Dr. Susan Dion Indigenous CI The Collaborative Inquiry Presentation - - PDF document

• Dr. Susan Dion Indigenous CI

The Collaborative Inquiry Presentation

• DR. SUSAN DION: Okay, so part 2, The Listening Stone Project. When the

collaborative inquiry--the First Nations, Metis and Inuit focused collaborative inquiry started 4 years ago I was asked to do some research on the work that was happening in the boards. So the Listening Stone Project is the research project that I do with my team of research assistants, and you're the ones, right? Who are doing the collaborative inquiry work out in the boards. And the Listening Stone is the research based on the work that you're doing. So that's the relationship between the Listening Stone Project and the collaborative inquiry. The collaborative inquiry is really--it really started with this realisation that First Nations, Metis, and Inuit students are in Ontario schools, right? They're in the publicly funded school in Ontario. The students are in your classrooms and really the Ministry started to think about the ways in which they were not aware, not necessarily have the knowledge and understanding to respond to First Nations, Metis, and Inuit students in the schools. And the need for this education, I mean the understanding of the Indigenous student achievement gap, right? There was increasing attention being paid to that achievement gap and a lot of questions being asked about how do we respond to that gap? And really early in the collaborative inquiry story was this realisation that well, the knowledge gap that teachers have, right? Is connected to the Indigenous student achievement gap. So if we're going to respond to the students then we also have to create

• pportunities for teachers to learn, because there's a realisation that teachers

haven't had the opportunity to do the learning that they need that will allow them to be responsive to teaching this content that the students need. And so that's how the collaborative inquiry kind of started in this way. This realisation that we really need to change what is happening in classrooms and schools. And one of the really exciting things that we've found with the collaborative inquiry is that it really is supporting this paradigm shift, right? The work that's been happening in classrooms, and schools, and boards across the province has been contributing to a paradigm shift. And every year we have these face to face meetings in the fall when I report on what I learned from talking to people in the spring. It's in the spring when educators gather and tell their stories of what they did and what they learned where there's so much excitement about the paradigm shift, and we listen to boards report and then team members, we find ourselves chatting to each other and did you hear this? And did you hear what that school's doing? Did you hear what these teachers are doing? And it's an incredible sense of this feeling of the shift starting to happen through the collaborative inquiry.

And Taya K. Alfred, one of my colleagues at the University of Victoria has talked about this need for a paradigm shift. That, that is what is needed. And that's what's

• happening. So I know Troy had the goals up previously: increasing Indigenous

student wellbeing and achievement, increasing knowledge, understanding, and awareness for all teachers and students and increasing engagement with partners. What we've learned from 4 years of research is how these goals are really, really inter-dependent right? I mean, my kids they go to school with non-Indigenous kids, right? And a lot of times we say they're Indigenous kids and the non-Indigenous kids but we know that there's a lot of diversity within the Indigenous student population and a lot of diversity within the non-Indigenous student population. So it's this collaborative inquiry is about all students right? The learning that all students need. And these goals cannot be accomplished separate from each other. We also have learned the critical role that community partners play in the collaborative inquiry. And the really important thing that I learned from this data collection is that educators, they tell me every year 95% of the data sources say that the most important thing about the collaborative inquiry is how much I’m learning. It's like I can't believe how much I’m learning through this collaborative inquiry. And then when I say what are the challenges? And again 96%, 97% every year the biggest challenge is what I don't know. So there's these almost it feels like a conflict. I'm learning so much, but I don't know. And it's this the more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know, the more I realise how important my lack of knowledge is, the more I’m learning from the work that I’m doing as a team, right? So the way that the collaborative inquiry works and the power of it is that it allows you as educators to be learners, and it's working together as a team to do that learning, to take the time to do the learning and working in relationship with community partners. That's what's really making a difference. So just a moment of details. The data collections that I’ve done, I've now written four

• reports. 1, 2, and 3 are available online. It's actually the Council of Ontario Directors
• f Education that I'm under contract with CODE, right? My contract is not with the

Ministry, it's with CODE. So they're the ones who are funding the research. And if you just Google Susan Dion Listening Stone you will get the access to the reports and you can see from this chart that the data collection that we've done, myself and my team of research assistants. So we've interviewed educators, surveys with educators. This year I did a lot of talking circles with teams of educators as well as community member talking circles. This was the first year that I actually was able to talk with students. It's always been a little bit of a challenge just because of the short data collection period. And it's

complicated, right? With ethics to get access to students. And I just have to say that in terms of the student data we do have an--I did do these talking circles, but we also want to expand the student voice. So I'm going to be doing another round of data collection with students. So if you're doing some work with s in your classrooms through your CI work and you'd like me to come and visit your class, or you'd like to share some of your students' work we'll be getting in touch with people again in early January to increase the student voice in the year 4 report. But you see I have observation notes and review of those. Some of you have done learning stories. I reviewed the learning stories as well. They're a part of the report. So first I'm going to talk a little bit about community partners, and just say if you are new to the collaborative inquiry and you have questions about who are the community partners? How do I get in touch with community partners? The year--it is the year 2 report has at the back of that report an appendix about how to do

• utreach to, and with to find out how to establish those relationships. and the

community partners over the years have talked about how much they appreciate being involved in the collaborative inquiry, and they say things to me like you know Susan, they called once and I kind of ignored them. And then they called again and I still ignored them. But when they called a third time then I knew that they were serious. They weren't calling to complain about our students. They were calling because they really do value the knowledge that I have of the students, the knowledge that I have

• f the community. This is a different kind of partnership. This is what the community

members are telling us, and being involved right from the start in the planning of the collaborative inquiry, what's your question going to be, right? All these decisions are made at the local level, and that makes a big difference for the community partners. You decide collaboratively what your question and what your focus is going to be for your school, for your school team. So some of the things that I learned from the talking circles, they're in schools and they're listening to s talk, and they're seeing the positive impact. They're really seeing the increased interest in teaching and learning about history both by the educators and by the students and they're finding that incredibly encouraging. They're very concerned about language. The community members I would say, their number one concern is how are we teaching Indigenous languages in the schools? What are we doing to increase the valuing of Indigenous language and Indigenous knowledge? And yeah, how can we work together to bring the knowledge and the language into all the schools, and classrooms on a regular basis.

So of course as a team you start out where you are, like where the teams are who have been doing this for four years. You're in a different place than people who are just starting out on this with this particular inquiry. These are some of the real priorities from the community members. And they really pay attention when they're in your schools, and at events and different teams have done different things. Some people have had community feasts and a school POW wow, or different activities to get the project started, right? In working with the community members. And one of the things they say is when we have events in our school if the administration is there, if superintendents attend events then we know that it matters in that school, and in that board, right? They see that the presence of administrators raises the importance, the profile of the work that's being done. Leadership is so important. Support from leadership teams is so importance in terms of teachers feeling that they can accomplish the work when they've got support from the team leadership. So community members see these things happening in schools, and they know, and they value the participation of school leadership. They have a lot of ongoing concerns as well in terms of is it going to continue? How are we going to bring Indigenous educators into the work that's happening in the schools? Some boards have done a lot of work with local Indigenous artists, some teams reach out to local universities, and colleges because all the universities and colleges now have Indigenous student groups and sometimes you can connect with people who want to go into education, right? Or have a lot of interest in what's happening in

• schools. So if you reach out to your local college and university and connect with

some of the post-secondary students in terms of starting to make some of those connections in terms of your community. So the community members have a lot of interest in being partners and sharing in the planning of the work that you're going to do and really being in the schools on a regular basis. This is something else they say to me. It's not just a one-off. They didn’t just call and say oh, can you come and just do whatever? No, we planned

• together. The teachers stayed and learned with the students. It is a team that's

working together and it's an ongoing relationship. This is what is mattering to the community members. Okay, I'm going to give you a little bit of time to talk at your table in terms of what are you thinking about in terms of your community partners? Maybe what are some of your questions? What has your board done in the past? Or if you're new to the team what are you thinking about in terms of outreach to involved community partners?

Our conversations with students, the talking circles that I did with students, maybe of these students were in schools where there wasn't a collaborative inquiry happening. So for the most part the students that I've heard from are students who are really teaching us about why the collaborative inquiry is so important. So some of you who were at my presentations in the past will perhaps recognize this slide because in the past I've talked about how important the broader social political context is for us as educators in terms of understanding the content and understanding the importance of this content, right? And the work we're doing is not happening in isolation. But the really interesting thing was that when I spoke with the students, when I did those 9 talking circles what I came to realise is that the students are also accessing knowledge through the broader social, political context. They are aware of a lot of the issues, right? That we need to be teaching about. They know about I Don't Know More. They've participated in demonstrations. They have seen some artwork. They know about the TRC and the really interesting thing to me is this kind of need that students have and that students voiced. This deep understanding that they need and they have a right to this content. And they want access to these stories because they want to make sense of their own lives, right? They are living the reality, right? When I listen to the students I sometimes think about they're living in the residue of the legacy of colonialism, right? They're dealing with so many issues and challenges but they don't necessarily understand because they have never had a chance to do the learning, but they need it. Some kid said to me why do we even have reserves? Town kids can get up at quarter to 9 and get to school on time, but I have to get the bus at 7:00 AM if I'm going to get to school on time. Miss, why do we even have reserves? Right? So they're living the reality of it, of the history but they don't know. They can't make sense of it because they don't know. They hear the stories, they're supposed to be proud but you know, Miss, it's kind of hard to be proud because the hydro gets cut

• ff, or we don't have clean water, I can't take a shower. I go to school and then the

town kids, they make jokes when we walk by. It’s like oh, dirty Indians. This is what's happening with some of our students and if they don't understand that history then it's hard for them to be proud, eh? Because they don't understand why the reserve conditions are the way that they are. They need the history to make sense of it. So when I did the talking circles the first question that I asked them, they were kind

• f--I asked them why do you come to school? And they were kind of like well, why

wouldn't we come to school? And they liked learning, they liked being with their

• friends. They want to be engaged. They kind of thought it was a little bit of an odd

question quite honestly. They did talk a lot about those classes that they liked. They really like gym, and art, and drama. They also like chemistry, and biology. Courses where they're actively involved, where they can have active participation those were their favourite classes. Teachers, they talked a lot about teachers who talk to them, pay attention to them, understand, do a little bit of outreach. Interesting when I think back to the first year report one of the student stories that I heard from an educator, she asked her grade 4 students what do you want to do as part of this collaborative inquiry and this little boy in grade 4 said I want to make a book about my community because, you know, our teachers and my classmates, they think we live in tipis down that road. And then when I talked to the educators I said you know Susan, this year we went to the reserve. We did parent teacher interviews at the band office and this was the first time I'd ever been to the reserve. I've taught in the school for 12 years, I’d never gone to the reserve. So the students know, right? Students know the distance that exists between themselves and their teachers. And when the teachers do the work of bridging that gap, reaching out, talking to them--another teacher told me about going to a pow wow for the first time and she said my student, she's so quiet in class, but she told

• me. She talked for like half an hour about her regalia. Then before the collaborative

inquiry I didn't even know what regalia was, and yet my student has all this knowledge that there was no space for that knowledge in the classroom before. So I didn't even know that she had the knowledge. As a collaborative inquiry team we went to the Pow wow, and then the students, they were at home and then they could share their knowledge. and this is what students are looking for and wanting. That active interest by their teachers in their lives, their experiences, their knowledge, their stories. That's what they are looking for, that's what they want. So the students, talking to them when I came home after two weeks of doing intensive data gathering with the students I was both devastated and encouraged. Encouraged by their growing awareness of their right to this education, the comradery that students are with each other, but also really devastating by how much work we need to do, right? Lots, and lots of challenges within the school and this idea of the Indigenous student navigating settler school double bind, right? You're supposed to be proud, but you're dealing with lots of issues that we don't talk about. Oh, we're going to do a land acknowledgement, and we're going to celebrate Orange Shirt Day, but now the students have to listen to their classmates. Why do we have

to stand for this? Or what's this Orange Shirt Day? Because if we don't teach the content that's necessarily for students, all the students to understand then the Indigenous kids are getting backlash. That's what they're telling me. You know, like some of them, they told me--I had this one interesting experience in a school where the students told me yeah, they put up some artwork and some posters, but they don't talk about it. This poster has been up since the beginning of year, and it's beautiful, and we like it, but no one ever talks about it. and then it was interesting because when I was leaving I went to the principal and he was walking me through the school and he said oh, do you see these beautiful posters we've put up? And I in my head is going yeah, but have you asked your students about how they feel? Because they have something to say, right? They don't want the posters to just go up and nothing to be said about them. It's a good first step but the students need the follow up steps, right? They need the lessons to be taught. They need it integrated in all of their courses and not just for them, but for all students. The students also talked a lot about--I asked them about what's working for them in their schools and where do they find comfort in places of belonging in their schools? and a lot of schools are making an effort to create spaces and places--Native Studies rooms that a lot of high schools have started to create. The students are really appreciating those. The graduation coaches and Aboriginal student support workers, that's making a difference for the students. The students do find, they often talk about needing those spaces. A number of groups told me that they've created a spot in the library where they gather. Some other students talked about places in hallways where they gather to share with each other, and just hang

• ut with each other and that that's really making a huge difference for them.

So there's a lot of progress being made yet at the same time there's a lot more work to be done. So the other piece that I found really important when I asked the students in the talking circles about what they need and want, and the sense of Miss, we don't really know because we've never had it. So they know that they want to have their knowledge and language, their stories, their literature integrated into their curriculum, but they don't know what that's going to feel like because they haven't had it. When I teach my courses in the Faculty of Education at York every year I ask my students how many of you have read a book written by an Indigenous author? And 17 years of teaching, and 2 students, yeah 2. One student said we read Kiss of the Fur Queen in the drama class, and another student had read Green Grass, Running Water in English. And a lot of students are saying that they're choosing to read Indigenous authored books as a part of their independent assignments, but having a high school English teacher assign an Indigenous author text, it's not happening yet. And I talked to the students in the talking circles about this, and one of the students

said wait, you mean there are Indigenous authors? Oh, wait that's really bad right? Like I should know that shouldn't I? And I thought yeah, but you don't know it because your teachers haven't given you the books. So we do have work to do in terms of really understanding and responding to this need that the students are conscious of, and wanting to understand. And there's one thing I didn't talk about, that the students are concerned about, right? it's when you teach, right? When you start integrating this content the students don't want to be made the experts, right? They don't want to be centred out. They don't want their teacher to say oh, you're Native, why don't you teach us about that, eh? the thing is when you teach and the students have the opportunity to jump in and say oh, you know I can answer that question, or I have something I want to add then the thing is to let the s make those decisions about when they're going to jump in, right? When they're comfortable they will, but putting the spotlight on them and asking them to do the teaching, that's not fair to the s and some of them have had that experience, and it does not sit well with them, so. Being a part of the collaborative inquiry educators tell me that learning about colonialism, and residential schools, learning about the history of the relationship between Indigenous, non-Indigenous people, doing that work is so--it is critical to addressing, right? The fear. and a lot of educators talk about the fear of doing this

• work. The fear of getting it wrong. The fear of offending. The fear of not knowing how

to respond to students' questions. Just there's a lot of fear. Fear of cultural appropriation. I mean this is complicated, and complex, right? there aren't easy answers and as educators we haven't necessarily been prepared to do this work. We're supposed to know the answers, and yet when it comes to teaching this content we're all often

• verwhelmed by how much we don't know, and the expectation that we should know.

And so I mean being a part of this collaborative inquiry really does ask something of

• you. It asks--requires that you pay attention, and that you're patient with yourself as

you do the work of learning. This is the other amazing thing about this collaborative inquiry is that it gives you time, because your budget, it's about using your budget to give yourself time. release time to do the work of learning, to pay attention and to pay your community partners, right? Community members were overwhelmed with work and demands, and we have families to feed and bills to pay, and this collaborative inquiry part of the beauty

• f it is that you do have a budget to pay the community partners, and they have a

right to be paid. and it's a part of making a good relationship is honouring the knowledge that they're going to bring to the table. And every year, right? teachers tell me that listening to the community members--Susan, it was like we were at the

kitchen table. They just talked. they just told stories, and we learned so much from the listening. This project isn’t called the Listening Stone by accident. It comes from the stories that teachers tell me, eh? Listening. The big part of this collaborative inquiry is about

• listening. And especially at the beginning of the journey for those of you who are just

starting this work, right? Taking the time, using your budget. Oh, if Debra Cormier from the Ministry were here she would say I don't want people calling me at the end

• f the year saying they have money left over in their budget. Use your budget, take

the time, support the learning that needs to happen. Realise that there's a lot of fear involved in putting yourself in the position of learner. But one of the things that I really do believe, like I've been working with educators teaching, how do we teach this content? I've been doing this for 30 years and teachers used to tell me, you know, Susan, this material, this content it has nothing to do with me. I don't have any friends who grew up on a reserve, I don't teach near a reserve, I don't really know anything about this. And it used to feel to me like people were saying they were like a perfect stranger to Indigenous content, and there was something about that position that was desirable. Like they wanted to stay the perfect stranger because it got them off the hook. You don't have to do the work if you're a stranger to Indigenous people and Indigenous issues, and history, and literature, and content. But what this collaborative inquiry

• pportunity is, is it allows you to move from that position, to become the not so

perfect stranger. To opening yourself up to being a learner. To working in collaboration with your team. To be learners together, and to reach out to the community, and work together. You know, educators would tell me about the Board had a PD session and elder came and told stories, or a knowledge keeper was invited to our school. and then next thing I know they're telling me oh, and there was a talk at the library, and we

• went. And CBC had a special event, and we went. The collaborative inquiry is the

starting point, right? and it involves you in the work of learning. So that I would say is the most important piece that--the most important thing that I’ve learned from the collaborative inquiry is the way, and the willingness of educators to involved themselves in the work, and to do the work of learning, eh? Reading the literature, listening, watching films, coming together as a team to talk about what are we doing? How are we doing it? Who are we creating relationships with? How are we bringing the community in? This is what educators are telling me is really making the difference in terms of increasing not just their knowledge but their comfort in terms of integrating this

content into their classrooms and into their curriculum. So strategies for doing this learning, the planning meetings, the dialogue, the face to face sessions, PD sessions, resources right? Identifying key resources, and what works, and at what different grade levels. What resources should we be working with? and school and board wide events that provide opportunities for educators to learn. The factors that support a successful CI, right? This continuity of learning and some

• f you I know are new to the CI, but you've got teams in your board. There are

schools in your board that have been involved in the past, so talking to the teams that have been a part of this CI in the past and building your work on, and learning from the work that they've done, and again the beauty is you decide at a local level what your project is going to be, right? Some people say they're going to work with artists and create lessons around bringing artists into classrooms. Some people do beading projects. Some people do--one board did a mentorship project where they had teachers, right, every board everywhere I go every board has champion

• teachers. People who have been doing this work long before the collaborative

inquiry, long before the TRC. Those champion teachers partner with teachers who are new to the work creating that mentor, mentee relationship. So there are lots of different ways. A group of educators that the collaborative inquiry is really having a positive impact are the language and culture teachers in schools have talked about how the collaborative inquiry has completely shifted their relationship with the staff, right? I've talked to language and culture teachers who say the collaborative inquiry has totally shifted their position, right? IT used to be that they were almost ignored, not even considered full members of the staff and now they're recognized as legitimate members of staff with valuable knowledge instead of kids just going, just being sent to the language and culture teacher. The language and culture teachers are coming into classrooms, working in collaboration with classroom teachers doing the work together. So who are the Indigenous educators in your board? How are you working with them? What's their role in the collaborative inquiry work? So these are some of the different ways that boards are really finding and creating success as a team. The collaborative inquiry really is about working together as a team, and remembering that everyone has a role to play in doing this work, and like I said administrators, classroom teachers, parents, community members it's all about the achievement and wellbeing of students, right? Another thing that educators tell me is that, you know Susan, I just did this one little lesson but the difference that it made for my Indigenous students, I couldn't believe how it shifted their place in the classroom. So the impact that it's having on the

students, on all students is really overwhelming. At the beginning of the day I think it was Troy or Nick, I can't remember which one of them we talked about we started with 15 boards 3 years ago and now in the 5th year every board in the province is a part of this collaborative inquiry and that's because it's working. IT's because it is creating a paradigm shift and if it feels scary, and intimidating it's because it is, right? Making these huge shifts in how we teach and what we teach, this isn’t easily accomplished, but it's happening because of the commitment of the collaborative inquiry teams, and it is having an impact on teacher/student relationships, and students' relationships with schools, and community members' relationships with institutions of formal schooling, right? We have a long, and complicated, and not so positive history in our relationship with institutions of formal schooling. So shifting that is a lot of work, and it's hard for you and it's hard for community and parents as well, but it works because the team works together to make the change happen, and it's deep learning. if you could go on the CODE website and look at the past reports you'll see the second year report is called Depp, Deep, Deep Learning because that's what this collaborative inquiry asks of you, but then the results are amazing in terms of the learning that you will do and the shift in your understanding, and the changes that you'll see in your students.