What we heard about the experiences of families and caregivers in our Listening Forums allowed us to see 12 themes and takeaways. These were shared with participating families and caregivers on November 10, 2022.

Quotes from families and caregivers have also been included, to directly link their experiences to the themes.

Caregiver Burden

Alleviating the extra labour

Takeaway Quotes
Acknowledge the added burden that marginalized families experience having to engage with oppressive and colonial systems and structures. We must work to alleviate this burden. Caregivers experience the system as, “being designed to be difficult for them.”

Accountability

Responding to inappropriate behaviour from staff and students

Takeaway Quotes
Write policies and procedures using an anti-oppressive, anti-racist approach. Ensure that they are upheld. “If they knew that they can’t say things or they would be held accountable there is no way that a teacher would respond or react the way they do”

Lack of Trust

Limited efforts to build trust with community

Takeaway Quotes
As a system, we assume that caregivers trust us. In fact, that is not always the case for many marginalized caregivers whose trust may have been broken over time. We need to continue establishing ways of developing trust with caregivers. “There’s barely any community members here in this meeting… And again that speaks volumes to lack of trust that the community has towards the school board…”

Making Space

Centering the voices of marginalized community members

Takeaway Quotes
Establish improved ways to allow for sharing and listening with the family and caregiver community. “…feeling of banging my head against the wall, because no one could hear me.”

Representation in the Curriculum

Current learning material represents a single narrative

Takeaway Quotes
Balance truth telling and fulsome history without giving into:

  • deficit framing,
  • context of resistance, resilience, joy and strength
 “When you look around the classroom and our communities, it’s very different than what we see in our children’s learning material.”

Improving Representation

Reflecting the student body

Takeaway Quotes
Increasing the representation of school staff takes intentional efforts with:

  • Policies and procedures that will result in actual positive change
  • Recognition that representation is a starting place
 “Representation…it does make a huge difference in our children’s lives…somebody that looks like you as your educator, as your teacher, as your guidance counsellor, as somebody to look up to.”

Navigating the System

Who do you go to and how do you get there?

Takeaway Quotes
Identify and remedy the current barriers that impact caregivers’ ability to access:

  • Information
  • Supports
  • Resources
 “I would say that if I was not an educated person, not having language or having the knowledge, it’d be harder to navigate and to have those conversations and to advocate for my child.”

Professional Development

Increasing staff competence and capacity

Takeaway Quotes

Staff need to be held to high expectations and given opportunities to learn so they can prevent and respond to harm.

School leadership must support educators in their learning and growth to shift the school culture.

 “Nobody’s ever tried to understand these things or practice these skills or develop those mechanisms [tools] before it comes up and hits them in the face for the first time…”

Streaming

The ways in which deficit thinking* impacts student’s future

Takeaway Quotes
Educators significantly impact the life trajectories of students facing barriers in education through streaming. Efforts to de-stream the ways beliefs, systems and structures work are fundamental to student success. “This is ableism, and what we’re navigating is a whole bunch of unconscious biases with regard to ableism. And if we address that head-on, we might be able to break down some barriers like these assumptions”

Intergenerational Impact of Discrimination

Pain and harm ripples through families and communities

Takeaway Quotes
Building trust must be trauma and oppression-informed. “…I didn’t realize that the things that were happening to me were due to the systemic racism, and I really internalized those things and thought they were my fault.”

Use and Collection of Data

Evidence-based decision-making

Takeaway Quotes
Better use existing data to inform change within the system. Communicate this process to the caregiver community. “…accountability or ways that they can measure the ways in which this training is actually changing the culture and changing the system.”

Working Together

Honouring the value and input of community

Takeaway Quotes
Find ways to honour and learn from the lived experiences of caregivers in our system and take seriously the feedback and input they provide. “Never once have I been asked anything like this or been invited to give feedback on what it’s been like for us.”

Glossary of Terminology

  • *deficit thinking is the idea that students from various marginalized groups fail in school due to their internal deficiencies