Public education, designed during the industrial age,
was developed with a factory model in mind.
Despite significant advances, very little has changed.
I've spent the last twenty years as an educator,
a teacher, principal, superintendent, and a parent,
and I continue to witness how in these models,
the same groups of students continue to be over-represented in education gaps.
These students are indigenous, black, in particular black boys, racialized students
(that's those who can be categorized by their race other than white),
those with special identified learning needs and with disabilities,
those coming out of poverty, and 2SLGBT identifying students.
The role and impact of identity on educational outcomes
is something that we need to become more explicit about addressing
in education systems.
By identities I mean all the various ways that we can be identified,
for me, and for all of us.
Some of those things include our race, age, sex, sexual orientation,
gender, immigration status, religion, and ability.
Our identities shape how we experience the world,
and some of our identities give us privilege.
Personally, I never have to think when I go somewhere
whether or not there's an elevator,
or if I have to run up a few flights of stairs.
My able-bodied privilege means that I never have to think about these things.
But as a brown person, a Muslim, I'm more cautious about how I engage the police,
especially at airports and border crossings,
because I can always be sure that I'm going to be "randomly selected."
These are things that I have to think about every single day,
but not everyone has to.
In my own home, my sons who are racialized black
at times have different experiences with the police than even I do.
One day, in addressing this with one of my sons
who was stopped a couple of times on his way home from school
and telling him how to respond, he said to me, "Dad it's not fair."
I said to him,
"Son this isn't about what's fair, this is about keeping you alive."
Our identities shape how we experience the world,
and how people see and respond to us.
As a principal, one day I put out a great aspiration statement
in one of our newsletters.
I said, "In this school we want everyone to want to run to school everyday."
Until someone asked me, what if someone can't run?
Today, as the Superintendent of Equity, Anti-racism, and Anti-oppression,
I work in one of the largest boards on the part of Turtle Island we call Canada.
We serve approximately 250,000 students.
When we as senior leaders got together and looked at our data,
it underscored these realities.
For example, our student population, 12% of them are black.
But by the time they graduate,
42% of black students would have been suspended at least once.
Education is a colonial project.
The systems and structures, the laws and the cultures,
were created based on the beliefs and attitudes
of those who were in power at that time.
Some of those beliefs included pieces like indigenous people are uncivilized
and they need to be dispossessed of the land,
that black people existed for the economic benefit of those in power,
that women were less than men
and so they shouldn't be allowed to vote or hold public office,
that 2SLGBT identifying people needed to be medically fixed or locked away,
and that people with disabilities should be locked away.
All of these were quoted into the systems and structures around education.
The systems and structure reflected those beliefs and attitudes,
and so they're not neutral.
We have to accept that they work for some and not for other children.
Since identity is the common factor in who's successful and unsuccessful,
systems need to engage in learning and unlearning about identity
in order to be able to change those outcomes.
Einstein tells us that the definition of insanity
is to keep doing the same things, hoping for different results.
As adults, none of us check our identities at the door,
whether we're male, female, trans, black, or white,
Muslim, Jewish or Christian,
these things are important parts of who we are.
We need to move away from saying things like, "School is only about learning,"
or things like, "I don't see color,"
because students experience their identities in school every single day.
Identities are complex and they intersect.
So a child who is gay will face barriers in our schools.
But if that child happens to be a black, Muslim, lesbian child
with a disability coming out of poverty,
she will face compounding barriers.
As a teacher and a principal,
what that meant was I needed to get to know my students well
beyond their likes and dislikes.
In my classroom I made sure there were snacks available,
it was a positive space for LGBT identifying students,
and it was a space to pray.
As a beginning teacher, I chose to work in challenging neighborhoods
to be able to make a difference in the lives of children.
In order to prepare them for life in the real world,
I used to give lots of homework,
until I read the research that says it has very little value for learning outcomes,
and in fact, it reinforces the disparity between students,
especially those coming from poverty.
I chose to work in those schools to be able to try and make a difference,
but upon self-reflection, I realized that I was the one creating the barrier.
This learning over time meant for me that I had to try and do things differently.
Looking at a human rights approach,
inclusive design is an approach that often thinks about people with disabilities.
Working with a group of educators, we looked at how inclusive design
and approach could be constructed, that would be used throughout education
that affirmed all identities in classroom spaces.
And it begins by thinking about those identities
and thinking about who is most marginalized amongst them.
As a teacher or principal, it meant getting to know their families,
their family structures, their histories, their languages,
and to make sure it was reflected in the ethos of school and class.
As a superintendent, I challenged my principals to think about
what groups of students are going into which high school pathways, and why.
Which groups of students are becoming suspended or not,
and how might we be complicit in those outcomes?
Transformation can only begin when we turn our gaze towards us.
Once we know who is most marginalized and under-served,
I work with principals to begin school improvement planning
with those students first in mind.
What types of structures will serve to engage and inspire them?
Which structures need to be dismantled?
How are we aligning our budget and our resources
to make sure that this is a priority?
Finally, and most importantly, we have to think about the adult learning necessary,
about the identities that we hold
in relation to the identities of the students that we serve.
How does that shape how we think about instruction, curriculum,
achievement, well-being, and success?
These are difficult conversations to have,
but they are the most important.
The reason that they're so hard is they hit us at the core of who we are.
Remember, I saw myself as a nice person,
but my niceness and my good intentions wasn't enough.
It was my impact that mattered.
In spite of having experienced poverty and moments of homelessness myself,
when I taught in the classroom, I reverted back to the way I was taught
both in school and when I was at the Faculty of Education.
Sometimes we feel defensive or embarrassed,
and we don't want to have these conversations.
But it's important that we do not hold marginalized students hostage
to our emotions and fragility as adults.
As a teacher, principal, or superintendent,
I tried to keep this in mind whenever I'm making decisions,
otherwise I'm going to use my own experiences and identities
to be able to understand and try to solve problems
and that will make me miss critical pieces that affects whole groups of students.
I try to remember that as a cis-gendered person who's making decisions
on behalf of trans children,
or as a male making decisions on behalf of girls.
This learning is not about creating feelings of blame, shame, or guilt,
but about helping us to do better for the students that we serve.
Exactly why we came to education to begin with.
Today in my board, we have a long way to go,
but we're on the journey.
Through our achievement and well-being goals,
we're working to explicitly identify
which groups of students are over-represented in the gaps.
We're working to make sure that they see their lives and experiences and abilities
reflected in the curriculum, in the classrooms, in the instruction,
the experiences, and the staff.
Through our equity goals,
we're focused on the learning that we as adults need to do
in order to be able to think about our identities in relation to theirs.
So that we move away from "This is the way it's always been done,"
to "Why can't we do it differently?"
I came to public education in order to make a difference
in the lives of the children that I serve.
Knowing their identities, abilities, and lived experiences
is the key to unlocking that potential.
Understanding how our own identities interact with theirs in these structures,
gives us the opportunity, the chance for innovation,
and the ability to change a trajectory of public education
in a way that will work for every single student that we serve.