As per course,
View: The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Adichie
Understanding the climate in your school community and your place within that structure are key areas of fostering an equitable, open and fair culture. Khalifa highlights the importance of the inclusion of student, parent, and community voice. All too often, the narrative of our community is perceived with one lens, ‘one story’. That is the essence of white privilege, having ‘your’ story centered always, never needing to ‘see’ other’s stories, and failing to see and understand the vast diversity beyond the ‘white’ story and norms. Within the Equity and Inclusive Education in Ontario Schools (2014) document, there is a glossary which has terms that will assist in gaining a common understanding language.
Discussion:
After reading White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh and the following reflection on Teaching White Privilege, consider items and then choose one which you feel to be outdated and discuss why. Write a contemporary(updated) version of this item. Also consider writing a new item not listed that is now part of the social fabric that was not evident when McIntosh (1990) originally wrote this article. Reflect and comment on your privilege in the school and wider school community by virtue of being the school principal recognizing that for everyone, it will be a unique experience at any given time and place.
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As per discussion,
Having started my education through Lakehead, there is a very prominent population of First Nations families in Thunder Bay. I quickly came face to face with the ideas of privilege and racism on a very disturbing level that was almost dauntingly engrained into the dialogue of life in the north. I remember studying Peggy McIntosh in a first year Women's Studies and Literature class. Having been someone who strongly spoke out against the violence against women going through high school and trying to support my classmates who were in an IEP pathway, I thought I was aware of what I was doing and that I was doing enough to reflect the change I wanted to see in the world.
I will never forget that initial class where our professor not only welcomed us to the class but reminded us that there is a difference between feminism and humanism and that the course isn't just about recognizing rights and advocacy for women but all people (the focal point was this but through the use of female authors' literature). Quickly after the welcome we were introduced that regardless of whatever minority group we may identify with, privilege is subjective and contextual. In some cases one identifies as having more privilege based on race rather than socio-economic status, sometimes vice-versa in other cases it could be that an individual identifies with more a couple minority groups. It was not an overload of information at first, but then trying to fathom the change I wanted to make, it was certainly something that I really needed to examine on a very deep level and in some very uncomfortable ways because of the social norms that pre-existed within me and that idea that sometimes the social groups we are in are intoxicatingly exceptional friendships but requires one to use a very critical lens at how the friendship/social groups impact your own worldview.
Through working with various groups completing various tasks and learning opportunities that I organized for myself to participate in as a way of tyring to reconcile with myself the areas of my worldview that I felt I needed to really focus on, I was able to dig deep and better understand who I was and what I believed. I felt this is important in my personal examination because, ou need to see complexity. You need a basic understanding of how power relations work in society, and your own position in the matrix of these relations (DiAngelo and Sensoy, 2010) Since then I have pursued my teaching career tyring to identify the ways I can use my privilege as a way of reconciling conflict around me whether it be an internal or external conflict.
There are a number of ways for teachers to incorporate multiculturalism in their school, one idea of multiculturalism that builds onto examining privilege (from my teaching experience), comes from an activity/project "what is in a name?" Students were creating a narrative about the origin or suspected origin of their name and the implications it held on their life for them. Before moving into multiculturalism though, its important to establish a SAFE environment in classrooms. the multiculturalism materials that teachers may bring into classrooms will raise questions by students (or comments), it will be important for students to know how to respond when hearing something they may not fully agree with. This reminds me of a classroom policy I created with my students which were called "SAFE Space Conversations", today we know them as "Courageous Conversations". I have produced a class visual that can be put up in a classroom for students and teachers to reference in these instances. Find the free download at the link here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/SAFE-Classroom-Poster-4262425
After establishing a SAFE classroom, students understand that there is a way to conduct oneself when surprised by discussions, or the way these discussions might impact the way we feel personally. The teacher can than begin to incorporate materials, news articles and other aspects of culture into the class. In regards to geography, it is quite necessary for students to not only look at Canada, but other parts of the world as well, why not incorporate some of the places that students come from (if not from Canada). History, that is a subject that is not built around one country, many countries were apart of that and can very well be incorporated or compared to Canada at different times based on the development of the two countries (if the country become a country after Canada). When holding these conversations in class, it is a constant need that teachers are examining their own privlege through conversation, not necessarily through comparison between themselves and student sin particular but on a level of empathy and advocacy. As a teacher using the power to sometimes steer a conversation into one direction or another is an important way to ensure that students feel like their education matters to them. A form of examination I do as an English subject teacher is consider what it is that is available in a library for students, teachers and what resources are available, examining what I have and what I can do with what have as well (including experience) and introducing to students a perspective but offering opportunities to hear about how it might be done with different materials or in different places and why.
As a staff it will be difficult to really learn about multicultural education without examining one's privilege. Teachers need to have a leader who can model these conversations or open the floor to personal learning experiences. This act of listening (as a leader) is how I examine what others' experiences are. I recognize what my privilege is not through a matter of comparison but through accessibility to the things/knowledge needed in order to acheive what it is I need to succeed.
Celebrating a student's culture is a great way of observing one's own privilege in a way that speaks to what one does with that privilege at the same time. Some schools sometimes go overboard and miss the point when celebrating a particular culture in their school, this goes back to an idea of cultural appropriation. This could look like a stereotype that depicts all Japanese kneel before their meal and love eating sushi at every meal. This doesn't necessarily need to be what happens or what the focus in an event celebrating culture. In celebrating culture and being able to host an activity with a team is an opportunity for me to recognize not only my privilege that I can instil a sense of welcome into the members of the particular culture that I can participate in as an appreciative observer but the privilege that the school hold sin having people who can share such experience with the school community.
The school would benefit from inviting parents, community members, or volunteers to come in and share their experiences in other cultures. I feel the more access to the local school community resources and experience working alongside with local based epistemologies gives one another opportunity to recognize what kind of supports are in place or feel are needed in order for others to succeed in their own understanding. If the school has the resources to do so, they could host an event for the staff after school (or as a professional development activity) in which they are learning about a culture (as decided based on the situation) so that they themselves could host an event that promotes multiculturalism at the school. This could even be a note sent out to parents, "if you have a particular ethnic culture that you feel there is an aspectr of that you practice or would like to share and are willing to come to a PTA meeting to discuss how you celebrate your culture as we are looking for opportunites to highlight and celebrate various cultures in our school community".
These are thoughts and things I have tried in general and in different circumstances with the staff at our school to examine our own privileges and how we interact with others with our own privilege in mind. Successful experiences in really addressing privilege, areas that people still may feel uncomfortable talking about (that embarrassment), people still have a good time in these professional-social gatherings. Cooking, eating, chatting, taking pictures. Have those three things to build that visual tangible and memorable point in your faculty's journey.
References:
Robin DiAngelo & Özlem Sensoy (2010) “OK, I Get It! Now Tell Me How to Do It!”: Why We Can’t Just Tell You How to Do Critical Multicultural Education, Multicultural Perspectives, 12:2, 97-102, DOI: 10.1080/15210960.2010.481199
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc
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