Teach and Learn with Ms. Yee

When beginning my inquiry process this fall, I asked myself what I do and do not already know about representation in classrooms. The question that I based my research and reflection on was 'What are some effective ways to ensure all students feel represented and respected in the classroom community?' taking into account that tokenism is a real possibility and is not a true representation.  As a Chinese Canadian woman, I did not often find myself feeling represented in schools. This meant that did not feel represented by the content that we were studying or the staff who surrounded me as I was growing up. I had a strong community outside of schools, where my aunties and cousins were the strong Asian role models that I needed to have. This past year, one of my professors told my class that the majority of students enrolled in education are middle-class white women. I would say this is accurate according to my experiences growing up in south-end Winnipeg. It took a while for this...

For the last three years, I have been working in Winnipeg's inner city as a youth programmer or building monitor. My role has included keeping an eye on the door and providing resources to community members, dealing with medical and violence-related emergencies, and providing a program for youth aged 6 to 18, depending on the shift I work and the location. In my time, I have also gotten to know the community and the other workers in the building. I am now familiar with the different supports and organizations in the community.  Whenever people learn about where I work, they always make a comment about how dangerous it is or they do not like that I work there. While there is more violence in inner-city communities, I know that some of the reasons are systemic. Indigenous and newcomer populations are more dominantly populating Winnipeg's inner-city. This is because of the cheaper rates of housing and the proximity of social support. These supports have come up as a result of soci...

As a social studies teacher, the integration of social justice into my methodology is not only a goal of mine but an expectation I am held to by myself and the Manitoba curriculum. Including social justice within my methodology means the integration of themes and histories that have to do with the social issues that are affecting Canadian and global populations historically and contemporarily. Within the grade 9 Manitoba social studies curriculum , a conceptual model by James Banks is provided for reference. This model was made to analyze the levels of integration of multicultural content into the curriculum. But first, what is multicultural content? To me, multicultural content means that the understandings, histories, and perspectives that I am including in my classroom come from a variety of different sources that find value in the varied voices and experiences. My understanding of multicultural content is currently informed by bell hooks and my own lived experiences as someone who ...