Week 10: The Single Story
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?
My experience in elementary and early high school was a very one sided, stereotypical, colonized education. There was little to no discussion of other culture, other than on a set “culture day” or very occasionally in class. There was almost no discussion of treaty education or Indigenous ways of knowing/learning. I was completed my mandatory history/social studies classes in high school by the time treaty education was implemented into the curriculum. While I did not receive any discussion about treaties in those subjects and I do not have vivid memories of treaty or Indigenous education taught in other subjects. Half way through high school, I ended up switching schools. My new school was a lot more inclusive, we had lots of different cultures, people who were new to the country and even two Elders who came to our school on a regular basis. Our differences were not only discussed but celebrated. While it was only the last couple years of my early education, I am very grateful to have been a part of a school that was very diverse, inclusive and celebrated all students.
One example of a ‘single story’ that comes to mind from my education happened in a math class. I do not remember what unit or topic we were discussing but our teacher was going over one of the word problems with us before we continued to work on the rest individually. All the word problems used a deck of cards in the question/answer. Our teacher was going over the problem, finally the girl who sat next to me raised her hand and asked, “what is a deck of cards?”, she has recently moved to Canada and had never heard the term. It was expected that everyone knew what a deck of cards was and our teacher responded with something along the lines of, “I don’t have time to go over that, you’ll have to look it up or ask someone”. In a classroom, all student’s truth matters and by that I mean that all students deserve to be included and properly represented.