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?

Which “single stories” were present in your own schooling? Whose truth mattered?

Growing up and learning, the school experience has taught me that not only are skills valued differently but people have been as well. Schools value what students are capable of on a skewed scale that does not value them on an equal playing field. Whether consciously or not people are constantly judging and re-judging you on things that you are not always capable of changing such as your skin colour, sexual orientation, culture, or even accents. We are too caught up with oppressive behaviours that separate and divide people in a time that has no need or reason for those divisions to exist. Until I reached high school I was a very independent and untrusting person that only ever  expected the worst, I could hardly imagine that others were willing to help you out without ulterior motives and I had kept that mindset for a long time. Highschool showed me people and friends that were able to squeeze rocks into lemonade and provided me the welcoming experience needed to make me more trusting of others. I still take a cautious approach but I also provide everyone the chance to show me who they are as an individual because until they show you who they really are you have no way of knowing what they are really thinking or going through. After being raised Christian my parents taught me about residential schools and it changed the way I viewed not only education and the intentions behind it but of religion and belief that up until then I had just taken at a face value of fact. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2009) My biases are: untrusting of authority figures and of men, skeptical untrusting nature, I tend to like the things and people I am familiar with. Working against biases like these is to openly teach our histories bluntly and factually in a way that allows students as individuals to take in and evaluate the intentions behind our actions. Growing up, schools valued the old white male view of education that valued “traditional” or “cultural classic” learning and heavily relied on old English and European literature for this. If you wanted to matter or had your voice heard you had to be financially well off and typically be an influential white or male; this has been a skewed value system that devalues the contributions of minorities and financially disenfranchised students that tells them they do not matter and are valued as lesser than another. These single stories only empower this outdated idea of what it takes to be a member of society and do not present the many truths and perspectives of other groups in education. By removing these other lenses you are losing their views and learnt experiences that could only ever come from living a life from a perspective you yourself could never have. “A major objective of social studies and core curriculum is to teach critical and creative thinking. Teachers must not deny this process to the students by insisting on a single values position in the classroom.” (Saskatchewan Curriculum 18) Rather than coming to the classroom with preconceived assumptions of others based off incomplete information we must change the classroom to one where a difference of race, culture, or beliefs do not create a barrier to education or to a students social experience. The fact is that we are all human and that nobody can ever be fully aware of what others have lived and experienced during their lives because everyone’s lives are unique and provide different learning experiences.

The Saskatchewan Curriculum “Social Studies 10 Social Organizations A Curriculum Guide”, Grade 10. Regina: Saskatchewan, Ministry of Education, 1992.