Public education, designed during the
industrial age,
was developed with a factory
model in mind.
Despite significant advances, very little
has changed.
I've spent the last twenty years 
as an educator,
a teacher, principal, superintendent,
and a parent,
and I continue to witness how in these
models,
the same groups of students continue to be
over-represented in education gaps.
These students are indigenous, black, in
particular black boys, racialized students
(that's those who can be categorized 
by their race other than white),
those with special identified learning 
needs and with disabilities,
those coming out of poverty, 
and 2SLGBT identifying students.
The role and impact of identity 
on educational outcomes
is something that we need to become more 
explicit about addressing
in education systems.
By identities I mean all the various ways
that we can be identified,
for me, and for all of us.
Some of those things include our race,
age, sex, sexual orientation,
gender, immigration status, 
religion, and ability.
Our identities shape how we 
experience the world,
and some of our identities 
give us privilege.
Personally, I never have to think when I
go somewhere
whether or not there's an elevator,
or if I have to run up a few 
flights of stairs.
My able-bodied privilege means that 
I never have to think about these things.
But as a brown person, a Muslim, I'm more
cautious about how I engage the police,
especially at airports and 
border crossings,
because I can always be sure that I'm 
going to be "randomly selected."
These are things that I have to think 
about every single day,
but not everyone has to.
In my own home, my sons who 
are racialized black
at times have different experiences 
with the police than even I do.
One day, in addressing this with one of 
my sons
who was stopped a couple of times on his
way home from school
and telling him how to respond, 
he said to me, "Dad it's not fair."
I said to him,
"Son this isn't about what's fair, 
this is about keeping you alive."
Our identities shape how we experience the
world,
and how people see and respond to us.
As a principal, one day I put out a great 
aspiration statement
in one of our newsletters.
I said, "In this school we want everyone 
to want to run to school everyday."
Until someone asked me, 
what if someone can't run?
Today, as the Superintendent of Equity, 
Anti-racism, and Anti-oppression,
I work in one of the largest boards on the
part of Turtle Island we call Canada.
We serve approximately 250,000 students.
When we as senior leaders got 
together and looked at our data,
it underscored these realities.
For example, our student population, 12%
of them are black.
But by the time they graduate,
42% of black students would have 
been suspended at least once.
Education is a colonial project.
The systems and structures, 
the laws and the cultures,
were created based on the beliefs 
and attitudes
of those who were in power at that time.
Some of those beliefs included pieces like
indigenous people are uncivilized
and they need to be dispossessed 
of the land,
that black people existed for the 
economic benefit of those in power,
that women were less than men
and so they shouldn't be allowed to 
vote or hold public office,
that 2SLGBT identifying people needed 
to be medically fixed or locked away,
and that people with disabilities 
should be locked away.
All of these were quoted into the 
systems and structures around education.
The systems and structure reflected
those beliefs and attitudes,
and so they're not neutral.
We have to accept that they work for 
some and not for other children.
Since identity is the common factor 
in who's successful and unsuccessful,
systems need to engage in learning and 
unlearning about identity
in order to be able to change 
those outcomes.
Einstein tells us that the definition of 
insanity
is to keep doing the same things, 
hoping for different results.
As adults, none of us check 
our identities at the door,
whether we're male, female, 
trans, black, or white,
Muslim, Jewish or Christian,
these things are important parts 
of who we are.
We need to move away from saying things
like, "School is only about learning,"
or things like, "I don't see color,"
because students experience their
identities in school every single day.
Identities are complex and they intersect.
So a child who is gay will face 
barriers in our schools.
But if that child happens to be a black, 
Muslim, lesbian child
with a disability coming out of poverty,
she will face compounding barriers.
As a teacher and a principal,
what that meant was I needed 
to get to know my students well
beyond their likes and dislikes.
In my classroom I made sure there 
were snacks available,
it was a positive space for 
LGBT identifying students,
and it was a space to pray.
As a beginning teacher, I chose to work in
challenging neighborhoods
to be able to make a difference 
in the lives of children.
In order to prepare them for 
life in the real world,
I used to give lots of homework,
until I read the research that says it has
very little value for learning outcomes,
and in fact, it reinforces the 
disparity between students,
especially those coming from poverty.
I chose to work in those schools to
be able to try and make a difference,
but upon self-reflection, I realized that
I was the one creating the barrier.
This learning over time meant for me that 
I had to try and do things differently.
Looking at a human rights approach,
inclusive design is an approach that often
thinks about people with disabilities.
Working with a group of educators, we
looked at how inclusive design
and approach could be constructed,
that would be used throughout education
that affirmed all identities 
in classroom spaces.
And it begins by thinking 
about those identities
and thinking about who is most 
marginalized amongst them.
As a teacher or principal, it meant
getting to know their families,
their family structures, their histories,
their languages,
and to make sure it was reflected 
in the ethos of school and class.
As a superintendent, I challenged my 
principals to think about
what groups of students are going into 
which high school pathways, and why.
Which groups of students are 
becoming suspended or not,
and how might we be complicit 
in those outcomes?
Transformation can only begin when
we turn our gaze towards us.
Once we know who is most 
marginalized and under-served,
I work with principals to begin school 
improvement planning
with those students first in mind.
What types of structures will serve to 
engage and inspire them?
Which structures need to be dismantled?
How are we aligning our budget 
and our resources
to make sure that this is a priority?
Finally, and most importantly, we have to
think about the adult learning necessary,
about the identities that we hold
in relation to the identities of the 
students that we serve.
How does that shape how we think 
about instruction, curriculum,
achievement, well-being, and success?
These are difficult conversations to have,
but they are the most important.
The reason that they're so hard is 
they hit us at the core of who we are.
Remember, I saw myself as a nice person,
but my niceness and my good 
intentions wasn't enough.
It was my impact that mattered.
In spite of having experienced poverty
and moments of homelessness myself,
when I taught in the classroom, I reverted
back to the way I was taught
both in school and when I was 
at the Faculty of Education.
Sometimes we feel defensive 
or embarrassed,
and we don't want to have these 
conversations.
But it's important that we do not hold 
marginalized students hostage
to our emotions and fragility as adults.
As a teacher, principal, or 
superintendent,
I tried to keep this in mind whenever 
I'm making decisions,
otherwise I'm going to use my 
own experiences and identities
to be able to understand and 
try to solve problems
and that will make me miss critical pieces
that affects whole groups of students.
I try to remember that as a cis-gendered
person who's making decisions
on behalf of trans children,
or as a male making decisions 
on behalf of girls.
This learning is not about creating 
feelings of blame, shame, or guilt,
but about helping us to do better 
for the students that we serve.
Exactly why we came to education 
to begin with.
Today in my board, we have 
a long way to go,
but we're on the journey.
Through our achievement and well-being
goals,
we're working to explicitly identify
which groups of students 
are over-represented in the gaps.
We're working to make sure that they see
their lives and experiences and abilities
reflected in the curriculum, in the 
classrooms, in the instruction,
the experiences, and the staff.
Through our equity goals,
we're focused on the learning that 
we as adults need to do
in order to be able to think about our 
identities in relation to theirs.
So that we move away from "This is the way
it's always been done,"
to "Why can't we do it differently?"
I came to public education in order to
make a difference
in the lives of the children that I serve.
Knowing their identities, abilities, and
lived experiences
is the key to unlocking that potential.
Understanding how our own identities 
interact with theirs in these structures,
gives us the opportunity, the chance for 
innovation,
and the ability to change a trajectory
of public education
in a way that will work for every 
single student that we serve.
