Not really. But my time on Haida Gwaii for my CFE was an opportunity to “unlearn” many of the preconceived notions and ideas that I had about teaching and schools. I was posted at a school called George M. Dawson Secondary, located in a city called Masset on the northern tip of Haida Gwaii. The school itself was quite a small school owing to the small population in Masset, and each class had anywhere between 4 to 10 students in it. Instead of teaching any classes, I behaved more as a classroom assistant and observer, occasionally adding details and ideas to the teacher’s lesson to foster students’ engagement and bring a new perspective to things.
One thing I definitely no longer know is whether the BC school rankings are a valid way to consider schools and students. The day before my flight back to Vancouver, my host family brought me a newspaper and showed me the BC school rankings (which had just been published at that point). To my dismay, GMDSS was ranked the second worst high school in BC for 2015. I remember feeling a sense of shame that we still rank students and schools in this way. Somehow someone sitting in an office (probably in the lower mainland somewhere) saw fit to just look at the standardized test scores and assorted anecdotal information from GMDSS and use it to rank it one of the worst schools in BC. But what I saw with the students was quite different. They were very engaged with the curriculum. When they wanted to learn about something or were curious, they had an endless stream of relevant and illuminating questions. They all had areas of interest and were passionate about pursuing them, whether it was indigenous art, history, issues in media, forestry, or otherwise. But the rankings said nothing about these- only that their provincial exam scores were low. What a preposterous and idiotic way to look at students and schools.
I think this is important to me as a teacher because, even if I didn’t see the symptoms that the rankings saw in GMDSS, I saw that the students were affected by this reputation in very tangible ways. Many of the students had a chip on their shoulder, reacting very negatively to any feedback and my directions which were given in hope that they would use it to improve their learning. Many students refused to care about their studies because, in their own words, “we’re a crappy school in a crappy neighbourhood anyway.” How can I discourage this attitude in students? How do I create an environment in which students, without being overwhelmed by their negative reputation, can construct a positive learning environment for themselves?