I grew up in a small town, so for a long time I had an extremely biased point of view because that’s how living in a small town can sometimes be. However, once I moved into Regina, I had my eyes opened to the truth of people, rather than racism and lies about other people. I went to Balfour which was a very diverse school in terms of the people and in terms of what languages you’re exposed to when first entering the school. As you walk throughout the school, there was Aborginal culture seen throughout and I saw more projects develop throughout my highschool career. With this alone, my biases have changed. When first entering University/the classroom, my biases were a lot less educated and aware which means I was likely bringing in unchallenged racism, sexism, etc. I say unchallenged because I didn’t even realize what I was thinking until University brought me to think about my own thoughts. I struggled through the first two years, but now I often question what I’m thinking and always asking myself “is this the truth or a bias?” Now, I’m not perfect but I am doing what I can for the sake of my students and their futures. I believe being educated and challenging is one way that we can unlearn/work against these biases because it really makes you examine yourself, your thoughts and how you were raised in terms of biases.
There were many single stories in my school, especially in the favor of European/white people. In Social Studies, when discussing Residential Schools and Aboriginal Issues, we often discussed all of the negative things that happened to Aboriginal people, but what the European colonizers did were barely discussed or it didn’t seem as bad as it really was. As I got older, as I was more educated, there were different truths that began to unfold and those stories then had different truths to them. However, it made me really think about what we are being taught and what many educators valued as important and whose stories were truly more important. Not only does this connect to subject areas, but it can also connect to future students. Often, children who comes from a family that is struggling are often categorized as a difficult child, or a child that has no interest in being in school. Having this bias tagged on their head makes it difficult for the child to navigate through life and for future educators to view them any differently. Single stories can be a very negative, biased thing that many children, family or specific groups of people live with on a daily. Listening to all of the stories, with different perspectives allows the educators or students to hear everything that went on and how it affected everyone.
Nicole's Blog 