Under the same sky

Leaving the community

I find that endings are the hardest part to write, let alone realize. They are hardly ever definitive, intuitive, or neatly planned. Sometimes they just happen and I find myself momentarily stuck, nestled in the afterthought, trying to make sense of it all. I think endings are difficult too because they are based entirely on our perspective; they require a narrative — the sifting through of experiences to isolate events that we later name as beginnings, middles and ends. One of my students — a student who is the same age as myself — told me that the way she gets through it all is by seeing her life as a story. She said it makes it easier that way; she can detach and look at events in her life almost like clips from a movie. She can appreciate them and still carry on. Because, as she said, my life is a sad story. 

Students helping to prepare for grad

I find myself a little stuck now trying to make sense of my year up north. Trying to make sense of all the sad stories I’ve heard. To piece together why I went in the first place, why I decided to not stay, and why that year has now become part of my story and will forever shape how I see the world. Coming to that decision wasn’t easy. Being able to walk away from poverty, addictions and hopelessness relatively unscathed is such a privilege and one that does not come without some feelings of guilt. I had made a commitment of two years after all, one which I was initially eager and excited to fulfil, and it’s always hard to recognize that there is a subtle lack in one’s life that is rapidly becoming so large that it is soon unbearable. To realize too, that the lack I felt was nothing in comparison to the lack I fear my students are both aware and unaware of in their own lives. I grieve for them. For my students. I grieve the absence — how many of my students will never get to see how beautiful and vast the world is; how their education is deplorably limited, and strategically fails them; how, when colonization is not making Indigenous peoples invisible, it is infantilizing them, placating them with chicken dinners and treaty days, stripping them of dignity and an ability to self-determine.

Victoria BC view

I am left with these thoughts as I sit in a waterfront Airbnb looking out to the Pacific ocean thinking about the three shades of blue — sky, mountain, ocean. Thinking about how awfully gorgeous the world is, and how painfully my new view juxtaposes with the equally blue sky I left in northern Ontario. A sky that is the same, but one that hangs over a different place. A place with houses held together cheaply, garbage bag windows whipping in the wind, children playing among stacks of garbage, beating eagerly at my front door, saying: Lindsay, can we have almonds?! I do not know how make sense of this. How some people get to live in 5 bedroom houses, and some in oven-heated homes. I am aware that this late awareness is a product my privilege. Still, it is hard to reconcile. It is hard to reconcile as I sit, watching seagulls pick at garbage cans and tourists kayak along the shoreline. Part of me has always wished I possessed the ability to turn off my brain and resist analysis. But alas, that is not the brain I have been given, and so this benign scene becomes a symbol for me. A symbol of our country. How some are afforded a great quality of life, while others are not. How we all share the same sky, but these worlds do not often collide; they remain disconnected, making it easier for those who do not in poverty, to enjoy their life of privilege, unperturbed. 

While uncomfortable, it is important to acknowledge this dissonance. It is especially important now, during this year, when we celebrate 150 years of Canada. This year that we reflect on how the formation of Canada devastated and continues to violently disadvantage Indigenous peoples. Here are a few things that I have learned about First Nations education in my local context. I cannot speak to whether this relates broadly to other regions in Canada or other reserves in Ontario, but these are bits of information I have gathered from my time in northern Ontario.

1. Many First Nations children and youth living in remote communities do not have access to the same quality of education as other Canadians. My understanding is that First Nations education is federally funded while public schools are provincially funded. At the school I worked, funding was based on the amount of students who attended near the beginning of the year. 

2. Many First Nations communities have boil-water advisories.  

3. Power and running water are not reliable in the community I lived. I once saw someone post on Facebook that they needed water because they had not been able to bathe their baby in two weeks. 

4. There are a considerable amount of First Nations High schools — many of which are not located in these remote communities — that do not offer academic/university level courses. In Ontario, there are three streams in high school (locally developed/workplace, applied/college, and academic/university). Academic/university level courses are required for university, meaning that students would not be able to apply to university without them. 

5. Despite the hoopla of media attention focusing on mental health, there continues to be a severe lack of mental health resources in these remote communities. I spent much of my time talking with students, trying to scrape together resources, just making space to listen, and hoping they would be okay.

Walking down the street

These are just a few of the everyday injustices. This does not speak to the lack of food security, the rampant addictions, and how navigating through this world makes it difficult for people to form secure attachments, to learn how to cope in healthy ways, to prioritize education, or to envision a better future for themselves. Such living conditions demand survival first, and that is what people in that remote Oji-Cree community are doing. They are surviving. They are doing it well. They are doing it the best they can; they are still there. This being said, they deserve so much more.

That is both the reason I went up and the reason I had to leave. I am so profoundly proud of my students for simply showing up to school, for trying, for not giving up, and even if they did leave my class and never come back, once again, I am proud of them for trying. These might seem like low expectations to unknowing bystanders but they are the farthest things from it. When people are telling me stories of how their step father stabbed their pregnant mother with a fork, how they are drinking away their baby, how they were sexually assaulted, how they wear a black sock and white sock to remind themselves there is good and evil in the world, how they tried to unsuccessfully hang themselves two weeks ago, how it is has been a whole few months since they have drank or sold drugs, how they have a special room they go to get away from the parents who take in more children so they can have child tax, you understand these are not low expectations. These children, these youth, these adults are not victims. They are survivors of a broken system. They are a product of colonialism. They fight every day to stay hopeful in a world that does not favour their odds. They have given me such an incredible gift — an awareness I was lacking.

Despite this important gift, I know that if I stayed, I would probably need to turn into a harder person; I would need to become desensitized to the poverty, to the abuse, to the addictions. I would have to reduce my experiences to a story so I could make it through the day. This is not all bad per se. After all, the great Thomas King once eloquently said, the truth about stories, is that’s all we are. I am acutely aware of this, yet I don’t want to see life abstractly. We are alive, after all. We are stories, yes, but we are also people. We construct narratives to make sense of the world, but sometimes the world doesn’t make sense. Our stories signal real lived experiences and I do not want to become desensitized to the lives of those people I was honoured to get to know — to their struggles, their hopes, their fears. I do not want to accept that survival is enough. I want more for my students and I do not want to work within a system that I feel I cannot change from within it — where I feel complicit in a faulty structure. What I think these students need is something different than what we are currently offering. This is not a revolutionary idea. It is just an onerous one to realize. I think these students need relevant, culturally based educational material; they need experiential learning opportunities; they need the chance to become leaders in their communities; they need adequate resources so they can develop healthy coping strategies. Above all, these students need more opportunity. They need a change in the structure of Canada, of our country, so that they don’t need to ask for basic human rights while others paddle board along the ocean or skip university classes or complain about traffic or go out for dinner.

I will leave you with a story from one my students. 

It is the last week of school and she is frantically trying to complete her work for the year. She works part-time, looks after children, and comes to school, trying to complete three credits (one more than is typical in a term). She is telling me about how she is scared of being done. How part of her just wants to give up and she is afraid that people are going to judge her. Of how she wishes her dad was still alive to see this moment. One question on her final project is to write a poem about a transition in her life. She is nervous. She twists in her spiny chair. 

Please, Lindsay, she asks, Do I have to write a poem? 

I smile, jumping up from my chair. Poems are the best! Speak from the heart. Let the words flow out from you. I am going full-throttle into my teacher enthusiasm. 

But what do I write about? she asks. 

I pause. Think about your life. Think about an important moment or moments. Think about how those moments shaped you. I can tell I’m losing her. She stares blankly at the screen in front of her. I’m trying to find a hook, then she looks over at me. 
I don’t want to think about the past. When I think about the past all I see is sadness. It doesn’t make me feel good. My life is a sad story. It’s like a movie. She laughs at that. If I told you about it, you wouldn’t think it’s real. 

I sit and listen. Okay well, a transition doesn’t have to be in the present, I say. What about this transition? What about where you are now and where you want to be? 

You mean goals? You’re always on about goals, she jokes. 

I smile. Um yeah, I say, that’s my job, I chuckle. 

Alright, I can do that, she says. This is what she wrote.

Goals

From none to one.

From working to schooling.

From my world to another.

From numb to feeling

From silence to speaking.

From picking up drugs to picking up a pen.

From knowing it all to learning more.

From pleasing everyone to pleasing myself.

From being locked up with no hope to receiving my key for an open door of opportunities.

I’ll let this be the ending to my northern teaching experience. I’ll let the hope stay with me. I’ll let it carry me through. And when I look up to our same blue sky, I will remember those northern warriors. I will smile and believe that someday it will be better. That someday all of us will make it better.

Correlations between a big heart, a little stew & greater student engagement

One student learning about ecosystems

I’ve been trying to write a new post for a while, but the truth is, I just didn’t know what to write. See, I have this rule: I won’t share my thoughts until I feel they are balanced enough. Until there is enough positive and negative. I do this because words are so powerful. They take up space. They shape perspectives. They influence thoughts. They determine actions.

So what do I want to say? Rather, it should be: what do I want to ask? That is because there is no simple, easily packaged answer, ready for delivery about education and First Nations, Metis & Inuit peoples. It is not a one size fits all question or answer. It is local and it is nuanced. I live in an Anishinaabe, Oji-Cree fly-in community. That might be very different from another community or the urban experience of First Nations youth living in Toronto. Education, and its legacy of colonialism, is a complex issue, and as such, merits real discuss, for which I offer a very small glimpse into a larger conversation where my voice should never be raised to more than a whisper.

One student's art sculpture

So what question would I like to echo out into the inter-webs? I want to inch closer to: What is our responsibility as settler teachers to our First Nations students? How can we not reinforce colonialism as white teachers? How can we reimagine education in meaningful ways for our students with the resources that we have to create real space and opportunity for them?

I’ll draw on five events that have happened since my return to NSL after the Christmas holidays to order my scattered Sunday thoughts:

• I started to try to have a warm meal for my students everyday.
• One my mature students buried his murdered son.
• One of my students lost her boyfriend to suicide.
• The dog the teachers usually look after was eaten by a wolf.
• And for about four weeks, my attendance went up from three regular attendees to eight students.

The students getting out of the class

So how do these things relate to those questions? Well, since I came back from the holidays I started caring a little less about the academic side of school and started focusing in on how to get students coming to school. On how to get them feeling hopeful and capable and appreciated. On how to shoo-away some of the widespread tragedy that seems to skulk around every corner in the north.

I remember before I left for the holidays one student and I were talking and he said: “Lindsay, it is just so incredibly boring sitting at a computer trying to do high school.” I looked at him, and in that moment, all I could say was: “Yeah, I’m sorry. That doesn't sound fun”. I’m grateful for his frankness because it gave me a greater drive to make my alternative classroom more engaging for students. To try to do more with what I had because I don’t like it either: this incredible lack. Lack of choice, lack of resources, lack of opportunity, lack of hope. I caught this same student looking up an article back in the fall, and asking him: “Oh, what’s this?”. He said: “They found my father.” The newspaper article read: Homeless Man Found Dead In Winnipeg River.

Fun photo scavenger hunt

My students are not just dealing with what designer shoes to buy or if their friends like them. They are dealing with confronting those who have sexually assaulted them in court. They are dealing with the death of murdered family members. They are dealing with suicide, with depression, with anxiety. They are dealing with hunger. With bedbugs. With lice. They are dealing with parents who have addictions. They are dealing with not becoming parents with addictions. All the while, they are making the choice to come to school. Or the choice to not come to school.

So what’s my job? What’s my place and my role as a privileged individual coming into this underprivileged community with its own complex past and present? I still don’t have an answer to that question, but I do have the feeling that if I am to impart anything to my students, it is simply that they matter. Their stories, their accomplishments, and even their failures are important. I do not have the expertise of a special education teacher. I do not have the experience of a veteran teacher or the first hand cultural knowledge of someone who is FNMI (First Nations, Metis or Inuit).

One student's art project

All I know is that I care. I am human. I am flawed, but I care. I can give them food. I can give positive reinforcement. I can say good morning. I can set high expectations. I can be consistent. I can build their confidence by scaffolding them at the level they are instead of imposing expectations of where they should be. I can make them tea. I can ask them how they are everyday. I can treat them with respect. I can honour when they need space, and I can know when they need support. I can model kindness and humility. I can encourage them to do the same. I can give them prizes and awards for doing their work. I can give them leadership opportunities. I can listen.

These are all things I can do.

And while there is a lot of hurt here — and being the sensitive soul I am, I cannot help but acknowledge that deeply — these small things I can do make my story up here worthwhile. At least that is what I tell myself when I am afraid I'm doing my students a disservice. When I feel the lack.

I want to see my students laugh and make positive associations with school. I want them to see the possibilities they have in front of them. I want them to have a new story when it comes to school. I want to learn from them and their culture and make space for that. Because maybe, just maybe if they believe they matter, they will forget about schooling, and just focus on learning for themselves and no-one else. Focus on their story and their next life chapter.

It’s a long road ahead, but with every student that comes into my class — and that keeps coming — I feel hope. And hope is what keeps me going. It's also what I suspect keeps my students going too. So thank goodness for hope. Tomorrow is another day, and another chance for me to tell my students just how much they matter.