Harm continues to happen to Indigenous students in the classroom, how can we make things better?
We are 6-7 weeks into this school year and I cannot tell you how many folks have been coming to me with issues they have been having with their own Indigenous children in the classroom, issues happening with the Indigenous students people are supporting, and issues Indigenous educators are having being in Indigenous education trying to protect Indigenous students from harm. I know this happens all the time and I know it is an on-going conversation but for me in this moment it is a little overwhelming with the amount of what is happening and how many people are using their voices to speak up and back to these harms.
I thought I would share some of the stories that have been told to me over the last 6 weeks, to show others the harm that continues in educational spaces for Indigenous students.
Incident #1
This is an assignment that some students received near the beginning of the year. My very first wonder is how well do you know your students in the classroom before you give them an assignment on sharing their trauma with you? I want to be clear here, this is not okay any time of the year to give students an assignment asking them to share their lived trauma.
This particular assignment was a trigger for the Indigenous students in the classroom and since it was the beginning of the year, it makes a huge impact on how safe the Indigenous students feel and their comfort level in the classroom.
The questions on this assignment are asking students to share their trauma and historical trauma in a paper to be marked by a non-Indigenous educator. I am curious to know why the focus is on the students and their trauma, when there are so many other ways you can talk about the history of colonization and historical events that do not require a student to be retraumatize in a space where they are supposed to be learning. This not only effects the Indigenous students in the classroom, it also impacts other students with a history of colonization and oppression not only in Canada but everywhere around the world.
This kind of assignment impacts the student’s well-being and feeling of belonging within the educational space. This then impacts the students even wanting to go to school. So when it is said that Indigenous and other historically silenced students get pushed out of educational spaces, this is exactly how that happens. When students have to endure harmful assignments that only focus on the past harms of their culture and have to relive it on a daily basis in the classroom, why would they want to continue to go to a place that continually harms them.
My questions for educators are:
How can this be done differently? How would you be able to teach and share about the past impacts of colonization in this place known as Canada today without having to ask the students to share their trauma about it?
Incident #2
I can’t even believe I am writing this one down because of the news stories about this kind of assignment. The enormous amount of press that educators get when they ask students to talk about residential schools in a good light has been unreal. There has been so much in the news and media about how harmful and wrong this is, I am so sad to say that this is something that happened within the last 6 weeks of school. Students were asked to compare and contrast a letter from a priest of a residential school and a student from the school. This is still happening and needs to stop immediately.
Incident #3
This next one is also a compare and contrast question for students. The two pieces of literature they are using are a story about a 60’s scoop child returning to their home community compared to a poem of a Métis person being moved off their land. The question here is who lost more? As if it is the oppression Olympics and we can put on a scale who lost more through the colonization of this place known as Canada today. The one piece that was used for the 60’s scoop was a piece that when the Indigenous people spoke, it was in broken english with a lot of slang. It also had the slang term for Indian in it at least 20 times and the educator read the piece out loud for the students. This not only shows Indigenous people through a lens of not being smart, it tells all who listen/read the story that same narrative. This is the only narrative that has been told in western colonial education systems and this is how it is perpetuated, through stories like this one. Within the story it also tells the story of the reserve being dirty, run down and the people are poor, adding on to the narrative that all Indigenous people live in poverty. To add on to the harm within this piece of writing, it also romanticizes coming back “home” to a community that you were stolen from. As a 60’s scoop child myself, I can speak to this directly that it isn’t romantic coming back to a place you have been stolen from. It is complicated and difficult. Knowing you were stolen from the stories, the history, and the threads of your family. There is nothing romantic about it. It is painful and challenging.
When students spoke up about how the assignment was harmful, the push back received was a digging in of heels about the importance of learning the truth about the history of this place. I personally agree that we need to learn the true about the colonial history of this place, I actually wrote a best-selling book about the importance of learning the truth about the colonial history of this place, but I draw the line at when the learning is harmful to Indigenous students, this learning cannot be at the expense of Indigenous student’s mental well-being. If we continue to harm students in the classroom, they are going to continue to not show up because they cannot prepare themselves for the types of harm that can happen in the class. Then they can’t recover in time to go back to get harmed again. This constant cycle of harm makes it impossible for the students to be there. They are living in a state of fight or flight daily in classrooms and this needs to stop. Those in the positions that make decisions on lessons, material, and curriculum need to do the work of being vigilant about how the course material can affect Indigenous students and what supports or alternatives are in place for the Indigenous students if the material is harmful. This must be at the top of every list of educators teaching mandatory Indigenous graduation courses.
Questions to consider?
How will this work impact the Indigenous students in my classroom? Could it be harmful or taken in a harmful way?
What other things can I offer for the Indigenous students so that they can learn about Indigenous brilliance and resistance?
Incident #4
An Indigenous parent wanted to address a harmful assignment that was given to their child. The email sent to the school was sent at 7 PM in the evening. The parent did not think that they would hear anything back that evening but would hear back first thing in the morning because of the severity of harm that took place in the classroom. The parent had asked for a place to meet and talk about the trauma their child experienced in school that day. Unfortunately, the parent had not heard anything back until they had to email the principal again mid-morning to ask if they received the previous email sent. The principal finally emailed back and said they would call shortly once they had gathered all the information about the class from the teachers. What this said to the parent was that, their voice and feedback was not as important as the teachers of the class. That the principal did not want to have a conversation with the hurt student and parent first because that wasn’t the top priority in hearing about how the student was harmed.
Once the principal did call the parent, they allowed for a short recap of what harm took place, then decided that as the principal they needed to validate the teachers and that they are good people with good intentions. The principal did not validate the child’s experience or the parent’s anger, they focused on making sure that the educators were seen in a good light. The conversation went on to the principal saying that they gave the written piece and question to the assistant superintendent, and they told the principal that the piece given wasn’t that bad but needed unpacking and the question of who suffered more, could have been asked in a different way. This was stating to the parent that the people in higher up positions such as himself and the district leads know better and from their worldview that this kind of work was okay in the classroom. Completely disregarding the student’s trauma, the parents’ trauma, and feelings about how this impacted their children. Then it was the principal’s idea to fix this issue by asking the student how they are feeling and what they can do to fix the harm done. The parent at this point was so upset that they were explicitly clear that the principal had no right to talk to the student harmed. That it was their job as a principal to stop the harm, this means that they need to talk to the teachers, review the materials, remove the harmful material and show the students that they were heard and now making it clear they understand that the work was harmful, and they will no longer use this harmful work in the future. It is not the job of the students to constantly relive the trauma and explain to the people that harmed them how and why it was harmful.
Here are some steps that you can do as an educator when students who have been harmed in your class come and speak to you:
• You need to really listen, do not interrupt, do not ask questions, just listen to the full story the student or parent is telling you until you have completely heard their side of the story. Then you can ask clarifying questions but be sure it is for clarification and not to center your viewpoint. (like how the principal kept centering the teachers)
• Then you need to be honest with yourself and from the story being told to you, can you see that what you are doing is causing or perpetuating harm to the students?
• If the answer is yes, then you need to STOP THE HARM and the use of harmful materials
Even if:
• Your intentions are good
• You don’t yet fully understand why this causes harm
• You feel defensive in that moment
• It’s the way you’ve always done things
• Others still do it
• You still need to stop the harm
Acknowledge that you have heard their experience, and you will do your best to do better. As educators we need to understand that even if we don’t know how and why something has harmed a student, it is not our job to understand, it is our job to stop the harm and make sure we don’t do it again. Once we have heard the student, or the parent, we need to do our own work, we need to read, we need to learn more, we need to be pushing ourselves to understand how the impact of our work has harmed and how we can change what we are doing to make sure we don’t do it again. FULL STOP.
Had the principal said:
Can you please tell me what happen in class today for your child?
Can you please help me understand what you as the parent feel needs to happen next for this situation to be addressed?
Can you please let me know if there is something I personally can do to support your children in this incident?
Moving forward, I as the principal will connect with the educators to talk through how this has impacted your child and do my very best to make sure something like this does not happen again for your children.
Had the principal done this first thing in the morning, this situation would not be something I would be writing today. I would not be using this horrible experience as a lesson for others to learn from. How this incident was handled made this situation worse. What is even more difficult is that this is not the first time the parent had been in the office talking to this principal about a harmful content in the classroom with their Indigenous children.
We need to demand better from principals, educators, and the school system. This is not just impacting Indigenous students; it impacts all historically silenced students and the harms that happen to them daily in schools.
These four incidents are just a very small light into what it means for Indigenous people to endure the education system on a daily basis. We really need it to stop.
I encourage all of you to demand better, use your voice, take up space and speak back to the harms in the system. If there are enough voices that keep pushing back, then I am a believer that change will happen.
Update:
I would like to take this opportunity to say that the Principal has done a lot of work since this phone call. Not only did they listen to the advice given from the parent, they apologised and worked with the educators to make sure there is more opportunities for learning about Indigenous education in their school. They took some deep pauses and is now working to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I am so thankful for people who do take the time to reflect and learn from events that unfold in their spaces. Thank You for listening.
