Episode 3: Introspection-Change in Mindset & Practice

The voices you will listen to focus on ideas concerning Introspection: change in mindset and/or practice. Facing History and Ourselves summarizes its pedagogical approach as one of “scope and sequence.” They explain that sequences are circular with no particular starting or endpoint. In order to be able to teach history, one has to understand themselves, and their position within society. In learning and teaching history education, we have to understand our past in order to understand our present and how it impacts our future. The following voices are committed to the practice of self-actualization and healing. Jasmine Wong, senior programs associate of Facing History Canada shares how self-actualization comes from learning with others.

Transcript

Jessica Sass 0:00

This is Jessica Sass and you are listening to one of four parts of a series titled: Collective History: Reconciliation, Knowledge, & Justice. Over the course of several months, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Indigenous educational partners of Facing History and Ourselves Canada, an international education organization that creates supplemental materials for teachers that “stand up to bigotry and hate.”  Educators and Elders shared their vision of what educational partnership looks like and how it impacts not only their classroom but generations of students who will uplift and uphold true narratives of history. In this conversation, we focus on ideas around Introspection: change in mindset and/or practice. Facing History and Ourselves summarizes its pedagogical approach as one of “scope and sequence.” They explain that sequences are circular with no particular starting or endpoint. In order to be able to teach history, one has to understand themselves, and their position within society. In learning and teaching history education, we have to understand our past in order to understand our present and how it impacts our future. The following voices are committed to the practice of self-actualization and healing. Jasmine Wong, senior programs associate of Facing History Canada shares how self-actualization comes from learning with others.                                                   

Jasmine Wong  1:58

The more I learn from other people, in some ways, the better I understand myself. The better I am able to understand the world around me, the more I can give an offer authentically to other teachers who I work with. I think, you know, you often don't know what you don't know. 

Jessica Sass 2:19 

The process of introspection makes me think about a quote by Bell Hooks that I hold dear --  In All About Love, she says, “rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion” (1981, p.215). In order to heal others, you have to heal yourself, however, this practice is not an individual endeavor, but rather one that can be done in partnership.  Leora Schaefer, executive director of Facing History and Ourselves goes into more depth about how the learning environment at work creates opportunities for reflection with her colleagues, including Jasmine Wong – and the opportunity to grapple with hard truths about history and identity. 

Leora Schaefer  3:08

We're a team who are constantly checking, keeping check and asking questions. It is always about asking questions. Always asking, like, Is this our place? Is this what we should be applying for when it comes to funding? Is this the right place for us to be working? Who has invited us in? That's a really important question, are we being asked for help? Are we being told please just move out of the way?

Jessica Sass 3:40

Leora finds some of the answers to her questions in the reflections of her colleague Jasmine.

Leora Schaefer  3:48

And Jasmine said, you know, I don't want to work like that. Let's bring on the partners with a blank slate like just ask the partners, what do they need? How do they want to be involved? Who should be part of this program? How do we build it and she started co-creating since we started working and delving into Canadian history and partnering and building relationships with Indigenous people who are now friends and colleagues, which has built on who I am, impacted how I see myself. Thinking about my role as a settler here in Canada. How do I take teachings that Indigenous Elders have shared with me? And those are not just professional learning? Those are personal learning? How am I committed to issues differently because of the relationships that I have built because of people who I now know? 

Jessica Sass 4:56

Jasmine explains how she approaches her organizations’ role in the education of educators so that students can see their own stories in the classroom teachings.

Jasmine Wong 5:10

What role does Facing History have? We shouldn't assume that we have this role as an organization that knows everything. And has sort of like our way of doing things. I think we need to be asking, is our role to be a platform, right? And to like to share our network. When the children's remains were recovered in Kamloops. I remember seeing a huge jump in the number of downloads that we had for our resource. A lot more educators were requesting professional learning and not just history, social science, secondary educators. But now we are starting to see people in business, people in student services and administration, we start to see a lot more private schools because it was such a moment of real reckoning. But, I think since the summer, what we've seen is this, this broader swath of teachers who are saying, Wow, what do I need to know? Not just because I need to teach it, but what do I need to know? How do we inform educators so that they have a posture of understanding for non-Indigenous teachers to say like, when is it that I need to step back and make space and for Indigenous teachers and students to say, like, I see my voice, I hear my voice I see belonging, I know I matter.

Jessica Sass 6:44

While Jasmine questions her positionality and the organizations’ as non-Indigenous educators, Andrew McConnell --Andrew McConnell has been the coordinator of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit education at the York Region District School Board talks about the structural failures of Canadian academia and the ways in which education misrepresented history. Change in mindset and practice can only occur if structural harms of institutions are acknowledged.  

Andrew McConnell  7:13

And the academy is Eurocentric and based and it supports and maintains Eurocentric points of views and values, even though it says it's pushing them. It's still the same thing, right? With that saying, you know, right-wing, left-wing, it's still the same bird. So it's along those lines, whereas when they're doing it with the community and actually sitting with people who've lived it, walked it, talked to, and seeing that is expertise because it is. You know, just because you studied somebody who's experienced doesn't make you more expert in their experience than them. But the academy allows for that mindset, right? It's like, if I've studied it, I, therefore, become an expert in it. It's like keeping that person living there, the actual expert, you know, you're secondary to them. Now, you might have had conversations with multiple people, which means you have a different perspective, because you have multiple perspectives, but how could you possibly be more expert in their experience than them? It's not possible. It's a ridiculous idea. And so you don't see that right with Facing History. They're very open to that and therefore they reach out to multiple people from multiple perspectives, bring it in, and really do good work. Right like if there's one thing I would say about the workaround residential schools as they really have captured that residential school is not an Indigenous thing. It's a settler thing. Right? It's Canadian history is not Indigenous history. If you don't have Canada, you don't have residential schools. But you do have indigenous people. That's sort of your litmus test. Right. So they get that, and I think that that's part of where their mission and their understanding comes from is that, you know, it is directly attributable to residential schools directly attributable to the economic wealth, and well-being of non-Indigenous Canadians.
Jessica Sass 9:03

We have to acknowledge the legacy and harm of Eurocentric education in order to fully understand Indigenous history and the impact it has on those who teach it. Andrew speaks about how oftentimes in academia people who “studied” a place or culture or people are deemed as experts. Grandmother Kim Wheatley, Anishinaabe cultural consultant, explains her intrinsically personal connection to the work that she does - something that is often overlooked by educators that she works with. When understanding ourselves, we need to be aware of how our teachers carry trauma or pain. And how we can both honor them with space, time, and care.

Grandmother Kim Wheatley  9:46

There are individual stories here. And, and so some of the difficulties I have are commonly not being triggered myself and being asked to share my story in relation to what we're exploring. I mean, I have many relatives who went to residential school, and I have many relatives who, you know, suffered enormous harms almost unspeakable in that they can't speak them, you know. And I have that intergenerational trauma. I have that blood memory. I have the challenge of using a language that doesn't adequately word what you're trying to say. And sometimes, you know, standing in front of a group of teachers, I don't have that moment, to kind of be human. I have an expectation to accomplish dissemination but I can't do it without emotion. I can't do it without, you know, feeling away sometimes. So some of the difficulties of experiences, you know, feeling like I'm on the verge of tears, but not, you know, not letting that spill or sometimes having it spill and feeling a way about that. It's a very vulnerable state to be in.

Jessica Sass 11:16

Kim goes on to explain how delicate it can be in teaching what is the story of her life and truth.

Grandmother Kim Wheatley  11:24

But our truth is so raw, and so emotionally grounded, we're exploring, ever-evolving truths. And it's really difficult like it's just, it's such a heavyweight to carry a weight, you know, and then try and work through, because there's no distance between the truth and my life. It's still like, there's a currency about it. That is challenging. Like, did I use the right words? Did I cover enough?  Did I express it the best way possible? Did I diminish the people because I told the truth, there's a great sense of responsibility for how things are shared.

Jessica Sass 12:12

I really appreciate Kim for sharing her heart with me and being so vulnerable. Hopefully, the educators out there listening will have more empathy and a better understanding of the emotional labor that Indigenous wisdom keepers have to go through each time they lead a workshop. Kim feels the way she does because her past has shaped who she is in the present - within those spaces. I remember Jasmine Wong saying that “We can think about how history applies to every moment today, and it can change the way that we see and interact with the world.” This is really powerful. How do we wrestle with intergenerational trauma and how has history shaped where we are at this very moment? As you may have listened to in the other segments, Elder Shirley John has gone through healing through her own life journey. She speaks as a holder of wisdom and explains the importance of taking care of ourselves - in what we can control in our lives and what we can not. Elder Shirley begins her dialogue with me by tracing her hand resembling a lifeline. 

Elder Shirley  13:36

It's like, I always say the lifeline. We have a lifeline. Okay. This is the lifeline. From the beginning of time, when you're in your mom's womb, you will be here for every five-ten fifteen-twenty twenty-five, all the way up to 100 years old. Every five years, you go into your lifeline and find out what has happened to me. There are good things that happen. And there are not so good things that haven't happened. Sometimes those are more prominent in the lifeline 5, 10, 15, 20. But you find that as time goes on, all the good things will come your way. When you look after yourself, you have to find that balance for this person, for yourself. And only you can do that. Only we can do that for ourselves. And as much as that person over there will talk to me talk to him, tell him everything that I need to know about healing. The bottom line is me. How much you might want to take, how much am I going to give them, are they going to break me or what, you know? 

Jessica Sass 14:44

To hear everyone’s full interviews, head over to the “people” tab and click on each individual you’d like to hear more from. You will see their biography, along with the full video, and transcription. Thank you for listening.