Creating Space, Closing Gaps

As stated in last week’s blog, this week I want to explore the idea of ‘gaps’.  In particular the ‘education gap’, the ‘achievement gap’ and the knowledge gap.  What are they, and how are they defined?  It’s a good time to be thinking about these different kinds of gaps and what they mean.

That’s because last Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and National Chief Shawn Atleo announced a ‘retooled’ plan for First Nations education that included the notion of jointly developed legislation, financial resources for operation and maintenance and a renaming of the education legislation to the First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act.  When asked about how much control First Nations would have, Prime Minister Harper is said to have replied, “Well, there has to be standards.”  Which begs the question – whose standards?

In the hours following the announcement, individuals and organizations tweeted their reactions or released statements to the press.  Some First Nation communities and organizations reaffirmed their rejection of the legislation or expressed they were feeling cautious and wanted to hear more details.  I think it’s possible that many members of the general public would not really understand why First Nations were not more excited. And I also think that this lack of understanding originates from what is called the knowledge gap.  But let’s start with the other two first – just what exactly are the education and achievement gaps?

Quick Notes:

The Education Gap

• The education gap is measured by the length of time it will take First Nations to catch up with the graduation rates of mainstream Canadian student.  Estimated at 27 – 28 years by these reports by Auditor General Sheila Fraser.

The Achievement Gap

• Sometimes measured by comparing high school graduation rates of provincial and First Nation students.
• Also measured by comparing standardized testing scores of provincial and First Nation schools.   (Think EQAO for Ontario)
• In Ontario, a stated goal of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit Policy Framework.

This report also does a good job of describing the achievement gap, as well as the knowledge gap and the resource gap.

Knowledge Gap

When I say knowledge gap, what I mean is that a lot of people are not aware that Indigenous Peoples have inherent rights (rights that cannot be delegated by another government) and treaty rights (rights that flow from internationally recognized legal arrangements and that allow non-Indigenous to settle on Indigenous peoples territories and share in the resources) that pertain to education.

And while this is what I see, I also realize, I personally can’t blame people for not having the benefit of the whole story.  Provincial curriculum doesn't really teach the history of the Treaties and the importance of the treaty relationship, choosing instead to situate events like Idle No More as incidents within a Canadian social, historical and political landscape as it does in the Canadian and World Studies Grade 9 and 10 Curriculum.

Now I realize that some people are happy that at least Idle No More got a mention here, but there are big, huge, gaping opportunities missed all throughout this document to simply state what the Treaty rights of non-Indigenous people actually are and then explore how to make the relationship more empowering for everyone – all the while teaching how/why governments are organized in such and such a way.  I’m going to be picking on this particular curriculum in future posts a bit but not because I’m trying to be mean - because I genuinely want to find ways to create more space for building understanding using the tools available.  Stay tuned.

Mind the Gaps

So.  We’ve established there are gaps.   But those gaps are more than numbers. They’re people, humans, spirits.  They’re students who are not interested or not doing well with the curriculum and system that Ontario or other provinces have designed.  (Mind you – this doesn’t mean that every student is doing poorly, there are those who are doing quite well, I’m sure). They are kids who feel like the schools don’t support who they are and want them to check their identity at the door. And sometimes, students are deciding they don’t want to walk through that door at all. It appears that policy makers want to see these incidents as symptoms of an education and achievement gap that when closed, will reap vast economic benefits for the growth domestic product of Canada.

I think these are assumptions are made and perpetuated because of the prevailing lack of understanding about who Indigenous Peoples actually are and what relationship actually exists by way of Treaty and other constructive arrangements.  There are things that mainstream education policy and decision makers simply don’t know about Indigenous Peoples - and it shows.  But there's no indication that the ministries of education are going to create awareness of fundamental concepts like Treaties, self-determination, and Indigenous rights and responsibilities any time soon.  Fine.

That doesn’t mean that First Nations have to follow suit and do the same – much less be judged for what they do according to standards controlled and set by legislation designed by Indian and Northern Affairs (which are provincial standards, really).   There are other gaps that First Nations are concerned about that are just as (if not more) important than whether or not our kids can describe the parliamentary system.  Here’s one that comes to mind and because I can’t think of a more creative name just yet, let’s call it the language stabilization gap.

• How many years will it take for us to increase the number of speakers that we have of our Indigenous languages?
• What is our vision for language learning?  What are our principles? Our values?
• What measures will we need to take and who will take them?  When?
• How will we empower our students to love learning? To be accepting and supportive of their classmates?
• How will we encourage parents and communities to take part in the learning process?
• What policy supports will need to be in place to meaningfully support language learner?
• Who will develop the resources?
• How will we build interdisciplinary subjects like non-indigenous concepts of language, science and technology into our plan?
• And, how will we make sure these subjects don’t take over as they have in the past and sometimes are doing today?

Do More with Less

I haven’t been to every First Nation community out there, but of the ones I have visited there are tons of good ideas and plans about how to answer these questions – many of them inspired by their Nation’s original instructions and beliefs.  For myself, I truly believe communities are the best placed to close the gaps that are the most important to them. But even when a community decides the most important gap is a language and culture gap, there’s still pressure on those communities to simultaneously close the gaps that matter to the federal and provincial government, and always with less funding than their provincial counterparts. Not only is this is unacceptable, it’s not clear that the new education plan will do anything to alter this dynamic.

At this point, the pretence of change is all I really see being offered with the new education plan, although it’s being heralded by the AFN as ‘historic’.  It’s hardly difficult to commit money prior to an election and since four major education programs will sunset (end) in 2015 it’d be very easy to re-profile those program dollars and make it look like a new announcement.  But the next few weeks will be more telling.  Until then, here is some early analysis of the proposed education plan, courtesy of the Chiefs of Ontario, the First Nations Education Council of Quebec and Pam Palmater.

I may sound jaded here, but I have no illusions that the AFN is going to stand up for our inherent right to education – I’m not really sure they can see how they might be compromising it in the first place.  But happily, they aren’t rights holders or the real change makers.  We are.  People are.  Our community members are.

So what do we really think? What standards matter most to us? What are our principles and standards about language use in school or across Turtle Island? How do we want our kids to feel in class? What are our principles and standards about teaching?  About creating classroom communities? About learning and collaboration? What gap do we most want to close?

And how are we going to close it?

S

The Curse of the Compulsive Edit

I started work on the second draft of my story this week and immediately fell victim to compulsive editing syndrome.  I had gotten all the way through Chapter Three by the time I realized what was happening.   I had done exactly what Stephen King’s On Writing and other articles that talk about the process of the second edit advise not to do.

Having started the edit, it was hard to pull myself away from the book.  I was excited after all, thrilled with the fact that I had managed to write the basic first draft in four weeks and certain that I could manage the second draft just as quickly.

Except that I had forgotten what had made the first draft flow so quickly – a clear plan for how the story unfolded.   The truth is, characters change in the telling of a story, at least mine did.  They grow and they become something more in your head and whatever they become can often get missed on the page in the mad rush to put down word after word.   When I was finally able to peel myself away, I was able to see that things were missing.

Funnily enough, I was only able to pull myself away out of sheer exhaustion. I was researching a lot of things this week and my brain was on hyper-drive.  I wanted to do everything all at once.  Read, write, draw, research, tweet, blog, work, sleep, you name it.   But no one can do everything at once.  Instead, I had to schedule time where I could sit down and read my book all in one piece and in a way that didn’t make me want to run to my computer and start to make edits.  I did this by saving a PDF of my book and reading it off of my ipad, sticky notes at the ready – a nice tip I got from Ksenia Anske, who’s sticky board is an organizational tool I adore.

After the read through, I went back to my trusted outline, scrolled to the bottom and started to make notes of what I had found overall in the story.  This included areas where things were moving too quickly, where characters seemed to not be pulling their weight, and a backstory that was motivating my protagonist in a huge way that wasn’t evident on the page.  I noticed a huge emotional driver for my character that hadn’t been given any attention at all in the text.

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything else, so I read a bunch of articles online about people’s experience with the second edit.  Reading through the ideas and questions other people ask their story during the second edit was extremely helpful to me.  My next step will be to take what I have found and consider where I can build/write those pieces into the overall foundation of the story.   As Stephen King puts it, I need to ask myself the Big Questions about what it all means, reinforce the themes and meanings I find and scrap the things that go in the opposite direction.

So that is how I am going to be spending the rest of my Saturday and the next few weeks.  I also decided to start a new short story this weekend, something that I’ve been thinking about for the last few days.  It’s inspired by a cool little Haudenosaunee legend and also some reading and thinking I’ve been doing about Treaties and Wampum Belts.  The last few mornings I found myself waking up thinking about it, and I can already tell that working on a new project will help me stay focussed on the editing work that needs to be done on The Whirlwind’s Prophecy – the working title of my book.

Happy editing everyone! Let’s make these stories sing!

S

Let's Talk About Education!

I have many passions. Art and writing are two of the biggest ones. But I also care a lot, a ton actually, about education.  I care about education for the same reasons that most people do.  I also care about it because I realize that some things about education in our community could change for the better and because there have been (and still are) unhealthy external impacts on our education system and schools. I want our learners to have the best educational experience that we can provide and I want to be apart of building on and improving what we have.   And I know I’m not alone in this.

Recently, I’ve been having education discussions in so many different places (classrooms, kitchen tables, hallways, grocery stores, conferences) with other people who were as passionate as I was, that I decided I wanted to let a part of my blog be solely about exploring the possibilities in education.  I also wanted a space to celebrate some of the awesome teaching/learning stories that are taking place despite the wretched policy and funding frameworks that apply to First Nation schools.

I know a lot of people, educators, parents and kids who have something to say about education in our community but don’t know where to say it or where to go for current information about education. For instance, many teachers or community members I have talked to have not heard about the First Nations Education Act and had questions about it or about who the government purportedly consulted with in the design of it.  I offer the comment section of this blog as one place to contemplate, share ideas and ask questions.  I offer the blogs themselves as snapshots of as much information as I can find about current happenings on education.   I realize we all have different viewpoints and ideas to share - we aren’t always going to agree and that’s totally okay. All I ask is that if you choose to communicate here, please communicate with one another kindly, respectfully and peacefully.  No bullying please.   Other than that, welcome! I hope you find something of interest in these posts and can bear with me as I go along – this is a new adventure for me and it’s absolutely possible I’ll make some wrong turns and become tangled in thickets of thought.

In case you were wondering, I thought I would include this right from the outset. It’s a tiny list that shows how I’m absolutely not an expert but nonetheless explains a bit about who am I and where am I going to be coming from.

• Turtle Clan, Mohawk
• A sister, a daughter, an auntie
• A writer
• An artist
• A community member
• A graduate student
• A teacher
• A program writer
• A policy analyst
• A researcher
• A language advocate
• A language learner
• A person who believes everyone has a spirit, a gift and a purpose
• A person who believes that Indigenous Peoples are awesome

So that’s me.  Let’s dig in!

Like many First Nation communities across Turtle Island, Six Nations is dealing with the FNEA, a draft legislation concerning First Nations education.  I’ve personally written about the history of this legislation at length here however, the Ontario Native Education Counselling Association has good resources and background on the legislation on their website. Although the legislation is one of the factors driving the discussion about education in our community, it isn’t the only one and we’re not alone in having it.  There are movements happening in education all across the world, where people are asking questions about why education looks the way it does, what it could look like in the future and how to make it better.    It’s a big, huge conversation that I look forward to getting into.

Originally, for my next post (I plan to post every Wednesday), I had planned to talk about funding issues and how/why I plan to separate those issues from the discussion of education.   But instead, I am going to begin by writing about the gaps that are often mentioned when it comes to First Nations schools.  You know the ones I’m talking about - the ‘achievement gap’ and the ‘education gap’.   I believe that the impressions these labels create about our students and our schools are incredibly misleading and I’d like to share why I think that.  So instead of talking about funding, I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts about a different kind of gap - a knowledge gap and how I feel the knowledge gaps further cements concepts like ‘achievement gaps’ which are built on principles that are not helpful to anyone, not just Indigenous students, but teachers and learners everywhere.

Nya:weh!

Working Titles and Second Drafts

Today I am going to start on the second draft of my novel re-write.  As I mentioned here, last year I wrote a modestly sized manuscript that was flawed in various ways.  At the start of January I realized that the project needed to be rewritten completely.  I agonized over making the decision because it’s hard to walk away from months worth of work.  I wondered if I was dooming myself to another year, writing another draft of a story I had already been writing on and off for three years.  Then I realized it is never 'dooming' to get to write especially if it improves the reading experience.  This is why I can see people say it is a good thing to read a lot.  Last year, I read fifty books and this reading helped me to see that I had to follow my instincts.  And my instincts were telling me that my story was not ready for readers.

So on January 4, I committed to restarting the draft.  I actually almost started the year off with an entirely different project, one inspired by lacrosse.  I outlined the entire thing and wrote the first few chapters but the first story was eating away at me.  I wasn’t ready to let it go.  But making an outline for the lacrosse story had inspired me.   I made myself an outline for my story and set some basic goals for the first draft.  I would write as simply and cleanly as I could until I had a first draft.  I wouldn’t aim for writing an 80,000 word novel, I would just write a story with a clear beginning, middle and end. I set myself modest targets for the word count of each chapter.

By January 27, I had finished a first draft using the last two days of my winter holidays, snow days, weekends and evenings.   I wrote pretty much every day, but I took breaks in between.  My word count at the end of 23 days was 41,222.  Not an epic by any means, but most importantly, they were words I was proud of.   I was also proud because I told the story that I had imagined, I told it without getting too distracted or lost (although there’s always surprises) and I knew when I finished that there were elements of it that I wanted to flesh out that would round it out nicely.  One week in, I had adjusted the outline and I adjusted it again eleven days later.  Now this is the first time I've really used an outline.  A lot of writers I know and whose blogs I follow don’t use the outline.  I definitely agree with anyone out there who’s saying that you have to do whatever feels right for you.  But I have to say on my own behalf that having the outline was awesome because it totally helped me stay on track and organize the little inspirations/ideas that I was getting as I wrote.

Anyways.  I am happy to have given the first draft a tiny rest and I’m excited to start working on the second draft today.  I'll definitely be checking out some other blogs for tips etc, on how to move through the second draft effectively.

And finally, welcome to my new blog site - I am really excited about it!  The name of the blog has changed.  It is now my Indigenous name, written in the Cayuga language, which is Odadrihonyanisoh (Oh-da-dron-ya-nee-soh).  Some of the post formats look a bit wonky from the transition but I'll get a round to straightening them out as I go.

I made the decision to change blogs because I was finding that I was often posting about such different things (writing, education, treaty relationships, my community, itty bitty stories, journal type thoughts) with no easy way to organize the posts according to subjects.  I hope this will help anyone who happens along to explore the areas they are most interested in – even if it’s just the pictures.

Til next time, happy writing!

S

Passion, Purpose and Positivity

I spent last weekend at a Youth Engagement Forum in my community.  The event was organized by the local Six Nations youth in collaboration with the Ontario First Nations Young Peoples Council.  Alas, I’m not a youth anymore, so my role was really to assist with a bit of the planning and try to help out in other ways.  I like this role, it gives me a lot of time to listen, learn and be inspired by the leadership that young people and elders demonstrate.  Many powerful and positive messages were shared throughout the forum from youth, elders and presenters.   Here are some of the highlights that I personally took from the event:

• Everyone has a gift
• Find your passion and purpose
• Share your positive energy
• You only fail if you stop trying
• Help your community and your people
• Be good to the Creation
• Follow your original instructions

On Treaties:

1)  Indigenous Peoples are not Canadians

2) Treaties were made not signed

3) Treaties are internationally recognized agreements

Over the last week, I had read a few articles that were very negative.  One of them was about the negativity and hatred that was directed at a thirteen-year old girl who wore a sweatshirt to school that said, “Got Land? Thank an Indian.”  The second was a public statement by a Conservative MP who was defending the oil sands for creating jobs and slamming Neil Young for statements and positions he’s been taking about the oil sands through the #HonourtheTreaties tour.   I was disappointed by the attitudes of these women who were spreading this negativity around in defense of same-ness and economics.

I was disappointed because over the past few years I’ve realized that one of my dreams is for there to be clean water, a healthy climate and food systems for Indigenous and non-Indigenous families of the future. and I recognize that means I need to be aware of the very real challenges we are creating for those families and be willing to understand what I might have to give up to help ensure that future.  I read those articles, saw those negative attitudes and wondered what I could do about it without generating more negativity.  I think I got my answer this weekend.  The messages that were shared in the forum are all potential ways to be proactive without resorting to negativity.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t ‘haters’ out there – certainly, they seem to be everywhere.  I read a lot of writer’s blogs and in the last few weeks a number of them talked about having the same experiences with people, trolls or others who criticize and belittle the work that they are doing.  Once again, I found a similar message.  I don’t have to make the choice to be negative or internalize negativity because there’s another option that fits me better, an option that lets me keep making the art I have to make and share the happiness that creativity brings me with others.  Definitely, this is the choice for me.

#HonourtheTreaties