How has your upbringing/schooling shaped how you “read the world?” What biases and lenses do you bring to the classroom? How might we unlearn / work against these biases?
I, like many others who have grown up in the province of Saskatchewan, grew up in a small town. The people I interacted with were mostly white, the teachers I had were all white, and my classmates were primarily white as well. Because of this, it would be hard to argue that I do not have a “white lens” covering my view on the world. Growing up, I had never really experienced people that had come from different cultures until I got into my later teenage years. The world around me growing up was largely white. But I didn’t just grow up looking at the world through a white lens, I grew up male, heterosexual, able-bodied, and middle class. It would be fair to say that I have never experienced true oppression in my life, and it can hard to sympathize and relate with something you do not completely understand and/or have experienced for yourself. It is important when I begin teaching to leave these dominant lenses behind. I think I am doing a good job of unlearning/working against these biases, but there can always be improvements. I think one way to achieve this is to constantly be expanding your worldview. Another way to work against these biases is what is being currently being done through this forum post: acknowledging what they are and the fact that they are there is a big step in unlearning them.
Which “single stories” (see Chimamanda Adichie’s talk, viewed in lecture) were present in your own schooling? Whose truth mattered?
In my schooling, the “single stories” that were presented were mostly those of the dominant European society. In elementary school, I remember learning about the Holocaust, and I remember being horrified by the things that the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is ironic because while in elementary school, I never learned about the poor treatment of Indigenous people in my own country. In fact, I cannot recall learning about anything related to First Nations, Metis or Inuit people/culture while in elementary school. It was not until I reached middle/high school when I started learning these things. The story was the white story, while others were ignored. It is unfortunate that this is the case, but it is changing. While on my placement in ECS 100, I was put into a grade four classroom and they were beginning to learn about Resident Schools. We still need to improve and move further away from our Eurocentric education system, but it is nice to see that it is beginning to change.