“Education must not simply teach work — it must teach life.”― W.E.B. Du BoisFERGUS, ONT.—There are times when Colinda Clyne finds herself acting on her traditional responsibilities in a very public way. In July 2018 when the Ontario government cancelled pre-arranged summer sessions to revise and look at the curriculum to incorporate Indigenous content, Clyne, who is the Indigenous curriculum lead for the Upper Grand District School Board, felt compelled to call it out.It was her tweet that alerted the rest of the province that this wasn’t business as usual, that the government was reversing revisions that had been put in place in response to the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.Clyne, who is Anishinaabe, talks about her responsibilities as bear clan member: medicine and healing, policing and justice. “I can tell you, I have been policing other people since I was 2 years old,” she said in a café in Guelph.At a workshop on Grade 7 and Grade 8 curriculum enhancements at the Wellington County Museum and Archives in Fergus in November 2018, Clyne told teachers, “When I look at the new curriculum additions, I know about half of them. So don’t feel badly.“I’m asking you to be vulnerable in embarking on work that you’re not confident about,” she said.Making headway on the anti-oppression continuum is multi-layered work for teachers. If critical self-reflection is the foundation of that work and recognizing the hidden curriculum is the next step, a logical progression is engaging in an official curriculum that explicitly includes non-European viewpoints and knowledge.This means teachers have to know what they don’t know.Clyne asked the teachers to write their hopes from the workshop on one sticky note and fears on another, which she then posted on a wall in two clusters. “What I see coming up a lot is that people are worried that they don&# ...
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