Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Start of the year

How I Approach the First Days and Weeks of School

It’s the end of July and I think I’m ready to start thinking about next year now. I haven’t fully shaken off last year yet – I’m not sure I ever will, to be honest – but it’s time, now, to start looking forward and thinking about the 2021-22 school year.

Ten years into my career, I’ve developed a few things I like to do to kick off the year and get to know my students.

Some context, before I share some of my start-up routines: I teach Middle French Immersion, which starts in grade 4. The students in this program come from many different schools (and occasionally from out-of-province/country). Some have been at my school since kindergarten, others come in as the only one from their previous school. Some of my routines are about getting to know a new school, feeling comfortable with new classmates, and settling some nerves at the beginning of an immersion program.

So. Here we go. A small taste of how I like to start off the year. I’m not going to take you minute-for-minute through my first day because I’m not that consistent, but I’ll share the things I find really helpful and important in the early days.

 

Before School Starts

Typically, my board doesn’t give information to families about their new teachers or classes before the first day of school. That said, if I were able to reach out to families ahead of time, as I know some boards do this, I would want to record a short video introducing myself and giving a quick look at the classroom.

The morning of the first day of school, I print off a final class list along with student photos so that I can easily recognize them on the yard when they arrive.

With respect to class decor, I absolutely do not overdecorate my classroom before school starts. In fact, if you look at this photo, you’ll note that my classroom is actually pretty bare bones on day 1:

That’s because our walls are typically full of student work and co-created anchor charts. No point in putting up decorations for the first day only to replace them a few days later! I also find that too much on the walls is very distracting and overwhelming for students, especially when they’re just starting out in a second language program.

 

First Day of School

I put small nameplates on student desks so they can find a spot and sit down. These are not permanent nametags. I usually just use cardstock or bristol board to make a folded stand-up card. On students’ desks are all of the supplies they’ll be getting – notebooks, duotangs, etc. (My board provides these to students rather than asking families to purchase them.)

Our very first activity as a class is to go around and introduce ourselves. I never read names from the class list on the first day. It’s important that everyone learn how to say everyone else’s name properly and the best way to do that is to have students say their names themselves.

Two things to note on student intros: I invite students to share their pronouns if they’re comfortable but make it clear that they are not required to. I also make sure to tell them that they can pass on the intro if they are very uncomfortable speaking in front of everyone first thing. It is very rare that anyone is unwilling to share their name, though.

 

Boîte de moi

Early in the day on the first day of school, I like to do this activity to give students a little idea of who I am. Many of my students come from feeder schools and haven’t met me before, and the others have likely only seen me as a duty teacher or maybe their Core French teacher in the past.

The idea behind this activity is simple: I fill a shoebox with items that represent me, then share what I brought with the class and tell them a little about what those items mean to me. For example, I’m an avid reader, so I often include a favourite book. I play a lot of board games, so I may include dice. I love coffee, so I’ll often stick a favourite coffee mug into the box, too. A photo of my family, of course.

Over the first two weeks, students then bring in their own shoeboxes of personal items (or photos/drawings of them) to share. Students are usually really engaged in this task. Very occasionally, I have a student or two who may be uncomfortable with this task, so I make sure to tell everyone at the outset that they can let me know (with a note on my desk, an e-mail from a parent, a private convo during recess, etc.) if they would prefer an alternative.

Some alternative options I provide:

  • Recording a video from home with Flipgrid that will only be visible to me.
  • Presenting at recess in front of just me or one or two peers they’re comfortable with.
  • Creating a different kind of presentation, e.g. Slides, that accomplishes the same thing.

Note for fellow FSL teachers: We spend the first week learning and practicing the language they’ll need to be able to share their boxes in French. It’s a great way to get a quick sense of what their rehearsed language level is.

 

Student Info Forms

I try not to overload students or their families with paperwork in the first week, but there is one set of forms that I always make sure to do: a set of questions for students to complete at school on the first day and a general info questionnaire for parents/guardians.

The questions on the student form change slightly from year to year, but here are some things that I always ask:

  • Name they’d like me to call them in class
  • Pronouns they’d like me to use in class
  • Something they feel really good about at school
  • Something they find challenging at school
  • Something they’re looking forward to or want to do this year

For parents/guardians, it’s a bit more standard from year to year:

  • Contact info and preferences (yes, even if the office has this info, because there is ALWAYS someone whose number/e-mail has changed and they’ve forgotten to inform the office)
  • Access to technology/internet at home (useful to know during COVID, mainly)
  • If the student has an updated hearing/eyesight test (this is always question #1 when bringing a student to team, so I like to just ask everyone right at the start of the year)
  • Whether the family has any particularly busy or late nights with extracurriculars (I then try to avoid planning big assessments or events on the day after these late nights, if possible)
  • What they’d like to see as part of their child’s education for the year

 

Nametags and Labels

In the first few days of school, I ask students to create their own nametag that will be their permanent nametag throughout the year. This gives them an opportunity to have some agency with what name is on it, what it looks like, etc. It’s also a really interesting insight into who they are, as I typically see a range of styles from plain printing in black marker to elaborate designs in full colour.

In years where I’ve had assigned seating, like last year, the nametags get attached to the visible side/front of the desk so that they’re visible to educators in the room. In years where I’ve used flexible seating (which is honestly every non-COVID year at this point in my career!), we make them stand-up nametags on cardstock. They’re used, then, to denote where students have chosen to sit for the period and can be moved around as needed.

Because I teach FSL, I also like to have students label key parts of the classroom in French to facilitate oral communication – la porte, le tableau, l’horloge, les fenêtres, etc. It sounds like nothing, but it honestly makes SUCH a difference for them to have the word right there on the object in front of them – and at the junior level, they seem way more likely to pay attention if they’re the ones who made it, not me.

 

Unstructured Outdoor Play Time

I always, always make a point of scheduling a little bit of unstructured time outside on the first two days of school. I try to keep it short – going out 10-15 minutes early for recess, for example, or heading out early at the end of the day and playing in the yard.

It’s important that this time is unstructured because I want to see what students do with the time. I provide some equipment for them, but otherwise they have free choice of activity. While they’re playing, I make notes.

  • Who already has a social group?
  • Who doesn’t seem to have many connections in the class?
  • What kinds of activities do they choose?
  • Who prefers to hang out with me and chat?
  • Who ignores all of the equipment and opts to sit down and read, walk and talk, etc. instead?

It’s an incredibly useful exercise and informs many of my early decisions on groupings for class activities. The reason why I say to keep it short is because in my program, there are always students who don’t have any connections in the class, so I don’t want to put them through half an hour of not knowing what to do with themselves and feeling uncomfortable.

 

Hopefully that gives you all a little idea of some things you could do in the first few days with your class to get to know them and gather some key info for your early planning. If you have any questions or are looking to bounce ideas off of someone, you’re always welcome to contact me! I can be reached on Twitter @rollforlearning or by e-mail at srothgeb@gmail.com – and I’m always open to chatting about teaching.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Assessment and Evaluation, Curriculum Planning, Differentiated Instruction

Ditch Tests – Do Projects Instead!

As the year winds down and you start to think about next year, I have something I want you to consider: get rid of tests.

No, seriously. Forget about them.

When I first started teaching, I, too, used tests. After all, that’s what my experience was: finish a unit, do a test to demonstrate your learning, move on to the next unit. I even did that thing that my own teachers had done where I worded questions in specific ways to try and “trick” students. I told myself that this was a way to make sure they were attending to the questions, really paying attention in class, really knew the material.

Is that true, though?

As I learned more about effective assessment and practice, I started to see how wrong that was. What are we really assessing when we ask students to memorize facts? Complete tests within a set timeframe, inducing unnecessary stress? Give them one chance to show their learning, in one set way, without allowing for student choice or different ways for students to show their learning?

(As an aside, my most hated kind of test is a spelling test.)

I got rid of tests in my teaching several years ago and I have no regrets. This decision has led to a better understanding of students’ needs and learning, higher student engagement, and a more fun classroom all-around.

So what do I do instead? 

P R O J E C T S.

There are so many reasons why I love projects.

  • The possibilities of what you create are nigh endless.
  • You can easily provide multiple options to students.
  • Expectations for the project can be tailored to individual students’ programs and needs.
  • Projects are versatile and easy to adapt on the fly if necessary.
  • Cross-curricular opportunities abound.
  • Projects can be individual or collaborative in nature.
  • It’s easy to integrate technology into your plans. 

What kinds of projects do I use for assessment?

For Grade 4/5 Science, I’ve used Minecraft: Education Edition to have students create model habitats and human organ systems to demonstrate what they had learned. In previous years, I’ve also had students create new animals (inspired by the book Scranimals) and create a habitat that would respond to their needs.

For Drama, Art, and Language, I’ve had students create stop motion animation and puppet shows where they have to think about the backgrounds, character design, sound effects, storyboards.

For Social Studies, students have created museums with artifacts from early societies, explaining their importance and history while acting as tour guides for visitors.

For Math, students have created their “dream home” with set parameters for maximum perimeter and area. At times, I’ve also extended this into financial literacy and planning by giving them resources and asking them to decorate their home within a certain budget.

For Grade 6 Science and Language, students have created dioramas of key moments in stories read in class and incorporated circuitry and working switches into their pieces. (These were extremely cool and some of my absolute favourite projects to date. So many design challenges to overcome. So many creative solutions. So much perseverance!)

For Language and Art, students have created graphic novels of fractured fairy tales, incorporating narrative elements and elements of design into their work. 

Like I said: the possibilities are nigh endless. Often, students will find ways to adapt and change the project in exciting ways I hadn’t thought of before. I can then take their ideas forward into future years.

Using projects as often as I do isn’t without its downsides, of course. Projects take a LOT of time, so you’ll want to be prepared for that. You need to be clear about what your expectations are so that students don’t get too far off track, either. Providing a list of steps for students to follow is helpful, especially with set “check in” points where you meet with them to see how things are going.

One key thing you’ll want to have in place before you dive into project-based learning is a routine around what students can do if they have finished their work. I’ve found that students tend to take different amounts of time to complete their work, some groups finishing quickly while others still have days ahead of them. You’ll want to know what the finished groups will move onto while waiting for others to finish (and no, it shouldn’t just be extra work).

Also, projects tend to make your classroom look a mess. I’ve embraced the chaos. My classroom is never tidy.

Every year, I ask my class what their favourite things were that we did in class. Every year, they mention projects. They love them. They love the creativity, the flexibility, the collaboration.

Even if you don’t completely get rid of tests in your classroom, try some projects, alright? It’s worth it. Even when the projects don’t work out the way you expected and you can’t use them to assess what you thought you were assessing (which happens sometimes!) it’s still a worthwhile venture.

If ever you need ideas for projects, I’m here. I’m happy to share. I do so many of them.

If you already do lots of project-based learning, what are your favourite things that you’ve done?

Decorative: Minecraft scene
Shawna Rothgeb-Bird 21st Century Learning, Technology, Technology in school, Year End Reflection

A Reflection on a Year of Minecraft: Education Edition

It’s June tomorrow! How is it already June? This year has somehow been both the longest and the shortest year of my teaching career. It’s been a bit of a slog in many ways, so I’ve been thankful for little moments of joy that I have shared with the students in my class over the year.

One of our great joys this year has been Minecraft. I’ve talked about it before, but I wanted to give a little update on our village and the overall pros and cons of using Minecraft in the classroom.

 

A Village Update

We have been working on the village off and on, primarily as a “when you’ve finished your work, you can do this if you want” option, for most of the year. If you’re not familiar with the village, we used a “Starter Town” template from the Minecraft library. It has the infrastructure already set up and you populate it with buildings. We started with students creating their own houses in numbered spaces set aside for this purpose. As you can see, we had a wide variety of styles and building heights.

Many houses have rooftop hot tubs. They are obsessed with the idea of hot tubs.

I will say that in hindsight, this template doesn’t really allow for much sidewalk space between buildings. I appreciated the smaller spaces (the building area is about 10×10) because it forced students to confront design challenges and adapt their plans, but the sidewalks themselves made it feel oppressive and crowded to walk at ground level. I think it would’ve been better to use wider sidewalks.

From there, students started adding all kinds of buildings – a hotel, a pet store, the Merry Dairy (a great ice cream shop in Ottawa), a leaf daycare (it’s a long story, don’t ask)…

There didn’t seem to be an end to their creativity. Some students created a zoo.

Others created an elaborate underground network of tunnels that would lead between buildings. Then, different houses started to appear – rogue houses! Without building permits! 

The builds got even more egregiously out of line with our Super Strict Community Planning: an entire village appeared just outside of the town, complete with blacksmith.

It was really cool to watch them create new things in the world and think outside the box.

 

Reflection on a Year of Minecraft

So… after a year of using this game in class, what do I think? Overall, I’ve been happy with what students have been able to do in the game. They’ve come up with some really cool ways to demonstrate their learning. They show far more perseverance when working through problems in Minecraft than they do at any other time. It’s also been great for collaboration in a year when opportunities to work with other students have been pretty minimal.

This isn’t to say there have been NO issues. We’ve definitely encountered some problems with outdated tech in schools where certain devices can’t be used for the game. During online learning, it’s been really difficult to troubleshoot problems with students. Some students don’t have compatible devices at home, either. 

Then there’s the in-game problems we’ve had, of which I’ll name a few here:

  • Spawning hundreds of animals in town.
  • Using commands incorrectly.
  • Harassing other students with commands.
  • Flooding the town.
  • Burning things down with lava.

I mean, most of those can be solved by students becoming more familiar with Minecraft, but it’s been an adventure.

 

Pros

  • Develops students’ critical and creative thinking skills.
  • Strong cross-curricular opportunities.
  • Can be used for short-term or long-term projects.
  • Tons of premade worlds, lesson plans, and activities in the library.
  • Strong buy-in from students.
  • Can be used in multiple languages.
  • Fosters perseverance.
  • Allows students to take on leadership roles by sharing their knowledge with peers.
  • Collaboration between classes!
  • In-game tutorials for students who are new to Minecraft.

 

Cons

  • Have to have the right devices to make it work.
  • If doing a whole-class collaborative project, one device has to host the world for everyone (and should be reasonably powerful – even my gaming PC crashes when I have 15+ students in our very large village world).
  • Some students are easily distracted by the game itself and don’t always complete objectives.
  • Updates to the game can lead to network issues at school.
  • Students accidentally break other students’ work, especially when first learning.
  • Very rarely, gamebreaking bugs happen that mean a student may have to restart their work or can no longer access a shared world.

 

Advice for Starting Minecraft in the Classroom

  • Give students time to play. They will 100% be distracted and unfocused the first few times you use it and will not get much accomplished.
  • Use the in-game tutorials to show students how to interact and play in the world.
  • Be very clear about your objectives and goals.
  • Give students the opportunity to share what they’ve made with their peers.
  • Be patient. Everything in Minecraft takes longer. Help your students plan their projects so that they don’t become overwhelmed by the scale of what they want to do.
  • A little goes a long way. Take breaks from Minecraft, too, so that students don’t get burned out on it.
  • Allocate time for potential issues. Become familiar with the game yourself so that you can help with common problems. You don’t have to be an expert, but you should know some basic commands (how to teleport, for example).

 

I’m really pleased that my board will be continuing with Minecraft: Education Edition next year. I’m looking forward to working on some new plans for next year over the summer. If you try it out, I’d love to see what you do with it!

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Professional Learning and Growth

Looking Back to Move Forward

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on past practice lately. As part of that process, I’ve been revisiting old lesson plans, activities, report card comments – essentially, everything that goes into being an educator.

Part of this has been borne out of necessity. This is a year unlike any other I’ve experienced and I’ve regularly found myself needing to find new and forgotten ways to keep students engaged, which has led me to look for ideas from previous years.

The larger reason for this, though, is to confront the necessary but harsh truth that I have not always been the most responsive or informed teacher when it comes to equity and creating safe spaces in the classroom.

I have always done what I thought was best for my students. I have never intentionally done something that would cause them harm. But looking back like this, I can see places where my practices weren’t what they are today, and that’s an important thing to acknowledge so that I can remind myself both of how far I’ve come and how much learning I have to do.

For example, at the beginning of my career, I segregated Health classes for units on puberty/sexual health. I thought I was creating a safer space for my students, but in actual fact, this practice is harmful in many ways. I wasn’t educated enough on trans, non-binary, and intersex identities. I know better now.

Another example of past mistakes is my participation in and promotion of spirit days at school. At the beginning of my career, I didn’t understand how problematic most (if not all) spirit days are. I have pictures of me proudly participating in “crazy hair day”. I cringe at them now, but I keep those photos tucked away in a folder on my computer specifically to remind myself that I am not infallible and I am always learning.

I’m writing about this tonight not to dwell on past mistakes, not to overthink or express regret over my earlier ignorance. I’m writing about this to hopefully let you know that many of us – especially white educators – have made and will make missteps in our careers. We will do what we think is right and it will not be right at all. 

When we make missteps, it’s important that we be able to reflect, recognize that we’ve made a mistake, acknowledge what the mistake was, and commit to doing better. If we never look back, if we never acknowledge that we have caused harm, then we won’t be able to do better in the future.

You may feel discomfort and embarrassment as you look back on your past practice. Don’t run from that discomfort. Sit with it, think about it, let yourself feel it. This discomfort is an important part of learning. Recognizing your past mistakes is the only way to truly move forward with your practice.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird 21st Century Learning, Inclusion, Resources, Technology, Technology in school

Grade 4/5 Science in Minecraft: Education Edition

My students and I have really been enjoying exploring how we can use Minecraft: Education Edition to extend our learning. Last month, before we got sent back to the world of online learning, we spent some time diving into a Science task in class.

The basic premise of the task was similar between the two grades: research a topic and build a model of it within Minecraft. Grade 4 students would be choosing one of the animals from Minecraft and creating a viable habitat for that animal in the game, while Grade 5 students would be choosing a human organ system and creating a pathway that would bring visitors through the functions of that organ system. After building their model, they then presented their worlds to the class and talked about the different elements they included.

For Grade 4, they had to consider food chains, predators and prey, appropriate shelter, biomes.

For Grade 5, they had to consider which organs were part of the system, how they’d create them in the game, what their function is and how to show that with a path or railway.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure how it would go when we started down this road. I considered that it might be a bit to out there as far as projects go. I should know better by now than to question these kids, though – they dove into this project with excitement and went well beyond my expectations. They enjoyed them so much that today they asked me if they could do another project like this. I’ve never had French Immersion students so willing to do an oral presentation!

Here are a few of their projects that I’d like to share.

Grade 4 Habitats

 

A farm habitat. The students who made this farm talked about the influence of human activity on the animals who live on the farm. There was a food chain demonstration around the side of the barn, with little pens containing different living things set up to walk visitors through the food chain.

 

This project was on bees. The students created a park with several wildflower gardens. When you look at the level of French on these signs, consider that I teach middle immersion, meaning this is their first year in French Immersion – and for the student who did this project, it was their first year learning French at all!

I loved how creative they got with showing what the animals eat. In this project, which was set up to resemble an artificial arctic fox habitat in a zoo, a student put an item frame on the ground and put raw chicken into the frame, making it look as though this arctic fox had been fed by caretakers.

This project was extremely cool. The students wanted to show that a polar bear’s habitat includes both land and ocean. They created a glass tunnel that you could walk through, seeing into an ocean full of fish. In the tunnel, there was a point where you could drop into the water and swim out into the ocean, eventually surfacing in a polar biome where you could see polar bears on land.

 

Grade 5 Human Organ Systems

Sadly, I don’t have many images of the grade five projects, in part because some of them took a long time to complete and we didn’t have a chance to grab screenshots before we all wound up in online learning! I do have this one really great project, though:

The Digestive System! For this project, you would start in front of a command block that was set to teleport you inside of a mouth full of teeth. Signs on the walls would explain where you were and what part of digestion happens in that area. Then, you’d follow the path down through the esophagus…

If you looked down through the esophagus, you could see liquid below – the stomach! You could then travel from the stomach through the digestive system until, eventually, you would drop out of the human body and into a (fake) toilet.

Another project took us through the nervous system. You started your journey in a minecart at the nose, where you would pick up a piece of paper meant to be a ‘message’ for the brain to tell it that the model’s nose was itchy. You’d hop in a minecart and travel to the brain, which would exchange your sheet of paper for a new message – instructions for the hand to scratch the model’s nose.

The grade 5 projects were a bit more difficult for them to wrap their heads around, admittedly. Still, they persevered and found some very cool ways to show us how human organ systems work.

 

Other projects we’ve taken on in Minecraft: Education Edition so far:

  • Building a class “town” where each student has a house, plus students are creating important community buildings like a school, a hospital, an apartment building, recreational facilities.
  • Retelling a fairy tale’s important events and places using NPCs.
  • Exploring an Anishinaabe community.
  • Doing a construction challenge with limited resources to learn about environmental impacts of human activity.
  • Regular old Minecraft fun. 😉

 

Hope you enjoyed this little tour of Minecraft in my classroom. I’m always happy to share more and talk about any of these projects. Now, onto my weekend planning, where I need to figure out how we’re going to use Minecraft: EE in our classroom next week!

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird General

You are not alone – and you aren’t a failure, either.

Here we are, midway through yet another week of remote learning. I’ve lost count of how many weeks we’ve done this now. You would think that by now, someone with as much teaching experience and technological know-how as I have would feel settled, but… I don’t.

If you’re a newer educator and you’re feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing, you suck at teaching online, your students aren’t learning anything, you don’t belong in this profession: you are not alone. Many of us are feeling that way, even with 10+ years of experience and a lot of tech savviness. 

My confidence with remote teaching vacillates even now, after so much experience and time with it. One day I’ll feel like I really rocked it – my students were engaged, everyone was learning, we had some fun, the day flew by. The next, I’ll feel like I have forgotten everything I know about teaching – everyone will seem disengaged and bored all day, I’ll sign off feeling like we didn’t accomplish anything, the day felt like it was somehow an entire week long.

Most days, if we’re being perfectly honest here, are somewhere securely in the middle of those extremes. Nothing special, but not bad.

Why, then, is it so hard to remember this from day to day? When I think about remote teaching, my first impulse is always to say that I’m out of my depth. Sinking. Ineffective.

The reality is that the vast majority of my teaching is fine. No, it isn’t the same as being at school in person, but I’m also not failing. My students are learning. We are making progress. They are engaged, albeit at a lower level than they normally are in class.

And still, almost every day, I end the day and sit down feeling defeated.

The imposter syndrome is real. I’ve always felt it to some degree, even before I was a teacher, but I find it’s at an all-time right now.

In my rational moments, I remind myself of a few things to try and chase that imposter syndrome away.

  • My students are safe at home.
  • Curriculum isn’t everything. Learning doesn’t have to mean curriculum expectations.
  • My students are not falling behind this year. We as educators need to adjust our expectations going forward.
  • My students genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
  • Everyone has made so much progress since September.
  • I am a good teacher. I belong in this profession.

I can’t say it’s a perfect system, but at least one of those points usually helps me remember that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself every day.

I hope that if you’re reading this and relate to any of it, you can come away from this post feeling a little less isolated, a little less worried about how you’re doing. Are your students safe? Have they made progress? Do you have moments of fun and connection? You’re fine. They’re fine. 

This isn’t the school year any of us wanted, but that doesn’t mean you’re a bad teacher.

You are not a failure.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Challenging Topics, Equity, Gender, Gender stereotypes, LGBTQ2S, Student wellbeing

On Being a Queer Educator in Ontario Schools

If you read Part 1, you’ll know by now that my experience as a student sucked. By the time I went to teacher’s college, I had fully embraced my queerness. I had a reasonably good handle on my identity. As I took my first baby steps into the world of teaching, I had decided that I was going to do better for my students than any of my teachers did for me.

Oh, to have that same youthful optimism and fire.

After ten years, so much of it has been chipped away by constant reminders that the school system and almost everyone in it are still perpetuating the idea that there is a “default” and then there are aberrant identities that are outside of that norm.

Think about your experience as an educator and whether any of these moments have happened at your school:

  • Being asked to “balance” the distribution of boys and girls when creating class lists.
  • Playing “boys vs. girls” in Phys Ed.
  • Having a “boys team” and a “girls team” for intramurals.
  • Creating groups of desks to intentionally mix genders.
  • Having “boys” and “girls” washroom passes.
  • Splitting the class based on gender for health class.
  • Saying “boys and girls” to address your class.

Do those feel innocent to you? No big deal? Look, it’s okay if you have done these things and never thought twice about them. Most of us have. But we have to acknowledge that those types of small actions contribute to the sense that we have a specific set of expectations around what it means to be a “boy” or a “girl.” That we expect all students to even fit into that binary. We have to be better than this.

Students notice these things. Some of them are obvious, like the Phys Ed example, while others you may think are more “behind the scenes” like class lists, but students notice. And when students notice those things, they draw conclusions about what the Institution of Education thinks about who is attending their schools.

And then, there’s how educators approach students who don’t fit those expectations.

I can’t tell you how much it hurts every single time I hear these things:

They’re too young to know they’re trans.

They just want attention.

I think they’re lying.

The other kids won’t get it and will all want to use the all-gender washroom.

I have to inform their parents. 

Fine, but I’m not going to change how I teach.

I can’t talk about this in class because parents will get upset.

I don’t know enough about this to teach any of it.

I don’t have time to do anything that isn’t in the curriculum.

Why do we need a neutral washroom if we don’t have any trans or NB students?

You think you’re commiserating with a colleague. You think you’re just expressing your frustration and stress with a colleague. What you’re doing, when you’re saying these things to a queer colleague, is often retraumatizing them. You’re reminding them of their otherness. You’re showing them that you consider their existence extracurricular and optional.

You’re showing not only your students but your colleagues, too, that you do not think their existence is worth the time to learn about, integrate into your teaching, and normalize.

But wait! There’s more!

Remember back in Part 1, when I talked about fear? And how it kept coming up at the PD day a few weeks back when we were discussing how to use a 2SLGBTQ+ resource in the classroom?

I want to talk about that fear.

When you say you’re scared of parent backlash, what exactly is it about that idea that scares you? What do you think will happen?

Will a parent post about you on social media?

Will a parent complain about you to the board?

Will a parent remove their child from your class?

Or are you scared that a parent will make an assumption that you are queer?

Are you scared that a parent will decide that you are unfit to teach their child?

 

Most importantly, why is it that you think that your fear is more important than your responsibility to your students to support them, validate them, see them, and show them a world where they are not something other and are, instead, just… normal?

 

Do you realize that your 2SLGBTQ+ colleagues and students have lived with fear their entire life? That we hesitate before putting our family photos up in our classrooms, the way that some of you do without thinking twice, because we are worried about the reaction?

 

And we notice, Reader, when you turn equity lessons into events instead of building it into your everyday teaching. We notice when you inform (let’s call it what it is: warn) families before discussing equity in the classroom. We notice when you give families the chance to opt their child out of lessons on equity.

As a queer parent, when I get a letter home “informing me” about an upcoming lesson where the class will be talking about a “challenging topic,” it signals to me that the educator and the school behind this letter consider this topic to be controversial. That there will be different points of view and that those have to be “respected.”

But my life is not a point of view. I have an absolute, inalienable, unassailable RIGHT to exist. 2SLGBTQ+ people are not a matter of debate, we are not an opinion – our existence is objectively right and we have an obligation, as educators, to promote and defend that existence just as fervently as we do all others.

When you leave space for debate, when you “respect all points of view” in your classroom, you’re telling your queer students and colleagues that you think it’s okay that some people believe that their existence is wrong.

And we notice that.

We notice when you refer to teaching about 2SLGBTQ+ as a challenging topic. Why is it challenging? 

Does it make you uncomfortable? Examine that, because that’s some problematic nonsense right there. 

Do you feel like you don’t know enough? Then educate yourself, just like you probably look up half of the Science curriculum every time you change grades. Or maybe that’s just me.

Are you scared of having to defend your teaching? Your board and union have both taken public stances in defense of 2SLGBTQ+ rights and they’re protected in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so settle down.

Do you think you’re going to face a lot of questions from students that you may not know how to answer? Isn’t that… pretty much a daily experience in teaching, no matter what subject? Embrace learning WITH your students.

I’m glad that it’s becoming more commonplace to talk about 2SLGBTQ+ experiences, identities, and perspectives in class, but if you feel like you need to or even can warn your students’ families before discussing equity in the classroom, quite frankly, you aren’t talking about equity often enough.

 

Finally, I want you to know all the good things I notice, too.

I notice when you introduce yourself with your pronouns.

I notice when you don’t say “moms and dads” to your students.

I notice when you teach with books showing queer experiences – both as the lesson itself and without making the character’s queerness be THE POINT, because hey, we’re also just regular people doing regular things and it doesn’t all have to be about being queer.

I notice when you tell your students about the gender neutral washroom on their First Day of School tour.

I notice when you don’t say “boys and girls” to get your students’ attention.

I notice when you embrace inclusive intramural teams.

I notice when I can’t find any of the 2SLGBTQ+ picture books because they’re all out in colleagues’ classrooms being used.

I notice when I walk by your students and overhear them talking about what they’re learning in class.

I notice when students feel safe to explore their identity in your classroom.

I notice when students feel safe to come out in your classroom.

I notice when you don’t whisper “gay” like it’s a bad word.

I notice when you don’t wait for me to be the one to say, “This long standing practice is problematic and rooted in homophobia. Can we change it?”

 

There’s a long road ahead of us. When educators are more scared of community backlash than they are of harming their students, we have to call that out.

Your inaction is causing harm.

Your fear is causing harm.

Your students deserve better than that.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Building Inclusion, Challenging Topics, Equity, Gender, LGBTQ2S

On Being a Queer Student in Ontario Schools

Recently, there was a PD day in my board where the morning was dedicated to equity training. We started with a discussion about a book that has been provided for every school in the OCDSB titled George. 

If you’re unfamiliar with the book, here is a brief synopsis from Scholastic Canada: 

A bright, bold debut about a girl who was born a boy, but refuses to let that stand in the way of her dream.

More than anything else, George wants to play Charlotte in her fourth-grade class’s production of Charlotte’s Web. The problem is, her teacher won’t let her, because George is a boy. But George isn’t about to let that squash her dream. With the help of her best friend, George must learn to stand up for her wish — and brave a few bullies along the way.

Transcending all categories and genres, George is a pertinent and poignant middle-grade read for kids of all backgrounds.

As soon as this discussion was presented to us, I felt my heart rate increase. I debated turning my camera off (we were doing this PD remotely) so that my colleagues couldn’t see my reactions. We were given a few minutes to explore some questions about how we would approach this text in the classroom and share our thoughts on a collaborative whiteboard.

Reader, I didn’t make it past the first question: “What biases do we have that we may bring to the text?”

I didn’t make it past this question because I kept seeing the word FEAR come up on the screen in front of me. I started to sweat. My leg started shaking restlessly. I found it hard to sit still. I grit my teeth and started adding my thoughts next to theirs: 

Why do we have to “warn” families that we are going to use this resource?

This implies that there is something controversial about being queer.

As educators, we have to make students feel seen and validated.

I’m not going to go through a detailed account of how that “training” went for me. I still haven’t fully recovered. It was an incredibly difficult day to get through and I left feeling overwhelmed by how much work there is to do in education to do better for our students. I’m going to talk about that “FEAR” idea later, after I put some of this in the context of Who I Am.

What I am going to do here is challenge the idea that discussions about 2SLGBTQ+ people, perspectives, and experiences are a challenging or uncomfortable topic in the classroom. This is going to be a two-parter, so bear with me. Maybe even a three-parter. Who knows when I’ll get to the exact point I’m trying to make.

In this first part, I’m going to talk about my experience as a student in this province.

In my Twitter bio, I describe myself as “Queer AF.” My profile picture has the pan flag as a background. I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s in a small town close to Ottawa and went to Catholic school from JK to OAC (grade 13, that magical year that no longer exists).

I know many people can point to the exact moment when they realized they’re queer, but I can’t. In many ways, it feels like I’ve just… always known. Because I’ve always been queer. What I needed, as a child, was the opportunity to see myself reflected in lessons, stories, media, discussions in the classroom.

That is not what I got.

There is something wrong with me. 

I can’t tell you how many times that thought ran through my head as a child. As a teenager. As a student. I remember watching movies and shows, reading books, seeing families in the news, and trying to imagine myself as an adult. Sometimes, I could see myself in these families. Sometimes, I could see myself fulfilling the role that society was very clearly expecting me to take on.

Sometimes, though, I couldn’t. There would be moments where I’d imagine myself as a Wife to a Husband and it just felt… wrong. Like it didn’t fit.

I got older. People started developing crushes. We’d talk, as friends, about who we “liked.”

I never liked anyone. I never had crushes. That’s what I told myself, anyway, because everything we were taught was that girls would have crushes on boys, boys would have crushes on girls, and that was that. That’s how “biology” worked. 

It wasn’t until later that I realized that oh, I had crushes, they just… were all on girls.

I sat in class thinking about this often. Why was I broken? What was wrong with me? I would try to pick out boys that maybe, one day, I could convince myself I liked. Sometimes it worked, fleetingly, but most of the time, I felt indifferent.

I moved on to high school. I wrote a love letter (yes, it was immediately shared around the school, and yes, it was mortifying) to a boy. I was deeply set in my feeling that everyone can tell that I am very broken inside and I needed someone to think that no, I’m normal, see? I have crushes on boys! I’m just a regular girl! Just like everyone else!

I think I had everyone else mostly convinced that I was straight, but I had trouble making and keeping friends all the same because the depth of that feeling of otherness was overwhelming. I struggled with mental health, self-harm, depression. 

I even tried to be a Good Catholic Girl in grade 11. I became very interested in liturgies. I tried very hard to make prayer work for me. When it came time for Reconciliation, I thought, This is it. This is where I can fix everything. 

I confessed to having feelings for other girls. But also, sometimes boys! I’m– I’m redeemable, right? This is my big chance! I’ll tell the truth, I’ll pray, I’ll do my penance, and then I’ll be “better.”

And at school, in a school-sanctioned (and required) event, with school staff, I was told that I would go to hell. It confirmed my fears that I was broken. Fundamentally wrong. A sinner. Don’t you want to have children? Don’t you want to go to Heaven? Don’t you want God’s love?

These questions, thrown at me like accusations by the school chaplain, are burned in my mind. The memories are like scars. I actually wrote them down. I kept the journal where I wrote that down for years, for some… awful, self-loathing reason. I don’t know why.

I was shaken by that. My mental health declined even further. I became convinced that my mental health was just another example of how irrevocably screwed up I was as a person. I mean, everyone else around me was “normal.” People were dating. In movies and shows, everyone was straight. If a character came out in the media, it was shocking. Because it wasn’t “normal.”

I withdrew into the online world even more than I had before. I threw myself into the online roleplaying community, playing make-believe as all manner of characters from different genres. I wrote stories – so, so many stories. I read fanfiction. I learned what “slash” and “shipping” meant.

Most importantly, online, I found the queer community. It was sneaky, at first – just little glimpses of other people who were like me, hidden in their writing and the characters they played. I started to wonder if I wasn’t so alone. In time, this world of beautiful, bright, loving, ABSOLUTELY NORMAL PEOPLE helped me see that it wasn’t me that was wrong, it was the world I was expected to live in that was.

And reader, that made me so angry. I had wasted so much time hating myself, trying to fix myself, trying to be someone I wasn’t. I had hurt myself, and in the process, I had hurt my family, too. I had pulled away from them because I didn’t want to cause them pain by being their broken kid.

Furious at my own ignorance to my identity, emboldened by my online friends, determined that none of this should be this way, I came out as bisexual at school in grade 12.

The reaction was swift, decimating, and brutal. People teased. People joked. In that same journal from before, I kept track of the things people said to me: I was doing this for attention. I was saying this because I was too ugly or weird to get a boyfriend. Besides, I couldn’t be bi if I’d never even kissed a girl to know if I really wanted to. What a weirdo. What a freak. Obviously I’m screwed up, since I also have all those scars on my arms. Hey, is that why I was trying to die? Because I knew how screwed up I was?

I hid. I got quiet. I did not talk about being bi after a few weeks of that misery. By OAC, I think most people had forgotten about my moment of “attention-seeking” and moved on to some other target. It wasn’t until I had moved away and started university that I let myself explore my identity and figure out some small piece of who I am.

So. You’ve read all of that, and you’re wondering what any of this has to do with education, maybe? Maybe you think that none of the responsibility for this fell on the school, because after all, it wasn’t my teachers saying that I was a freak. It wasn’t my teachers saying that I was broken or looking for attention.

The thing is, they also didn’t normalize 2SLGBTQ+ identities. They didn’t talk about them at all. And because they never brought them into the class, not only did I sit there feeling like I was fundamentally broken because I couldn’t relate to what I was seeing – my peers internalized the idea that cis-het is the norm and everything else outside of that is deviant.

In short, school created, presented, and perpetuated a perception that being cis-het is the default. If any other perspectives ever came up, they were immediately juxtaposed with the Straight Experience. If students tries to explore queer topics in their work, they were summarily shut down, implying that there was something about it that was wrong or inappropriate for school.

School let me down.

There was a chance for school to be the place where my peers were shown a wide range of experiences, perspectives, and identities to broaden their worldview.

Instead, they perpetuated one experience and held it up as the one you’re supposed to have.

And we’re still doing it, but that’s what Part 2 of this is going to be about.

If you read all of that, thanks. There’s a lot in here that I’ve never said out loud – not to my partner, not to my family, not to my friends.

But it was time.

See you in Part 2.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Mental Health

“It’s Okay to Not Be Okay” – Is it, though?

(Content warning: Depression, anxiety, self-harm, general mental health.)

I read a really interesting article the other day about toxic positivity and how it permeates school culture. In particular, the article was discussing educator mental health and how we can’t, really, be open about what we are going through, no matter how much we hear from school boards on Bell’s spectacularly successful (and incredibly frustrating) “Let’s Talk” campaign.

I am someone who has lived with depression and anxiety for most of my life. It’s only recently that I’ve felt like I can speak openly about it with my colleagues, and that mainly has to do with more of them opening up about their own experiences first. I’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing people who really make me feel supported and safe.

Still, even in this supportive school, this quote from the article stands out to me:

“So let’s instead talk about the explicit and implied professional expectation of classroom teachers: a collectively rock-solid, unblemished, psychological “mask” of sanity and stability.”

I have felt this. I imagine we all have, at one point or another. We’re expected to set aside our personal lives when we enter the building and put on a “brave face” for our students. We’ve taught through tragedy, loss, anger, pain, fear. I have educator friends who have taught through a miscarriage, the loss of friends and family, immense personal trauma.  

It feels like there’s no room for us to have the full range of human emotion in the classroom for fear of “taking away” from our students’ experiences. Damaging our reputation or the reputation of public education. Damaging “public trust” in our field.

And yet, it’s precisely those human emotions that help us build connections to our students. While I don’t share the full depth of my experiences with my students, I do share bits and pieces – enough that they don’t feel alone with their feelings.

I have a long history of self-harm, one that started when I was fairly young and continued for many, many years. I wear the evidence most prominently on my arms, but there are other scars that are more hidden. 

When I first started teaching, I chose to wear long sleeves to “hide” my scars. There had been some people in teacher’s college who had put it in my head that I would never be hired if I had obvious signs of self-harm, no matter how old they were or how stable I was now. A few years in, I gave up the charade and just started wearing whatever I wanted. 

It was scary, at first, to open myself up in this way. By and large, most of my colleagues and students don’t notice the scars at all. I’m sure there are people that I’ve worked with for ten years who haven’t ever seen them even though I almost never wear long sleeves now.

What’s most telling, though, is that most of the people who have noticed them have assumed that they were from some kind of accident. It would never cross their mind that I have a history of self-harm. They are universally surprised when they hear me talk about my experience with depression because – wait for it – I “seem so put-together.”

I’m not, though. I’m not put-together. While I feel like I have a very good handle on my mental health now and manage it very well from day to day, it is a conscious thing to counteract my brain chemistry and instincts. There is not one day that passes where I don’t think about my anxiety and depression.

I seem “put-together” because I work incredibly hard to make people think that. I do it because that’s the culture of schools: stay strong, stay positive, smile, be brave. You’re made to feel that being open about your struggles would somehow influence your students, that you would project your experiences onto them.

That isn’t what really happens, of course. There was a year where I had a group of older students who were very observant and compassionate. One of them asked about my scars one day, and we had already spent a lot of time talking about mental health that year as a class, so I told them a little bit about my history.

It was terrifying to tell them anything. I worried about backlash. I worried about them treating me differently. My students, of course, didn’t do anything like that. Their parents didn’t call my principal and demand my resignation. Nothing happened except that my students knew something about me as a human being who has been through some very human experiences.

Several months later, a student came to me to talk. They were worried about their friend, who was saying and doing some worrying things. The student felt that they could approach me, they said, because of what I had shared in class. They knew that I would understand. A few months after that, another student came to me. This time it was about them – just wanting to talk to someone who understood what it was like to feel these things.

Because I wasn’t wearing my mask, my students knew that I was safe to talk to. I saw them. That was huge.

Like so many of these blog posts I make, I don’t really know where I meant for this to go. If I had infinite time, I could refine this and make it some kind of cohesive whole, but here I am writing my blog post at the eleventh hour (… literally, it’s 11pm and I have to get this done by midnight!).

I guess I just want us to think about the message we are sending our students, consciously or otherwise, when we are forced or encouraged to “put on a brave face” for our students.

By putting on that mask, are we doing a great disservice to our students, instead? We think we’re being “strong” for them, that it makes us do our job better, but I fear that many people haven’t stopped to consider the message this sends to our students.

At the height of my depression and self-harm, I felt isolated. Broken. Wrong. I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone because no one would understand. I didn’t know how I would explain it to anyone without sounding “crazy,” and I worried that I would be seen as a failure if anyone found out. I couldn’t let down my family, my teachers, what few friends I had.

Because everyone always seemed so put-together, I felt like I had to be an outlier. I had to be an anomaly. And that meant telling anyone was not an option.

This same thing happens with adults. It’s so hard to sit in a room and feel like you’re the only one who isn’t okay. But you’re never alone, and we owe it to ourselves and to each other to stop pretending that we’re all fine all the time.

It’s okay to not be okay. We’ve heard it a thousand times in the past year. But are we going to see meaningful change within our profession?

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Equity, Local Involvment

The ETFO Annual Meeting – We need you!

The other day, I received one of my favourite e-mails of the year from my local: it’s time to put our names forward for the election of our delegation to the ETFO annual meeting!

If you aren’t familiar with the annual meeting, it’s an annual event where ETFO members from across the province gather in Toronto to do union business. We hear reports from committees and the general secretary; move, debate, and vote on resolutions, which can change the direction of the union or compel the union to take action; debate and pass the budget; vote for who will represent us on the Provincial Executive.

That sounds boring, doesn’t it? Except it ISN’T. It’s exciting getting to hear passionate, knowledgeable voices from around the province. You hear perspectives from a wide range of ETFO members whose voices you may not have heard otherwise. You’re confronted with ideas and issues that you may never have considered before. You also have a chance to get up and speak your truth on topics that matter to you.

Coming from a small town, I didn’t have a sheltered upbringing at home, but overall, my experience in Ontario was very… limited. Homogenous. White. Cis-het. Christian. I’ve spent most of my adult life unlearning a lot of the attitudes, stereotypes, and completely incorrect teachings I was exposed to growing up. The ETFO annual meeting has proven to be a truly incredible place to learn from people whose voices I didn’t hear growing up – both through the people who get to speak and through the people who aren’t represented on the floor.

I don’t want to suggest that the event is a purely joyful, wonderful experience. There are moments every year where I am frustrated, angry, fired up, disappointed. There’s an imbalance on the floor when it comes to who speaks, how Robert’s Rules are used, who’s in the room. I’ve heard some things that make me shake with anger. I’ve heard some things that break my heart. I’ve seen voices be silenced by louder, more privileged voices who know how to leverage the system in their favour.

Ultimately, that’s why I think it’s so important that more people become aware of what the meeting is, why it’s a valuable opportunity, and why we need some fresh new voices there. I’m admittedly a regular, having gone several times – and yet, when I’m there, I feel like I’m still a newbie. There are people there who have been to the meeting for twice as many years as I’ve been a teacher.

It’s time. It’s time for some different voices to be heard.

Does any of this sound exciting to you? Interesting? Worth checking out? Then you should put your name forward to be considered for your local delegation! (If SOME of this sounds interesting but you’d rather not have voting rights and want a different role, there is also a wide range of volunteer opportunities that you can seek for the annual meeting. I have never done any of them, so I can’t speak to them, but many people from my local have attended in various capacities and speak highly of that side of the experience as well!)

Every local has a slightly different process for electing delegates to the annual meeting. In mine, we put our names forward in February and hold an election at a general meeting. We set aside specific spots for new delegates and another set of spots for delegates from designated groups (racialized members, women, 2SLGBTQ+). We bring more delegates than we can have on the floor so that we can rotate throughout the day.

If you don’t know what the process is in your local, I urge you to contact your steward or someone in your local and find out how delegates are elected. Maybe you’ll go and decide it isn’t for you – but maybe you’ll go and find out that you love it.

If you do wind up there, you’re always welcome to drop me a line. I LOVE helping new delegates with the ins and outs of the meeting, and I’m always ready to chat with fellow educators.