This year, our school community will celebrate Gender Splendour from April 6-9, 2021. It will be our 11th year implementing arts-based curriculum that explores gender identity and equity, 2SLGBTQ+ communities, inclusive families, and disrupts homophobia and transphobia. Over the years, the Kindergarten-Grade 6 students have participated in several inclusive and intersectional workshops, including: Love Makes […]
Gender Equity
International Women’s Day
Happy International Women’s Day! What does this mean to you? What does this mean to your teaching practice? Feminism is for everyone “Eighty-one percent of the members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) are women and, in many ways, the history of women teachers reflects the struggles of all Canadian women” […]
Boys vs Girls
A friendly competition? No. No. No no no no no. Boys vs girls in sports? Boys vs girls in games? Boys vs girls in math? No again. Here’s why: Boys vs girls contests assume there are only two genders and reinforces this idea to children. This competition forces children to ‘choose’ which side […]
Creating a Safe Space for 2SLGBTQ+ Students and Families
Growing up as a queer kid in a small town, my experience in school wasn’t always very welcoming. Everything felt like it was designed in a way that assumed that I – and everyone – was cis and straight, from the books we read to the forms we took home and the way everyone spoke […]
Novels That Spark Conversation and Empathy
This year, due to the ongoing job action, Forest of Reading looks quite different in our school. Rather than having a club where students read books at their leisure and then check in with the teacher who read the book for conversation, we’re reading some of the texts as a class. Given a couple of […]
The Gender Gap in Technology
According to a recent report* by ICTC (the Information and Technology Information Council) Canadian women represent about 50% of the overall workforce but represent only 25% of the technology industry workforce. Of the 100 major tech companies in Canada only 5 have female CEOs and 1 Co-CEO. 26% of the tech companies have no women in senior leadership at […]
Drawing The Line
Each year, in Canada, approximately 460,000 women are sexually assaulted, although only a fraction of them report the assault to the police (1). In a day and age where this statistic holds true, it’s hard to imagine that our government is wanting to go back to a time where consent and gender identity aren’t being discussed […]
Gender Equity in 2018
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms outlines what gender equity should look like … but do women really have gender equity in 2018? In education and workplace participation, gender equity has made some strides. in 2015, women are almost as likely to have a high school (82.5% women vs. 89.3% men) or university […]