Close Reading: An/other Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky: Greenwashing, Curriculum, and Ecojustice5/27/2018 The central argument of Ng-A-Fook’s “An/other Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky: Greenwashing, Curriculum, and Ecojustice” is about how teacher education, curriculum and ecocritical literacy can be used to change the narrative that is evoked by the updates to the Ontario Curriculum as well as add narratives that are missing from the curriculum, which should not be. Technological progress as a solution to environmental problems is the main narrative that is educed by the curriculum and recognized by the Curriculum Council Report. This narrative is labeled as “anthropocentric and individualistic.” (Ng-A-Fook, 2010, p.45) He goes on to describe how this narrative fails to offer any solutions to the “ongoing consumptive problem of many Canadians” and is unsuccessful in providing a real-world narrative of the places in which Ontario students live.
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Healthy School Communities are a sum of many different aspects coming together in a whole-school approach. “A healthy school community promotes a culture of wellness for all its members: students, teachers, administrators, principals, staff, parents, and community partners.” (Physical & Health Education Canada, n.d.) Each of these members have an important role to play for a functioning and nurturing learning environment. Healthy eating, physical activity, sexual health, mental health, safety and injury prevention, substance abuse and addiction programs, and sleep are all concerns that must be addressed by a healthy school community. (Government of Manitoba, n.d.) In this post, I will look at each of these topics through a whole-school lens and recommendations made by government and non-government entities for each topic. I will comment on why each is important, how they are being addressed at my own school and what areas I see for growth in my school. Finally, I will make some recommendations for what individual teachers can do to meet these recommendations in their own school. Healthy Eating“Students who eat well have improved concentration, academic performance, attendance, self-esteem, behavior, and lifelong healthy habits.” (Government of Manitoba, n.d.) Some of the recommendations that are included from Manitoba’s School Food Environment that we at our school are addressing include:
Our school funded breakfast program provides a small snack for all students who want one before our opening exercises. The food for the program is baked by home economics classes, sourced from our local grocer or our school gardens, and prepared and served by volunteer students and teachers. It provides necessary food for those who often come to school hungry and a bond opportunity for all. An area that our school has room to grow in is our procurement guidelines. Recyclable food packaging, local foods, and fair-trade options need to be explored for our school to meet more of the provinces recommendations. Physical ActivityChildren who are physically active have better self-esteem and body image, better academic performance, less health risks and are more likely to continue being active into adulthood. (Government of Manitoba, n.d.) According to the 2015 ParticipACTION report card for Canadian Schools, only 9% of 5 to 17-year-olds are getting at least 60 minutes of activity per day. This is an appalling number that reflects students’ life at school and at home. Some factors that contribute to this are a sedentary lifestyle along with a loss of time for active play. Some recommendations that our school is addressing are:
Our school is a leader in our division in emphasizing the importance of outdoor play in all conditions. Our K-3 students each have a dedicated 35-minute outdoor education class every second day, with the grade 1s going out every day. Parents are made aware of the importance of risk-taking in the outdoors and many echo these sentiments at home. With limited gym space, our school has used the nearby forest as an extension of the school to meet Manitoba’s recommendations for physical education classes every day in early-years. In our rural school, transportation to and from organized sports is a barrier for many families. We’ve addressed this by arranging alternate pick-up and drop-off spots for buses as well as encouraging carpooling for staff and students. An area of physical activity that has yet to be addressed in our school is active transportation. Since more than half of our students are bused to school, they may not have the opportunity to bike or walk to school. However, we have many students that come from the town where the school is located. A walking school bus or “walking and wheeling Wednesdays” (ParticipACTION, 2015) may be ideas to consider. Mental HealthMental health initiatives are coming to the forefront of school planning, especially here in Canada. “Clearly Canada is leading global SMH [school mental health] efforts focused on mental health literacy.” (Weist et al., 2017) From awareness of mental health for all members of a school to programs targeted at individuals, the strides made in mental health in schools during my short teaching career are tremendous. This change in thinking has helped explain and normalize a previously stigmatic topic. “Mental health literacy can help reduce stigma by changing the language used to describe mental health and individuals with mental health issues.” (Government of Manitoba, n.d.) Changing language around mental health is a powerful way of changing the way people think about mental health issues and those affected by them. Evidence-based programs that promote mental health literacy in Canada have been very successful. “Experiences so far indicate that school-based MHL interventions are inexpensive, easily applied, pedagogically familiar, and sustainable.” (Weist et al., 2017) After dissecting the Joint Consortium for School Health: Positive Mental Health Indicator Framework, (2012) I found a few strengths of my school in their recommendations:
The first is a new program to our school called Handle with Care that I am partnering with our divisional social workers to offer this fall for parents of children age 4-6. It is a program aimed at educating parents of young children about what they can do to support their child’s mental health. It is four sessions, each having a different theme: building trust and attachment, promoting and enhancing self-esteem, expressing emotions, and relationships with others. (Handle with Care, n.d.) The second is our yearly, whole-school celebration of Blue Day, a day dedicated to mental health literacy. The day is planned by our student and staff social action group and divided into elementary and high school activities. Activities focus on mental health literacy in the areas of self-esteem, emotional control strategies, positive relationships and many more. Each year it is a huge success. The area of youth mentorship is one that could be explored further in our school. An advantage of living in a small community in a K-12 school is having outstanding high school students that are willing to mentor younger students in a meaningful way. Informal mentorship could easily be transitioned into a more formalized mentorship program with training opportunities for mentors. SleepThe 2016 participACTION report card opens the with title “Are Canadian Kids Too Tired to Move?” to which it answers a resounding “yes.” According to their findings, 31% of school-aged children are sleep deprived as they are caught in a cycle of low physical activity that makes it hard for them to fall asleep at night resulting in being too tired to be highly active during the day. (Participaction, 2016) The report card recommends that regular physical activity, decreased sedentary behaviors, decreased screen time, and exposure to the outdoors can all be helpful for kids sleep patterns. In our school, we offer many opportunities for physical activity both indoors and outdoors but very little is done to decrease sedentary behaviors and screen time. Each of these should be further explored and buy-in from parents and the community would be essential. What Can I Do?As an individual teacher, I can teach kids about the dangers of these unhealthy habits. A better strategy is to be a role model for healthy physical activity, mental health, sleep and eating habits. Teaching these important lessons inside and outside my classroom but also advocating for initiatives that I find can alter our school culture in a positive and sustainable way. I can show students the benefits of time spend outdoors for their mental and physical health. Our gardening program can show them the joys and sustainable advantages of growing your own food. A common theme in the solutions to so many of these issues in our school is understanding interconnectedness.
As you can see, our school is well on its way to being a healthy school community. We have done so much in the areas of mental health literacy, physical literacy, and healthy eating and still have room to grow. We’ve taken a whole-school approach and created partnerships outside our walls. There is still work to do in each of the health domains, and creating ways to do this sustainably is our unending challenge. References Government of Manitoba (n.d.) Healthy Schools. Retrieved from http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthyschools/index.html on October 2, 2017. Handle with Care (n.d.) Retrieved from handlewithcarecanada.org on October 3, 2017. Joint Consortium of School Health (2012) Positive Mental Health Toolkit. Retrieved from http://www.wmaproducts.com/jcshfulltoolkit/index.html on October 3, 2017. ParticipACTION. (2015) Archived Report Cards. Toronto: ParticipACTION; Retrieved from www.participACTION.com/reportcard on October 3, 2017. ParticipACTION. (2016) Archived Report Cards. Toronto: ParticipACTION; Retrieved from www.participACTION.com/reportcard on October 3, 2017. Physical & Health Education Canada (n.d.) Healthy School Communities. Retrieved from http://www.phecanada.ca/programs/hsc on October 3, 2017. Weist, M.D., Bruns, E.J., Whitaker, K., Wei, Y., Kutcher, S., Larsen, T., Holsen, I., Cooper, J.L., Geroski, A., Short, K.H. (2017) School mental health promotion and intervention: Experiences from four nations. School Psychology International. Vol 38, 4, 343 – 362. Two-eyed Seeing and Food SovereigntyAfter reading Deer and Falkenburg’s chapter about Indigenous food sovereignty and how it relates to food security as well as watching the video (below) Two-Eyed Seeing by Elder Albert, his wife Elder Murdena, and their colleague Dr. Cheryl Bartlett, I couldn’t help but see how the two concepts were connected in many ways. Albert and Murdena talk about how traditional indigenous knowledge and western science can no longer be seen as competing and separate views, but as two ways of seeing the same concept from different perspectives. This is beautifully related to the ideas of ‘upskilling’ Indigenous food practices. It is bringing two vast knowledge bases together to create innovative solutions to extremely complete problems. Deer and Falkenburg’s chapter talks about their research that: “explored the ways in which urban communities and organizations can ‘upskill’ Indigenous food practices such as food growing, harvesting, and production to diminish food insecurity and promote principles of Indigenous Food Sovereignty (IFS) within an urban context” In the past, I’ve explored interconnectedness in the natural world, even using a garden as an example with young students. Something I have not explored is the interconnectedness of knowledge from a social perspective and I would like to explore this further. Something that I take away from Deer and Falkenburg’s research is that idea of Food Sovereignty. This is a new term for me and I am in love with it. The notion of sovereignty is a huge part of relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples with food sovereignty as a facet of it. This really made me reflect on my own community and how food security affects it. Exploring Interconnectedness for Food SecurityLiving an hour from Winnipeg, our local grocery stores are still competing with people making a Cost-co run and are losing the battle. Our school sits in a small town with First Nations reserves on either side of it, neither of which have a grocery store. We do a lot at the school to encourage gardening and taking control of your food supply with students but it hasn’t translated into food security yet. The readings got me thinking about how I could work with our communities to move from school-based gardening programs to ones that were more inclusive of the community at large. How can communities take back control of our food in a meaningful way? One of the ways that really stuck out to me from the research was sharing “food as ceremony.” It’s about respect – especially the respect - and respect of the growth. It’s another life that you’re bringing and growing, and you’re harvesting that life form in a respectful way and putting it in your body. There’s that circle of life happening. This is something I would like to explore further in my classroom. I would love to help teach kids to respect how their food got to them. Although food security is a huge problem, I can see a really big opportunity in our community as well. Teaching students about the interconnectedness of soil, water, plants, and food (not to mention people) is such an easy way to help them become aware. I always think that once you see and touch the connections in nature, you will start finding them everywhere. We’ve started plants in our classroom a few weeks ago and helped our custodians get the flower beds ready but today was the first day that the grade 1s got to get into the food gardens. We picked weeds and dug around for thirty minutes today and I wish I had recorded their conversations. Worms, centipedes, flowers, stems, Rabbit POOP!, and stems were all part of the conversation. The student’s may not know it, but they are more affluent in nature than they were before. I am seeing the importance of food sovereignty, even with 5-7-year-olds. We choose what we want to eat because we choose what is going into our garden. I am interested to see if these kids might grow up to take back control of their food as adults as well. I am going to use the final part of The Hidden Beauty of Pollination as the activator in our next unit about pollination and butterflies. The connections that are shown by the slow motion video are so beautiful, I am hoping it will inspire my K/1s to look very closely for beauty around the flowers in our new gardens. O’Brien, C. (2016). Education for sustainable happiness and well-being. Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis Ltd. Deer, F., & Falkenberg, T. (Editors). (2017). Indigenous perspectives on education for well-being in Canada. Winnipeg: Education for Sustainable Well-Being Press. Two-Eyed Seeing (2013, July 12). Retrieved May 23, 2017, from https://youtu.be/_CY-iGduw5 The hidden beauty of pollination (2011, May 09). Retrieved May 23, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqsXc_aefKI Williams, D., & Brown, J. (2013). Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education: Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life. Florence: Taylor and Francis. |
AuthorJamie and Felsch are my names. K/1 and Outdoor Ed are my games. Archives
July 2018
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