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EXPLORING MY ―UNFINISHED‖ SELF: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO THE LIFE OF
AN EDUCATIONAL ACTIVIST
by
Jill Catherine Goodreau
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Masters of Arts
Graduate Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Jill Catherine Goodreau 2011
ii
EXPLORING MY “UNFINISHED” SELF: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO THE LIFE
OF AN EDUCATIONAL ACTIVIST
Master of Arts 2011
Jill Catherine Goodreau
Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education
University of Toronto
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to explore tensions and themes that have influenced my
activist identity. Drawing on theories of reflective practice, self study and autoethnography I use
a narrative inquiry approach to trace significant experiences in my life, from student to high
school teacher, to teacher educator. Themes that arise include a shift from a political to a
―student voice‖ focused approach to educational activism, the ongoing influence of my
privileged identities, the importance of mentorship, the recognition that social change is possible,
and the awareness and embracing of my ―unfinishedness‖. This study attempts to add to
literature on educational or teacher activism and speak to the value of narrative inquiry
approaches in teacher education and professional development programs.
iii
Acknowledgments
There are a number of people I would like to thank as this thesis journey comes to an end. First
and foremost to my supervisor, Reva Joshee, for her unwavering support, encouragement, and
constructive feedback. Reva, you have been an amazing critical friend through this process and I
am becoming a more effective educator because of you.
Sincerest gratitude to my dear friend and mentor Tracy Williams-Shreve who spent hours
helping me in the revision process and who is a constant inspiration for the type of educator I
would like to be.
Thanks to my dear friends Ivano, Aitana, and Cat. Ivano and Aitana graciously offered their
house to Cat and I, as we pushed through the final stages of this project this summer. I wouldn‘t
be at this place of completion if it wasn‘t for the inspiration and refuge your house provided. And
to Cat, my partner through this journey. Thanks for the constant updates and encouragement as
we both struggled and triumphed along the way. There is no one else I would have chosen to
share this experience with.
Thanks to John Portelli for sticking with me as my second reader over the years, for helping me
develop into a critical reflective educator and most of all for being an ongoing source of kindness
and support. Also, a special thanks to Clare Kosnik for her encouragement, her emails and
nudges which gave me the momentum I needed to complete my thesis. You are both models of
the type of teacher educator I would like to be for my students.
To Jenny Chen, my friend and collaborator in many projects, who took on more responsibilities
this past year allowing me to dedicate more time to my thesis. You have an amazing way of
being exactly what I need at all times, thank you.
A special thanks to my parents who have helped shape the person I am today and for being a
constant source of inspiration in my life. Finally, to my husband, Jorge - thank you for all the
love, encouragement and support you give me every day. I look forward to having more time to
be for you, all that you have been for me over these past years.
iv
Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ ii
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................................... iv
Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1
What leads me to wanting to do this work? .............................................................................................. 2
My research question and goals of the study ............................................................................................ 6
Narrative inquiry as methodology............................................................................................................. 7
My conceptual framework ........................................................................................................................ 9
Defining Educational Activism ........................................................................................................... 10
Where it came from ........................................................................................................................ 11
How is educational/teacher activism defined in the literature?....................................................... 12
Defining educational activism in relation to social justice and equity ............................................ 13
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 15
Chapter Two: Research Methodology .................................................................................................... 17
How I came to narrative inquiry as methodology ................................................................................... 17
Influences of Reflective Practice, Self-Study and Autoethnography ...................................................... 20
Reflective Practice .............................................................................................................................. 20
Self-Study ........................................................................................................................................... 22
Autoethnography ................................................................................................................................. 24
Choosing my method – Narrative Inquiry .............................................................................................. 26
Doing Narrative Inquiry .......................................................................................................................... 28
Chapter Three: The Early Years – Developing the roots of Educational Activism ............................ 33
Where did my sense of justice come from? ............................................................................................ 33
Growing up on the farm, not a lot of money and feelings of exclusion .............................................. 34
Expanding understandings of exclusion ............................................................................................. 35
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Early understandings of ‗justice‘ through involvement in my church community ............................. 40
High school and Rotary .......................................................................................................................... 41
My exchange year: Challenging beliefs and refining goals .................................................................... 45
Chapter 4: My stories through university: Developing the roots of Educational Activism ............... 47
Ecuador – Developing a new understanding of social justice ................................................................. 47
The Seeds of Educational Activism – INEPE and Paolo Freire ............................................................. 51
An introduction to Paulo Freire .......................................................................................................... 56
Being inspired by Lilían Alvaro Lugo ................................................................................................ 59
Back in Canada – Working for change from a Global Education perspective ....................................... 63
My first experience writing social justice curriculum within an institution ........................................... 64
The draft course - Cultural studies, the classroom, and the public sphere – Initial developments of my
social justice education theory and practice ............................................................................................ 68
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 73
Chapter Five: My Journey as an Educational Activist – High School Teaching in Toronto ............. 74
My B. Ed in School, Community and Global Connections: Developing an equity lens and a social
justice community ................................................................................................................................... 74
Developing an equity lens ................................................................................................................... 75
Making every moment count .............................................................................................................. 80
The TDSB Equity Department: Resources, opportunities and challenges .............................................. 82
Building my equity toolkit .................................................................................................................. 82
Developing an activist stance .............................................................................................................. 83
Being inspired/mentored along my way ............................................................................................. 87
Rethinking what matters – Shifting from an issues focused curriculum to a focus on students ............. 89
My first year: I can do it myself .......................................................................................................... 90
Initial Successes – Social justice/ global citizenship education is possible! ....................................... 91
Working as a team – making global justice a department focus ......................................................... 94
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―Keep the Beat‖ – A culminating moment in my teaching career ...................................................... 98
A shift in focus – Moving from outside to the inside ....................................................................... 100
Negotiating the ―Spaces between‖ – Hearing my students‘ stories? ................................................ 104
Beginning my MA in Education – A Time for Reflection .................................................................... 110
You mean I should be critical about critical pedagogy? ................................................................... 110
Making ‗Student Voice‘ central to educational activism .................................................................. 113
Chapter Six: Continuing the Journey as a Teacher Educator ............................................................ 117
A dream come true ................................................................................................................................ 117
Reflection #1: A lofty goal – to develop social justice educators (April 2010) .................................... 119
Building Peaceful Communities Summer Institute – Discovering the benefits of narrative inquiry .... 122
Reflection #2: Reconsidering my practice as a teacher educator (Summer Institute July 2010) .......... 124
Chapter Seven: Developing themes and understandings across my journey as an educational
activist ...................................................................................................................................................... 132
My evolving educational activist identity ............................................................................................. 133
Recognizing privilege – an ongoing challenge ..................................................................................... 137
Mentoring .............................................................................................................................................. 140
Seeing change as possible ..................................................................................................................... 143
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 148
Chapter Eight: Educational Activism through Narrative Inquiry ..................................................... 150
Narrative Inquiry as professional development .................................................................................... 153
Narrative Inquiry as teacher development ............................................................................................ 155
Connecting narrative inquiry to the dynamic educational activism field.............................................. 158
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 159
References ................................................................................................................................................ 160
1
Chapter 1 - Introduction
At the outset I would like to say that the development I have gone through to arrive
at the stage I currently occupy is reflected in the style and depth of exploration that
unfolds within the pages of this piece. In a sense, this narrative matures as it
unfolds. You will note as you read that I struggle with exploring feelings and
motivations and stating them clearly. Perhaps this is a function of connecting too
well with my former selves. As I come closer to the present, the narrative and
reflections on these former selves is infused with greater depth and insight. Noting
this pattern within my own process leads me to inquire whether the same may be
true of others. This may have value in exploring later on the strategies that
maximize the value of narrative approaches for educational activists.
Inquiring into personal narratives of my development as an educational activist
has been a richly rewarding experience. Writing this thesis forced me to stop and engage
in deep reflection on the significant stories of my journey as an educational activist and
why they mattered; something I had rarely done previously. For as long as I can
remember I have been someone who carried around numerous lists of things to do, who
was always involved in a number of social justice projects and always felt that there were
never enough hours in the day to accomplish my goals. Spending these past months
writing and reflecting on personal and professional experiences beginning from my
childhood has been both invigorating since I do not often take time to be with my own
thoughts, and challenging since I often felt that other projects should take priority over
my own. Some of these feelings stem from childhood experiences where everything
needed to have a purpose. I grew up on a farm in southwestern Ontario where there was
always work to be done. My siblings and I often felt guilty if we did simple leisure
activities like go for a walk or a bike ride. Instead of a walk why not go out to the field
and pick stones? A bike ride – what was the destination? Why? So when I decided to take
a year off after five years of teaching I needed a reason for that as well – graduate studies.
2
Even this MA journey has been prolonged. Over the past six years I pushed the
completion of my own studies to the background and immersed myself in what seemed to
me more important social justice work. Finally however, I have taken the time to tell and
retell the significant stories of my journey as an educational activist and in the retelling I
have come to a new understanding of myself, my role as a social justice teacher, teacher
educator and a budding researcher.
In this introductory chapter I begin by explaining how I became interested in this
narrative inquiry of myself as an educational activist. I outline my goals for this research,
my chosen research methodology and the conceptual framework for this study. I also
include a section on how I am defining educational activism connected to the literature as
well as in relation the often parallel terms ―social justice‖ and ―equity.‖ I conclude by
outlining the structure of my thesis and offering my thoughts on the wider significance of
this research.
What leads me to wanting to do this work?
My interest in this topic has developed over the years and has grown out of a deep
commitment to social justice, the ongoing educational activism work I am part of, and my
desire to become a more reflective and effective activist educator. Most recently my
interest in inquiring into my stories relates directly to my work as a teacher educator
coordinating a social-justice-focused cohort in the secondary teacher education program
at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto.
My initial interest in doing graduate work in the area of social justice education
3
activism grew out of my high school teaching experience in an ‗urban‘1 school in
Toronto. After five years I felt I needed to take a step back from teaching and engage in
the critical study and reflection of how to more effectively engage my practice towards
the creation of a society where resources are equitably distributed and where people feel
safe and secure, are able to develop to their full capacities, and act as change agents in
their local, national and global communities (Adams, Bell & Griffin, 2007, p. 1-2). I, like
many, had become a teacher because I wanted to make a positive difference in the lives
of my students and others in communities all over the world. Over the years, I began
feeling overwhelmed by the inequities I saw around me (in schools and society) that I did
not feel equipped to effectively address. A great many of my students wanted to learn,
wanted to do something meaningful with their lives but their life situations were
impacting their potential and their hopes.
It was becoming clear based on academic research, Ministry reports, and events in
schools over recent years, that schools are not safe spaces for all students, the curriculum
does not include the voices and experiences of all students, and certain groups of students
are falling dramatically behind their peers academically (Brown, 2008; TDSB, 2010a).
Unfortunate recent events propelled my desire to work for positive change. These
included the 2007 shooting death of a grade nine student in a Toronto high school, the
2005 arrest of 16 students for assaulting a female student in a Toronto Catholic high
school, and the high dropout rates for students who speak Portuguese (42.5%), Spanish
1 ‘Urban’ and ‘inner-city’ are terms used to describe schools serving low-income, ethnic minority, and
language minority students (Banks, 2003). The term ‘urban’ today does not connote a geographic
concept used to define and describe physical locations but is employed as a social or cultural construct
used to describe certain people (poor and non-White) and places (certain neighbourhoods within cities)
(Noguera, 2003).
4
(39.1%), Somali (36.7%), Persian/Farsi (30.6%) and Arabic (27.8%) and those born in
the English speaking Caribbean (40%) (Brown, 2008). I became aware that students of
these backgrounds are also likely to have the lowest rates of school attendance and the
highest suspension rates (TDSB, 2010a). These along with other outcomes related to
academic ―success‖ converge to produce what has been widely referred to in the
literature as the ―achievement gap.‖ While what this phrase infers can be problematic in
itself as it leaves open a refined understanding of notions of both ―achievement‖ and
―gap,‖ a gap does indeed persist. More precisely, what is often lost in understanding the
contours of this gap are a closer scrutiny of the notion of ―achievement,‖ its processes
and outcomes that are rooted in sets of assumptions that are reified as limited pedagogies
that normalize some student identities while marginalizing others. Even more frustrating
is that this ―achievement gap‖ has existed for these groups since the 1980‘s (TDSB,
2010a).
Although school boards and the Ministry of Education acknowledge and have
developed initiatives2 to address these concerns and inequities, more effort is needed. My
original research interests connected to a desire to improve ‗inner city‘ or ‗urban‘ high
schools. Reading over my initial intentions, which focused on extending the elementary
focused ―Model Schools for Inner Cities Initiative‖3 to high schools and examining what
2 This acknowledgement of school inequities can be seen in the initiative to introduce new courses in
gender studies, equity studies and cultural studies courses into the secondary school curriculum, the
Ministry decision to implement portions of the School Community Safety Advisory Panel Report report,
and in the decision by the Toronto District School Board to open Africentric schools and to dedicate
funding and programming to schools in high-poverty areas (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2009; TDSB,
2010a).
3 The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Inner City Model School Initiative was an attempt at working
towards equity and social justice in Toronto's most inner city elementary schools, in an effort to
5
types of leadership models would be most effective, I remember my desire to be involved
in research that could have a positive impact on students, schools and communities in the
short term. My decision to engage in narrative inquiry into myself as an educational
activist came about four years (and three research topics) later.
My developing interest in inquiring into my development as an educational
activist also stems from my involvement in educational activism4 initiatives at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto. After
three years in the MA program I had come to the realization that one of the reasons I was
not getting my research moving was because I continually was involved in social justice
projects that I felt were more ‗urgent‘ than completing my MA. One of these ongoing
projects aimed to infuse educational activism into OISE‘s Initial Teacher Education
program and the wider educational community. A goal of this project has been to enable
educators and teacher candidates to share, learn, and enact ideas, strategies and effective
practices related to educational social justice activism. For the past six years this initiative
has included five annual Educational Activism conferences at OISE, the creation of an
Educational Activism Research Group, the development of an Educational Activism
Resource Guide, and a round table discussion with long-time activist educators on the
past, present and future of educational activism in Ontario. As my involvement in efforts
to normalize activism in educational spaces grew I thought that a valuable contribution to
my own understanding as well as to our work would be the exploration of people‘s
personal experiences and development as educational activists. This deeper look at the
effectively meet the needs of inner city students and support their academic, social, emotional, and
physical development (TDSB, 2005).
4 Defined in more detail below
6
personal and professional experiences that shape educational activists might offer some
lessons on things to consider as our group and others try to advance these goals.
My more recent experiences as a first year initial teacher educator also connected
to my interest in looking into my own journey as an educational activist. My goal as a
teacher educator is to help teacher candidates develop as equity minded, social justice
educators. This narrative inquiry connects to these goals because as I learn more about
my own journey, unpacking the experiences, assumptions and values which have
influenced my teacher identity and teaching practice, I can better understand my own
process of becoming which will offer me a deeper understanding of how to support new
teachers in their own becoming.
These overlapping interests all connect to my desire to engage myself personally
and professionally in the pursuit of social justice. Educators like myself believe that
classrooms and schools can be places of hope, where students and teachers gain glimpses
of the kind of society we could live in and where students can develop as whole beings
and learn the critical and academic skills needed to make that vision a reality (Rethinking
Schools, 2011).
My research question and goals of the study
The research question that emerged over the years based on my interests is: What
are the significant stories in my journey as an educational activist? By significant I mean
those experiences and events that led me to recalculate, reevaluate,
reconstruct/deconstruct my both my understanding and approach to teaching and learning
within a social justice framework.
The goals of this inquiry are to gain a deeper understanding of my development as
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an educational activist in order to improve my own practice and to offer entry points to
others interested in critically reflecting on themselves. Through the process of telling and
retelling my stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), I hope that this deeper knowledge of
myself as an educational activist will bring to consciousness knowledge that may enhance
my abilities as both a teacher and teacher educator committed to promoting social justice.
Another intention is that this inquiry serve the growing and diverse field of educational
activism as a way for others interested in educational activism to read my stories, ―reflect
critically on their own experience, enter emphatically into worlds of experience different
from their own, and actively engage in dialogue regarding the social and moral
implications of the different perspectives and standpoints encountered‖ (Ellis & Bochner,
2002, p. 748). In this way I am contributing to the overarching goal of the Educational
Activism Research Group which is, ―to document, support, and extend the work of
activist educators in Ontario‖ (Chen, Goodreau & Zoric, 2009).
Narrative inquiry as methodology
Since my goals relate to developing a deeper understanding of how my personal
and professional experiences have shaped who I am becoming as an educational activist I
have chosen narrative inquiry as the research methodology for my study. Stated simply,
narrative inquiry is the study of experience as story (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p.
477).
People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and as they
interpret their past in terms of these stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a portal
through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the
world is interpreted and made personally meaningful. (Connelly & Clandinin,
2006, p. 477)
8
Connelly and Clandinin (1990) describe ―[e]ducation and educational research [as] the
construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories‖ (p. 2). Johnson and
Golombek (2002) argue that the inquiry into one‘s experiences motivates teachers to
question and reinterpret their ways of knowing and teaching. Some of the questions I
explore in chapters three through five include: Where did my sense of justice come from?
How and why did my conceptualizations of social justice change from high school,
through university and into teaching and teacher education? What assumptions and
values were guiding my thinking at different stages in my journey? What were the
impacts of my students on my developing educational activism? How can I effectively
support the development of activist teachers through my role as teacher educator?
The telling of my personal narratives have led me to rethink my practices,
reconsider the factors affecting my professional development and become more
thoughtful and mindful in my work (Johnson & Golombek, 2002). An example of this is
my deeper understanding that the development of a social justice educational practice is
ongoing and cannot be taught in a single year of teacher education even though there is
an urgency to do so. Through my own stories I realize that my growth as an educational
activist is ongoing and it is important in my role as a teacher educator that I provide
opportunities for teacher candidates to engage in their own narrative inquiry so they can
uncover the understandings in their own experiences, re-evaluate their own assumptions
and values, and develop critical reflection processes that will support the continuous
shaping and reshaping of their own social justice teacher identities.
9
My conceptual framework
This work is based on a philosophy of educational activism that accepts that
social inequities exist in schools, that schools, through their mandated and hidden
curriculum, maintain and reproduce society‘s power structure, that educational change is
possible, and, that educators and students can play a key role in recognizing and
challenging these inequities and promoting social justice in schools and their larger local,
national and global communities (Adams, Bell & Griffin, 2007). These principles align
with the theory and practice of critical pedagogy that ―links the practice of schooling to
democratic principles of society and to transformative social action‖ (Darder, 2005). This
educational activist framework is influenced by the writings of Paulo Freire (1970, 1998),
Henry Giroux (1988), bell hooks (1994, 2003), and Peter McLaren (1998, 2007) who
advocate for a critical education for social transformation. A critical education aims to
enable students to recognize connections between their lives and experiences and the
social contexts in which they are embedded, then engage in action for change through an
ongoing reflective approach referred to as praxis (Freire, 1998).
Linking critical pedagogy to this narrative approach are the concepts of
―conscientization‖ (Freire, 1985) and ―teacher as intellectual‖ (Giroux, 1988).
Conscientization refers to the process of developing a critical consciousness of one‘s
social, economic and political realities and participating critically in actions for
transformation (1973, 1985). Freire explains that conscientization ―involves a constant
clarification of that which remains hidden within us while we move about in the world,
though we are not necessarily regarding the world as the object of our critical reflection‖
(Freire, 1985, p. 107). Through this inquiry I can begin to clarify that which remains
10
hidden in me through the retelling of my personal narratives so that I am able to act with
greater humility and solidarity with others.
Through his concept, ―teacher as intellectual‖, Giroux (1988) advocates ―that one
way to rethink and restructure the nature of teacher work, is to view teachers as
transformative intellectuals‖ (p. 25) who do not simply implement mandated curriculum
but who construct, adapt, create educational praxis based on the realities of our lives,
those of our students and community realities. Giroux advocates teachers to take on the
role of transformative intellectuals committed to understanding and engaging the
struggles for equality and justice specific to their classrooms, schools, and the
communities they serve (1988). In this narrative inquiry I am engaging in intellectual
work as I uncover meanings among my past and present experiences, develop new
theoretical knowledge and discover new possibilities for social justice practice (Connelly
& Clandinin, 1994). The understandings gained through the process of rewriting and
retelling of my stories will strengthen my practice as a ―transformative intellectual‖ and
educational activist.
Defining Educational Activism
One of the most frequent questions people ask me when I am describing my
research is: ―How are you defining educational activism?‖ I usually begin by saying, ―I
define educational activism as social justice education but I use the term ‗activism‘ to
highlight an overlapping goal of activist educators which is to engage in action which
disrupts the status quo and aims to create a more just society (Adams, Bell & Griffin,
2007). Sometimes people respond by saying that they define ‗social justice education‘
and ‗equity education‘ in the same way. I wholeheartedly agree but unfortunately the
11
terms social justice and equity are used so often, in so many contexts5, that the activist
part of the definition sometimes is dropped off.
In this section I will describe where my definition of educational activism came
from, how it is used in academic literature, and how I define and approach educational
activism in relation to social justice, equity and social justice education.
Where it came from
My first memory of using this term to describe my work was in the Fall of 2005. I had
been invited to be part of a Teacher Activism conference committee by Terezia Zoric,
Initial Teacher Education Lecturer and Equity Infusion Coordinator at OISE. She was
coordinating a conference entitled Teacher Activism: Social Justice in Classroom,
Schools and Communities6. In our first committee meeting we began by brainstorming
our responses to the questions: ―What is teacher activism?‖ and ―How is this different
from social justice or equity work teachers were involved in?‖ Around the table we talked
about what made teacher activism distinct from the terms social justice and equity. We
decided that while all three terms could be used interchangeably (depending on how you
define them), that the term (social justice) teacher activism emphasized action for
progressive social change. Teacher activism highlighted teachers‘ efforts to actively work
to dismantle barriers to equity and/or actively engage in initiatives that disrupted the
status quo. Sometimes people who referred to themselves as equity-minded or social
5 I have noticed through this process of narrative inquiry that I have used the term social justice to refer
my activities from high school up to present. Yet looking back the actions in high school were community
service oriented.
6 In the second year of the conference we changed ‘teacher’ to ‘educational’ activism to recognize the
activist educators who may be working in a university, a teachers’ union office, NGO or community setting
as well.
12
justice teachers did not act for change although they were involved in meaningful
activities like promoting the understanding of equity issues and/or supporting students‘
fundraising and charitable efforts. An important distinction between educational activism
and equity is that people who support the idea of equity can remain inactive, while
activism requires a spectrum of action beyond understanding.
How is educational/teacher activism defined in the literature?
The terms ‗educational activism‘, ‗teacher activism‘ and ‗activist educators‘ are
used in educational literature to describe educators working to improve teacher working
conditions and to defend their profession or to describe educators who are focused on
enhancing education for all students through changes in policies, practices or curriculum.
In the first category Blendinger (1970), McMorrow (1982) and Wagenaar (1974)
discuss the teacher activism or ‗militancy‘ of the 1960s and 1970s as teachers fought to
improve the conditions of those working in the field of education. More recently books
including Teacher activism in the 1990s (Robertson & Smaller, 1996) and The activist
teaching profession (Sachs, 2003) discuss teacher activism as a response to government
and public criticism of the teaching profession. The activism of women educators at the
turn of the century is also documented in the literature (Clifford, 1987; Munro, 1995;
Crucco, Munro & Weiler, 1999). Their activist work to achieve equal pay, pensions,
tenure, maternity leave, and to organize a union and community networks supported not
only women, but teachers in general (Munro, 1995).
A second category of literature which uses these terms relates to educators
committed to addressing social justice issues through changes in policies, practices or
13
curriculum in order to improve education for all students. Many educational activists
working for social transformation in schools and communities cite personal experiences
of discrimination and marginalization as catalysts for their activism (Romo, 2004; Grace
& Wells, 2009; Williams, 2009; Collay, 2010). Others, like me, describe their activism as
having grown out of educative experiences in high school, university and/or as teachers
(Lund & Nabavi, 2008; Pelo & Davidson, 2000). Marshall and Anderson (2009) bring
together the lived experiences of a variety of educational activist professionals in their
edited book Activist educators: Breaking past limits. They define an activist educator as
―an individual who is known for taking stands and engaging in action aimed at producing
social change, possibly in conflict with institutional opponents‖ (p. 116). They highlight
the many dimensions (eg. moral, spiritual), strategies (eg. curricular activism, framing
activist goals within institutional structure) and spaces (in schools, districts, and
community life) that professionals engage to promote educational activist goals (Marshall
& Anderson, 2009). Connecting to this second category of literature, my research
inquires into my development as an educational activist and the dimensions, strategies
and spaces that have been connected to my continued growth along this journey.
Defining educational activism in relation to social justice and equity
My definition of ―educational activism‖ connects to the definitions of ―social
justice‖ by Adams, Bell & Griffin (2007), ―equity‖ by TDSB Equitable Schools (2003)
and ―social justice education‖ by Au, Bigelow & Karp (2007).
i) Social justice includes a vision of society where resources are equitably
distributed and where members feel physically and psychologically safe
and secure, are able to develop to their full capacities, and possess the
tools needed to participate as change agents in their local, national and
global communities (Adams, Bell & Griffin, 2007, p. 1-2).
14
ii) Equity is the provision of opportunities for equality for all by responding
to the needs of individuals. Equity of treatment is not the same as equal
treatment because it is acknowledging historical and present systemic
discrimination against identified groups and removing barriers,
eliminating discrimination, and remedying the impacts of past
discrimination (TDSB Equitable Schools, 2003, p. 68).
iii) Social justice education is comprised of the following seven interlocking
components: it is grounded in the lives of the students; it is critical; it is
multicultural, anti-racist [anti-oppressive], and pro-justice; it is
participatory and experiential; it is hopeful, joyful, kind, and visionary; it
is activist; it is academically rigorous; and, it is culturally sensitive (Au,
Bigelow & Karp, 2007, p. x-xi).
A commonality among these definitions is the recognition that being aware of and
understanding discrimination and systems of oppression is not enough. Developing a
―sense of agency and capacity to interrupt and change oppressive patterns and behaviours
in themselves and in the institutions and communities of which they are a part‖ is an
important goal of educational activism (and social justice and equity education) (Adams,
Bell & Griffin, 2007, p. 2).
While I think it is important to highlight these principles and definitions at the
forefront, in order to provide myself and my readers a sense of my framework, I
recognize that there is not a solitary conception of, or approach to, educational activism.
Action for progressive social change varies based on the context and the actors involved.
My own conceptualization has evolved over the years and through the writing of this
thesis (as you will read as you enter my stories). Today when I speak of the components
of my educational activism I include those listed above but I also emphasize the
importance of understanding my own and my students social identities and how that
relates to how and what they learn and how that informs how and what I teach (Tatum,
2010), the importance of caring for students and ―teaching with love‖ (Freire, 1998;
15
hooks, 2003) as well the value of engaging critically reflexive practice and a process of
self-actualization (Joshee, 2006; hooks, 1994). I recognize (as Freire (1998) talks about
extensively in Pedagogy of freedom) that I am an ―unfinished‖ person and that my
understanding of educational activism will evolve as I continue uncovering
understandings from my present and past experiences and being educated by those
around me.
Conclusion
I have divided my stories into three chapters signifying different stages along this
journey of becoming an educational activist, first as a student, then a high school teacher
and finally as a teacher educator. My stories have been reconstructed as a way to inquire
into the complexities, the recurring feelings and themes experienced over the years. I
have found that by writing, receiving feedback and questions from my supervisor, Dr.
Reva Joshee, and rewriting these stories I am learning more about myself and my
practice. Through this process and the professional growth that has come with it I have
grown to value narrative inquiry as an effective professional development methodology
for educators looking to improve their practice.
These stories of educators on their experience of equity and social justice
education as understood by Clandinin & Connelly (1995) are rare in the literature.
Although my inquiry is autobiographical, I feel the exploration into my own life should
also seek a wider significance. It is my hope that my narratives can involve readers
emotionally and intellectually, so that they will be prompted to participate in the inquiry
process by reflecting on their own stories. A goal is that this in-depth study into my
journey as an educational activist may offer insights to others committed to educational
16
activism and to teacher educators and leaders in education who are considering
professional development programs.
17
Chapter Two: Research Methodology
I begin chapter two with a discussion of the experiences that led me to narrative
inquiry as the research methodology for my thesis. I continue by highlighting other
research theories that inform my study - reflective practice, self-study and
autoethnography. I conclude by offering a fuller description of narrative inquiry as
methodology and an explanation of how I employ this methodology in my study.
How I came to narrative inquiry as methodology
Deciding on a research methodology has in itself been an interesting journey.
Although I had taken a research methods course in the initial year of my studies I
overlooked narrative research since it did not connect to anything I had read previously
and I did not consider it a ‗rigourous‘ methodology for a thesis study. My introduction to
the value of self-study research and narrative inquiry came during a Works in Progress
course in Winter 2010. I was encouraged to learn that it was possible to rigourously
engage in the ―intentional and systematic inquiry into [my] own practice‖ (Dinkelman,
2003, p. 8) as a thesis worthy methodology.
As a final paper in the Works in Progress course I decided to explore my journey
as an educational activist. To begin this reflection I created a timeline of significant
events and experiences in my life that were stepping stones in my development. For my
final paper I fleshed out this timeline to include details and connections between
experiences. I titled the paper ―My journey as an educational activist.‖ It was 21 pages
long and at the time I considered it a thorough investigation into my growth as an
18
educational activist. Reading Dr. Reva Joshee‘s (my supervisor and critical friend7)
comments and questions on my first draft brought back more memories, emotions, details
of events and I was able to add more depth and insight to my stories. I found out quickly
that this initial inquiry into my stories was just beginning. This cycle of writing my
stories and receiving feedback from a critical friend has been an invaluable process
allowing me to deeply reflect on my assumptions, values, motivations, and the shifting
aspects of my practice, all of which has and is shaping the educational activist I am still
becoming.
The confirmation that a narrative inquiry approach was the best match for my
study and my future growth came in July 2010. I was at the Building Peaceful
Communities Summer Institute held at the University of Alberta and I was enrolled in a
course called ―Toward a Curriculum of Community.‖ This course employed a narrative
and reflexive approach, allowing course participants to re-imagine our experiential
knowing with new insights into our practices (Course syllabus, 2010). For our first class
we were asked to introduce ourselves using an artifact that told a story of who we were.
This immersion in narrative from the introductory activity was the beginning of my
critical reflection on the many stories about my journey as a ―curriculum maker of
community‖. Through daily written reflections connected to themes including:
―Beginning to map our inquiry into the making of a curriculum of community‖,
―Exploring the place of experience in shaping practices‖, and ―Beliefs and education
7 “A critical friend, as the name suggests, is a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be
examined through another lens, and offers critique of a person‘s work as a friend‖ (Costa & Kallick, 1993, p. 50).
Through Dr. Joshee‘s questions and probes I was able to inquire deeper into my experiences and practices and uncover
new understandings and connections.
19
negotiating spaces for sharing and inquiring into our lives‖ my attraction to narrative
inquiry and its power to uncover understandings and create meaning from experiences
grew.
After seven days of dedicated reading, reflecting, writing my personal narratives,
and listening to other peoples‘ stories I had a revelation about my practice which woke
me up at 4:30 AM. I had been committed to social justice education and activist causes
for many years. As a new teacher educator I found myself wanting to share all of what I
had learned over the years with my teacher candidates. I wanted them to become
committed educational activists who considered how their social identities had an impact
on who and what they teach, who understood the role of power and privilege in
education, who had an understanding of the ‗isms‘, who would make curricular and
pedagogical choices that were equitable, and who would work to eliminate barriers to
equity in their classrooms, schools and communities. Of course this is a challenging
endeavour. While debriefing the November practicum session during my first year as a
teacher educator, when I thought I was making advancements, a teacher candidate would
say something like, ―my practicum students in the applied classes don‘t want to learn‖ or
―I don‘t see colour, I just see students.‖ I realized how far we still had to go. Statements
such as these were clear indications that my attempts to cultivate understandings that
extended beyond specific situations had not yet been understood. What could do to help
my teacher candidates challenge their assumptions and gain a deeper understanding of
social justice as a paradigm rather than a list of viable actions?
20
My early morning revelation, after being immersed in the inquiring into my
practice, was that if my goal as a teacher educator is to shape my teacher candidates into
curriculum makers of community that I need to open up spaces to allow my students to
grow, question, wonder, reflect, belong, and become. I had been experiencing the value
of this through this course and summer institute and therefore need to consider how to
provide similar opportunities for my students.
This seems more obvious to me now but it felt like a light bulb went on at the
time. Through this two week summer institute I felt like I gained important new
perspectives on how to be a teacher educator committed to social justice. Much of this
reconceptualizing of my practice related to this narrative work. I became more eager to
delve deeper into narrative inquiry as a methodology to answer my research question:
What are the significant stories in my journey (development) as an educational activist?
Influences of Reflective Practice, Self-Study and Autoethnography
Although I have chosen narrative inquiry as my research method this study has
been informed by my readings of reflective practice, self-study and autoethnography –
three areas that also privilege ‗self‘ in their research and acknowledge the self can be
involved in the meaning making process (Hamilton, Smith & Worthington, 2008). In the
following section I will offer a brief explanation of reflective practice, self-study and
autoethnography and how they inform my research.
Reflective Practice
Research in the area of reflective practice provides theoretical underpinnings for
my study. Much has been written about teachers as reflective practitioners able to
21
examine and problematize their practice, assumptions and values thereby actively
participating in their own professional growth and development (Brookfield, 1995;
Dewey, 1933, Schön, 1983; Zeichner & Liston, 1996). This narrative inquiry into the
significant moments in my journey as an educational activist is an opportunity to engage
in deep reflective practice with the goals of becoming a more effective and reflective
educator.
Brookfield (1995), when describing the process of critical reflection, encourages
teachers to view their practice first through the lens of autobiographical reflection in
order to become aware of and question assumptions about how issues of power influence
educational work:
Consulting our autobiographies as learners puts us in the role of the ―other.‖ We
see our practice from the other side of the mirror, and we see ourselves viscerally
connected to what our own students are experiencing. Investigating our
autobiographies as teachers is often the first step on the critical path. Through
personal self-reflection, we become aware of the paradigmatic assumptions and
instinctive reasonings that frame how we work. (1995, p. 29-30)
Embodying the features of reflective practice which demands that we ―utilize both our
heads and our hearts, our reasoning capacities and our emotional insights‖ requires effort
(Zeichner & Liston, 1996, p. 10). As an educational activist I am often caught up in the
‗doing‘ of activist work and I have often lamented not having the time to document my
projects or reflect on the underlying assumptions, patterns, successes, and challenges of
what myself and colleagues are involved in. This detailed writing and reflecting on
experiences is helping me develop the skills and attitudes8 to be a more critically
8 Dewey (1933) outlines three attitudes important to reflective practice: openmindedness (considering
alternate perspectives and possibilities), responsibility (careful consideration of the consequences of
22
reflective teacher and is helping me to take another look at how to effectively engage in
meaningful curriculum development and social justice education.
The research on reflective practice also informs my inquiry because it
acknowledges the interconnectedness of theory and practice and the construction of
professional knowledge by teachers (Schön, 1987; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Zeichner
& Liston, 1996; Beattie, 1997). As I write about my stories from my first years of
teaching high school to my experiences as a teacher educator I am engaging in Schön‘s
(1983) reflective process of framing, reinterpreting and reframing these experiences. This
theorizing of my own practice and my construction of what makes an educational activist
contributes to the development of my own professional knowledge of educational
activism and will hopefully add to this growing field.
Self-Study
The characteristics and purposes of self-study research also inform this
investigation into myself as an educational activist. Self-study research can be defined as
―[t]he study of one‘s self, one‘s actions, one‘s ideas … It is autobiographical, historical,
cultural, and political . . . it draws on one‘s life, but it is more than that. Self-study also
involves a thoughtful look at texts read, experiences had, people known and ideas
considered‖ (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998, p. 236). Connected to this definition is
Dinkelman (2003) who describes self-study research as the intentional and systematic
actions) and wholeheartedness (being thoroughly involved in each situation, examining assumptions and
beliefs and being open to new learning) (as described In Loughran, 1996 and Zeichner & Liston, 1996).
Through this inquiry into myself I can more fully develop these attitudes and engage them in my personal
and professional life.
23
inquiry into one‘s own practice to reveal knowledge about practice. These descriptions
along with elements of self-study –that it is self-initiated and self- focused, that its goal is
to improve teacher practice, and that it is interactive (LaBoskey, 2004), have provided a
knowledge base for my research.
LaBoskey‘s third element, that self-study is interactive, has been an integral
component of my study. He states the ―[n]eed for interactions with colleagues, students,
educational literature (and the researcher‘s previous work) to continually question
developing understandings in order to ‗interrogate assumptions and values‘‖ (2004, p.
860). I have incorporated this interactive element into my study by engaging in ongoing
discussions with a critical friend (also my thesis supervisor) who reads my stories and
asks probing questions. Some of her questions have been: ―Where did your sense of
justice come from?‖, ―How did this manifest itself?‖, ―How were you defining social
justice then?‖, ―What was challenged specifically, how?‖, ―Are you the same person in
all of these stories?‖, and, ―Is there something you might call a deep or spiritual belief
that guides you in this work?‖ These and other questions, have pushed my thinking,
helped me make connections between my experiences, served to uncover new
understandings, and facilitated the interrogation into the underlying assumptions and
values that have shaped my development. Also related to this element is the ―interaction‖
with my previous work including research papers, lesson plans, curriculum documents,
courses of study, and written reflections. These primary documents have been rich
resources highlighting my changing understandings of social justice and providing clues
to my thinking at different stages in my journey as an educational activist.
24
Self-study research also informs my inquiry in that its purposes reflect those of
my research. The first is the purpose of self-study research to improve practice by
continually checking one‘s practices with their beliefs and then reframing and
reconceptualizing practice based on this systemic reflection (Loughran, 2007). As a new
teacher educator with a great deal to learn, this is an important research purpose.
Secondly, modeling reflective practice by systematically studying my own practice
promotes credibility among my teacher candidates and is a motivator for doing this work
(Dinkelman, 2003; Berry, 2004). A third purpose of self-study research is to contribute to
the knowledge base within many contexts and communities (Hamilton, 2008; Dinkelman,
2003). This connects to hopes for my study to expand the research on educational
activism and to add to the literature which advocates for narrative approaches in teacher
education and professional development.
Autoethnography
Autoethnography is another qualitative research approach which informs my
inquiry. Although there is not one precise definition to this evolving field, which has
broadened to include terms such as personal narratives, narratives of self, personal
experience narratives, and self-stories (Ellis & Bochner, 2002, p. 739), autoethnography
can be described as ―an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and
systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience‖
(Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011, ¶ 1). When I initially began this inquiry my intention
was to write about my own significant moments in my development as an educational
activist and to interview two of my colleagues who also see themselves as educational
activists. I thought that by exploring their stories next to mine I would gain greater
25
insights into my own stories. While this is likely true my supervisor advised that for this
inquiry I focus solely on myself and to continue mining my own stories. The second draft
of my stories was already over 45 pages long and I had only begun the hard work of self-
questioning and exposing my vulnerabilities, conflicts, choices, and values (Ellis &
Bochner, 2002, p. 748). This deeper engagement with my personal narratives aligns with
the benefits of autoethnography, namely allowing for the opportunity to make meaning
from one‘s own experiences, the reflective insights possible through the telling, analyzing
and retelling on one‘s own stories, the potential for deep professional growth and change,
as well the opportunities it provides readers to connect to my stories and read into them
from their own contexts.
Autoethnography provides a way for me to make meaning of my experiences at a
deep level and "opportunities to cast a critical eye on aspects of [my] own practice"
(Lambrek, 2005, p. 230). As I was reading dissertations which used autoethnography as
method people expressed that it offered them a way to ‗enlarge‘ their knowledge, to reach
reflective insights that would not have happened through other methods of research. L.
Alwin (2009) wrote that autoethnography allowed him to ―get at another, deeper, level of
learning that is, to get at a wholeness, a synthesis of my life lived (self) and my
professional practitionership (culture)‖ (p. 62). Through this process of writing my stories
using personal details, and describing emotions and events, I am better able to transport
myself back to those experiences. In so doing I am better able to analyze them within the
social, institutional, political context in which they happened as well as consider how
they relate to other experiences in my personal and professional life (Young and
Meneley, 2005). Since one of my goals in this inquiry is to become a better teacher and
26
teacher educator this deep and focused reflection into personal and professional
experiences is providing insights into myself which have already led to professional
growth.
Another intended goal of this inquiry is to provide an opportunity for others
interested in educational activism to glean lessons from my journey. Autoethnography
provides an avenue for that to happen.
The usefulness of these stories is their capacity to inspire conversation from the
point of view of the readers, who enter from the perspective of their own lives.
The narrative rises or falls on its capacity to provoke readers to broaden their
horizons, reflect critically on their own experience, enter emphatically into worlds
of experience different from their own, and actively engage in dialogue regarding
the social and moral implications of the different perspectives and standpoints
encountered. (Ellis & Bochner, 2002, p. 748)
By privileging stories over analysis, autoethnography allows and encourages ―alternative
readings and multiple interpretations‖ (Ellis & Bochner, 2002, p. 744).
Choosing my method – Narrative Inquiry
Whereas self-study examines self in action, usually within educational contexts,
and autoethnography focuses on self within a larger context, narrative inquiry looks into a
story of self (Hamilton, Smith & Worthington, 2008, p. 17). Since my inquiry begins
with stories from my childhood (therefore not always within an educational context) and
my primary interest is to ―represent and understand experience‖ (not always the social
and cultural context of the situation), narrative inquiry seemed the best approach for my
study (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 18).
When I opened Carola Conle‘s book on narrative, Teachers’ stories, teachers’
lives, I felt like I was reading something I could have written. She writes, ―I can only
27
answer the question ―What am I to do?‖ if I can answer the prior question ―Of what story
or stories do I find myself a part?‖ (2006, p. vii). This question ―What am I to do?‖ is a
question I have pondered many times over the past number of years - after my first year
of teaching when I was thinking about how to be both a globally minded educator and
meet the needs of my students facing challenges in their own lives, after the second
teacher/educational activism conference when our conference advisory team was
brainstorming our next steps in pursuing educational activism, and after my first year as
an initial teacher educator when my aims to develop equity-minded teacher candidates
fell short of my expectations. For the 14 years that I have considered myself an educator I
have not taken the time to give serious consideration to Conle‘s second question: ―Of
what story or stories do I find myself a part?‖ By engaging in the inquiry of my personal
and professional narratives I can begin answering both of these questions.
Narrative inquiry is more than ―just telling stories‖ however. It is a qualitative
approach to research which offers the researcher a way to come to understandings about
experience, both personal and professional. Central to the narrative inquiry process is the
reflexive relationship between the living, telling, retelling and reliving of life stories
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 71). In order to uncover meaning among our past and
present experiences and use these understandings to grow, develop, improve in the future
we need to do more than tell our stories, we must retell them. It is in the rewriting and
retelling of experiences that understandings are uncovered, new theoretical
understandings emerge, and that we begin to transform ourselves and see new
possibilities for practice (Clandinin & Huber, 2010; Connelly & Clandinin, 1994).
28
An important influence on the development of narrative inquiry has been Dewey
and his ideas about experience and the notion of education as the reconstruction of
experience (1938). Since experience happens narratively the best way to understand life
and educational experiences is through the telling and inquiry into these narratives
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 19). Connelly and Clandinin, after over 23 years of
writing about narrative inquiry, offer the following definition of this methodology:
People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and as they
interpret their past in terms of these stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a portal
through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the
world is interpreted and made personally meaningful. Narrative inquiry, the study
of experience as story, then, is first and foremost a way of thinking about
experience. Narrative inquiry as a methodology entails a view of the
phenomenon. To use narrative inquiry methodology is to adopt a particular view
of experience as phenomenon under study. (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 477)
Since the goals of my study are: to better understand myself as an educational activist as I
continue to engage in this work through the annual conference and in the activities of the
Educational Activism Research Group; to become a better teacher and teacher educator;
and, to document my experiences and lessons learned as an educational activist so that
others interested in social justice education might be able to gain insight into their own
journeys, narrative inquiry is the best approach to achieve these goals.
Doing Narrative Inquiry
When I decided that a narrative inquiry into my own stories was going to be the
direction for my thesis I was excited and I thought that it was going to be easy. No
interviews, no transcriptions…was I ever mistaken. The act of engaging in the process of
living, telling, retelling and reliving my stories has been rigourous, challenging and very
insightful. As I read through narratives written by others my desire was peaked to expand
29
on my own, to delve deeper into the details, to make things more vivid, to uncover new
understandings which might lead to a transformed future.
My process in engaging in narrative inquiry has been cyclical, and is ongoing. As
mentioned earlier I began this journey by creating a timeline of the significant moments
in my development as an educational activist. My next step was the writing or telling of
the stories as I remembered them9. From here I passed my draft to my supervisor who
served as a critical friend. Her questions and feedback allowed me to recall dimensions of
my experiences more vividly including the physical environment, the feelings and
emotions of myself and others, and the context in which the story unfolded. This connects
to the three dimensions of narrative inquiry – temporality, sociality and place10
- which
became a framework for the reconstruction of my stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000;
Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). In the later drafts of my stories I began looking at
documents I had produced along the way that connect to different events in my life.
These included reflection and course papers, course guides, lesson plans, and curriculum
documents. These documents helped to transport myself back to those experiences and
provided insights into my development over the years. This process of retelling my
9 The initial reconstruction of my stories was from memory. Reading Ellis and Bochner (2002)
eased my concerns about my stories not being reliable since I do not having journals, interviews,
field notes, etc. They discuss the situated nature of writing stories. Stories will always be partial
as we write ―from a situated location, trying to make our present, imagined future, and
remembered past cohere‖ (Ellis & Bochner, 2002, p. 751).
10 Temporality refers to events and people always having a past, present and future. We are
always in transition. In this process of reconstructing my stories my present influenced my
understanding of the past and together they connect to how I ‗relive‘ my stories in the future.
Sociality connects to personal (feelings, hopes, reactions, moral dispositions) and social
conditions (the context under which the experience is happening). Place refers to where the event
happened (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006).
30
stories after receiving critical feedback from my supervisor and through my own inquiry
into my experiences led to richer accounts of my personal and professional past and
thereby enhanced the analysis process.
Analysing my stories involved a search for ―patterns, narrative threads, tensions
and themes either within or across [my] personal experience‖ (Clandinin & Connelly,
1994, p. 423). As both the researcher and the subject of the research I need to be aware of
issues of subjectivity and interpretation. Who I am as a person and educator, my values
and social identities, as well as my intimate connection to the stories will all influence
this research and how I interpret the patterns, threads, tensions and themes within my
stories. I do not try to deny my subjectivity, I see it as valuable to my research since my
primary goal is to understand my experiences not provide generalizable results (Ellis &
Bochner, 2002). Since I am so close to the research however I developed some questions
that I have reflected on continually as I rewrite and analyse my stories. They are: What
assumptions, values, and beliefs were guiding my thinking? What was my
definition/understanding of equity/social justice/educational activism at the time? What
are the tensions and themes in each story? What are the patterns between stories?
Since my research connects to inquiring into my development as an educational
activist through the significant stories of my life, my goal in the discussion chapter
(chapter six) is to highlight the themes related to my growth and the tensions that have
come up in my stories. A more extensive view of Jill, an educational activist, comes to
the forefront through the searching for threads and themes across time and the reflection
on my past and present experiences and practice. As I engage in an analysis of my
31
development and considerations for how to improve my practice I do so from the
perspective of an activist teacher educator since that is my present position.
There have been many times during this process that I have doubted my ability to
effectively engage in narrative inquiry and the interpretation of my stories. Fortunately,
as I continued educating myself in the thinking and doing of narrative research I have
come to feel more at ease in this inquiry process. Reading parts of Narrative inquiry:
Experience and story in qualitative research made me realize that there is no one way to
write a narrative dissertation and that people engage in the writing based on their context,
comfort and in the style they think will best fit their topic and audience (Clandinin &
Connelly, 2000). I also learned that narratives are ongoing and are often transformed
through the process of telling and retelling.
We restory earlier experiences as we reflect on later experiences so the stories and
their meaning shift and change over time. As we engage in a reflective research
process, our stories are often restoried and changed as we, as teachers and/or
researchers, "give back" to each other ways of seeing our stories. (Connelly &
Clandinin, 1990, p. 9)
This depiction of stories being restoried through this process of reflection and
conversation with others has been my experience over these months. I have written and
rewritten the stories of my development as an educational activist three times so far. Each
time I engaged in the process of retelling my stories I uncovered more depth and insights
which relate to the changing contexts of my journey. I realize that these stories are not
complete and that each time I enter these narratives I will pull back another layer and
uncover something new (Miller, 1998). I recognize that the stories and analysis that I
present in the following chapters are temporal understandings based on my present
32
perspective and interpretation. This ―retelling‖ and ―restorying‖ has been an incredibly
enriching experience which I plan to continue on my own and with my teacher candidates
and teachers educators after this thesis journey has ended.
33
Chapter Three: The Early Years – Developing the roots of
Educational Activism
I begin the retelling of my personal narratives with stories from my childhood
through high school which have been influential on this journey as an educational
activist. Where possible I refer to texts written during these experiences to provide a
closer look at my developing beliefs, values and the underlying assumptions of my
actions. As Maxine Greene states:
… the narratives we shape out of the materials of our lived lives must somehow
take account of our original landscapes if we are to be truly present to ourselves
(1995, p.75). Clearly, we cannot return to the landscapes of those prereflective
days. We can only become present to them by reflecting on them. Yet even so, if
we do make the effort to reflect upon them we become far more present to our
enmeshed and open-ended selves. (1995, p. 73)
This chapter, therefore, provides an important context for my development over the
years.
Where did my sense of justice come from?
When I began thinking about my journey as an educational activist I could
remember clearly my high school involvement in social justice (although looking back,
this involvement was more connected to charity than social justice) but I could not
remember what came before – what had led me to that path? It was not until July 2010,
sitting in our community circle during the Building Peaceful Communities Summer
Institute that earlier memories came to me. Florence Glanfield, an instructor at the
Institute, was recounting an experience from her childhood when she first recognized
injustice. As she was describing her story I began remembering my own childhood
experiences which led to my understanding of inequity and my sense of justice.
34
Growing up on the farm, not a lot of money and feelings of exclusion
I grew up in a small farming community in Southwestern Ontario. My parents
were (and are still) farmers and to supplement our family‘s income my father also ran a
logging, firewood and tree service business. My mother was a ‗stay-at-home‘ mom and
since farming and logging were both professions with limited financial security issues of
money were a defining feature in my childhood. From an early age I was aware of
difference especially as it related to socio-economic status and geographic origin.
As a child and teenager I remember my Mom taking my sister and me to a second
hand store to buy clothes. Even though we would mainly buy work clothes (since on the
farm I would work after school and on weekends) I remember being embarrassed and
ashamed to go there and my sister and I would make sure there was no one around to see
us walk in. We would insist that our Mom park behind the store and then we would look
in every direction to make sure no one noticed us walking into the store. When inside I
would stay away from the store windows for fear that one of my classmates would see me
and then tease me at school.
Not having a lot of money was the source of arguments between my parents. Talk
of money is the only conversation I remember my parents having. I recall not being able
to enjoy some of the foods that were common in my friends‘ homes. For example, we
rarely bought boxed cereal because it was more expensive than toast for breakfast. For
school lunches we would have a jar of no-name Kool-Aid while others would bring juice
boxes. Friends would bring those tasty all-in-one cracker and cheese packages and my
sister and I would bring soda crackers and cheese slices. I also remember the feeling of
35
never having the latest fashions that my friends wore because the name brand clothes
always cost more. Looking back now, I am embarrassed that I felt this way and I
recognize that my experiences of economic inequality were not as acute as other people
experiencing poverty. At the time however, these issues did influence my thoughts and
made me more empathetic to others experiencing inequality.
Another clear memory I have of my adolescence was that of feeling left out
among my friends. Living seven kilometers outside of the closest town, taking a bus to
school and returning home to work right after school, meant I was rarely able to
participate in after-school activities. While my girlfriends bonded at dance classes, on
sports teams and figure skating, my sister and I would miss out on these after-school and
weekend activities. Missing them was upsetting but what affected me more was that it
seemed that most of the conversations among my friends during school hours were about
experiences that happened at these activities. As a teen craving popularity and acceptance
I felt like I was the last to know everything and because I was not part of these bonding
experiences I became one of the last people invited to events like sleepovers.
These memories have shaped who I am today more than I initially realized. My
sense of justice has its roots here and as I write down these stories emotions come
flooding back to me. I remember caring about others from a young age, wanting people
to have enough and I always made efforts to make others feel included.
Expanding understandings of exclusion
Since my childhood my understandings of exclusion have expanded. When I was
younger I understood exclusion at the individual level. Other than my own feelings of
36
exclusion based on income and where I lived, the other examples of exclusion I was
aware of connected to the teasing people experienced. Some of my peers were teased and
felt excluded based on weight, religion, ability, and being labeled as a homosexual.
Thinking back I do not remember connecting exclusion to gender, race or other
categories. I also did not relate exclusion to systems of power as I do now.
My deepened awareness of exclusion developed as a high school teacher in
Toronto. Several understandings which connect to exclusion stand out for me during
those years. The first relates to the types of exclusion students experience. While,
students experienced exclusion for many of the same reasons that I remembered from
childhood, some students‘ feelings of exclusion also connected to their immigration
status, their lack of prior education in their home country, their English proficiency,
parental expectations, food restrictions, physical disability, and others. My understanding
of privilege grew during these years and I remember thinking that my experiences of
exclusion in elementary and secondary school as a white, able-bodied, English speaking,
Catholic, Canadian woman whose parents were still together, did not compare to those of
my students. I began hesitating before saying things like, ―I understand what you are
going through‖ or ―That reminds me of when I…‖ At the same time I would remember
the feelings of exclusion I felt growing up and I‘d like to think that they made me a better
listener and advocate for students. These statements were attempts to establish empathic,
caring connections to students as the bridge to participating with them to solve
challenges. Those aspects of students‘ realities that I could only imagine, and the ways
they shaped their lives opened a door that required a different type of understanding that I
could not so easily connect with. My recognition of this was a crucial one to move from
37
empathic activist and educator to a conscious engagement as an ―equity activist.‖ I
needed to understand that I did not understand (I could only imagine) before I could
begin to both recognize what I did not understand and work on understanding the
specificities of this ―blindness.‖
This leads to my understanding that feelings of exclusion are powerful, painful
and perhaps transformative for the individual experiencing them. My feelings of not
being included in friends‘ sleepover invitations were heartbreaking for me. They gave me
a reference point for understanding hurt that derives from exclusion so when students
come to me because they were feeling excluded from their peer group I expressed my
caring in ways that validated their experience so that they could move forward.
Resiliency, another understanding, is a term that comes to mind when I think
about exclusion and my former students. I learned early on in my teaching career not to
refer to my students by their experiences of exclusion but rather by their strengths and
abilities. I was often awed by the optimism and drive of students who overcame the labels
and statistics placed on them by society. Connected to these understandings was the
recognition that exclusion is often experienced systemically. At the school level
exclusion comes in the form of not including certain groups in the curriculum, asking
students to pay for field trips, student fees etc., organizing field trips outside of Canada
which exclude non-permanent residents and refugees, having an English as a Second
Language program of only four courses (with three of them merged as one class), not
allowing students with physical disabilities to enroll in their school of choice due to
limited facilities, and more. It was only when I was told about these barriers or I
38
witnessed them through the lives of students that I became conscious of their existence.
The privileges attributed to my dominant social identities were initially invisible to me
(McIntosh, 1988). Over the years I have made, and continue to make efforts, to become
conscious of the privileges attributed to me due to my social identities, do what I can to
eliminate barriers, help my students advocate for themselves, and raise awareness about
issues of privilege and exclusion.
An illustrative example from my position as a teacher educator that engages my
childhood experiences of exclusion, my growing understanding of privilege and
exclusion and my role as an educational activist is an activity called Circle of ourselves.11
This is an introductory activity I use with teacher candidates to initiate a discussion about
inclusion, exclusion and privilege in schools. To begin, each individual writes their name
in the centre of a page and in circles surrounding their name they write the identities or
categories that make up the ―circles of themselves‖. Once participants label the circles
with characteristics including their religious affiliation, gender, level of education, family
status, political affiliations, nationality, and groups to which they belong (runners,
quilters etc.) I ask them to think of a time in their lives when they felt included based on
one or more of their circles and a time they felt excluded. In small groups participants
share these experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Together as a large group I invite
volunteers to share their stories of exclusion and I construct a list of categories of
exclusion (race, gender, religion, first language, immigration status, etc.) on the board. In
this discussion I seek to highlight that we all have felt excluded at different times in our
11
I was first introduced to this activity while working at the TDSB equity department in 1999.
39
lives and feelings connected to experiences of exclusion are important to acknowledge.
At the same time this discussion leads to a recognition of privilege and systems of power
because some examples of exclusion are temporary, like when a participant talks about
feeling excluded when he could not speak the language while living abroad and he felt
―stupid‖ or when a Catholic participant felt excluded from her partner‘s Jewish traditions
at various times during the year. While acknowledging the emotions connected to the
exclusion I make a distinction between these experiences and the exclusion another
participant feels as the only black woman in her high school or the woman who wears a
hijab and although she was born in Canada is often asked where she came from. These
examples of exclusion connect to non-dominant social identities in Canada and
internationally which the participants cannot change. Whereas the English speaking male
travelling in Asia who feels excluded due to the language barrier can choose to live in
Canada where he will feel included, the black woman cannot change her racial
background in order to fit into dominant white spaces. Since these discussions are based
on real experiences and connect to emotions we all feel a space is created for people to
connect their own experiences with concepts of inclusion, exclusion, power and privilege.
This leads to a discussion of the types of exclusion students might experience, the
feelings connected to exclusion, and how as teachers we might support our students to
feel included.
Clearly my sense of justice and my understandings of exclusion have expanded
since my school days; but the memories of those early experiences have helped me
engage in discussions of inclusion and exclusion with diverse groups of students/teachers.
40
Beginning with an individual‘s personal experiences and feelings provides a connecting
point to facilitate the often more challenging discussions of power and privilege.
Early understandings of ‘justice’ through involvement in my church
community
Another childhood source of my developing sense of justice developed grew out
of the church community I belonged to. In the writing of these narratives I had initially
ignored the positive influence of that period in my life because for various reasons I have
distanced myself from the Catholic Church over the years. But as I began looking deeper
into my stories, and the sources of my social justice beliefs and principles, I was
transported back to my experiences connected to the church community.
St. Charles Catholic Church was located in the farming community where I grew
up. My father had been going to that church since he was a child. He had been an altar
boy and he and my grandparents have many stories of the close relationships they had
with the various priests that served the parish community. I enjoyed going to church on
Sundays. It was a time to see friends from the community and after almost every mass
most of the families would gather on the church steps to catch up on their lives. Everyone
knew each other and each Sunday felt like a little reunion. I developed a strong sense of
community here. Later when I would travel to Ecuador I would compare the supportive
and connected INEPE12
community to this one.
There are many stories I could tell about my years of going to church. It was a
community where members felt included. Everyone who wanted a role had one, or many.
12
INEPE (the Institute for Research, Popular Education and Promotion of Ecuador), is a community
development organization which has been working in the popular sectors of South Quito since 1985.
41
My dad was an usher, my mom was treasurer of the altar society and when I was old
enough I became part of the choir and later became a mass reader. I felt like I belonged
and that my contributions to mass and to church events were valued. This was also a
community that supported each other. Whether it was helping each other farm, sharing
tools, bringing someone‘s grain to market, ploughing a driveway in the winter, watching
someone‘s children, or bringing over a meal if someone was ill, I grew up feeling that
there were many people to rely on and supporting others in the community was what
people did.
As my involvement with the church community grew my overall sense of
community became stronger and so did my sense of justice. I would practice the readings
for mass prior to Sunday, I went to choir rehearsals, and over the years I developed a
strong relationship with the priest which continued in the form of letters while I was
away on an international exchange program. The sense of justice I developed connected
to helping others ‗less fortunate‘ by donating time, money, food or clothing. It also
related to being a ‗good person‘ by being kind to others, respecting others, and helping
out when and where I could. At that time I did not recognize that there were other ways
to engage in ‗social justice‘. This charity model that I was part of, which connected to
social service not social change (Office for Social Justice), would be my dominant
understanding of how to help others for the next few years.
High school and Rotary
My desire to make a difference continued to develop in high school through
participation on student council, the environmental club, knowledge learned in World
42
Issues class, and my introduction to Rotary International. In student council we organized
food drives and community building activities; in the environmental club we wrote a play
to raise awareness about environmental issues and we made and sold cloth bags for the
Christmas season; and in World Issues class I developed a deeper understanding and
passion for global issues. The positive feelings that came with helping others, taking
action on social justice and environmental issues, working with a group of committed
people, and being recognized publicly for these efforts motivated me to continue on this
path toward social justice activism.
My vice-principal, Wendy Hester, was a key individual in my high school years.
She took note of my interest in community and social justice issues and introduced me to
Rotary International.13
In Grade 11 she nominated me to attend RYLA (Rotary Youth
Leadership Awards), an intensive leadership training program, which led to my forming
an Interact (International Action) club at my high school.
Attending RYLA and being with dozens of student leaders from other high
schools was an inspiration for me and a defining moment in my teen years. This was one
of my first memories of wanting to do something bigger with my life and I remember the
experience vividly. On the first night of RYLA we settled in and were told to go to the
gymnasium where (for what felt like hours) we engaged in a variety of community
building activities. I remember going back to my room feeling like the happiest girl on
13
―Rotary International is a volunteer organization of business and professional leaders who
provide humanitarian service, and help to build goodwill and peace in the world. Rotary clubs
exist to improve communities through a range of humanitarian, intercultural and educational
activities‖. (Rotary International, n.d.). Part of Rotary‘s educational activities includes programs
for high-school students including Interact, RYLA, and student exchanges. My connection to
Rotary began here.
43
the planet, having made new friends and I was so excited for the rest of the program.
Over the next few days we engaged in activities and presentations on topics including:
keys to understanding ourselves and others, the importance of communication in effective
leadership, elements of community and global leadership, goal-setting, motivation, styles
of leadership, what makes an effective leader, group dynamics, ethics and critical
thinking, and Rotary's purpose and service to the community (Rotary District 5080). I
was a keen participant taking copious notes, gathering materials, and looking for ways to
integrate what I was learning here into my school and community.
I felt like a different person when I returned to my high school. I only wanted to
spend time with the other RYLA participant from my school and I was eager to begin
consolidating what I had learned at RYLA into my ‗real‘ life. Within that first week back
I was making morning announcements to start an Interact club at my school. Interact,
which stands for International Action, is a service club for youth (ages 14 – 18) supported
by individual Rotary clubs. I was motivated to start this club because I wanted to build
my connection with Rotary, put in practice the leadership skills I had learned at RYLA
and get more involved in community and global service.14
I was astounded when over 30
students from grades nine to 12 attended that first meeting! I felt like I had helped start
something and I was excited about the possibilities.
My connection with Rotary International continued for seven years. Their motto
―Service above Self‖ became my mantra. Through my involvement in Rotary my
14
Interact clubs must carry out two community service projects each year, including one that furthers
international understanding and goodwill (Rotary International).
44
commitment to local and global communities deepened and became more purposeful. I
began imagining myself becoming a Rotary ambassador for Canada and working for
global peace and understanding as a career. After high school I travelled to Belgium on a
year-long Rotary Youth Exchange, again due to encouragement from my vice-principal.
As I became more connected to Rotary I was inspired at the possibilities to become
involved in service projects within Canada and internationally.
As I reflect back on these experiences from my present understanding of social
justice and educational activism I realize that my high school experiences were mainly
connected to a charity approach to activism which tried to address immediate needs but
did not adequately attend to and take into account the root causes of issues. Whether it
was learning about a Rotary group‘s experience building a school in an African country
or the Interact club organizing a food and clothing drive at school or starting a fundraiser
for an international cause I think a good word to describe my actions and motivations was
humanitarianism. I was concerned for the welfare of others, and I was strongly
committed to making the improvement of human welfare my life‘s goal (The American
Heritage Dictionary, 2009). It would not be until years later, while living and studying in
Ecuador, that I would come to understand injustice as I see it now. Although I would not
say that my understanding of social justice became sophisticated through my high school
experiences there were some foundations laid for my future educational activism. The
leadership and organizational skills, the positive feelings that go along with community
service, being recognized for social action and the relationships that I built through these
activities kept me engaged and motivated to seek out opportunities to get involved in my
new contexts.
45
My exchange year: Challenging beliefs and refining goals
Living, attending high school in Belgium and getting to know dozens of other
international exchange students opened my eyes to many new things. Keeping abreast of
world events and reading the newspaper (other than our local Tilbury Times) was not
something I indulged in before travelling overseas. I remember being in Belgium for less
than a month and asking an exchange student from New Zealand what language people
spoke in her country? She was incredulous that I thought her command of English was
strong and I felt ignorant not knowing that English was New Zealand‘s official language.
As well I remember learning about Belgium‘s colonization of the Congo, their efforts to
‗help‘ the Congolese, and details about the Cold War that I was surprised that I had not
known before. Meeting and getting to know other teenagers from Latin America, Asia,
and Africa challenged stereotypes and misperceptions that I had held about these parts of
the world. I remember thinking at the time that if only everyone had the opportunity to
connect with people from around the world that international understanding would be
feasible and global conflicts could be resolved. I thought it was that easy! At this stage in
my life I did not have a complex understanding of the role North America played in
global inequities. My sense of social justice still did not connect to an understanding of
power relationships or an awareness of the negative impacts of colonization.
During this year in Belgium (my first trip outside of North America) my future
goals were refined. I had planned to go to the University of Waterloo for Environmental
Science. I decided to change my future studies to international relations/development. I
felt like my education was just beginning and I wanted to learn more about world events,
history, global conflicts and in the future work with an international humanitarian
46
organization. This was an important step towards educational activism – wanting to
increase my own knowledge, educate others and encourage action to work towards a
better world.
47
Chapter 4: My stories through university: Developing the
roots of Educational Activism
My stories in this chapter highlight my shift during my university years from an
interest in working for change internationally to a desire to become an educator for global
justice in Canada. My experiences in Ecuador, during my third year of university, played
a major role in this shift. My life experiences and understandings ―bumped up‖ against
the realities of peoples and communities across Ecuador and this bumping continues to
reverberate in and through my stories to this day (Clandinin et al., 2006).
Ecuador – Developing a new understanding of social justice
Spending my third year of university in Ecuador through the Trent in Ecuador
program provided another life-changing experience and solidified a new understanding of
social justice and my career path in education. Taking university courses in International
Development in a ‗developing‘ Latin American country and volunteering with a
community development organization for four months brought all that I had been
studying during my two years at the University of Guelph into reality.
Prior to this experience in a ‗developing‘ country my views of social justice had
already begun to shift away from a charity approach, where I believed that if the
symptoms of injustice were addressed that equity could be achieved, to an
acknowledgment of the need to address the systemic policies and practices that caused
much if the injustice in the first place (Office of Social Justice). Two university
professors, Dr. Jorge Nef and Dr. Teresa Turner, helped shape my changing views during
my first two years through courses including ―Politics of Latin America‖, ―Development
and Underdevelopment‖, and ―Politics of Africa‖. It has been sixteen years but I can still
48
hear their lectures and the passion for justice which resonated in their words and
examples. I remember listening to course lectures and reading articles from Arturo
Escobar‘s Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the Third World
(1995) and Development in theory and practice by Jan K. Black (1991) and feeling that
pieces of a puzzle which had been missing throughout high school and during my
exchange year in Belgium were being filled in. For example, I remember being told by
someone I cared about in Belgium that people in the Congo were lazy. They said, ―We
try to help them by giving them tractors but they are lazy and just let them rust in their
fields.‖ At the time I believed this statement but I could not understand how it was
possible that farmers in another country would leave tractors to decay. I thought there
was a better explanation as to why people in different parts of the world were ‗less
developed‘.
Through the courses I took during the first two years at the University of Guelph I
began to see the development paradigm as a form of neocolonialism (Black, 1991;
Escobar, 1995). I remember reading about how development initiatives began in the
1960s by ‗experts‘ going into countries and defining people as poor and then creating
programs to help solve the problem of poverty (Black, 1991). But even through the
awareness gained in these courses and learning about the problematic development
apparatus and the negative impacts of Western interference I still felt that I had a role to
fill as an International Development worker. I believed that I could offer real support to
communities since I understood the issues surrounding previous development paradigms
and I understood that future international development needed to be more participatory
and incorporate the voices and knowledge of communities in the Global South. These
49
feelings of wanting to be a ‗new and improved international development expert‘
changed after only three months in Ecuador.
Through learning about the social, economic, political, historical aspects of
Ecuador, living in an Ecuadorian family and travelling throughout the country, I began to
witness what the development picture in Ecuador looked like, beyond the reports, articles
and videos. Travelling to Ecuador‘s Amazonian region during the third month of the
program was the beginning of my shift away from considering a future as an international
development worker. I remember sitting with all the other Trent in Ecuador students as
we waited for our bus. We were looking forward to going to the rain forest, exploring its
biodiversity, learning about and meeting indigenous communities, getting a glimpse into
the impacts of development on the region and overall having a great time as a group. Our
feelings of excitement about this adventure sombered upon reaching Lago Agrio, a jungle
city about half an hour from the border of Colombia, and home to an abandoned oil
refinery once run by Petrocanada. Although production had stopped years prior there was
still natural gas being burned off from a pipe coming from what should have been a
cement holding tank. Instead there was a hole in the earth without any protective layer to
keep the oil from leeching into the ground and waterways. Our indigenous guide stuck a
stick into the ground about 200 metres from the abandoned site and pulled it out dripping
with black crude. We were told that this was how many of the oil operations in the
Ecuadorian Amazon functioned – no environmental protections in place which lead to
contaminated soil and water across the region. Seeing the battered Canadian flag at the
site was impactful. I remember wondering how it was possible for a country committed
to tough environmental standards at home could actively and knowingly contaminate this
50
part of the world and destroy the lives of many communities here. I remember thinking
that this would never happen in Canada, Canadians would never allow it, yet here they
were profiting from the devastation in another country.15
Feelings of incredulousness
grew as we travelled from this abandoned oil site and watched the oil pipeline stretch
above ground across the Ecuadorian Amazonian region leaving the entire area vulnerable.
We spoke with leaders of indigenous communities who have been pushed to start eco-
tourism projects in order to hold back the encroaching oil companies from taking over the
entire region. The reality of seeing this case study in development made much of what I
had been reading about for two years come into clearer focus.
I began to doubt my role as a development worker who had no background in
areas like engineering or health and who was not fluent in the language. What role could
I play in serving communities who were experiencing poverty and a lack of autonomy not
because they were lacking in knowledge or good ideas but due to international influences
like the imposition of structural adjustment policies? These were decimating the social
safety net and had led to Ecuador increasing their exports in primary products (bananas,
coffee, cocoa, shrimp and flowers) which have numerous negative impacts. My
understanding of charity versus social justice was becoming clearer. There was no
amount of aid that would support the Ecuadorian population to be able to construct their
own realities and fulfill their own potential. I felt that systemic change at the international
and national level was needed.
15
At the time I was not aware of the tar sands in Alberta or the effects of mining on aboriginal
communities in Canada. My Canadian perspective consisted of the oil extraction that was happening in
the communities where I lived and worked. There were many small oil wells in Southwestern Ontario and
they were well maintained.
51
On another trip I travelled to Ecuador‘s coastal area where swaths of mangroves
have been deforested to make way for shrimp farms. It was enraging to see the
devastating loss of a critical source of biodiversity in order to meet global demand for
shrimp and to support the national economy. More heartbreaking was the acute poverty
of the communities surrounding the shrimp farms which have not directly benefitted from
the industry. Again I questioned the usefulness of my university studies and felt guilty
about my own consumption habits which contribute to these problems. How did a degree
in International Development prepare me to serve these communities?
This growing feeling of powerlessness was a turning point. The glamour of
working for an international development organization and being able to ‗help‘ people in
‗less-developed‘ nations became less appealing as my understanding of global inequality
grew. I now felt that meaningful action would be to effect international policy and
consumption so that Ecuadorian communities and organizations would be able to have
autonomy over their own futures. At first I felt a sense of despair having spent three years
studying International Development for no reason. This feeling changed when I started
my work placement at INEPE (The Institute for Research, Popular Education and
Promotion of Ecuador). It was working in this community development organization
where I regained a sense of purpose, this time in the field of education.
The Seeds of Educational Activism – INEPE and Paolo Freire
In January 1997, I began volunteering with INEPE, a Popular Education school
and community development organization located in an indigenous community
overlooking Quito, Ecuador. I will never be able to adequately express through these
52
personal narratives the significance that INEPE has had on my personal and professional
life. Initially when I began writing about my journey as an educational activist my story
began with INEPE because it was there where I decided to become a teacher and where I
first began to consider education as a tool for social change. My relationship with INEPE
has grown over the past 14 years. I now consider INEPE, Ecuador and the Raza-Alvaro
family (founding members of INEPE) my second home and family. I believe so deeply in
the principles of INEPE and their work that I remain committed to them in many
different capacities up to this day. In this section I will offer a description of INEPE and
the ―seeds of educational activism‖ that were planted during my initial 1997 experience.
The ―seeds‖ include an understanding of education as a tool for social change, an
introduction to Paolo Freire and his ideas, the knowledge and inspiration gained from
Lilián Alvaro (considered by most as the heart of INEPE), and INEPE‘s principles that I
have come to live by.
Below is a description of INEPE that I recently used for a poster to attract
interested OISE teacher candidates to do their five week internship in Ecuador:
INEPE - The Institute of Investigation, Popular Education and
Promotion of Ecuador is an internationally renowned non-governmental school
with over 25 years of work with low-income indigenous young people and
families in the Dolorosa neighborhood in Quito, Ecuador. With 600 children
enrolled and over 1800 Indigenous teachers receiving their Bachelors or Masters
degrees in education, INEPE‘s commitment is to transformative education that
follows the life work of Paulo Freire and honours the whole child, values cultural
diversity and supports spiritual development.
At INEPE caring for the environment is part of daily life. The hillsides are
being reforested with thousands of new trees, organic gardens are being expanded
with state of the art biodynamic composting, and new greenhouses await organic
tomato crops. Community weekend work parties called ―mingas‖, repaired old
roads and built a new one.
53
Classes include traditional subjects like math, natural and social sciences,
physical education, computers, and language classes in Quechua and English, all
of which are taught through the principles of popular education. Yoga, aikido,
reiki, acupressure are part of the curriculum. The children receive integrated
medical care with indigenous remedies, herbal and homeopathic treatments that
honor the wisdom in the body. There is also a beautiful music conservatory where
children and adults join together in choirs, bands, and orchestra.
When I first volunteered at INEPE in 1997 some of the aspects described above (eg.
acupressure, the music conservatory, and the greenhouses) were distant dreams which
have become reality over the years as people offer their personal gifts to the community.
For example, a couple from the USA spends six weeks a year at INEPE offering
acupressure and cranial sacral therapy classes to youth and adults. This couple is just one
of many people who have been inspired by INEPE and continue to return and give back
in years to come.
It does not take long for people to realize that INEPE is a special place. What
struck me early on was the happiness and sense of agency I saw in the students, staff, and
community members. I remember how strikingly different this was from the pictures and
stories of poverty and strife that are often connected to children, families and
communities in the ‗developing‘ world. Even though the economic and living conditions
of the majority of the families in the community surrounding INEPE would designate
them as ‗poor‘, this label would not be one that anyone who spent any time at INEPE
would put on this community. People were engaged in creating new possibilities for their
lives and saw themselves as actors in transforming their reality.
Education was central to the work of INEPE and I began to see education as a
powerful tool for social change. Prior to this experience my university studies connected
54
to considerations about which populations and areas would be the most effective foci for
development. For example, should the focus be women since they are the nucleus of the
community? Or should the focus be children since they are the future of a community?
Should the target area be the environment, the local economy, health, or education? My
time at INEPE convinced me that education should be central to community development
work.
At INEPE, their Unidad Educativa (a K-12 school) was the focal point and their
local development, health, environmental, cultural and women‘s projects stemmed from
there. Local indigenous women were educated in early childhood education so they could
be effective daycare workers. This education allowed these women to gain employment
and helped them become more knowledgeable mothers to their own children. Children
investigated the natural sciences in their classes and wrote letters to the municipal
government successfully halting the deforesting of the neighbouring forest. Indigenous
knowledge and practices were infused into all subject areas and the community gathered
for cultural events and performances organized by the school. This has led to an
appreciation and revival of indigenous traditions which were at risk of being lost. High
school students were engaged in work-study projects where they learned the skills,
developed work habits and earned a salary connected to running a community bakery,
local recycling projects, organic agriculture, and a community library. Through these and
other examples, children, youth, and adults have been involved in shaping and
transforming their lives and are active participants in the building of a strong community.
55
It was inspiring for me to be connected to INEPE and I found myself wanting to
be connected to as many aspects of the school as possible. I taught English as a Second
Language during the school day and in the afternoons became involved in establishing
the community library, helping out with the bakery and organizing afterschool activities
for some of the children in the community. My understanding of development shifted
throughout this experience. I began to question how it was defined and who needed to be
‗developed‘. A moment that stands out for me was when a group of boys, who I had
gotten very close to, spent one afternoon in the school yard playing with a stick and an
old tire. They seemed happier and freer than many privileged children in Canada. They
were not competing for who had more possessions, they did not experience bullying, and
they spent every afternoon outdoors not playing video games or on the Internet. I
remember thinking that INEPE and the surrounding community could teach people in
Canada a thing or two about development. Through education new realities were being
created based on the hopes and dreams of the community.
I became inspired to pursue a career in education in Canada. This was a shift from
my previous hopes to work for a development organization internationally. My new
motivations were to engage in the ‗development‘ of youth in Canada using INEPE‘s
focus on the whole child. As well I wanted to be a high school teacher in Canada to use
education as a tool for social change and raise awareness about global injustice that
‗developed‘ nations were implicated in. Unfair international policies, pressures from
international organizations and global consumption patterns (flowers, shrimp, bananas,
oil) were limiting the ability for communities to reach their full potential and gain
autonomy over their lives and futures and I believed that young people in Canada could
56
gain an understanding of global issues and act in solidarity with these communities. The
final words from my self evaluation of my experience at INEPE sums up this new
commitment to education and what would become educational activism:
Though my time at INEPE was short it was long enough to affect my feelings
towards education and has instigated me to pursue a path of Popular Education in
Canada. … I feel that education is the basis in achieving true development in
order to create a world of people who understand and accept other cultures, who
are critical of political and economic systems and who have the desire to help
others in any way they can.
(Personal reflection, 1997).
An introduction to Paulo Freire
Beyond having a new life purpose I also gained direction in how to engage in
action for change. It was through my time at INEPE that I was introduced to Paulo
Freire‘s ideas of popular education and ―conscientization‖ often referred to as critical
consciousness (1970). I had heard of Freire previously during Professor Nef‘s lectures in
his ―Politics of Latin America‖ class but watching his ideas translated into action and
seeing the results drove me to want learn more. During the four months I was at INEPE,
and especially once I had made the decision to follow a career in education, I began to
ask Lilián Alvaro (a director and founding member of INEPE) about Freirian concepts
and I would take notes of how Freire‘s ideas were being translated into practice. At the
end of my volunteer experience I included many of these ideas in a final paper I wrote as
a requirement for the Trent in Ecuador program. Here is an excerpt which highlights my
understanding at the time:
Paolo Freire, who has influenced INEPE's model for education greatly,
has put forth education as a practice of freedom based on three concepts:
dialogue, participation and solidarity.
The first concept, dialogue, reflects the importance of mutual
57
communication between the educators and those being educated exchanging
"sabadurias y conocimientos" (wisdom and knowledge). Everyone
communicating realizes and accepts that no person's dialogue is better than
another. By dialoguing together the education process can be initiated with the
community and does not have to be a hierarchical system imposed on the
community but one based on the reality of the area which will then work to
enhance it.
Participation, the second component, integrates aspects of equal
participation among the community, the students, and the teachers to create a
system which benefits the whole population interchanging many ideas.
Participation also includes the interdisciplinary nature of all the subject areas
taught in education. Therefore at INEPE each subject overlaps just as they do in
reality. For instance when talking about the scientific method which is the manner
to prove some aspect of nature most educators tend to overlook the humanistic
aspect of investigation. Feelings are conjured up when something is observed and
as humans we also relate to nature. This human side of science, therefore, should
play a role in education as well. If both aspects are included a better
understanding of the topic will ensue. To gain a true and liberating education all
subject areas participate with the other. For these reasons at INEPE students are
asked to draw in Math class, or taken to the forest for science class and then asked
to write a text about the feelings generated from the experience. This participation
involves the inclusion of all aspects of life in each subject studied. Although
objective knowledge is important so is subjective knowledge and both are able to
change realities. By this I mean that by including the human emotions in
education a whole community can be advanced in the aspect of obtaining better
values, treating each other with more love and respect etc. Participation in Paolo's
terms also means that when one person knows more than another he should use
this knowledge in a liberating way and not in a dominating one. Paolo Freire's
pedagogy is all encompassing and one of alegria (happiness) where participating
together in areas of advancing knowledge systems and human emotions we can
see the world and our own reality in a new light and with a better understanding.
Solidarity is the third theme promoted by Paolo Freire as being an
essential part in achieving a liberating education. This concept expresses the
fraternal nature of education. We educate and in turn are educated. It is a mutual
process where each participant realizes that he or she has something to learn from
the other. Working together and learning from each other we become better able
to understand our own reality and by knowing it better, can work to transform it.
(Goodreau, 1997)
Freire‘s critique of the banking system of education that I had been educated in and his
ideas for education as a practice of freedom inspired me. I was excited about the
58
possibility of bringing these popular education ideas to Ontario. Once again I felt like I
had something to offer the development field.
When comparing my understanding of these concepts now to those expressed
above, I believe they have become more nuanced and reflect a deepening of
understanding that experience should bring. Rather than simply seeing dialogue as a
bidirectional, mutual exchange, I now understand that it is a much richer and more
dynamic process of multiple internal and external ―conversations‖ in which internal
dialogue (meaning making) shapes what is communicated and understood as a shared
understanding of the world is sought in a community of learners. Similarly, my
understandings of participation and solidarity have expanded. I thought the work was
easy. After 14 years of education work I realize how challenging truly participating and
working in solidarity with others is. Participation implies listening and learning from
others and being open to being challenged and transformed. It involves becoming aware
of how systems of power operate and how social identities have an impact on theirs and
others‘ realities. Acting in solidarity with others is not simply ―working together and
learning from each other.‖ It involves a recognition of the complexities of systems of
power and being aware (from my position) of how privileged social identities can be used
to act for social justice. Freire‘s concept of solidarity involves people who are developing
understandings of themselves in relation to others and truly respecting each other to work
in common, if complex constellations of unity, to challenge systems of oppression.
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Being inspired by Lilían Alvaro Lugo
Another seed of my educational activism has been the inspired example of Lilián
Alvaro Lugo (a founder of INEPE). It has been over 14 years since we first met and I
have had the privilege to learn from many other dedicated educators and activists in my
life. After all of these years however, I still describe Lilián as the most influential woman
I have ever known. I had the privilege of living with Lilián, her husband Patricio and
their daughter Andrea while I was volunteering at INEPE. It is many of her qualities as
an educator that I have drawn from her and continue to try to infuse in my own practice.
Lilián sees the humanity and potential in every student. I was moved by her
ability to connect with each child that crossed her path in a sincere and authentic way.
She seemed to know each student and she ‗saw‘ each of them. Years later I would read
the chapter ―Teaching with love‖ by bell hooks (2003) and Pedagogy of Freedom by
Paolo Freire (1998) and think of Lilián as they wrote about loving and caring for
students. She demonstrated this in small gestures like putting sunscreen on the face of a
kindergarten student or guiding her finger over the text a child was reading to help them
pronounce each syllable or the gentle way she would alter the sweater of a student so it
fell properly over their shoulders. She also made efforts to give responsibilities to
students that would highlight their strengths. She was instrumental in beginning an
afterschool homework session for students needing extra support. She asked Manuel, a
grade 9 student who she noted was strong (especially in Math and Physics), had a
welcoming presence and who she felt had the ability to teach, if he would be interested in
tutoring students a couple of afternoons a week. She explained why she thought he would
60
be an effective tutor and mentor and he graciously accepted.16
On another occasion she
asked Geovanny, another high school student, if he would be interested in working with
me to organize the community library. She noted in him his organizational skills and
attention to detail. These opportunities and extra responsibilities served as a launching
point for students.17
They became more able to handle responsibility, they felt part of the
INEPE team, their self confidence grew and I do not think it is a stretch to say that
Lilián‘s intervention in their lives has made a lasting impact.18
Another principle that Lilián lives by and inspires in those around her is
excellence. This connects to loving students and working with others for a more equitable
world. An outsider might view Lilián as a strict and demanding teacher. One morning she
pulled aside Jorge, a grade four student who she had seen run out of class. She was
disappointed in him for not completing his homework and for being disruptive and
disrespectful. She took him to wash his face and clean up his uniform. Jorge often came
to school unkempt. He lived with his other siblings and mother in a tiny house with mud
floors. There were serious issues in the family and I remember thinking it was remarkable
that Jorge and his younger brother came to school at all. I would excuse him for being
16
Since graduating from high school, Manuel has been a Math and Physics teacher at INEPE. He is
presently finishing his thesis for his university studies in education and he is a self confident, caring, and
excellent teacher.
17 Geovanny has finished his studies in library science is now the librarian and print centre manager at
INEPE.
18 During my last visit in May 2011 I was thrilled to see many of my former students working as teachers,
administration assistants, department heads, and project managers. I could write a whole thesis on this
aspect alone. It connects with the sense of family that INEPE creates, the love that teachers show
students who then see themselves as capable and worthy individuals and the quality education they have
received that they are now using to serve the community.
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late and for not having his homework finished. At first I was surprised by how Lilián,
Patricio and Rosita treated him. They demanded that he respect his uniform, show up for
school on time and complete his homework. I came to understand this attitude. They
demanded more from him than other teachers had (including myself) because they truly
believed that he could meet their expectations. And he did. He started completing his
homework at the school in the afternoon and he tried to come to school on time wearing
his uniform respectfully. I learned an important lesson about deficit thinking through this
experience. This student, although facing numerous challenges in his life, did not have to
be treated differently than other students and demands placed on him should allow him
the same opportunities as other students. This experience shook my beliefs and made me
realize that I still held a paternalistic view of students in the ‗developing‘ world. I felt that
I was serving these students by engaging them in fun English activities and volunteering
my time with them. I have come to acknowledge that my expectations for students were
initially low. I did not make concerted efforts to construct scaffolded learning activities
nor did I effectively evaluate students‘ progress. Lilían, on the other hand, placed high
expectations on all students because she saw their potential and wanted them to become
actors in their lives and the life of the community. In Canada a student like Jorge would
have been placed in special education classes and labeled a slow learner. Yet at INEPE he
flourished. During my last visit in May 2011 I was so happy to run into Jorge again. He
told me he was back from his university studies in Cuba where he was in his third year of
a medical degree. He is going to be a doctor!
This demand for excellence was not limited to students. Teachers were held to
excellence as well. Beyond their teaching load they were required to be part of weekly
62
coordination meetings and to submit weekly evaluations and lesson plans to the lead
teacher for their grade or area. Lilián would meet every Saturday for an average of five
hours with the grade two teachers and assist them with their lesson plans for the next
week. She expected all teachers to be engaged in their own professional learning and she
instilled within them the critical importance of the job they were doing. I often sat in on
these meetings and I was driven to expect more from myself as a result. My lesson plans
became more detailed and my knowledge of each student, my ability to observe, listen
and plan according to their interests, questions and abilities grew.
Solidarity was another of Lilián‘s qualities which has inspired my actions since
then. Many of my stereotypes and assumptions of how principals or directors of schools
should act were challenged at INEPE. The hierarchical relationships that I had come to
expect from people in positions of power do not exist at INEPE. Lilián, through her daily
actions, showed me what living with humility and solidarity with others looks like. When
going on a walk through the neighbouring forest or up to the organic gardens Lilián
would bring a garbage bag and pick up each piece of garbage she saw along the way. At
lunch she would sit with students at the small tables and chairs and make sure they all
had their meals before she ate. During a community work day Lilián would work
alongside other community members cleaning desks, pulling weeds, planting flowers etc.
If a community member needed to be taken to the hospital she would visit, often
spending hours with them and their family. And when one of the recent graduates became
addicted to drugs or alcohol she and her husband Patricio (also a founder and director of
INEPE) would talk to them and get them into rehabilitation often paying for it from their
63
own salary. These examples along with her continued efforts to obtain services and
programs for the INEPE community have provided rich references to live by.
Encompassed in the illustrations above are feelings of love, hopefulness, passion
and possibility. Though I could outline how all of the staff at INEPE exemplify these
qualities, Lilián embodies them and inspires others through her lived example. I know
that Lilián would not like how I have focused on her actions here; she would insist that it
is the collective that should be highlighted. I agree that she does not act alone and it is the
commitment of many that have resulted in INEPE‘s success. But as her husband Patricio
said to a small group of us this past May (the same phrase I wrote in my term paper 14
years earlier), ―Lilián is the heart of INEPE.‖ She inspires us to be the best version of
ourselves. Her words, ―ser más para servir mejor‖19
ring in my head often and I strive
daily to model her qualities of seeing the potential in my students, demanding high
expectations of them, living in solidarity with others, and acting with love.
Back in Canada – Working for change from a Global Education
perspective
Returning from my experiences in Ecuador, I was eager to begin putting into
action the principles of popular education and working with others to take action on
global issues. I was in my final year of my International Development degree and I was
eager to begin moving towards my new goal of being a high school teacher. To that end I
developed and presented a proposal for a Global Education working group to OPIRG-
Guelph (Ontario Public Interest Research Group). The goal for this working group was to
19
“ser más para servir mejor” loosely translates to “be the best you possible in order to serve others
better”.
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develop workshops (using popular education principles) for high school classes on global
issues and to work with interested students on action projects. I believed that through
education we could raise awareness about issues of injustice (like the impacts of oil in
Ecuador or shrimp consumption and the destruction of the mangroves) and that once
students recognized injustice and their connection to global issues that we could work to
effect change locally, nationally and globally. With my working group proposal accepted
I successfully connected with the Guelph International Resource Centre (GIRC) and
teachers at the local high schools.
A critical moment in my educational activism journey occurred during the
inaugural working group meeting. I was astounded to see approximately 30 interested
university students in attendance, excited about the opportunity to work with high school
students on issues of global justice that they were passionate about. I knew that many
university students were interested in global justice but I was inspired at the number who
considered education as a vehicle for social change. Some became involved because they
had had their own international experiences and were interested in educating others about
issues they cared about like the situation in East Timor and Shell Oil‘s devastating
impacts on the Ogoni people in Nigeria. Through this emerging community connected to
the Global Education working group my commitment to educating for global justice in
Canada began to take shape.
My first experience writing social justice curriculum within an institution
In January 1998 I was hired by the Centre for Cultural Studies (CCS) of the
University of Guelph to develop a third year course entitled Cultural Studies, the
Classroom, and the Public Sphere. This paid employment in the social justice field
65
provided encouragement that educational activism work could be valued institutionally.
This course was designed to explore ways of knowing, alternative methods of education,
research and activism in collaboration with community groups. Two objectives of the
course were that:
It intends to set up a relationship that has not previously existed in a formal way
between the university and the community as a way of recognizing the education
and research regularly undertaken by community groups and their role in the
production of knowledge and social change.
Another objective is to help students follow a path to success in the not-for-profit
sector. This sector operates on a different value system from the for-profit sector
in many cases. It is important for students to understand the social justice
community; the constraints, challenges, limitations, and values which exist, in
order for students to make a path for themselves and look to alternative ways
which will lead to social change.
(Draft course outline, 1998)
Perhaps the most critical piece necessary to achieve course goals that I now see as
absent from this description is a concentrated focus on the internal realities (along with
social identities) that are brought to the experience in the form of each participant. The
―self‖ or ―selves‖ of learners is at the core of each learning experience and is what makes
meaning of the ―text‖ of experience. Were I to develop the same course today, I would
place emphasis on the construction of personal meaning through social lenses and the
need to unpack these meanings to enhance their engagement within social justice
communities.
Aspects of this work that provided insights to my growth at the time include
connecting to community and not-for-profit organizations, learning from an established
group of activist oriented university professors, and gaining insight into the process of
institutionalizing social justice work.
66
I remember feeling a new world open up to me when I began meeting directors of
Guelph community organizations like Action Read, Fresh Start Housing, Anishnabeg
Outreach and Women in Crisis. These organizations were committed not only to meeting
the immediate needs of the communities they served but were also active in influencing
inequitable practices and policies that affected marginalized communities. After four
years of studying International Development, I was only now learning about social justice
work being done right outside of the university walls. My university studies up to this
point had made no connection to local organizations nor encouraged students to get
involved in the community. I too had not made an effort to connect to social justice
initiatives happening locally because I lived on-campus for my first two years and spent
my third year abroad. Until my connection with these community organizations I felt that
it was more important to work for global causes because I thought the needs were more
acute than issues facing Canadians. Through many hours of research and interviews I
began to make connections between the national and international. This was the first time
that I was learning about and seeing Canadians experiencing poverty, living in inadequate
housing, facing challenges of literacy, abuse, and invisibility. I cannot say that my
understanding of these issues developed to a large extent through this experience but my
awareness of their existence did.
Within a few months I had compiled a list of over 50 social justice groups in the
Guelph area and had spoken with many of them. Through this experience my educational
outlook which had been firmly focused on the global expanded to include local and
national communities and I began envisioning that future global education/social justice
67
work in schools would be richer and more effective by connecting to social justice
organizations.
It was through working with this established group at the Centre for Cultural
Studies of the University of Guelph that I recognized the value of collaboration and
where I began developing strategies for engaging in activist work within an institution.
These professors, representing different faculties, had been working together for years to
create spaces within the university for social justice orientations to become more
normalized. Through their efforts and knowledge of the institution, this activist oriented
course was successfully launched in the Fall of 2000. In a report which outlined the
process of developing this course I highlighted some of the strategies which led to
institutional support:
Pointers for establishing a project in an atmosphere unfriendly to beliefs:
1. Bring the undergraduate population into your corner. Their numbers are many
and they usually stick around for at least four years, unlike graduate students.
2. Incorporate the university mission into your proposal. In this case information
technology and collaboration with community groups is deemed important though
what is usually put into practice seems tokenistic at best.
3. Get media attention. This will make large numbers aware, generate legitimacy,
and make it harder for the academy to put down something "in their interest"
which may affect their public image. (Goodreau, 1998)
Thinking strategically and being part of this successful initiative was significant in my
development as an educational activist. Prior to working with these professors I had
connected with faculty in the Political Science department who were considered activists
and sometimes agitators by the university administration. They often spoke out against
the university administration and were often persecuted by other faculty for their
‗extreme‘ views. Although I personally supported their politics and became an ally
68
working alongside them I saw the struggles and backlash they often endured. I found it
interesting that the work of the Centre for Cultural Studies (which could have also been
viewed as subversive) did not face the scrutiny that these activist professors experienced.
A lesson I learned early on was that activism which seeks to challenge social structures
does not have to come from those with the loudest voices or radical views. Those
connected to the CCS worked within the existing structure in order to effect change. The
professors were committed to social justice and worked collaboratively and methodically
towards their goals. I realized that activists were not only the individuals in the spotlight
with their fists in the air. Successful social justice initiatives could originate from
individuals who were viewed as team players by a largely liberal institution. This would
be a lesson that I would remember when I started my own career teaching in the Ontario
public school system.
I was feeling extremely positive through this experience. My first attempts at
engaging in global education and social justice initiatives through both OPIRG-Guelph
and Centre for Cultural Studies of the University of Guelph were both widely supported
and successful. I had returned from my life changing trip in Ecuador to affirming
experiences about the possibilities of education as a tool for social change.
The draft course - Cultural studies, the classroom, and the public sphere –
Initial developments of my social justice education theory and practice
Looking over the course outline I developed 13 years ago (prior to my Bachelor
of Education degree) offers insights into where I was in my journey as an educational
activist. My first reaction to what I had written was, ―Wow Jill this is impressive!‖ I
remember having researched issues of power, the construction of knowledge, and how to
69
develop a university course which attempts to de-center the academy and privilege
student and community organizational knowledge and experience. As I reviewed the 25
page draft course outline I had developed I noted a few aspects which would still be
present if I were developing the course today.
The first is the importance given to theory/practice. The first principle of Cultural
Studies outlined in the course is ―Theory must be practiced; practice must be theorized‖
(p. 1). This praxis is weaved throughout the course. During the practicum component of
the course I suggested that ―[t]he class will reconvene monthly (and/or have a regular
discussion group using communications technology) in the second semester for the
purpose of theorizing and sharing reflections about the community practicum experience
(p. 3). This principle of theorizing practice and practicing theory is still one I attempt to
integrate into my initial teacher education classes each year.20
Another aspect that
impressed me after 13 years was the importance given to incorporating community and
student input into the direction of the course. One of the first activities of the course was
to:
… involve students, members of the Centre for Cultural Studies and community
activists in the following:
* finalizing the design of each offering of the course itself (including the scale and
nature of community involvement in the second semester); 20
An assignment in my Teacher Education Seminar course is a Praxis project which asks students to
integrate observation, reflection and practice by engaging in a school and/or community-based volunteer
project and to compose a reflective “praxis” summary with the following components (taken directly from
the assignment):
1. Retell – describe the activities, responsibilities & duties performed including specific “critical incidents”
to animate your story. Did you achieve your project objectives?
2. Relate – the experiences to specific concepts/content learned through your Initial Teacher Education
courses. How did the course material extend, assist and/or differ from what you experienced? (with
accurate references!!!) 3. Reflect on the experiences as they relate to your professional growth,
highlighting 2-3 key insights and 2-3 areas of desired future learning.
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* assessing the different needs of the course, the students, and the community
partners; (p. 2)
I continue to value this principle and do what I can to integrate student input and
changing needs into the fluid nature of all of my classes. A third aspect that reflects my
current educational activism is the efforts made in this course to reflect on, question and
deconstruct concepts and ideas. Examples of this from my 1998 course outline include a
whole class dedicated to deconstructing the ―classroom‖:
I feel that in order to better understand the dynamics between the university and
the community we need to be able to theorize issues that may take place here and
create a space which is an alternative to the typical classroom we may find in this
university and formal school systems. (p. 8)
Another class focused on unpacking ―Education, research and social intervention‖:
How have they been recognized traditionally?
Are they done in the same manner in the community sphere? How do they differ?
How funding relates to social intervention? Barriers, etc.
Can we derive alternative methods of these "modernist" components in order to
transform society? (p. 12)
I was pleased to be reminded of the depth of my thinking regarding these aspects of
engaging in theory/practice throughout the course, involving students and community
activists in the structuring and decision making for the course and infusing a spirit of
questioning and critical thinking into course themes. At the same time that my thinking of
ways to engage meaningfully in social justice work was developing however, there are
aspects of my thinking that have developed and shifted over the years.
If I were to teach this course today I would make some changes. The first would
be to include time for community building in the first couple of classes. The topic for the
first class was ―What is Cultural Studies and why is this course important?‖ None of my
71
initial ideas for the first class connected to getting to know ourselves and each other or to
negotiating the creation of a space that would allow for controversial yet respectful
discussions. Since an overall theme in the course was ―unlearning‖ there should have
been attention paid to aspects including classroom and community building processes
(Wald, 1997). I think another important theme that I would infuse throughout the course
would be a consideration of our social identities and how who we are impacts our work.
Although in the initial preamble of the course I mention the importance of
―understand[ing] our place in the power relations and issues that will be discussed in
order to transform our reality‖ (p. 3) I did not incorporate any activities or readings that
ask students to consider privilege or their connection to power in society.
On the note of readings I was dismayed to see that even though the authors and
articles/books I chose came from fields including critical theory, feminism, and critical
pedagogy, the majority of them were from dominant backgrounds. Why had I not made
greater efforts to include a variety of voices and perspectives? Another question that I had
for my previous self was why I had structured this course much like other university
courses with topics, readings, and presentations? Analysing it 13 years later, after having
been involved in education for many years, I might include a community mapping
exercise, community circles, perspective taking activities and make reference to specific
points in the course where it would be important to seek out community perspectives in
content and pedagogy. These omissions and gaps in thinking surprised me. Why had I not
reflected/considered my own dominant social identities and position of being educated in
the academy? I had been developing a course to de-center the ‗ivory tower‘ and the topics
chosen were reflective of this yet I had done little of the reflective work myself.
72
Interestingly, at the time I thought I had considered my position in relation to this
work. I went back to what I had written about my ―position‖ to see if I could get a sense
of what I had been thinking at the time:
To position myself in relation to this work, I am a recent graduate of the
Collaborative International Development Studies program at the University of
Guelph and have been involved in social justice work through efforts with OPIRG
(Ontario Public Interest Research Group) and affiliations with other groups in the
area. I am interested in working for social change through the field of education. I
see education as a tool for change and my focus has been global education and
critical pedagogy. My university career, though of an interdisciplinary focus, did
not highlight community organizing and the social justice sector. I felt unprepared
to succeed in this dynamic field which integrates historical growth and challenges
which need to be understood.
(Goodreau, 1998)
Even though in this quote I acknowledge the importance of positioning myself in this
work I do not include an awareness of my social identities or an understanding of what
unconscious biases I might have writing from a university perspective. This excerpt gives
me a better understanding as to why an investigation of social identities is missing, why
there is little attention paid to including authors from the Global South, and why little
attention was paid to altering the university course structure. At this stage in my
educational activism journey I had yet to engage in discussions of privilege and power as
it related to individuals and I had not begun my own critical reflective process. My
activism as it related to this course connected to challenging institutional and corporate
power and discussions of uniting the left wing against the right.21
One of my notes for the
week entitled ―Social activism and considerations‖ highlights this:
21
This focus related to the activist climate on the University of Guelph campus at the time. The Guelph
Socialists were an active group on campus and many of my friends and acquaintances (including myself)
either considered ourselves members or supporters of this group. ―The Guelph Socialists are a
revolutionary marxist group who seek to build a larger socialist current in the community. They are active
73
In today's society which has become dominated by the conservative agenda, it is
necessary for those on the left, fighting for social justice, to be solid in their
beliefs and be able to argue against mainstream thought. We must be convincing
in our views and understand the issues as they relate both to the right and to the
left.
(Goodreau, 1998, p. 15)
Although I remain impressed by my idealism and optimism that change was possible, and
the efforts I was making to be an agent of change in my work and personal life I am now
more clearly able to see that I still had a lot to learn. Upon completing my work with the
Centre for Cultural Studies I returned to Ecuador and spent the next seven months
working with, and learning from, the INEPE community again before beginning my
Bachelor of Education degree at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the
University of Toronto.
Conclusion
Looking back over this chapter my initial reactions are that the pieces to a puzzle
were on the table but that some pieces were still missing and interlocking pieces needed
to be found. Clandinin et al. (2006) describe this as a research puzzle which is shaped and
reshaped by growing understandings of people‘s lives that are being storied and restoried
(p. 15). Through the telling and retelling of these experiences, taking into account the
shaping influence of the various contexts of my life, my identity as an educational activist
is unfolding. Once I began teaching in Ontario and trying to integrate many of the life
lessons learned over the years my puzzle was once again reshaped.
in organizing against government cutbacks to education and social programs, and support strikes and social
movements which challenge the capitalistic status quo.‖ (Description taken from my list of social justice
organizations in Guelph, 1998)
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Chapter Five: My Journey as an Educational Activist – High
School Teaching in Toronto
This chapter reflects my educational experiences connected to being a high school
teacher in Toronto. I begin and end with stories of my studies at the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education of the University of Toronto – first my Bachelor of Education and
more recently my graduate studies. Between these significant learning experiences I
include narratives of my experiences working at the Equity department of the Toronto
District School Board and teaching at an ―urban‖22
Toronto high school. The life stories
in this chapter reflect my shifting understandings and focuses of educational activism.
My B. Ed in School, Community and Global Connections: Developing an
equity lens and a social justice community
I was so excited to start my Bachelor of Education degree at the Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education in the School, Community and Global Connections cohort.23
I
was looking forward to meeting other teacher candidates interested in global education
and being one step closer to being a teacher to be able to put into practice things that I
had learned at INEPE and to inspire youth to want to make a difference in the world.
Being at OISE was a draw for me due to all I had read about its global education
22
To repeat a footnote from Chapter 1: ‘Urban’ and ‘inner-city’ are terms used to describe schools serving
low-income, ethnic minority, and language minority students (Banks, 2003). The term ‘urban’ today does
not connote a geographic concept used to define and describe physical locations but is employed as a
social or cultural construct used to describe certain people (poor and non-White) and places (certain
neighbourhoods within cities) (Noguera, 2003).
23 Taken from the cohort description on OISE’s website, teacher candidates in SP3 “are invited to think
about student achievement, global awareness, advocacy, and community building for positive change
across the curriculum. SP3 seeks to bridge the divide between global perceptions and realities to promote
social justice, conflict resolution, and transformational change at the local, national, and global levels”
(OISE, 2011).
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initiatives and OISE‘s International Institute for Global Education. My experiences in
Ecuador were very present in my mind and I was motivated to use my privilege and
opportunity to study to better myself so I could better serve others. I remember feeling a
sense of urgency to not waste time because global justice could not wait. I often thought
of Lilián and Patricio, directors of INEPE and their work ethic. During my time with
them in Ecuador I watched as every aspect of their lives showed commitment to working
towards dignity and social justice for others. Whether it was working with new teachers
on the weekends, helping a family purchase building materials to construct a business,
taking a student to the hospital, or writing a proposal for funding, Lilián and Patricio
lived and breathed their commitment to others. As I began my B. Ed. program their lived
example was my inspiration and I was committed to living their example in Canada and
not wasting a moment of my year. This sense of urgency and commitment to using this
opportunity to study at OISE translated to my not only committing fully to my studies but
to becoming involved in the Student Teachers Union as Community and Cultural
Awareness Coordinator; volunteering at the International Institute for Global Education;
sitting on a faculty search committee; organizing fundraisers at my practicum schools
with proceeds going to INEPE; and coordinating the development of an equity resource
that was made available to all teacher candidates.
Developing an equity lens
Gaining an understanding of equity issues and beginning to develop an inclusive
curriculum framework is an important story from my B. Ed year. The development of this
equity lens happened at a slower rate than I initially remembered however. Looking back
at a practicum reflection paper I wrote four months into the B. Ed program highlights
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that, while I was able to see difference based on gender, race, socio-economic status, this
understanding lacked critical reflection and clear descriptors relating to equity:
The gender breakdown is about two thirds young women to one third young men
which lends to another interesting layer at ESA, which also was present in my
classes. I attribute this gender imbalance to the nature of the Arts. Many parents
place their daughters in dance classes and their sons in sports. It is more often that
you find girls in extracurricular activities such as drama and music. This was the
case when I was growing up and seems similar today. As well, when it comes to
auditioning to enter a program such as one at ESA or an international exchange
program, there seems to be more females applying. This has been my personal
experience in the two international programs I have been on where 75%
applicants were female. (personal reflection, 2000)
Clearly, I recognized gender at my first practicum school but in my analysis I used
phrases like ―the nature of the Arts‖ and connected this experience to what I had
experienced growing up. I did not yet have the language or understanding to discuss
gender expectations and stereotypes of males/females.
Another example to highlight my beginning understanding of equity issues
connects to my History teaching:
We looked at how minority groups in Canada were affected through the War;
focussing on women, natives, and the French Canadians. We spoke of how
negatively the soldiers were treated by many of the generals during the War and
through all of the activities we spoke about how these events relate to present day.
I did not discuss the extent to which racism was institutionalized through the War
in terms of banning the vote from certain populations, imposing conscription,
treatment of Chinese and native populations.
These excerpts highlight my intent to teach from a social history perspective and to
discuss issues of inequality. In this quote I recognize that I had not included an
investigation of institutional racism in my classes. I am a bit surprised, however, that
after four months in the B. Ed program I was not able to articulate an equity position
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more clearly especially after my previous learning experiences in Ecuador and the Centre
for Cultural Studies of the University of Guelph. The value of reflecting on my own
maturation through this narrative inquiry process is the realization that building an
equity-based awareness or framework develops with experience over time and that
teacher candidates do not arrive at an understanding, they grow into it. Over the next few
months of my B. Ed year this equity disposition grew due to critical readings, an
informative equity presentation and my internship with the TDSB Equity Department.
Critical to my developing equity lens were articles in my School and Society
class, specifically - Peggy McIntosh‘s ―White privilege: Unpacking the invisible
knapsack‖ (1988) and Sonia Nieto‘s ―Affirmation, solidarity and critique: Moving
beyond tolerance in multicultural education‖ (1994). Twelve years after my introduction
to these articles they still find a place in the syllabi for my teacher education classes.
These two articles were foundational in increasing my interest in learning more about
issues of equity and how to incorporate them into my teaching.
Prior to reading McIntosh‘s article on white privilege I had an awareness of
privilege but I did not have a name for it. Reading her article and list of examples of
white privilege gave me the language to articulate what I had experienced in Ecuador
being treated as somehow superior to others because I was white. I had not thought about
my white privilege in Canada prior to reading the article and living in Toronto. Now that
I was becoming aware of it I wanted to know more, be part of making others aware of it,
and figure out ways to challenge it.
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Nieto‘s article on multicultural education introduced me to different approaches in
education. I had entered the B. Ed program wanting to infuse Freire‘s ideas of popular
education into my teaching. I saw popular education as a teaching and learning process in
the form of a spiral which began with the experiences and interests of the participants,
included the learning of new theory and information, and resulted in action and reflection
(Arnold, Burke, James, Martin & Thomas, 1991). I was convinced that if popular
education methods were employed in classrooms that Freire‘s ideals of education as a
practice of freedom could be realized. Until then I had not encountered the terms
‗multicultural‘ or ‗anti-racist‘ education. I became interested in these approaches while
reading Nieto‘s article which depicted five schools at different levels of multicultural
education: monocultural; tolerance; acceptance; respect; and affirmation, solidarity and
critique. My school growing up resembled the first level on Nieto‘s continuum (all white
staff, days organized into four periods, classes organized by ability level, and curriculum
content virtually absent of ―the contributions, perspectives or talents of women or those
outside the cultural mainstream‖ (2002, p. 9)). As I read the schools described at each
successive level I became more inspired at what was possible in Canadian schools.
Unlike what I had learned through Freire‘s books this article offered specific details
about what a school based on respect and affirmation, solidarity and critique could look
like. Nieto described how the hallways would look, what types of professional
development teachers would be involved in, what the topics in an interdisciplinary
curriculum might be, how students are engaged in decision making, how students are
developing social action projects as part of the learning process, and much more (Nieto,
2002, pp. 12-18). Until then INEPE had been my only model and since it was not a public
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school I could not picture how to translate all aspects of its success in Canada. I felt
motivated that this type of school, in many ways similar to INEPE, was being described
as a possibility in Canada and the US.
I was inspired and also challenged by Nieto‘s fifth level of multicultural education
– ―affirmation, solidarity and critique‖ - which acknowledges that conflict and struggle is
necessary if we are to challenge the status quo. The following quotes highlight education
at this level:
Affirmation, solidarity and critique is based on the premise that the most powerful
learning results when students work and struggle with one another, even if it is
sometimes difficult and challenging. (p. 15)
Affirmation, solidarity and critique is also based on understanding that culture is
not a fixed or unchangeable artefact, and is therefore subject to critique. Passively
accepting the status quo of any culture is thus inconsistent with this level of
multicultural education. (p. 15)
Multicultural education without critique may result in cultures remaining at the
romantic or exotic stage. If students are to transcend their own cultural experience
in order to understand the differences of others, they need to go through a process
of reflection and critique of their cultures and those of others. This process of
critique however, begins with a solid core of solidarity with others who are
different from themselves. When based on true respect, critique is not only
necessary but in fact healthy. (p. 15)
To symbolize what a society might look like at this level of multicultural education Nieto
describes a tapestry which ―symbolizes, through its knots, broken threads, and seeming
jumble of colors and patterns on the back, the tensions, conflicts, and dilemmas that a
society needs to work out … But when reversed, the threads work together to depict a
picture of structure and beauty‖ (2002, p. 15). This description and imagery gave me
something to strive for. Now that I had a vision for what was possible I wanted to learn
how to get started.
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This is why the presentation made by Terezia Zoric, District Wide Coordinator of
Equity for the TDSB, in the final term of the year was so impactful for me. My awareness
and understanding of equity issues had been developing all year and I was eager to meet
someone working in schools committed to social justice. Terezia articulated how equity
was defined and what it did and did not look like in Ontario schools. Her presentation
spoke explicitly to issues of racism, classism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism and
religious diversity and offered strategies for integrating an awareness of these in our
teaching practice including our content, pedagogy and classroom climate. I became even
more interested in issues of inequity in Canada and Terezia helped me develop the
language and structure of what social justice/global citizenship education could look like
in Ontario schools. Wanting to increase my knowledge and skills to be an educator
committed to social justice and I spent part of my OISE internship working with Terezia
at the TDSB Equity Department.
Making every moment count
Upon reflection and now in my present position as a teacher educator in OISE‘s
Initial Teacher Education program, I realize that a key element to my growth was taking
advantage of the opportunities available to me during my B. Ed year. I surrounded myself
with colleagues interested in social justice, volunteered at the International Institute for
Global Education, took on a leadership role on the Student Teachers‘ Union, was a
member of a faculty search committee, maintained a critical engagement in classes,
sought out resources on global education and social justice themes, attended workshops
and lectures to build networks, and helped develop a 300 page equity resource guide for
teacher candidates. While retelling my stories my supervisor asked how did I know to get
81
involved and what part of my life story lead me to take up all of this? What comes to
mind is the sense of urgency I often felt due to my experiences in Ecuador. Whether it
was remembering the countless hours Lilián and Patricio dedicated to their work or
thinking back to the time I spent with coastal communities fighting the deforestation of
the mangroves or remembering some of the students at INEPE who were striving in the
face of adversity. I remember often feeling guilty that I had been born in a place of
privilege and others had not. To make up for some of it I wanted to use the privilege I had
to be the best person I could possibly be and to promote justice in any way I could. As
well, since my earlier social justice experiences in high school and university were
positive and led to awards, important friendships, successful initiatives and incredible job
opportunities, I felt confident that getting involved would be an enriching experience.
Connecting back to my childhood and high school experiences of exclusion and inclusion
I also think that I became involved in these activities at OISE as a way to ensure I was
part of a community and that it was a community of purpose. Just as becoming involved
in student council, the environmental club and beginning a Rotary Interact club during
high school was a way for me to build community I hoped that being involved during my
B. Ed year would lead to similar feelings of inclusion and provide a community of
support to work for social change.
It is clear that this year was significant for me. I made important contacts,
developed strong relationships with people who I still collaborate with and look to for
advice, gained a deeper understanding of global education, began to understand issues of
equity and how to develop inclusive curriculum, and gained knowledge and skills which
helped me survive my first years of teaching. The passion I felt for INEPE was still
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present but now I was interested in the Canadian context as well. My involvement and
commitment during the B. Ed year laid the foundations for my educational activist work
in Ontario.
The TDSB Equity Department: Resources, opportunities and challenges
Building on my five week internship as part of my B. Ed year my ongoing
connection to the TDSB Equity department has served as an invaluable learning
environment, one that has shaped the educational activist I have become. Especially
significant to my development have been the resources and opportunities the department
opened up to me, the development of an activist stance due to the challenges faced by the
Equity department in their efforts to advance equity goals in the TDSB, and the
knowledge and inspiration instilled through my relationship with Terezia Zoric.
Building my equity toolkit
Teaching for social justice requires time and effort – you cannot simply open the
textbook or teacher‘s guide you are using and have the perfect lesson – therefore, the
resources available through the equity department have been invaluable. One of my tasks
during my internship was to help the Equity department move offices. This meant going
through filing cabinets of old resources, documents, newspaper articles, and meeting
minutes and determining what was important to keep. It also meant packing up boxes of
current resources, posters, workshop materials etc. In this process I was able to build my
own collection of equity materials and gain an understanding of the rich history of equity
work in Toronto schools. As my boxes of resources expanded I became more engaged,
determined, and knowledgeable of equity issues connected to schools. I looked forward
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to putting in practice what I was learning and to being part of continuing this important
work. I could not wait to have my own classroom!
Later, in my first year of teaching, I remember teaching about immigration in
Grade 9 Canadian Geography. I was interested in connecting Canada‘s immigration
history to issues of race and began doing research. Having spent time working at the
Equity department I was aware that there were resources already developed to support
teachers. I used the ―Immigration History Mural Exercise‖ from Tim McCaskell‘s
Toward racial equality: Materials for secondary school teachers (1999) to teach
immigration patterns and how notions of race permeated Canada‘s immigration policies. I
remember thinking back to my practicum and the number of hours I spent developing
lessons which connected both to the curriculum and to social justice and global education
goals. Through connections to the Equity department and its resources (both human and
curriculum based) I now had a wide base to draw from. These resources and the historical
footprints of equity work in Toronto helped me survive my first year of teaching. I did
not feel alone in my efforts and I felt motivated by the work others had done before me.
Developing an activist stance
Working within the Equity department also deepened my awareness and passion
to act to challenge injustices closer to home. With my time in Ecuador and my year in
OISE‘s School, Community and Global Connections program fresh in my mind my
motivation was still largely focused on raising awareness of global issues among youth in
Canada who could act for change in order to support communities in other parts of the
world. While at the Equity department I became more aware of the inequities faced by
students and communities in Toronto and of the challenges the Equity department was
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experiencing within the school board in their efforts to institutionalize a wide reaching
equity policy (McCaskell, 2005). Reading articles, documents, and meeting minutes from
previous years was both inspiring and frustrating. Amazing work had been done
developing equity leadership camps, females in science programs, curriculum resources
on most equity issues, programs for LGBT youth affected by homophobia, and much
more. After amalgamation in 1998, when seven boards of education were brought
together under the new Toronto District School Board, the ability for the Equity
department to achieve its mandate ―to work with schools and the system as a whole to
implement Board policy and programs on equity issues‖ (TDSB Equity Department,
2000) became more challenging. The number of equity instructional leaders and student
program workers to serve this now much larger school board did not increase to reflect
the new reality. The department consisted of only five staff, a budget a fifth of what it
had been prior to amalgamation and a workload five times larger (McCaskell, 2005, p.
275). How would five staff be able to provide leadership, raise awareness, and support
efforts to challenge inequities in over 560 schools and 284 000 students (TDSB, 2010b)?
It was working within the equity department during this time of restructuring that
I developed an activist stance. The Equity Foundation Statement had only recently been
passed and it had been a major struggle (McCaskell, 2005). In the department there was a
feeling that intentional efforts were being made to silence equity. The thought was that if
there were less staff, moved to a less central location, with an expanded workload less
real change would happen. The board‘s actions sent a message that equity was not a
priority but a headache because acting on the newly passed Equity Foundation Statement
demanded real effort and change. Looking back I realize that I was part of a critical
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moment for equity in the TDSB. I was caught up in the energy of the equity department
members who looked for ways to work against these attempts to stifle the efforts which
might lead to real equity and not simply window dressings. I was getting a first-hand
lesson in the politics of schooling in Ontario and my understanding of how institutional
power operates grew. Until this experience I did not realize the roadblocks in the way of
achieving equity and social justice in Toronto schools. It seems that people were fine
with the Equity department doing a few workshops and developing curriculum. But when
it came to analyzing their hiring practices, training school administrators on the Equity
policy and/or implementing and evaluating equity principles in their policies and
procedures they were resistant. The frustration I felt from these perceived silencing
efforts motivated me to a more activist response: to call out this resistance and by my
actions in the classroom to be a teacher who more deeply understands and engages these
policies to work for equity and social justice.
Two specific efforts during my five week internship made me feel that activism
could lead to real change. The first were the initiatives connected to implementing the
Equity foundation statement and the second was the development and distribution of a
resource I co-edited entitled Tools for equity in the classroom: A collection of
information, activities, and resources for educators (2000).
The Equity foundation statement and commitments to equity policy
implementation is an overarching document that outlines how to implement and address
―Anti-Racism and Ethnocultural Equity, Anti-Sexism and Gender Equity, Anti-
Homophobia, Sexual Orientation, and Equity, Anti-Classism and Socio-Economic
Equity, and Equity for Persons with Disabilities‖ in ―Board Policies, Guidelines, and
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Practices, Leadership, School-Community Partnerships, Curriculum, Language, Student
Evaluation, Assessment, and Placement, Guidance, Employment and Promotion
Practices, Staff Development, and Harassment‖ (TDSB, 2000). During my time at the
Equity department I watched Terezia Zoric work tirelessly to get this document produced
to be distributed to all TDSB schools and to pursue its implementation through inservice
workshops for administrators. I was impressed with her ability and passion to use
institutional tools and frameworks to move an equity agenda forward within the newly
amalgamated school board. Through her example I developed an understanding of the
importance and potential of educational policy to make a positive difference for schools
and students.
Developing Tools for equity in the classroom: A collection of information,
activities, and resources for educators also made me feel that the actions of a few
committed individuals could affect positive change. This resource was written and
compiled by the Community and Cultural Awareness Group of the OISE‘s Student
Teachers‘ Union. We were motivated to create this resource for many reasons including:
our discouragement at the lack of awareness and analysis of equity issues among our
classmates, the minimal number of discussions or initiatives related to equity and
inclusion at our practicum placements, and our mutually held commitment to equity and
social justice. We organized the resource into 10 sections: Linking Oppressions; Gender;
Class; Anti-racist Education; Differently Abled; Anti-Homophobia, Heterosexism,
Transphobia; Religious Diversity; English as a Second Language; Global Education; and
Community. The objectives were to raise awareness about racism, sexism, classism,
heterosexism, ableism, linguicism and other oppressions; to make educators aware of
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how these ―isms‖ impact students‘ opportunities and experiences; to provide resources,
information and activities that both develop knowledge and awareness in order to work
with students on these issues; and, to encourage educators and students to critically
examine school systems and society and work for change (Goodreau & Shehata, 2000, p.
2).
A fellow teacher candidate and I spent hours during our internship finishing this
resource. Developing this resource while working simultaneously at the Equity
department increased our desire to make it an informative and inspiring resource. With
financial support from the TDSB Equity department and OISE‘s Student Teachers‘
Union, we were able to give a copy of this resource to every teacher candidate of OISE‘s
graduating class. This act of increasing awareness and potential action for equity and
social justice among future educators was exhilarating.
Being inspired/mentored along my way
From early on, Terezia Zoric, TDSB District Wide Coordinator for Equity,
became a role model for the type of social justice teacher activist I wanted to become. I
was drawn to her passion for social justice issues, her intellect and her demonstrated
commitment to working for equity and social justice in schools. Terezia reminded me a
great deal of Lilián Alvaro Lugo, director of INEPE. Both are passionate, articulate,
charismatic, and intelligent women. I found myself soaking in every moment with
Terezia learning as much as I could about the challenges and possibilities of achieving
equity in schools. One thing that struck me about both of these women was their ability to
articulate issues with exceptional clarity to any audience. Both women inspired others to
care and often act for social justice ideals. Both had been committed to social justice
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education from young ages – Lilián followed Freire‘s footsteps, teaching literacy to
marginalized communities during university and Terezia was involved in union politics
and helped to begin a student social justice group from her first year of teaching. When I
think back to my initial time with Terezia and Lilián something significant that stands out
is the time they took with me. I lived with Lilián and her family for four months and I had
the privilege of eating dinner with her every night and talking about popular education,
the history of INEPE, hopes for the future and other social justice issues and dreams. This
was similar with Terezia. Since she was moving offices during that first year we worked
together we would often stay late cleaning filing cabinets or working on projects. I loved
spending time with her and she always made time to listen and share knowledge and
experiences which I was keen to learn. Their commitment to social justice extended
beyond their long work days into (what seemed to me) all aspects of their lives. As I
write this I realize just how similar and seminal my initial experiences with Terezia and
Lilián were. I met and spent a great deal of time with them when I was going through
major shifts in my beliefs and future goals. I met Lilián when I was at a crossroads in my
international development path and she inspired me to become a popular educator. I met
Terezia when I was open to learning how to infuse equitable practices into my teaching
and to learning about how this was being done in the TDSB. Throughout my time at both
the Equity department and at INEPE I would stay until late in the evening working on
projects with Terezia or Lilián because their presence inspired me and their commitment
gave fire to my own.
The four months I spent at the Equity department between my B. Ed and my first
Ontario teaching job helped me develop important roots from which to grow. These were
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especially important considering that my first year of teaching coincided with the
implementation of the Conservative government policies of increasing instruction
minutes which for me meant teaching an extra Civics class. Having already witnessed the
positive change possible amidst resistance, having resources and an inspiring role model I
was fortunate to be able to rely on these roots to nourish me during the challenges of my
first year.
Rethinking what matters – Shifting from an issues focused curriculum to
a focus on students
My first job in an Ontario school was at West Toronto Collegiate, a school in the
Toronto District School Board, teaching in the Canadian and World Studies department.
This was my first experience teaching in an ―inner city‖ school with high numbers of
students affected by racial and economic inequality. The five years I spent teaching and
learning there played a significant role in my changing understanding of educational
activism. There are four distinct stories in my becoming that I attribute to my learning at
West Toronto CI. The first story relates to the sense of superiority I had in my first year
feeling like I had nothing to learn from others. The second story describes the many
successes I had engaging in global and social justice during my first years which kept me
inspired. My third story details my shifting focus from the larger society to an individual
focus as I became aware student experiences. Finally, my fourth story moves my focus
further inward to an awareness of my own social identities and their influence on my
practice.
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My first year: I can do it myself
During my first year I felt that I had little to learn from my colleagues when it
came to social justice teaching. I felt that my experiences at INEPE learning about
popular education, at OISE rubbing shoulders with global education experts and putting
together a 300 page equity resource, and with the TDSB Equity department facilitating
workshops with experienced equity educators, being mentored by an architect of the
Equity Foundation statement and building a library of equity resources, had all prepared
me to teach for social justice in this urban setting. I realize now that I had a false sense of
superiority when it came to teaching for social justice. Instead of asking other teachers
for support I developed my lesson plans on my own and I felt that for lessons to be strong
that they needed to be connected explicitly to equity or to present day issues. I did not
feel that other teachers were as committed to social justice as I was. At the time I saw
social/global justice mainly from the lens of curriculum content and I did not place the
same value on the development of the whole student and developing their emotional and
social needs. Even though this was important for me in Ecuador I felt that students in
Canada did not need the same support. It was not long before I began feeling
overwhelmed. I was trying to create engaging lessons but I was having a hard time,
especially with my Grade 10 Applied Canadian History class. There were many days that
first semester that I would be in tears at the end of the day.
An a-ha moment for me came after the first semester when I looked through my
department head‘s Canadian History binder. He had offered his resources to me at the
beginning of the year but I had not given them a careful look. I thought I could figure
things out on my own. When I finally looked through his binder I was amazed at the
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quality of resources and attention to equity issues present. I remember feeling ashamed
with myself for thinking that in my short educational career I somehow had things more
figured out than others who had been teaching for years. Looking through my colleague‘s
binder humbled me. I realized how much I still had to learn and I was foolish that I had
not taken advantage of this support until then and done a disservice to my students. I
began seeing my colleagues in a new light and recognizing that many were engaging
students in discussions and activities about social issues but I was judging them as not as
progressive or social justice minded because their approach was not as ―radical‖ as mine
was or was not connected to social action. After my first semester this superior attitude
began to shift and I opened myself up to learning from others.
Whereas initially I connected educational activism closely with political
activism—I would engage students in actions including writing letters to the editor,
boycotting products from sweatshops, and making posters and attending anti-war
rallies—I began to recognize how the actions of my colleagues were serving students. I
started to rethink my definition of activism and question how my practice was supporting
students in their present development process.
Initial Successes – Social justice/ global citizenship education is
possible!
While at West Toronto I was given the freedom to take all that I had learned and
was passionate about and try it in my classes. I could create lessons from a popular
education model. I could engage my students in learning about and acting on global
issues. I could infuse issues of equity into my lessons and discuss controversial issues
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with students. I was able to choose my areas of focus and be supported by my department
head and my principal.
My teacher activism began by engaging students in issues connected to injustices
which related to curriculum content (racism in Grade 10 Canadian history, violence
against women in Grade 11 Society Challenge and Change, sweatshop labour in Grade 10
Civics and ecological footprints in Grade 9 Canadian Geography). I considered my role
that of making students aware of inequities in the world and that by raising awareness
students would understand their connection to these issues, feel enraged by injustice and
engage in action for change. Over the years I have come to realize that I placed these
objectives at a higher priority than teaching and helping students master skills that would
help them on their own path.
Having my own class highlighted that global education and educating for social
justice can be connected to the Ontario curriculum with minimal effort. Through my four
months at the Equity department, volunteer experience at the International Institute for
Global Education as well as my background knowledge of community organizations
during my time with the Centre for Cultural Studies of the University of Guelph I
realized that there is a plethora of educational resources available that can be connected
to various subject areas and units. I recognize that teaching History, Civics, Geography
and Society, Challenge and Change facilitated the integration of local, national and global
issues which would have been more challenging had I been teaching Physics, Chemistry
or Math. For example in Grade 11 Chemistry students need to understand a specific set of
skills and content in order to be successful in Grade 12 Chemistry. This influences how
comfortable teachers feel about straying from a textbook. In the subjects I was teaching
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there was no specific course that explicitly connected to another therefore if I decided to
spend two weeks focusing on issues surrounding aboriginal peoples it would not affect a
student‘s ability to succeed in a future course.
Another reason I was able to infuse global education into my courses with success
was because my supportive department head was not focused on covering every
curriculum expectation and I was able to be autonomous in my curriculum planning.
Having control over what I taught and evaluated meant I was able to create my own path
and not conform to someone else‘s vision.
Student curiosity and interest in lessons also gave me energy and motivation to
continue my efforts of making lessons global and social justice focused. I remember
feeling inspired as I taught students and challenged them to think about the world beyond
their reality. I will never forget discussing ecological footprints with my Gr. 9 Geography
class and asking them to calculate their own footprints. Two of my female students
described their 45 minute showers (sometimes twice a day) to the class. The class was
shocked by how large their ecological footprints were and each student agreed to make a
personal change in at least one area of their life to lessen their environmental impact.
Looking back I wish we would have calculated our ecological footprint at the beginning
and end of this geography unit and asked students to pick one or two areas in their life
that they could try and alter for the month. But since this was my first year teaching and
Geography was not my subject area I had not integrated backward planning and many of
my global education lessons were not effectively connected to a culminating task.
In History I remember opening many students‘ eyes to the experiences of people
living below the poverty line. While studying the Great Depression our class compared
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poverty during the Great Depression to today. Through a variety of activities including
students to ―walk in the shoes of welfare‖ based on a campaign organized by The Daily
Bread Food Bank and a comparison between the structural issues related to poverty then
and now students became aware of inequities in their own communities and were inspired
to organize a food drive for a local food bank and some wrote letters to their federal MPs
urging them to adopt the 1% housing solution put forward by the Toronto Disaster Relief
Committee.24
Working as a team – making global justice a department focus
Supportive and critical colleagues were another major factor that played a role in
my development. I was extremely fortunate to be part of a Canadian and World Studies
department where most of the teachers made efforts to infuse social justice into our
courses. Unlike many educational activists who often feel isolated in their work, this
work environment was energizing and reminded me of what can be done when you work
with others.
In only my second year at West Toronto, I and two other teachers in the Canadian
and World Studies department began discussing ways to integrate the global citizenship
component of our teaching more formally into the department. This idea was initiated due
to two factors. The first was from two Civics students, Jennifer and Rina, who were
among the strongest and most engaged students in Grade 10. We were having a
24
The One Percent Solution was launched in 1998 by the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee (TDRC). It is
based on the finding of Prof. David Hulchanski of the University of Toronto that, in the mid-1990s, federal,
provincial, territorial and municipal governments spent about one percent of their budgets on housing.
Since then, governments have made substantial housing cuts. The One Percent Solution calls on
governments to double their commitment to housing programs by restoring and renewing housing
spending (Toronto Disaster Relief Committee).
95
discussion about their thoughts on the Civics and Careers courses and Jennifer said,
―Civics is fun, but Careers is important.‖ They felt that Careers was a course that would
help them prepare for the ‗real‘ world and that although Civics was interesting and
informative that it was not ‗valuable‘ for their future. This started a discussion in the
department about how to address this view of Civics and encourage students to see the
value of being responsible and active citizens, of learning tools to actively participate in
creating a just society, and the possible career options that could stem from Civics. The
second feature that led to our desire to formalize our global citizenship was the
motivation we felt working together as a team. We felt fortunate to be working so closely
together and we wanted to integrate and formalize the global and social justice teaching
we were all engaged in. We held a visioning meeting on the topic of implementing a
global certificate program in the school. Our objectives/goals for this program were:
To promote social justice and global education among our students in
order to raise awareness about issues in the local, national and global
communities and our relationship to them
To promote ACTION around issues at all levels in order to promote a
sense of active citizenship and empowerment
To make links between the school, local, and global communities through
greater involvement in the local and international communities
To allow students to gain power/ access over their lives and become
agents in their future choices
To provide a location for progressive staff development and learning
through the linking up with the OISE Alternate III program: School,
Community and Global Connections
(Visioning meeting minutes, 2001)
We envisioned that the program for a student in this certificate program would be:
Grade 9 - Canadian Geography
Grade 10 - Canadian History, Civics and possibly Career Education
- International Language course taken here or in Grade 11
Grade 11 - Canadian Politics and Citizenship paired up with 1 Co-op
placement in a community organization
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- 1 of the following courses (Americas, Society, World Religions,
20th
Century History, Travel and Tourism, Environmental Geo,
Modern West, Law)
Grade 12 - Semester 1 - Canadian and World Politics
- March Break - International Development Field Placement
- Semester 2 - World Issues
Total credits: 9 credits (3 mandatory and 6 optional)
(Visioning meeting minutes, 2001)
In this initial meeting we went so far as to offer a breakdown of the specific details of the
program.
We decided that we would start teaching the Grade 9 Geography, Grade 10
History and Civics courses within the framework of the pedagogy outlined in this
global certificate program. These courses would become part of the program and
allow students to make a decision as to whether this program is for them.
Students would apply into program for Grade 11 year.
Grade 11 course: Canadian Politics and Citizenship is a course which focusses
mainly on local processes. Aspects which would be integrated into the course
would include local issues, the issue of power, the development of leadership
skills, understanding of local government and processes, decision making skills,
understanding of community organizations and activities.
Grade 11 course would be attached to one credit co-op placement. Students would
be placed in a community organization and would gain an understanding of class
topics through experience. This part of the program would include reflection,
portfolio, presentation components. Students will have the opportunity to learn
from each other through ongoing praxis both in and out of the classroom.
The Grade 12 course will broaden the focus to include the international level.
Time will be spent preparing students for the International Component. We have
been given the opportunity to work with Dick Holland on the development of this
Grade 12 Canadian and World Politics course.
The field placement we hope will be a joint initiative with Canada World Youth
(CWY). CWY has ongoing projects with high schools which mirror our
objectives for this program.
(Visioning meeting minutes, 2001)
In this meeting we also brainstormed what the benefits for students would be, what
community organizations we could connect with, and we considered the next steps in
making the program a reality (talking to administration, the co-op department, staffing,
creating a brochure etc.).
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In the months that followed we surveyed students about the idea and received
overwhelming support. Overall, although the staffing committee had some reservations
since we were proposing to add one course to the school calendar, there was a feeling of
optimism and possibility that this we could make this happen. Our principal was
enthusiastic about our ideas and acknowledged this by naming global education as part of
our entire school focus.
Looking over these notes ten years later reminds me of not only how passionate I
was to formalize global education and equity issues into my courses but that I was
working with committed colleagues who were also committed to these issues and were
willing to put in the extra time and effort to make a program like this happen. I felt
challenged and inspired to become a better educator for social justice. Every day
provided an opportunity to create, discuss issues, and come up with ways to enhance our
teaching. They made it motivating to come to work and through their example I was
motivated along this journey as an educational activist. While some of my friends from
my B. Ed year were feeling disillusioned with teaching and possibilities for putting into
practice the ideas we learned at OISE I was optimistic and inspired.
This global certificate program was another example of working as an activist to
create change from within an institution. Similar to the Cultural Studies course and
Terezia‘s efforts to implement equity goals within the TDSB we used policies and
programs already existing in schools to our advantage.
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“Keep the Beat” – A culminating moment in my teaching career
In November 2002, now in my third year of teaching, I was asked by War Child
Canada if West Toronto could be the launch site for their Keep the Beat25
initiative. The
school‘s social justice group SKYA (Students Keeping You Aware) had already been
organizing our school‘s Keep the Beat fundraiser and they were ecstatic when they found
out that we would be hosting the national launch which would be televised on
MuchMusic. The story of this day described here is the moment that stands out in my five
years of working for social justice at West Toronto.
In the two weeks leading up to the event the whole school was buzzing. SKYA
students were making banners, the dance classes were preparing performances, more
students were signing up to participate in the fundraiser and myself and the admin team
were making preparations for the media and space allocations for the VIPs (our
superintendent, school board trustee, War Child Canada founder, Much Music VJs, and
performers) as well as for the whole school to attend the event. Students were excited
because they were going to see Chantal Kreviazuk and Red 1of the Rascalz perform.
They could not believe that such a huge event was happening at their school which some
referred to as a ‗ghetto‘ school. Now many more felt proud to be a West Toronto student.
When the day arrived I felt excited and proud to be part of something so large and
positive for the school and for this impressive humanitarian organization. Students
25
Keep the Beat is a musical event to raise money for War Child‘s international projects that help kids
affected by war. A non-stop music marathon, KTB participants from across Canada can get friends and
family to sponsor their music marathon, making sure the music never stops for 6, 12 or 24 hours. KTB
participants will play live music, spin records, dance, sing karaoke, play CDs, rap or create any form of
musical expression you love to listen to.
99
poured into the cafeteria and could hardly contain their excitement when these celebrities
performed. When they shared their stories of visiting with children affected by war in
Iraq and Sierra Leone the students listened so attentively you could hear a pin drop. This
was followed by two stellar hip hop dance performances by West Toronto students which
seemed to unite the whole student body. To close the event the SKYA student leaders
took the microphones, all standing together in their War Child Canada T-shirts. They
spoke with passion about their commitment to supporting war affected children and about
the idea that youth can have a voice and influence positive change. They spoke not only
of their own desire to work for social justice; their speeches were a call to action for all
students to get involved in a cause that mattered to them, to use the knowledge, skills,
gifts they had to make a positive difference in their communities. I was incredibly
impressed by their leadership, commitment and poise. I felt so proud that I played a role
in this important moment in their lives. This was one of the many moments that day that
convinced me that I had chosen the right career path and that my efforts to promote social
justice were worth it. Another powerful moment followed when they called me up to
acknowledge and thank me. I will never forget how honoured and overwhelmed I felt
when the students stood up and cheered. I took the opportunity to tell them that they had
the power to be agents of change in their communities and the world and I told them that
all of the staff including me loved coming to work each day because of how special they
all were to us. This experience and the positive influence it had on so many students at
the school filled me with positive energy and bolstered my commitment for social justice
activism.
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As I was thinking about this event I asked myself – why was this event so
important? What is its significance in your journey as an educational activist? Why does
it stand out? I started reflecting more deeply on the importance of this event. When I
looked at my notes I had underlined two words – students and culmination. I was the staff
advisor for SKYA and had been working with the students involved in this event since I
started at West Toronto. I had taught many of them twice or more and I had watched their
interest in equity issues grow and watched them develop into leaders. By no means do I
take all the credit for their budding interest and leadership skills. I do acknowledge
though, that through topics and activities in my classes as well as opportunities through
SKYA, that my actions to infuse global and social justice into course curriculum and
extra-curricular activities were part of their development. Watching these student leaders
organize such a successful event and hearing them speak with such passion about their
desire to ―be the change‖ they want to see in the world made me so proud and hopeful.
This event, which involved the entire student body, also gave me recognition across the
school as a social justice leader. In some ways I saw this event as a culmination of what I
had been working towards ever since I decided to enter teaching.
A shift in focus – Moving from outside to the inside
My ideas of activism and my educational purpose shifted during my first years of
teaching. I was troubled by the numbers of students absent from classes, facing a myriad
of personal issues and who were disengaged from school. Up until this point the focus of
my educational activism was the issues I was interested in infusing into the curriculum. I
did consider student backgrounds and interests when developing lessons but the
curriculum and the connecting issues were my starting point. My teaching goals
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continued to relate to a desire to create global citizens but I began wondering how to
make sense of wanting students to care about injustices faced by people outside of their
communities when many were facing serious issues in their own lives.
In my first two years two students, Faisal and Nicole stand out for helping to shift
my focus. Faisal was a 20 year old student in Grade 12 Society, Challenge and Change
who missed a number of classes. When he was present he participated in discussions,
seemed interested in course content and often stayed after class to chat more about course
topics. He was a charming young man and was well liked by his classmates. As the
semester progressed our after class conversations turned to his personal life, his struggles
and his marijuana use. I came to care deeply about his wellbeing and as he recognized
that he was addicted to marijuana he allowed me to help him get support. This
experience, and my next story, caused me to rethink why I went into teaching – to
educate and raise awareness about global issues so that youth in Canada could act for
global justice. How realistic or appropriate is that goal when students in my classes
needed support in their immediate life in order to enable themselves to come to school at
all.
Nicole is another student that added to the dissonance I was feeling. In my first
two years at West Toronto Nicole was in three of my classes. She was a fine student but
school was not her focus. Friends, boys and her appearance dominated her thoughts and
conversations. My classroom door was always open throughout the day and many
students, including Nicole and her friends, would drop in to chat. I was often very open
about things happening in my life and students felt comfortable sharing stories and
personal problems with me. I remember Nicole and her best friend coming into my class
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after school one day and Nicole breaking down as she told me she was pregnant. She did
not know where else to turn. I looked into options for her and supported her as she made
probably the most important decision of her early life. This experience has remained with
me because it brought to the forefront how important it is to consider the present realities
of students.
I found my focus shifting from being first and foremost concerned with issues
outside of the school environment to making central the well being and positive
development of the students in my classes. My new starting point became the
physiological, social, academic and emotional needs of my students. I began placing
greater importance on the daily interactions I was having with students and more
explicitly considering individuals in the class when planning my lessons. I am not naïve
to think that I could come to understand all of my students needs but I made efforts
especially when a student was struggling with school work or was missing class or
seemed disengaged. What was different now compared to when I began teaching was that
I came to value this understanding of WHO my students are as an integral part of being
an educational activist. I found that building relationships with my students, helping them
develop their self esteem and desire to reach their potential added an important dimension
to my activism. Of course the curriculum still mattered but it grew out of an
understanding of student background and life experiences and the action elements
contained within the curriculum connected more closely to student interest and potential.
I was coming to understand that if one of my goals was to develop the capacities and
passion in students to become active citizens that the first step would be to support them
in becoming the best version of themselves.
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This acknowledgment that social justice activism can come in the form of making
a difference in the lives of students and not only by engaging students in issues was made
clear to me during my second year of teaching Grade 11 Society, Challenge and Change.
During a unit on ―Gender and the Media‖ our class organized a campaign to End
Violence Against Women coinciding with December 6, Canada‘s National Day of
Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. I had organized the unit to look
at how gender stereotypes are shaped by the media and how this may lead to violent
expressions of masculinity and violence against women. I had chosen this direction for a
variety of reasons including conversations I had had with students about their
relationships (most of which were not healthy); the way males in this class referred to and
touched females in the hallways; and the attraction many students had to music with
misogynist lyrics. I expected students to be interested in the topics but I was blown away
by their motivation to do something about it. A spark for their interest in creating a
school wide campaign was a statistic I shared – ―More Canadian women have died at the
hands of violence then Canadian men in the two world wars‖ (TDSB Equity Department,
1994). A student asked, ―Miss, why isn‘t there a day to try to stop violence against
women since we have a day to remember the soldiers who died?‖ This lead to a
discussion of December 6th
and what we as a class could do to. This was how the
campaign to stop violence against women began. Students created collages including
images and statistics to raise awareness about the issues surrounding violence against
women. Involvement grew to selling white ribbons, taping outlines of the 14 victims of
the Montreal Massacre on the main foyer, students signing a large wooden white ribbon
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to pledge their commitment to ending violence, and an information table in the back of
the cafeteria.
What I remember vividly about that experience were two female students who
had been largely unmotivated in the class until this unit. They became very interested in
being part of the December 6th
campaign and became key leaders in its organization and
roll out. Seeing these two young women thrive in this activity was eye opening for me.
Both young women had been personally affected by abuse26
and felt empowered to have
the opportunity to learn more about the issue and to engage in action that would educate
and influence the actions of others. These students went on to improve not only in my
class but in their other subjects as well. Building their leadership skills and working on a
campaign that was meaningful and successful inspired them to reach their potential.
Engaging youth in issues they feel passionate about is critical and can have many
impacts. Educational activism had come to mean as much about impacting the lives of
the students in my classes as it did about improving communities outside of the school.
Negotiating the “Spaces between” – Hearing my students’ stories?
My teacher identity shifted to one that placed students‘ stories, experiences and
interests as central due to a sincere desire to help students reach their potential. I thought
my curriculum was becoming reflective of students lived experiences and that I was
giving ―legitimacy to the wisdom held in [the] lived stories‖ of the students in my classes
26
I knew this because during this unit we had been discussing healthy/unhealthy relationships and dating
violence and a couple of the girls stayed after class to talk about concerns they had for their friend who
was in an abusive relationship. They were looking for ways to support their friend without pushing her
away. As well one of them talked about having been in a similar situation and told me how pleased she
was that these issues were part of the course.
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(Aoki, p. 267). But after five years of teaching in this urban Toronto school my identity
shifted once again after realizing that as I learned more about my students experiences,
often of marginalization, that I had not opened up all of the spaces between the
curriculum because I had not fully reflected on how my own values, assumptions and
experiences impacted which stories I ‗heard‘. The following are three stories from
students that have lead me to further growth, deeper reflection and recurring questions
into how my social identities and experiences influence/d my curriculum.
Diego
I taught Diego three times over the course of two years. He is a complex young
man who had recently arrived as a refugee from a country in southern Africa. I could say
a lot about Diego but what is important for this story is that we had developed a good
relationship and I believed he knew that I cared for him and that I was an adult in his life
who saw into the goodness in his heart and did not label him as a potential gang member
(as others did).
One lunch hour we both were in the cafeteria and I overheard the woman working
there accuse Diego of stealing. He assured her he hadn‘t but she accused him again.
Diego was getting visibly frustrated and his voice was rising. I thought I would be able to
diffuse the situation easily because of the trust we had built with each other. I approached
Diego, told him that I believed him and to show the employee that his pockets were
empty to prove himself. When I asked Diego something I thought was simple – show
what is in your pockets – he became angry at being labeled as someone who would steal.
Because Diego became upset and swore at the woman working in the cafeteria I was
106
forced to act and bring him to the vice principal‘s office. I remember feeling confused,
upset and hurt that Diego did not to respond to me since we had a good relationship – I
thought he knew I cared for him and was different from other adults who labeled him.
In talking to a colleague about this experience I realized that I had not taken into
account all of the social, historical and cognitive factors at play in this situation. I did not
place this situation in the larger context of young black males who are often accused and
followed by authorities. In my experience I have trust in authorities and do not see them
as labeling me in negative ways but in my asking Diego to show what was in his pockets
to show that he had not stolen anything was another example of being labeled as a black
teenager who steals. My colleague also talked to me about how individuals work through
anger and tense situations at different rates. I was asking Diego to deal with his anger and
work through this situation in the heat of the moment. I did not consider that he might
need some time to cool off before he was able to speak about the experience.
Through this experience I became more aware of my privilege and I began to
question how I handled the situation. I asked myself: How can I know or understand what
shapes students experiences and their responses in certain situations? I realized that even
though I had made efforts to listen to my students, to show them love and belonging, and
to inquire into their lives, that I was still an outsider and was still viewing their reality
within my own values, beliefs and frames of reference. This realization deepened with
my next story and through these experiences which ―bumped‖ against my own narratives
I began to develop a greater ability to ―hear‖ and honour my students‘ voices.
Sukesh
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Throughout high school Sukesh was a model student and although as teachers we
say we do not have them – he was one of my favourites. He excelled in all of his courses
and he was part of the ‗in‘ group of males at the school (or I thought he was). Sukesh
graduated and entered a university in a smaller Ontario city. Late in his first semester I
got a call that he attempted suicide and had threatened to hurt some of his floormates in
residence. Sukesh was now back at his parents‘ house on suicide watch. To say that I was
shocked to learn about this is an understatement. I came to learn that Sukesh, all through
high school, was very insecure and believed that people did not really like him. He would
remember only the negative things that others would say about him and downplay all of
his friends and classmates positive comments and supportive actions. He did not realize
when others were ‗innocently‘ teasing him or being sarcastic and took everything to
heart.
I write about this story because I taught Sukesh five times in high school, from
Grade 9 through to Grade 12, and I thought I had gotten to know him quite well over the
years. He often ate his lunch in my classroom and shared stories of his family and their
desire for him to go into medicine. Learning that he had been living in an inner turmoil
all those years made me question how much I really knew about any of my students?
Sure I was one of the two teachers that Sukesh felt close enough to reach out to when he
was in his darkest hour, we spoke a few times after he left university, but how had I been
unaware of all of this before?
I began to ask myself questions like: What can I do differently in my practice to
get to the heart of students? In my efforts to know students how open am I to really listen
108
to stories of hardship and how do I give the space to students to share who they really
are? Are there stories that I accept or am open to more than others? Am I more likely to
‗hear‘ stories that reflect my ‗truth‘, my experiences, what I think of as typical issues for
teens like pregnancy or parental troubles? As these questions percolated, and were added
to by my next story, my identity as an educational activist began shifting again.
Anu, Thuva, Rina, Laila, and Jennifer
These young women were all extremely interested and excelled in social sciences
and humanities courses in high school. They all spoke of being interested in pursuing
teaching or working with NGOs or other careers related to these fields. We engaged in
conversations about the possibilities and university programs available. They are all
exceptional young women and I remember talking with them about my own university
experience. I was very surprised when they all entered university programs in business or
science. I did not expect it. I had incurred a large debt through university as I had to pay
for most costs on my own and with OSAP. But I had been allowed to pursue a degree in
the field of my choosing. It was awhile later that I realized that money was not
necessarily the predominant issue for these and other new immigrants to Canada. For
these women it was their parents‘ expectations of them and their desire that they pursue
university programs that would be more likely to lead to a career. This was an a-ha
moment for me and I reflected on my white, multi-generational Canadian privilege. I had
had the opportunity to pursue the courses I was interested in without the pressure of being
a first generation Canadian and having parents who had left their lives in another country
so I could have a better future. As I moved later into a position in Guidance I kept this
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learning close whenever I was working with students. I make efforts now not to view my
students‘ concerns through my own set of values. I remember having the attitude that I
wanted to help my students pursue their dreams and encourage them to experience
opportunities overseas or college or university in a different city. I have become more
perceptive to the realities of students and I am careful not to impose my values on them.
Related to the questions I began asking myself previously I added the following:
Is it possible to achieve the goals/ideals of basing curriculum on students‘ realities
without an investigation of our own social identities and experiences and how they play
out in the classroom? How do we give legitimacy to voices of our students that we do not
hear? I now consider that even though I see the faces of my students in my curriculum I
have to ask myself is it really more than their faces I see? How much more?
Sitting with these questions and realizing that I can never know everyone‘s whole
story what can I do? I can make attempts to reflect continuously on my practice, on how I
might be including or excluding my students. I can make efforts to create spaces and
opportunities for students to share stories, memories, wonders, concerns. I can consider
how my contact with students serves to honour their wholeness, recognizing that I will
never know everything about their story. I can continue this dialogue with myself, my
students and my colleagues in order to continue this process of becoming. It was during
this significant time of reflection and with a renewed desire to improve my practice in
order to better serve students that I began graduate studies.
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Beginning my MA in Education – A Time for Reflection
After five years of teaching high school I was ready to ‗graduate‘ with the
students I had started with in 2000 and go back to university. I began my MA in
Educational Administration in 2005. Not only did the break from teaching reenergize me
after the five years of trying to meet the needs of all of my students but academic studies
were a way to reflect on my teaching practice and to engage in the critical study and
reflection of working for social justice in schools.
Two stories are significant to my journey as an educational activist during this
period. The first relates to having the foundation for my educational practice shaken
through Dr. John Portelli‘s Critical Issues in Education: Philosophical Perspectives
course and the second connects to ongoing conversations with my colleague Tracy
Williams Shreve on the topic of student voice and transforming schools.
You mean I should be critical about critical pedagogy?
The Critical Issues in Education: Philosophical Perspectives course was a
seminar course organized around provocative and current issues in education. There were
usually two weekly readings and we were required to come prepared with some talking
points and questions that we could engage with as a group. Twelve of us would meet for
three hours on Tuesday evenings in a quaint seminar room at OISE. Dr. John Portelli
would wheel in his comfortable chair loaded with resources for the night‘s discussion. He
often would start the class by reading a children‘s picture book which set an inviting tone.
The discussions that followed were lively, respectful, well informed and they, along with
the readings, pushed my thinking about topics including critical thinking, controversial
issues, accountability, and critical pedagogy.
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When I had initially read the syllabus I was intrigued and felt that I had
knowledge and school experience to share on the topics and that my understanding of the
proposed issues was already nuanced. My critique of issues in education at the time
focused on wanting there to be greater understanding and discussion of how power and
privilege influences teaching and learning and I advocated moving teacher practice
towards social action. Engaging students in critical thinking or discussing controversial
issues was not enough I thought – it should lead to social action. This course‘s readings
and discussions caused me to question and probe deeper into aspects of teaching that I
had taken at face value. An excerpt from one of my reflections hints at the shifts in my
thinking:
A common theme in this week‘s readings for me was our definitions of terms and
their limitations. From critical thinking to constructivist thinking to critical
pedagogy - the definitions and connection I once held for these terms have now
come into question for me.
In many ways I feel that this questioning of commonly held beliefs is an
important part of praxis and is helping me to develop the abilities to question
other areas of my life and work (Feb 2, 2006).
The comfort I felt in viewing my work through a critical pedagogy lens and in
believing that my approach to teaching was serving student needs began to falter. It
started with readings and discussions about critical thinking. Until then I had not
considered that traditional critical thinking approaches privilege rational thought and
masculine ―ways of knowing‖ and place little value on subjectivity and empathy in the
thinking process (Burbules & Berk, 1999; Martin, 1992). It seemed so obvious that this
was the case and I was surprised that I had not previously considered the limitations in
critical thinking. This realization was humbling for me and I remember engaging with the
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course readings and class discussions from a more open and questioning stance. I had a
feeling that my beliefs in other aspects of my teaching were about to be turned on their
head.
Thinking critically about critical pedagogy was the next big a-ha for me. Critical
pedagogy and the writings of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren framed my
thinking and teaching up to this point. Many of my curriculum decisions connected to my
vision of a just society and to working with students to understand and challenge
inequities in our local, national and global communities. I was not expecting this to be
challenged. During a class discussion about critical pedagogy and readings by Lisa Delpit
(1988) and others I began to take a more critical look at critical pedagogy. Was it fair to
my students and their futures that I had decided to teach from a critical pedagogy
framework? Who were my social justice goals serving? Was I preparing students for the
world I wanted or the world that exists today? Was my concern for the lives of students
helping them academically? Was I teaching students about the culture of power27
and
how to navigate within it? Had I reflected on my own biases and assumptions and
considered the extent to which they were influencing my actions? These were important
questions to consider if I hoped to be an educational activist that supported others reach
their potential and engage in the praxis of constructing a better world. I remember feeling
27
The culture of power is, essentially, the culture that maintains power -- economic power, status power,
and kinds of power that you can imagine in a society. If students do not have access to aspects of that
culture, to the language of that culture, to the style of that culture, then they may not be able to be
successful (Delpit, 1988).
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that I wished I had taken this course a few years earlier and been more reflective in my
teaching philosophy.
Making ‘Student Voice’ central to educational activism
At the same time that I was reflecting critically on my teaching philosophy, my
teaching practice and how my social identities had an impact on who and what I teach, I
turned to a colleague and friend, Tracy Williams-Shreve, who helped reframe my vision
of educational activism. Tracy and I met in 2002 when she started teaching at West
Toronto CI. We both liked to get an early start to the day and would arrive at school two
hours before classes started. We would share many conversations in the mornings and we
quickly became good friends. Though I was drawn to her for many reasons including her
intellect, her openness and her generosity, it was her sincere and demonstrated love for
students that inspired me so much. I came to see her as an educational activist as well
although she would not describe herself that way. She would call herself an educator in
the true meaning of the word – from its latin roots educare – ―to draw out‖. She felt that
it was an educator‘s role to find out what the starting points for each student were and to
support students in their development so they could reach the potential that they might
not even realize is possible. For her working for social justice in schools consisted of
constructing transformative spaces and opportunities with students in a loving and safe
environment.
Our conversations, along with the professional growth I was experiencing in my
MA program, helped me to reconceptualize educational activism and better understand
the challenges and opportunities of working and teaching for social justice in urban
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schools. I had been feeling discouraged about my ability to meet the needs of all my
students. For the second time since I began teaching in Ontario I felt that there were
pieces of a puzzle that I was either missing or not using effectively. I had been trying to
connect what I was teaching to the students in my classes but in the year before my
graduate studies I realized the challenges of truly understanding the life histories and
experiences of marginalized students. As well, the course with Dr. Portelli had shaken my
beliefs regarding schooling and critical pedagogy. I had become aware that my efforts to
get to know students were still mediated through my own beliefs, values and social
identities and that I was still envisioning social justice through my own lens.
During the second semester of my studies I began putting pieces together and
reconsidering how social justice could be achieved in schools. My definition of
educational activism now included the process of understanding ‗student voice‘,
constructing meaning together and supporting students in reaching their potential. This
developing understanding and newfound passion is highlighted in a course paper I wrote
at the end of my second semester of graduate studies titled ―Student voice as the starting
point in transforming urban schools‖. Excerpts from this paper are included here to
highlight how I defined ‗student voice‘ and why I felt it needed to be the starting point in
working for social justice.
In the excerpt that follows the process of writing helps me to unpack the
complexities of not only student voice but how it is expressed in the exchange between
teacher and learner:
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Articulating my vision of student voice has been a challenge. The word
‗voice‘ usually relates to something that can be heard, understood, listened to. For
my definition voice includes part of an individual‘s being that is not easily heard
or understood. Perspectives from Dahl (1995), Giroux (1986) and McLaren
(2007) help to broaden this definition of student voice to include student
experiences and multiple identities…
The following two paragraphs (which developed out of a two month conversation
with my colleague Tracy Williams-Shreve) are a synthesis of my explanation of
voice and form the basis for the proposal that student voice should be a starting
point in transforming urban schools:
Students are the subjects onto which education is written as both an
experience and a set of externally defined intentional outcomes (eg. curriculum
expectations). They are subjects in the sense that what they learn and how they
learn it is an amalgam of what we expose them to and that which we cannot
see that only expresses itself partially in the form of what we understand as
voice. In essence, voice is the potential expression of both an existing and an
unfolding self of a student. Their existing selves comprise the sum of their
experiences and the coherent meanings they have made of these. Their
unfolding selves represent changes that result from the construction of new
meaning and systems of meaning. This existing self must connect to the
unfolding or emerging self for education to take hold of the student so that the
student develops the necessary agency to take hold of it.
Given that urban student voices are “cloaked” from most educators
through a divide of demography, the issue of voice is most poignantly
important in such educational settings for the very reason that students’
existing selves (the bridges) are unfamiliar terrain to most educators. This lack
of familiarity (hence understanding) renders educators in urban settings
unable to build the bridges between the inside and out that lead to educational
success for students who typically populate urban schools. So, understanding
the contours of student voice, hidden and expressed, potential and emergent, is
critical if the goal of education is to educate everyone.
The piece that connected student voice to activism is expressed below:
Genuinely listening to student voice will disrupt traditional roles of power
and authority maintained by the belief that the teacher is the trained authority and
possessor of knowledge. Understanding that ―[s]chool knowledge never speaks
for itself; it is constantly filtered through the ideological and cultural experiences
that students bring to the classroom‖, and that ―[t]o ignore the ideological
dimensions of student experience is to deny the ground upon which students
learn, speak, and imagine, teachers can develop new positionalities with students,
where both are teachers and learners creating knowledge and meaning together‖
(McLaren, 2007, p. 241). As this awareness of not only student voice, but teacher
voice develops, educators become more critical of school board and Ministry
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mandates and with students generate strategies that make schools more
responsible to their communities. Through this ongoing process of constructing
paths of urban school transformation with students, using practices of authentic
dialogue and participation, these and other challenges become easier to navigate.
What becomes clear as well is that although the creation of better schools which
serve all students is the desired destination, the construction of the path is where
true transformation lies.
I remember feeling clarity of purpose after having articulated these ideas. By
adding and making student voice central I felt that I was creating an integrated vision for
social justice. It brought me back to my time with INEPE in Ecuador where
―understanding and developing the WHOLE HUMAN BEING in all his/her facets:
rational, intuitive, imaginative, esthetic, emotional and spiritual‖ (INEPE photo essay)
was foundational to their work. This amplified vision of educational activism
incorporated these principles. My practice suddenly felt more authentic and meaningful
to me. Yes, reimagining classrooms, schools and communities was still a component of
my vision but considering student voice, knowledge construction and reflecting on these
in relation to myself and my own practice brought Freire back in my life and breathed
energy and renewed potential into my next steps.
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Chapter Six: Continuing the Journey as a Teacher Educator
In this chapter I document significant stories in my development as an activist
teacher educator. I describe why I chose this path, my aspirations and challenges during
my first year, and my initial successes and understandings. I have structured this chapter
slightly differently from the previous three. I am including two reflections of my first
year as a teacher educator. The first was written within two weeks of completing my first
year (at the end April 2010) as part of my final paper for the Works in Progress course. I
wrote the second reflection three months later as the culmination of an intense learning
experience, the Building Peaceful Communities summer institute in Alberta.
A dream come true
In some ways it seems that I have come back to a starting point – teachers college.
Only now I am the teacher educator committed to social justice teaching and developing
social justice educators. I remember during the last months of my B. Ed saying that ―in
ten years I would like to be teaching at OISE.‖ I had yet to have my own classroom but I
loved the energy and opportunities to develop ideas that I experienced at OISE. My OISE
instructors were involved in exciting initiatives and teaching what they were passionate
about. I watched as they inspired many of us to become educators with a global
perspective and to develop an equity lens. The idea that in the future I could possibly be a
teacher educator and have an impact on the development of future teachers who in turn
would have an impact on thousands of students appealed to me.
The steps I took over the next ten years helped me reach this goal. I became an
associate teacher, I offered workshops to Continuing Education and Initial Teacher
Education classes, I continued working for the TDSB Equity department each summer on
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equity curriculum resources, I began teaching Additional Qualification courses at OISE
and coordinating and offering workshops at their annual Educational Activism and
Peacemaking Education conferences. I also co-created an OISE internship opportunity
for teacher candidates to volunteer with INEPE in Ecuador, contributed to various OISE
publications – Orbit Magazine and Educating for global citizenship in a changing world
– and took part in curriculum development opportunities offered through OISE and the
Ministry of Education. Through these experiences I was able to stay connected to OISE
instructors who were leaders in the areas of global, equity and social justice, and
secondary social science education. Ten years after starting my B. Ed I was now
seconded as an instructor in OISE‘s Initial Teacher Education program.
I was excited about this new role as an educational activist working as an
instructor and coordinator in this 10 month consecutive program. My responsibilities in
my first year included coordinating the secondary program Inner City Education cohort
(SPICE) which meant teaching the Teacher Education Seminar course to 35 teacher
candidates who chose Inner City Education as the focus of their B. Ed studies. I also
coordinated and supervised their practicum placements. As well, I was a curriculum and
instruction instructor for General Social Science. As a teacher educator I have an
opportunity to help shape future educational activists and support teacher candidates who
are already activist oriented. Working fulltime at OISE also provides me with the
opportunity to continue the educational activist work of normalizing social justice
activism in the Initial Teacher Education program which began over five years ago. With
all of this comes the opportunity to reflect on my teaching practice, give careful thought
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about the lessons I have learned along the way and consider the best methods to share
these with candidates.
Reflection #1: A lofty goal – to develop social justice educators (April
2010)
Over the course of my first year I realized the challenges of instilling an
understanding of equity and an anti-oppression analysis in my teacher candidates in this
intense 10 month program (where only six months are spent in classes). For many teacher
candidates considering issues of equity is new. Therefore building an understanding of
what equity is, considering the influence of social identities and investigating how issues
of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disAbility, and religion affect schooling, student
engagement and achievement is a challenge. All of this along with building an equitable
and social action approach to teaching can be overwhelming in a short period of time. I
was optimistic in my goals and began my first year feeling like I could transfer all of my
knowledge about teaching on these new teacher candidates in these few months.
I remember feeling discouraged in late January, five months into the program,
when in a discussion about equity one of my social science students stated that her equity
goal was to help one homeless person off the street each semester. In another class while
debriefing practicum experiences students spoke of students as lazy, not caring about
school, and weak in their skills. While I can understand where these comments come
from I was disheartened at the lack of critical analysis about why these situations exist.
The discourse among students took on cultural deficit thinking blaming students instead
of an acknowledgment of what is happening in schools to create these situations.
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Working within the teacher education program has allowed me to gain insights
into the possibilities and challenges of infusing educational activism into the program as
a whole. While there are many opportunities, just as there are within public schooling,
there are many instructors who see equity as an add-on to their program and not an
integral component to their teaching. One instructor discussed a program she introduces
to her students during December‘s equity infusion week as ―this is what I do for equity‖.
While this attitude is discouraging I do recognize the challenges of incorporating all of
the lenses and topics (Differentiated Instruction, Special Education, Law and Ethics, etc)
into such a short program.
This stage in my educational activism is an important one. Through my
experiences with the Educational Activism Research Group we have been discussing and
working on initiatives to normalize social justice practices within the Initial Teacher
Education program. Now working within it and spending my first year working towards
these goals I realize some of the obstacles ahead. I look forward to continue taking baby
steps in my teaching, working on committees and participating in professional
development opportunities. Infusing educational activism into OISE‘s practices and
policies in an institution where time is a scarce commodity will be an uphill battle.
Just as my activism shifted after my first year of high school teaching once again I
was rethinking my practice given this new context. Writing about the significant
moments along my journey as an educational activist is helpful in understanding how I
might begin to translate my experiences into meaningful learning for others. Thinking
back to my own understanding during my B. Ed year I realize that my equity framework
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took time to develop and initially much of my learning I related to my experiences in
Ecuador. Without an Ontario high school context it was difficult to get a sense of how
and why students were marginalized until much later.
Significant to my growth as an educational activist is not only recognizing these
challenges and taking the time to reflect on my own experiences but also discovering
strategies that can work. Learning about the histories and experiences of my teacher
candidates in September can help in terms of gaining insight into their starting points in
order to build an understanding of equity which can grow from prior experiences. Most
significant during my first year has been building relationships with teacher candidates.
Taking the time to get to know a bit about my students by talking to them in and outside
of class, responding quickly to emails, being available to meet outside of class, offering
substantial comments on journal reflections, spending quality time with students during
practicum visits, being open and valuing student input during classes, and asking for
feedback on my instruction and assignments has led to respectful relationships. These
positive relationships in turn have led to the advancement of many teacher candidates
along an equity continuum as they have been open to my critical feedback and probing
questions which have pushed their thinking.
At the end of my first year one of my teacher candidates who was both in the
Inner City Education cohort as well as my social science class spoke about feeling
intimidated at the beginning of the year because she was the youngest in the class and her
experiences growing up in a rural town and attending an alternative high school did not
include discussions around equity, injustice, social identity and discrimination. These
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topics were all new for her. She described how much she had learned in the program and
that she felt able to grow and challenge her own assumptions because of the positive
classroom environment and sense of community established. She said I helped create a
classroom environment where people were able to make mistakes, and where she did not
feel judged for her lack of understanding. These comments were significant in terms of
my educational activism practice. I know that educational activism is a journey and that
my ability to connect to student experiences, develop respectful relationships, challenge
people‘s thinking and be supportive as they grow is an important starting point in these
new teachers‘ own personal journeys.
Building Peaceful Communities Summer Institute – Discovering the
benefits of narrative inquiry
For two weeks in July I was at the University of Alberta, 3000 km away from my
home, my work, my friends, my family, and all other distractions in an intensive
Mahatma Gandhi 2010 Summer Institute called Building Peaceful Communities. During
these 10 days approximately 25 graduate students spent their time taking one of two
courses, participating in full group activities, lectures and film studies focused on
infusing understandings of community with a Gandhian perspective and engaging with
others around issues of building peaceful communities (Summer Institute brochure,
2010). I was enrolled in a course called Toward a Curriculum of Community which
consisted of small and whole group discussion of daily readings on topics including:
1. Beginning to map our inquiry into the making of a curriculum of community;
2. Exploring the place of experience in shaping practices, beliefs and education;
3. Negotiating spaces for sharing and inquiring into our lives;
4. Attending to the political, social and cultural contexts of curriculum making;
5. Curriculum making that pushes against the mainstream;
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6. Negotiating a curriculum of community where attention to the ―spaces between‖
reshapes fear, silence, marginalization and violence;
7. Exploring the multi-vocality of a curriculum of community; and,
8. Shaping spaces for ongoing uncertainties, tensions and inquiry as we negotiate a
curriculum of community.
(Course outline, 2010)
For each class we were required to complete a three to five page reflection on how the
readings connected to our own narratives as we inquired into ourselves as ―curriculum
makers of community‖. Initially I found these daily reflections very challenging and they
took me hours to complete. My first few reflections also lacked depth and seemed
superficial. Comments I received from Dr. Florence Glanfield on my first few reflections
were ―Tell me more here…why do you think so?‖, ―What are the experiences that you
had that brought you to these points? Tell me more…‖, and, ―I invite you to inquire into
the stories that brought you to the places that you are now.‖ Engaging in narrative
inquiry did not come easy for me. It was not until the final week of the course that a shift
happened. I was able to reflect more deeply into my stories and make meaningful
connections between the readings and my own narratives. I cannot pinpoint exactly what
the change was but factors that helped were the daily practice of writing, having rich
discussions with critical friends, as well as being far away from the distractions of home
and work which provided an opportunity to remove myself from the clutter of my life
both physically and mentally.
The insights I developed in those final five days were profoundly significant in
my development as an educational activist and a teacher educator. They mark a new
phase in my journey as an educational activist, one which considers the value of
providing opportunities for my teacher candidates to engage in their own narrative
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inquiries and connects to the importance of committing myself to a process of self-
actualization (hooks, 1994, p. 15).
I am including much of my final course reflection here because it was the most
inspirational piece of writing and reflecting I feel I had done up to that point in my life
and my insights reflect my present understandings and challenges as a teacher educator
committed to the pursuit of social justice.
Reflection #2: Reconsidering my practice as a teacher educator
(Summer Institute July 2010)
These past two weeks have impacted me more than I ever thought possible. I
remember meeting Dr. Reva Joshee, my MA supervisor, after the fourth day of class. She
had read over my initial paper28
which I had titled – My Journey as an Educational
Activist and had written notes in the margins of every page. Most of her notes included
questions like: How did you become engaged in social justice? What inspired you to take
this action? Can you tell me what specific moments helped shape this understanding for
you? These questions, along with those of Dr. Florence Glanfield, my professor of this
Toward a Curriculum of Community course, asked me to reflect on the stories that had
shaped my identity at various stages of my life. I remember in the beginning being unable
to answer these questions and feeling frustrated at my inability to call on my memories
and experiences that shaped these important moments in my life.
28
The original version of my story which I wrote in April 2010 was 21 pages long. As I have gone through
this narrative inquiry process telling and retelling my stories as I uncover new insights this journey as an
educational activist has expanded to 90 pages.
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Over the course of the next week as I read the articles and participated in class
activities I kept Reva and Florence‘s questions at the front of my mind. As days passed I
gained clarity on some important stories that critically shaped my identity over the
years.29
As this course progressed and I was able to reflect deeper into these and other
pivotal moments, I began looking into my journey as an educational activist with a new
set of eyes. These re-found stories were giving me a better understanding of myself and
how my definition of a curriculum maker of community had evolved over the years. An
a-ha moment was the realization that if my goal as a teacher educator is to shape my
teacher candidates into curriculum makers of community that I need to open up spaces to
allow my students to grow, question, wonder, reflect, belong, and become. I was
experiencing the value of this through this course and therefore need to consider how to
provide similar opportunities for my students.
I recalled the frustration I felt at the end of my first year as a teacher educator.
One of my goals at the beginning of the year was to enable students to become aware of
their social identities and consider how these shape our worldviews, biases, values, and
assumptions. I wanted to help my teacher candidates move to a deep understanding of
equity, to develop an equity lens so they could work toward transforming themselves and
ultimately the school system. I was disheartened at the lack of movement I saw in my
teacher candidates towards the end of the program. I remember feeling discouraged in
29
It was in this reflection in July 2010 that I first wrote about two of my childhood stories that instilled me
with a sense of justice. These stories, which appear in Chapter 3, came to me during the final week of the
summer institute.
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late January, five months into the program, when in a discussion about equity, one of my
social science students stated that her goal was to help one homeless person off the street
each semester. In another class while debriefing practicum experiences teacher
candidates spoke of high school students as lazy, not caring about school, and weak in
their skills. While I understood where these comments arise from I was disheartened at
the lack of critical analysis about why these situations exist. The discourse among
students took on cultural deficit thinking blaming students instead of an acknowledgment
of what is happening in schools to create these situations and their role in maintaining or
disrupting unjust practices and structures.
I wanted to create curriculum makers of community in my teacher education
classes and help these future teachers bypass the ‗mistakes‘ I made - but how? This
course has offered me new insights into answering this question. Through more
committed efforts in the areas of time, reflection, modeling, and self-actualization I may
be better able to engage my teacher candidates in their own process of becoming
curriculum makers of community.
Time
I often speak about the need to challenge and disrupt social structures as we work
to create a new society based on principles of social justice. Our overwhelming reliance
on time is one of the social constructs that serves to maintain the status quo. By being tied
to time in so much of what I do I have not given myself and others the space to think
about their stories, to engage in meaningful dialogue with classmates, to deeply discuss
articles and class activities in order to gain some understanding of how we have and are
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being continually shaped by past and present narratives. Through my feelings of anxiety
related to time and moving sometimes too quickly through class activities I have hindered
my students‘ processes of reflection, meaning-making and growth.
Reflection
Through the ongoing written reflections in this course I have sat with myself and
considered how the articles, classroom activities, and dialogue with others have resonated
with, bumped up against, and connected to my stories. Through these reflections I am
more able to articulate my changing beliefs and gain clarity about my past, present and
future practice.
Modeling
In this course, Florence modeled what a curriculum maker of community looks
like. She listened deeply and sometimes changed her plan for the day based on questions,
conversations, and unexpected nuances that occurred in our group. She modeled phrases
like, ―I wonder about‖, ―I have been thinking hard about‖, and ―I have been listening to
your thoughts and this is what I am thinking…‖ These examples modeled pieces of my
own practice I would like to enhance. I would like to be more cognizant of my language,
my actions, and how deeply I listen to others. If I would like teacher candidates to listen
to their students, to shift their practice based on their students‘ needs, concerns, and
interests, to continually reflect on their teaching practice, and to develop a spirit of
inquiry in their students then I need to model these same practices in my teaching.
Self-actualization/mindfulness
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It has only been in the last couple of days that I gained an appreciation of this
process of reflection, growth and empowerment of ourselves so we are more able to
empower our students. Because I have taken the time for myself over the past two weeks
to be away from many of the pressures from home and not splitting my time between
friends, family, work and my studies I have been able to grow in ways that will improve
my future practice. This has been an important lesson to learn. If I am to be an effective
curriculum maker of community I need to commit to a process self-actualization (hooks,
1994).
The Spiral Model of Popular Education
As I thought about the four elements described above (time, reflection, modeling
and self-actualization) I envisioned a spiral. As I consider my stories, learn new
information and theory, reflect on the connections and develop new understandings I am
better able to act on this new information and be a better educator. Through self-
actualization and reflection my learning and growth pushed me upwards. Thinking about
my spiral process brought me back to conversations in Ecuador with Lilían Alvaro, a
founder of INEPE (the Institute of Research, Education and Popular Advancement of
Ecuador). I remember her explaining the theory of popular education and the spiral
process modeled on Paulo Freire‘s ideas of conscientization.
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(The Change Agency, n.d.)
Since my time at INEPE I have been applying this approach in all of my classes
and workshops. Upon reflection of my first year as a teacher educator I realized that
although I thought I was, I was not honouring the process in its intended form. I had been
placing superficial attention to Step 1. Start with experience of participants and the inner
circle and ongoing practice of reflection. This lack of attention to these two important
components were due to two reasons. The first is that I was working from a superficial
definition of starting with the experiences of participants when it came to my teacher
education students. Even though I had asked them to tell me important pieces about
themselves at the beginning of the year and I made efforts over the year to get to know
them as individuals I was not authentically structuring my classes based on their life
experiences and stories. My starting point was a consideration of the students in the inner
city classrooms where they would be teaching.
My second misstep in honouring this spiral model of education came in my
inattention to ongoing reflection and feedback. There were numerous reflection activities
throughout my courses but they became more procedural activities rather than spaces for
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honest reflection and critical feedback from myself and peers. This was due inpart to the
compressed nature of the Bachelor of Education program at OISE as well as my own
oversight in program planning. I was asking my students to engage in reflection without
explicitly talking about the deep purpose and considering the questions, methods and
feedback.
As I began thinking harder about why I was not effectively considering these two
important components, since I consider myself a popular educator and I have spent years
being critical of my own practice and considering my students life experiences, I came to
two more realizations that made better sense to me – my commitment to promoting
equity and the sense of urgency I feel about social justice issues.
I feel that teacher candidates need to be introduced to all forms of oppression and
have an understanding of how these inequities are expressed and enacted in our schools. I
wanted to engage in anti-oppression practice and shape teacher candidates who would be
committed to working against all forms of oppression in schools. I felt a greater
commitment to marginalized high school students in our public schools and placed them
at the centre of my practice to the detriment of engaging in an authentic practice of
belonging and becoming with my teacher candidates. This connects to the similar
realization I had while teaching at West Toronto Collegiate when I realized the
importance of centring my students in the curriculum rather than focussing on issues.
Also, I am driven by a great sense of urgency. I feel that our world and our
students do not have time to wait for change to come. Making the time for my teacher
candidates to reflect on their experiences and engage in reflection activities was not as
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important to me as learning the skills to act for change now. I did want them to start with
themselves and a reflection on their social identities and assumptions and belifs; but I
wanted the process to happen within months, not years so they would do no harm to
students when they entered their own classrooms.
I think that many educational activists feel this sense of urgency for action NOW.
I remember feeling this when I visited abandoned oil fileds in Ecuador where oil had
leached into much of the amazonian region. I felt an urgent need for action when I spent
time in the deforested coastal villages of Ecuador where the mangroves had been cut
down to make way for shrimp farms. And I have felt this urgency on a regular basis as a
high school teacher in Ontario as I watch students being pushed out of schools or falling
through the cracks due to inequitable practices and attitudes connected to race, socio-
economic status, learning disabilities and sexual orientation.
What I have come to consider now, through my experience at this summer
institute, is that my sense of urgency does not mean that others can forego their own
process of growth. If I am to truly be a curriculum maker of community I need to not
only commit to acting for social justice in all that I do but I must also consider opening
spaces for all of my future students (in my teacher education classes and my high school
classes) to engage in their own process of growing, questioning, reflecting, belonging,
and becoming.
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Chapter Seven: Developing themes and understandings
across my journey as an educational activist
In the previous four chapters I have presented the experiences connected to my
growth as an educational activist. My personal narratives included my earliest memories
of developing a sense of justice through high school, university, overseas travels, my
Bachelor of Education degree, working in the TDSB Equity department, my first years
teaching and into the present as a initial teacher educator at OISE. In this chapter, by
looking across these experiences, I identify a number of themes that have arisen on my
journey, namely the changing nature of my educational activist perspective and the work
that flows from it. As I was engaged in the process of retelling my stories I found myself
reflecting on them from the perspective of a teacher educator as that is the context of my
present work. If one of my goals is to help to develop social justice teachers then having a
sense of my own development, challenges and a-ha moments will make me a teacher
educator who may be more reflective and perceptive, hence more effective in achieving
this goal. I use this chapter and the next to flesh out themes I feel have unfolded during
this journey, identify some key learnings regarding teacher education, and the value of
narrative inquiry for myself and its potential benefits for the teaching profession in
general. I am sure that if I was returning to my position as a high school teacher or
preparing to continue discussions with educational activists across Ontario that the
themes generated would have shifted to allow me to make better sense of how to improve
in that context. I hope that anyone engaging with my personal narratives in the previous
chapters is able to find meaning in them relating to their own contexts.
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This chapter captures the themes that are at the forefront of my current
development as an educational activist. I begin by exploring the components related to
my growth. In earlier versions of my stories I considered the evolving aspects of my
educational activism separate stages in my journey. However, in the process of retelling
my stories I have come to see them as four important components to be mindful of and
not necessarily distinct stages that should be discarded once new understandings have
taken place. I also discuss the ongoing influence of my privileged identities, the
importance of mentorship, seeing change as possible, and my awareness and embracing
of my ―unfinishedness‖ as key themes related to my developing educational activism.
My evolving educational activist identity
Through this narrative inquiry process I have come to see my development as an
educational activist up to this moment in four phases or layers. They are:
1. Focus: Issues; Goal: To raise awareness and take action on issues that connect
student realities to the continuum of issues from local to global in order to
promote social justice;
2. Focus: Students; Goal: To get to know my students and understand their life
stories and experiences in order to support them in their developing into the best
version of themselves;
3. Focus: My social identities; Goal: To recognize my own social identities and how
they, along with my assumptions and perspectives, influence WHO, WHAT and
HOW I teach;
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4. Focus: Processes of reflection and self-actualization; Goal: To commit to my
own, and my students, reflexive processes in becoming and to being engaged in a
process of self-actualization.
What I found through this process of inquiring into my narratives was that each
phase was layered and significant experiences, conversations, and the introduction to new
theories and ideas gave me new understandings which led me to uncover the next phase.
As I moved through each phase above I ―bumped up‖ against other people‘s stories that
caused me to rethink my assumptions and/or actions (Clandinin et al., 2006). During my
first years of teaching in Toronto my ―teaching story‖ of wanting to encourage my
students to become global citizens and be engaged in making a difference in the world
bumped up against the stories of my students‘ lives. My teacher knowledge and teaching
goals came from the ―body of convictions and meanings, conscious or unconscious, that
[arose] from experience (intimate, social, and traditional) and that [were] expressed in
[my] practices‖ (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, p. 7). Many of my students‘ life stories did
not mirror my own in that many were facing serious life challenges due to numerous
factors and as my narratives interacted with theirs the dissonance caused me to rethink
and shift my practice. I began wondering how to make sense of wanting students to care
about injustices faced by people outside of their communities when many students were
facing serious issues in their own lives. I came to value this understanding of WHO my
students are as an integral part of being an educational activist. My activism began
integrating the second phase described above as I was coming to understand that if one of
my goals was to develop the capacities and passion in students to become active citizens
that the first step would be to support them in becoming the best version of themselves.
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This bumping against other narratives happened again when as described in
chapter four I bumped up against the life experiences of my students Diego, Sukesh, Anu,
Thuva, Rina, Laila, and Jennifer. I thought that I had significantly shifted my practice and
that I had been giving ―legitimacy to the wisdom held in [the] lived stories‖ of the
students in my classes (Aoki, 1993, 267). I realized however, as I learned more about my
students‘ experiences, often of marginalization, that I had not opened up all of the spaces
between the curriculum because I had not fully reflected on how my own values,
assumptions and experiences impacted which stories I ‗heard‘ (Aoki, 1993). I realized
that even though I had made efforts to listen to my students, to show them love and
belonging, and to inquire into their lives, that I was still an outsider and was still viewing
their reality within my own values, beliefs and frames of reference.
My ongoing development as an educational activist has occurred through a series
of bumps and ongoing tensions that have reverberated through my life and continue to
shape my identity, my stories to live by (Clandinin et al., 2006, p. 15). Aoki reminds us
that ―our identities as teachers … are not so much in our presences; rather, our identities,
who we are as teachers …, are ongoing effects of our becoming in difference‖ (1993, p.
260). From my experiences in Ecuador when my narratives of development work
bumped up against the realities of the devastation created by international oil production
and shrimp farming as well as my experiences at INEPE which offered me a new outlook
on schooling, this inquiry into my experiences has made me realize that I need to pay
more attention to these ―bumps‖ and what they might mean for my developing identity.
As a teacher educator I will encourage my teacher candidates (possibly through
journaling) to take note of their own moments of dissonance and experience with
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difference in their personal and professional lives because they provide opportunities for
growth.
Scholarly work in the field of education has also shaped this journey. As I look
back I can connect specific articles and authors to each stage in my development. I first
became interested in educational activism through the work of Paulo Freire and his
seminal book Pedagogy of the oppressed (1970). It provided a way to connect my interest
in challenging oppressive systems and working for global justice in my newfound passion
for education. Freire‘s words provided me with a tool (popular education) for my desire
to make a difference in the world at a time when I was feeling a sense of powerless in
Ecuador. I connected this new framework of popular education to Pike and Selby‘s global
education perspective (1988, 1999, 2000) in my initial years as an educator. As I became
more aware of the inequities within schools and communities in Canada and I looked to
develop an equity lens I was drawn to readings on anti-racist and social justice education.
This enhanced my understanding of power relations and how to develop a teaching
practice for social justice (Adams, Bell & Griffin, 2007; Banks, 2003; Lee, Menkart &
Okazawa-Rey, 2002). As my life experiences ―bumped up‖ against the lives of my
students and my educational activism shifted from a political to a ―student voice‖ focused
approach, I turned to Delpit (1988), Freire (1998) and hooks (2003) whose writings
offered greater insights. A focus in their writing was the importance of the student,
supporting their development process from their starting points to help them engage in
the world that exists today and supporting them to envision and create a new tomorrow.
Connecting with student voice required a connection to my own voice. I had to identify,
unpack and disrupt my own identities. My interest turned to literature on whiteness,
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privilege and power in schooling (Lund, 2008; McIntosh, 1988; Sleeter, 2001; Solomon
et al., 2005; Tatum, 2010). More recently connected to critical reflection and self
actualization I have gained knowledge again from Freire (1998) as well as from
Brookfield (1995), Hahn (2003), hooks (2003) and Joshee (2006).
I know that my journey is ongoing and I have much still to learn. As I move
forward as an educational activist I am interested in gaining a deeper understanding of
anti-oppressive education (Kumashiro, 2000). I have been an advocate of Banks‘
articulation of four approaches to multicultural education (2003) over the years and as a
teacher and teacher educator I have looked to moving curriculum towards more
transformative and applied social action approaches. More recently I have begun to look
more critically at this approach as often teachers and teacher candidates make efforts to
enact a social action approach without carefully examining their own assumptions, the
context in which the action may take place and most importantly, the effect that it may
have on students and communities. As I continue growing as an educational activist I am
also interested in learning how to enact education for sustainability, peace education and
holistic education in my practice.
Recognizing privilege – an ongoing challenge
Through the retelling of my stories I have noticed that my dominant social
identities in Canada have affected the rate at which I have integrated many of my
understandings. As I have taken the time to read through curriculum documents, articles,
lesson plans, term papers, and reflections I have written over the years I have been
surprised that I am still learning lessons that I have been thinking about for up to 13
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years. For example, in my work for the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of
Guelph I was reading articles on critical pedagogy, feminist theory and critical
multiculturalism by authors including bell hooks, Henry Giroux, Paulo Freire, Myles
Horton, and Peter McLaren. Yet when I spoke about positioning myself in the work I did
not connect my positioning to a consideration of my social identities. As well looking
back at the Tools for equity in the classroom binder I co-edited 11 years ago there were
opportunities to interrogate my privileged position and how that might connect to my
teaching practice. In the first section of the resource I included an selection on social
identity as it relates to education as well as ―The power flower‖ (Arnold, Burke, James,
Martin, & Thomas, 1991) and Peggy McIntosh‘s ―White privilege: Unpacking the
invisible knapsack‖ (1988). The following quote I wrote in May 2000 (adapted from
Educating for a change (1991)) reflects my attempt at understanding the importance of
recognizing one‘s social identities:
When working to address issues of equity in the classroom we need to start with
ourselves. By this I mean that educators lacking critical self-knowledge can
inadvertently erase themselves from the picture, by not working through basic
questions about who they are and why they do what they do. If we can‘t put
ourselves in the picture, we can‘t help others do the same. Since we too are
participants in the learning process we need to define our place and understand
our connection to the issues which come up in the classroom. (Goodreau &
Shehata, 2000, p. 6)
What this quote reveals is that while I had begun reflecting on my social identities I
believed that my actions were enough if I deliberated on questions from a ―diversity
checklist‖ (Goodreau & Shehata, 2000, pp. 12-13). I had yet to think about considering
what the experiences, challenges and hopes of my students might be and how those might
be different from my own. This deeper understanding of social identity and the historical
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and experiential contexts would not be awakened in me until years later (Adams, Bell &
Griffin, 2007).
After graduating from OISE I often spent summers working at the TDSB Equity
department where I was introduced (on more than one occasion) to the ―role of the
reader‖ approach which asks teachers to reflect on their biases, assumptions and beliefs.
Questions in this approach include: What personal biases shape my reaction to the
content of this particular subject-lesson? What experiences have shaped my biases? What
assumptions do I make about learning and teaching? and, How do I ensure that all my
students in my class feel included in the content and in the discussion? (TDSB Equitable
Schools, 2003). Although I often ask myself these questions I am realizing through this
inquiry process that even though I have the knowledge and tools to know myself as a
social justice educator I have not fully integrated them into my practice. I was reminded
of this again this past year when I was challenged by one of my racialized teacher
candidates. After a class reading of the McIntosh (1988) article on white privilege in
December 2010 I asked my teacher candidates to take a moment to reflect in their
journals before we engaged in a whole class discussion about the thoughts and emotions
the article invoked. While this teacher candidate did not dispute that this was a good
strategy she remarked that this opportunity had never been given after the articles written
about the experiences of marginalized students or teachers. I thought about her comments
and realized that while I was careful to consider how the white students might be feeling
after being asked to consider their white privilege that I had not paid similar attention to
the experiences of the racialized teacher candidates in my class.
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Through this narrative inquiry process I see the ongoing challenge I must attend
to in order to make explicit these questions of privilege and social identity in everything I
do. I have spent much of my life in institutions where whiteness informs the structural
and cultural contexts of my work as a researcher and educator (James, 2007, p. 119).
Therefore, the ease with which it is possible not to engage in this critical identity work
and fall into patterns which maintain the centrality of these structures is often hard to
resist (Delpit, 1988). This narrative inquiry process becomes even more important
because it allows for a process to keep that which can easily become invisible visible
(Solomon, Portelli, Daniel & Campbell, 2005).
While this inquiry has been a journey, one of my arrived at understandings is that
it is one with no final destination. At this stage I am moving toward new questions that
build on the discoveries made through this process. As a teacher educator what can I do
to support others become aware of their privileged identities and become conscious of
how power operates? How can I make these questions of privilege and social identity
explicit in my personal and professional life? How far am I willing or prepared to go? I
have a home and a job that pays me more than a living wage – what does really
understanding and acting for social justice mean? How do I live with these tensions?
How does my knowledge of my own ignorance inform my practice and fuel my change?
Knowing that I don‘t know leads me to ask questions and engage in actions that take me
to a place of greater understanding.
Mentoring
The value of mentors has been an ongoing theme in my journey:
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[M]entors are guides. They lead us along the journey of our lives. We trust them
because they have been there before. They embody our hopes, cast light on the
way ahead, interpret arcane signs, warn us of lurking dangers, and point out
unexpected delights along the way. (Daloz, 1999, p. 18)
Four valuable mentors who have been my ―guides‖ in my development as an
educational activist are: Wendy Hester, my high school vice principal; Lilián Alvaro
Lugo, a founder of INEPE; Terezia Zoric, former District Wide Coordinator of Equity for
the TDSB; and Tracy Williams-Shreve, a TDSB teacher colleague. It is interesting that
these mentors are all women. I have been inspired by many men along the way as well
but what makes these four women stand out in my narratives is the role they played in
helping me gain understandings and helped shape my developing identity at significant
points in my journey (Daloz, 1999).
In high school it was my vice principal Wendy who saw my developing
leadership skills and connected me to Rotary International. She nominated me for the
Rotary Youth Leadership Award conference and she encouraged me to go on Rotary
Youth Exchange. Her belief and encouragement motivated me to consider possibilities
for serving others as a career goal. Lilián came into my life at the critical moment when I
was disillusioned with my international development degree. She inspired me to see
education as a tool for social change and she was instrumental in my discovery of popular
education and pursuing a teaching degree in Canada. I met Terezia when I was struggling
to grasp how to integrate an equity lens into my teaching in Ontario. She was
instrumental in helping me develop an equitable teaching practice and she ignited my
passion for issues of social justice in schooling in Ontario. Through Tracy‘s mentorship I
have been able to better understand student realities and develop ―lived curricula‖ which
allows for ―students‘ own becoming‖ (Aoki, 1993, p. 266). Her understanding of the
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physical, physiological, cognitive, emotional, social, and historical factors of youth,
especially marginalized youth, helped me move to a deeper understanding of my
students‘ life experiences and to a greater awareness of my social identities and how they
have influenced my teaching. My commitment to social justice principles and to
persevering during challenging times is partially due to the example they set.
Significant attributes of these mentors that inspired me to dedicate myself more to
this pursuit were their extensive knowledge in their field, their accomplishments to which
I aspired, and their passion and commitment to social justice in their professional and
personal lives. The qualities of their mentorship included: their unselfish commitment of
time; their care for me on a personal level; their treatment of me as an equal colleague
seeing my potential and having confidence in my abilities; their empathetic, non
judgmental listening; and their support and willingness to share their knowledge with me
(Daloz, 1999; Chitpin, 2011; Rippon & Martin, 2006; Starcevich, 2003). I developed
strong and loving relationships with these mentors which enhanced my capacity to learn
from our critical conversations because I allowed myself to be vulnerable which in turn
has influenced my process of becoming (Chitpin, 2011, hooks, 2003).
As a mentee I also enacted qualities that positively influenced my development. I
listened with an open mind and heart, exhibited a willingness to become fully immersed
in any task, welcomed constructive feedback, and recognized that any situation was an
opportunity for learning, from cleaning out a filing cabinet with Terezia to conversations
over coffee with Tracy to catching a moment of interaction between Lilián and a student.
The impact that these mentors have had on my life became apparent through this
inquiry process. Without realizing it previously I see that I have been modeling these
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qualities in my interactions with students and teacher candidates. As a teacher mentor I
make concerted efforts to listen with an open mind and heart, to be generous with my
time and resources, and to make efforts to develop leadership capacities in others. As a
teacher educator and mentor I plan to continue modeling these qualities in my
educational relationships. I will continue to make efforts to build loving relationships
with my students based on ―care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility respect and
trust‖ (hooks, 2003, p. 131). I have experienced how, through these loving relationships,
minds and hearts can be opened, a learning community can be created, and the possibility
for being challenged and changed exists (hooks, 2003, p. 137).
Seeing change as possible
An inspiring thread that has emerged through my narratives is the belief that
change is possible. This is a belief that I can relate back to my childhood and more
recently to my engagement with Paulo Freire‘s work. Taking risks and creating
opportunities for success are qualities my father possesses and has instilled in my brother
and me. He began his own logging, firewood and tree service business in his early
twenties. I watched as the family business has grown to include a sawmill, a kiln and now
my brother‘s custom woodworking business. In high school he encouraged me to start my
own summer firewood business selling slabwood from the sawmill to local campers. It
was a huge success and helped me pay part of my university expenses. It was this spirit of
taking risks and being taught to think creatively of a way to achieve personal success that
inspired me to work with others to start a high school environmental club, start an
Interact club, begin a Global Education working group at OPIRG-Guelph, create an
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equity resource for OISE graduates, develop a global certificate program at West Toronto
CI, and to create an Educational Activism resource guide for educators.30
Over the years I have had the positive experience of working alongside people
who believed they could be agents of change and work toward goals of social justice
education:
…to enable people to develop the critical analytical tools necessary to understand
oppression and their own socialization and change oppressive systems, and to
develop a sense of agency and capacity to interrupt and change oppressive
patterns and behaviours in themselves and in the institutions and communities of
which they are a part.
(Adams, Bell, Griffin, 2007, p.2)
My narratives recount a number of examples of these efforts happening within
institutional settings. A parallel running through these experiences is the often creative
use of existing policy and programs in these change efforts. In the situations I was
connected to at the University of Guelph, the TDSB Equity Department, West Toronto
Collegiate, and most recently at OISE, the individuals involved did not sacrifice their
beliefs to fit their ideals into the institutional framework; in some cases these social
justice efforts effected changes or movement towards social justice within the broader
institution. For example, due to the Educational Activism conference at OISE I have been
given time release to infuse social justice initiatives into the Initial Teacher Education
30
I only connected this aspect of my childhood to these initiatives as I began writing this section. This is
another example of the power of narrative inquiry. As I continue retelling my stories I discover more
connections between my previous selves and who I am today. In the next phase of my journey I look
forward to sharing my stories with two educational activist colleagues interested in inquiring into their
own personal narratives. As I enter into their stories I know I will gain new understandings of my own
journey.
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program. As well, in part due to teacher efforts to implement a global certificate program
at West Toronto Collegiate, the principal focused energies on infusing a global justice
focus school wide.
As a teacher educator I will continue to discuss educational policies with my
students and engage them in thinking critically and creatively of ways they can use to
fulfill social justice purposes. By engaging them through class assignments and activities
in praxis, the process of dialogue and reflection leading on to change through action, they
too may be able to act on the understanding that their ―role in the world is not restricted
to a process of only observing what happens but it also involves [their] intervention as a
subject of what happens in the world‖ (Freire, 1998, p. 72).
I recognize that the source of the creative use of policy for social justice work is
based on the drives of the individuals who move its use in that direction. At the core of
this is my personal and professional change. Through mapping my own development
through this process I have made conscious my understanding that structural change is
possible through a more fundamental understanding that personal change and growth are
at the heart of it.
Unfinishedness
A constant theme throughout these narratives is that of being an ―incomplete‖ or
―unfinished‖ self. My willingness to be open to new ideas, to engage in critical dialogue
with others, and to be involved in an ongoing process of trying to improve myself reflects
this willingness to recognize my ―unfinished‖ self as Freire challenges us to do:
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The best starting point for such reflections [on teaching] is the unfinishedness of
our human condition. It is in this consciousness that the very possibility of
learning, of being educated resides. It is our immersion in the consciousness that
gives rise to a permanent movement of searching, of curious interrogation that
leads us not only to an awareness of the world but also to a thorough, scientific
knowledge of it. This permanent movement of searching creates a capacity for
learning not only in order to adapt to the world but especially to intervene, to re-
create, and to transform it. (1998, p. 66)
It is hard to pinpoint when this disposition of ―curious interrogation‖ and ―permanent
movement of searching‖ first developed. Was it when I left my small town to spend a
year in Belgium since it was then that I was confronted with a world of information and
experiences I had never previously considered? Or was it earlier in high school when I
came back from my RYLA leadership conference and was motivated to begin an Interact
club? What I am sure of is that this disposition has grown as I continue to work for social
justice. Each significant experience in my life from university to Ecuador to my B. Ed to
teaching in Toronto has both highlighted for me how much more there is to learn and
understand and has fueled my drive to work for social justice.
Another lesson learned along my journey which connects to my unfinishedness is
that of being open to dialogue and to being challenged:
To live in openness toward others and to have an open-ended curiousity toward
life and its challenges is essential to educational practice. To live this openness
toward others respectfully and, from time to time, when opportune, critically
reflect on this openness ought to be an essential part of the adventure of teaching.
… The experience of openness as a founding moment of our unfinishedness leads
us to the knowledge and awareness of that unfinishedness. It would be impossible
to know ourselves as unfinished and not to open ourselves to the world and to
others in search of an explanation or a response to a multitude of questions.
(Freire, 1998, p. 121)
This disposition has allowed me to be open to different facets of educational activism and
to recognizing that I am still in this process of becoming. This openness gave me the
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courage to talk to my colleague when I acted inappropriately in a situation with one of
my black male students. I was able to be vulnerable and from our conversation to
recognize that I needed to more thoughtfully consider the role and impact of privilege and
marginalization in my interactions and teaching practice.
This desire to ―open ourselves to the world and to others in search of an
explanation or a response to a multitude of questions‖ has me searching for the answer to
a question Dr. Joshee, my supervisor, posed recently when reading over a recent draft of
my narratives. She asked: ―Is there something you might call a deep or spiritual belief
that guides you in this work?‖ I feel my lack of response connects to the latest phase of
educational activism I discovered on this journey - the importance of being mindful and
engaging in a process of self-actualization. It was through the Building Peaceful
Communities Summer Institute that I began considering the connection between
educational activism, mindfulness, self-actualization, and my own spiritual development.
In defining myself as an educational activist I made efforts to keep Gandhi‘s words, ―Be
the change you would like to see in the world‖ present in my day to day actions. I do my
best to consider how my consumption practices and the way I treat others reflect the
principles of social justice that I care about. It has not been my practice however, to begin
the work of peace with myself and to be mindful of my body, my breath, or my
conversations with others (Hanh, 2003). I associated living Gandhi‘s vision with one that
did not do harm to others but I did not include peace within myself as an equally
important component. I am learning that my commitment to educational activism must be
at the same time personal and political (Joshee, 2006, p. 7). As bell hooks suggests:
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Progressive, holistic education, ‗engaged pedagogy‘ … emphasizes wellbeing.
That means that teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-
actualization that promotes their own wellbeing if they are to teach in a manner
that empowers students. (1994, p. 15)
This phase in my educational activism is a challenging one for me and it is part of the
reason I have been unable to answer Dr. Joshee‘s question about my spiritual beliefs.
Since last July‘s Summer Institute I have not actively engaged in mindful practice or the
process of self-actualization. Therefore, critical reflection on my spiritual beliefs is a
challenge for me. Through the retelling of my stories I see that although my growth as an
educational activist has been significant, my development is still ongoing and this phase,
like the others, will require continuous reflexive practice in order for me to integrate it
into my educational activism. This recognition of my unfinished self will allow me to
keep learning and growing as I work to ―intervene, to re-create, and to transform‖ the
world (Freire, 1998, p. 66).
As I move forward as a teacher educator I will make a greater effort to make these
qualities and dispositions an essential part of the Initial Teacher Education program. If I
would like to encourage students to be mindful, to be open to dialogue and critique as
well as to become conscious of their unfinished selves I must give my students multiple
opportunities to practice and reflect on these so that they might be integrated into their
process of becoming.
Conclusion
As I enter my third year as a teacher educator I carry the reflections I have made
in this inquiry at the forefront of my mind. I intend to be mindful of the dimensions of
educational activism that I have discovered thus far, and to be open to the learning that
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comes as I continue ―bumping up‖ against the life stories of others. I will make daily
efforts to recognize the ongoing influence of my social identities and strive to uncover
my unconscious biases. I will seek to be a caring and inspiring mentor, someone who
creates opportunities for others to reflect on their own ―unfinishedness‖. These themes
will have an added significance and relevance this coming year as I become a coordinator
and instructor for the School, Community and Global Connections cohort, the same
program in which I was enrolled 12 years ago. This new challenge and the lessons I am
poised to learn from this incoming group of teacher candidates will offer me an
opportunity to retell my stories and gain deeper understandings along this journey to
intervene, to re-create, and to transform the world (Freire, 1998).
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Chapter Eight: Educational Activism through Narrative
Inquiry
At the beginning of this journey of telling and retelling the significant stories of
my development as an educational activist I was not sure that I was engaged in thesis
worthy research. After immersing myself in narrative inquiry over many months, I am
now convinced that I could not have learned more through another approach. This inquiry
into my personal narratives is allowing me to get to places I otherwise would not have
reached by providing both the form and context for examining the surprises,
juxtapositions, contradictions, and incomplete stories of my shifting ―selves‖ and my
work (Miller, 1998, p. 152). This thesis exploration is not only helping me to understand
my growth as an educational activist but it has inspired an interest in pursuing narrative
inquiry as professional development and as a tool to support the development of social
justice educators.
I titled this chapter ―Educational Activism through Narrative Inquiry‖ which
connects to the new understandings I have gained about educational activism along this
journey using this methodology. In chapter one I stated that an important goal of
educational activism is to develop a sense of agency and capacity to interrupt and change
oppressive patterns and behaviours in ourselves and in the institutions and communities
to which we belong (Adams, Bell & Griffin, 2007, p. 2). At the beginning of this thesis
process I did not realize that my research method would become the vehicle that would
allow me to develop this sense of agency and ability to recognize and change these
oppressive patterns and behaviours. In this chapter I will explain how I have come to see
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narrative inquiry both as a way to understand the dynamic qualities of educational
activism and as an instructional tool in the development of social justice activists.
Through this narrative inquiry into my personal and professional experiences I
have come to a deeper understanding of the importance of what I see now as essential
components of educational activism. I will outline four of these components here and
demonstrate their connection to narrative inquiry in the rest of this chapter. The first is
the value of listening to and understanding ―student voice‖, which is comprised of the
sum of students‘ experiences and the coherent meanings they have made of these based
on their historical and social realities (Aoki, 1993; Giroux, 1986; McLaren, 2007), in
order to create meaningful educational experiences which will support students to
develop to their full capacities, and acquire the tools needed to participate as change
agents in their communities. Secondly, the need to become aware of our social identities
and cultural narratives and how they influence what, how and who we teach (Adams, Bell
& Griffin, 2007; McLaren, 2007; Tatum, 2010). A third component whose value has
become more evident to me through this process is the importance of engaging in
ongoing critical reflection as a way to become conscious of the assumptions and beliefs
underlying teacher practice which are often normalized within the structural and cultural
contexts of institutions (James, 2007). A fourth essential component that has been a
theme in my stories is the recognition of our ―unfinished‖ selves always in the process of
becoming, of curious interrogation of our surroundings in order to engage in
transformative actions for social justice (Freire, 1998).
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These four components – listening to ―student voice‖, developing an awareness of
our social identities, engaging in ongoing critical reflection, and recognizing our
―incompleteness‖ – align with purposes and outcomes of narrative inquiry (Greene, 1995;
Milner, 2007; Ritchie & Wilson, 2000). Incorporating a narrative inquiry approach into
teacher education and the professional development of teacher educators therefore, will
help achieve my aims to develop social justice educators and to integrate educational
activism within teacher education practices. A glimpse of the potential of narrative to
connect with educational activism goals is shown in these words from the book Teacher
narrative as critical inquiry:
…when preservice and experienced teachers…write and read and compose their
ideas and histories, then pedagogical or ―content‖ learning takes on new meaning
as it becomes connected with their ongoing development as people. The interplay
of multiple and often conflicting narratives of professional and personal history,
can provide the catalyst for reflection, critique, and ―re-vision‖ that initiate and
sustain teachers‘ capacity to resist confining narratives and to write new
narratives of teaching and living, thus recomposing themselves as teachers and as
individuals. (Ritchie & Wilson, 2000, p.7)
This quote, which makes reference to our ―ongoing development‖, to ―resist[ing]
―confining narratives‖, and to ―recomposing ourselves‖, echoes words by Freire (1998)
about education being a tool for critical consciousness and social transformation.
[T]he more I acknowledge my own process and attitudes and perceive the reasons
behind these, the more I am capable of changing and advancing from the stage of
ingenuous curiosity to epistemological curiosity (p. 44)… This permanent
movement of searching creates a capacity for learning not only in order to adapt
to the world but especially to intervene, to re-create, and to transform it‖ (p.66).
By infusing narrative inquiry methodologies into the ongoing development of social
justice teacher educators as well as an instructional practice in initial teacher education
we may be able to enlarge our capacities ―to invent visions of what should be and what
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might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools‖ (Greene,
1995, p.5).
Narrative Inquiry as professional development
Based on the understandings I have gained through this process of telling and
retelling my personal narratives I believe that the writing of our own and interacting with
each other‘s stories would provide opportunities to reflect on and rethink our teacher
education practices; to examine the assumptions, values and beliefs underlying our
actions; and to enhance our understandings of the needs of our teacher candidates. One
lesson that was emphasized through my study is that the development of a social justice
orientation to teaching is ongoing. I remember believing in my B. Ed year that I had
acquired the knowledge and skills I needed to be a social justice teacher. This narrative
inquiry has highlighted that my understandings shifted and my social justice education
practice improved over the years as I ―bumped up‖ against the life stories of others. In
my first two years as a teacher educator I attempted to teach my teacher candidates
everything I knew and to help them become equity minded teachers within the 10 months
of the initial teacher education program. I focused on teaching social justice content and
making teacher candidates aware of equity issues. This thesis journey has led to me
rethinking my teacher education goals and an important aspect of my future practice will
be to actively support teacher candidates develop a critical reflective practice so they are
able to continue in their process of becoming after their B. Ed year is over.
Not only would ongoing narrative inquiry as professional development lead
teachers to question and rethink our practice, engaging in the inquiry and critical
154
reflection of experiences with critical friends might allow us to support one another to
interrogate our assumptions, to better understand the unconscious aspects of our practice
and to examine how issues of power influence educational work (Brookfield, 1995;
Milner, 2007). Through this process I recognize that many moments of growth as an
educational activist occurred when my dominant social identities intersected with the
realities of students from non-dominant backgrounds. By inquiring into our experiences
and sharing these narratives with critical friends, who will question us or offer a similar
or counter narrative from which to examine our own, we might be able to make conscious
the unconscious aspects of lives and become more effective in making the experiences
and implications of privilege explicit in our teaching and to resist dominant structures in
our educational work.
Inquiring into our own stories as teacher educators may also help to more clearly
understand what teacher candidates experience as they move from roles as students to
roles as teachers (Elbaz-Luwisch, 2001; Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2000). Often times as a
teacher educator I assume (since it has been my reality for the past 12 years) that my
teacher candidates have an understanding of what is happening in Toronto schools and in
the lives of students. I also use terms in my classes like ―social justice‖, ―equity‖, and
―multicultural education‖ without defining them as though there is shared knowledge of
their meanings. In the retelling of my stories I remembered that when I first came to
OISE in 1999 my mind was focused on my experiences in Ecuador and I had no
knowledge of the realities in Toronto schools. My understandings of the words ―social
justice‖, ―equity‖, and ―multicultural education‖ were also different then what they are
today. This engagement with my previous selves has brought me closer to understanding
155
the entry points of my teacher candidates and prompted me to reflect on the challenges
and opportunities of working in initial teacher education. By employing narrative inquiry
as professional development we might enhance our ability as teacher educators to take
into account the personal experiences and learning needs of teacher candidates and create
educational experiences which are meaningful and transformative (Conle, 2006; Dewey,
1938).
Narrative Inquiry as teacher development
Recognizing that narrative inquiry as a tool for teacher development is well
documented in the field (Alvine, 2001; Beattie, 2006; Conle, 2006; Milner, 2007; Ritchie
& Wilson, 2000), I would like to emphasize narrative inquiry as an approach for the
development of social justice educators. This connects to Dewey‘s definition of education
as a ―continual reorganization, reconstruction and transformation of experience‖ (1916, p.
76). He believed that it is only through experience that we learn about the world and only
by the use of our experience that we maintain and better ourselves in the world (Dewey,
1916). Dewey (1938) cautioned that not all experience is educative and leads to positive
growth therefore there is a need for a theory of experience. Infusing narrative inquiry into
teacher education will support teacher candidates understand the nature of their own
experiences and to develop a theory of experience centred on the principles of continuity
and interaction and the attitudes of openmindedness, wholeheartedness and
responsibility. This theory of experience will support teacher candidates become fluent in
the process of ongoing critically reflection and enable them to create meaningful
educational opportunities for students which connect students‘ past experiences to future
156
positive growth thereby expanding their possibilities to become change agents in their
own lives and that of society.
Connected to these goals I advocate using narrative inquiry in teacher
development in two complementary ways. The first is as an instructional strategy to
engage teacher candidates in the development of a social justice teacher identity during
the initial teacher education program. The second is to teach the skills and attitudes of
narrative inquiry as a critical reflection tool in itself to support teacher candidates in their
ongoing development as social justice educators.
In the first instance narrative inquiry would serve to assist teacher candidates in
understanding how their past experiences have shaped their assumptions and beliefs as
they enter teaching, to become aware of their social identities and how these as well as
their lived experiences influence who and what they teach, and enhance their ability to
‗hear‘ the stories of their future students. The idea of teaching narrative inquiry as a
framework to enhance future critical reflective practice became an important
consideration through the invaluable learning it provided me and the more recent
acknowledgment that exploring the contours of my previous selves is still very much a
work in progress. By teaching and practicing narrative inquiry as a tool in itself teacher
candidates may have greater possibility to develop the skills and attitudes to enhance
their fluency with this approach.
Upon reviewing my stories I realize that much remains to be uncovered within my
own experiences. A good friend and colleague offered to read my thesis before
submitting it and she noted that there was an absence of the emotional aspects of my
development and an understanding of what motivates me internally, especially within my
157
earlier life stories. At first upon receiving my colleague‘s feedback I felt discouraged. I
have been immersed in this inquiry process for many months and retold my stories three
times yet I am still working on connecting with my previous selves. Reading her
comments helped me see that for example during my teenage years I don‘t describe the
emotions I felt when I established an Interact club at my school and why those feelings of
accomplishment and validation were important to me at the time. Much of it had to do
with wanting to receive validation from my father and to know he was proud of me. As
well I have not included how the death of my teenage sister Kelley has shaped (and
continues to shape) my development including how it has allowed me to empathize with
students at a deeper level. I know that as I uncover more of the layers within my stories I
will learn more about the many aspects of Jill, the person and educational activist (not
that I separate these identities).
My feelings of frustration and discouragement subsided when I considered that
this study may not only provide insights into the development of an educational activist
but may serve as an example of the challenges connected to narrative inquiry and provide
a rationale for including the development of this process within teacher education. I
recognize that I am still in the process of developing the skills and attitudes of narrative
inquiry and that through practice and ongoing feedback I will improve. My ability to
inquire into my stories and discover the many facets of my previous selves has been
supported by my instructor during last year‘s Building Peaceful Communities summer
institute, my thesis supervisor and my colleague who have all served as critical friends
asking provocative questions, critiquing my work and providing another lens to view my
stories by sharing their own (Costa & Kallick, 1993). Developing an instructional
158
framework for narrative inquiry and providing opportunities for teacher candidates to
compose and reflect on their past and present experiences within a supportive and
challenging community may serve to make this critical reflection process a more
instinctual component in educational activism praxis.
Connecting narrative inquiry to the dynamic educational activism
field
I am anxious to re-engage with these stories from my experiences through my
childhood to those as a teacher educator and access new understandings which might
enhance my abilities to engage in educational activist work. A next step in this process
connected to my social justice work within the Educational Activism Research Group at
OISE is to use my stories as an entry point to engage in narrative inquiry with other
activist educators. Questions connected to themes from my personal and professional
experiences that I would like to inquire into with other educational activists include:
―How do other educational activists define themselves and their work?‖, ―How have
seminal experiences (positive and negative) shaped approaches to activism?‖, ―What are
the differences between those whose understandings of justice are based predominantly
on exclusion and those who have experienced inclusion and a sense of community most
of their lives?‖, ―What role has privilege played in the shaping and reshaping of identities
as educational activists?‖, ―To what extent have mentors influenced processes of
becoming?‖, and ―What motivates others internally to engage in this work?‖ Through this
engagement of narrative inquiry processes with others in the educational activist
community we might add to the knowledge base in the growing field of educational
activism. As well we may come to new understandings in our own journeys by entering
159
into these worlds of experience different from our own, and actively engage in dialogue
regarding the implications of the different perspectives and standpoints encountered (Ellis
& Bochner, 2002).
Conclusion
This enthusiasm in incorporating narrative inquiry into ongoing educational
activism efforts reminded me of a quote I read by Conle (2006) which connects to teacher
narrative and a sense of urgency:
By writing out things that are important to them at the time, they unintentionally
begin to sound important themes in their lives and relate them to their ongoing
teacher preparation work. They begin to construct a curriculum for themselves
that is based on an urgency to get to know themselves better in order to be better
teachers. (p. 4 - 5)
This sense of urgency to get to know ourselves in order to become better social justice
educators and activists brings me back to the urgency I have felt for many years in
wanting to engage in action for social justice now for the betterment of others. For as
long as I can remember I have lived my life thinking and acting in the present and future
tense wanting to be involved in actions to serve others. This feeling intensified during my
first experience in Ecuador in 1996 and until this research process I had not taken
adequate time to reflect on my previous selves and how they have impacted my social
justice work. While these urgent feelings persist I have a newfound sense of urgency as
an ―unfinished‖ being to engage in narrative inquiry to support my own and others
journeys of growth seeking to intervene, to re-create, and to transform the world.
160
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