism in this classroom. For my black students, I demonstrated that I was ready to listen to them and to see them, I took a step toward gaining their trust - showing them that I would not tolerate racism in my class, and that I understood the continuing harm of racism today. This unit was a complete success in my eyes, as it was full of developing understanding of the history of racism and conversations about white guilt and the heartache of experiencing racism. |