We are all treaty people, and it is important that we understand the role and significance of treaties and our responsibility to these important agreements. Across Canada, treaty days offer opportunities for celebration, teaching and improving our understanding of treaties. In Ontario, this takes place during the week of November 1-5. 

In preparation for this week, we have worked with educator Andrew McConnell (Anishinaabe/English, member of Nipissing First Nation) to publish a list of resources to support you with your learning and planning.

Choosing a piece of literature for your course is an important decision. Take a moment to reflect on the very small number of books you will have the opportunity to introduce to your students in any given year. Stories have the potential to help students understand different perspectives, question their surroundings, and build empathy in meaningful and communal ways. With such an important role to play, these are some of the questions we encourage you to consider when deciding how to develop a course and which texts to teach:

In this blog post Stella Kim, one of the co-writers of “Addressing Anti-Asian Racism: A Resource for Educators” and Toronto District School Board secondary science and physics teacher, shares about the process of creating this resource and how you and your colleagues can use this resource for professional learning. 

Our dear friend, mentor, and teacher, former Chief of Sagkeeng First Nation (Manitoba), Theodore (Ted) Niizhota Fontaine passed away on May 10, 2021. Theodore was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, uncle, nephew, cousin and Sagkeeng community member. He is known across Canada as an accomplished leader in First Nations and public service, a knowledge keeper, Elder, gifted author, educator and public speaker (click here for a full biography). We continue to mourn his loss, miss his presence and walk with gratitude for his friendship and for the legacy that he created with Facing History. Read our full remembrance post here. 

For many educators, back to school is a time of excitement; the idea of inspiring young readers, fostering new understanding, smelling and holding books together as a classroom community brings delight. You hope students will bee-line to the bookshelf during independent and community reading time.  

What can we do to support students during unpredictable and challenging times? How can we create communities where people hear and see each other, treat each other with dignity and respond together as a community? In this blog post, which borrows much of its content from the Back to School with Current Events teaching idea, we will share resources and approaches for addressing current events in the classroom during the first few days of school.

In this blog post, Ontario educator, Uthish Ganesh, discusses how he set the foundation for the deep and complex subject matter in the African Diaspora course by focusing the first unit on building community, centering an equity approach and creating space for identity affirming activities. This process created necessary space to explore the layers of identity and its interplay with society and build bridges of commonality, understanding and empathy between students of all backgrounds. 

June was Indigenous History Month. Throughout the entire year, we recognize how important it is to be striving towards meaningful inclusion of Indigenous histories, knowledges, ways of being and contributions. 

On Sunday, Salman Afzaal, 46, his wife Madiha Salman, 44, daughter Yumna Salman, 15, and her 74-year-old grandmother died, and Fayez Salman, their 9 year old son, remains in hospital after a horrifying hit and run targeted at the family because of their Muslim faith.  This evening, as the news unfolds, we mourn the victims and extend our deepest sympathies to their son, for whom our hearts break, and to their families, their communities, and to Muslim Canadians. 

We sit with renewed sadness for individuals and communities who have been impacted by residential schools as we mourn the loss of the 215 children whose remains were found buried at the Kamloops residential school.  Our hearts are with the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation as well as Indigenous children, communities and families across Turtle Island.

This is a time for a collective and national mourning. It is a time for acknowledgement of the ongoing work of survivors’ families and communities for truth, remembrance of loved ones and justice. It is a time for renewed calls for truth seeking, truth telling and collective action.