As far back as I can remember, I've always loved September. New school supplies. Getting back to a routine. However, I know not everyone welcomes the dawn of a new school year with joyful anticipation or optimism. This is understandable. Schools have not always been a safe or welcoming place for all children.
For much of the history of public education in Canada, school-age children who had sensory, physical, and/or cognitive disabilities were segregated from their peers by being kept at home or placed in institutions. In the 1960s, school divisions began programming for these children but continued to segregate them from their peers by placing them in separate schools and/or classrooms. By the 1970s and 1980s, general education classrooms were becoming more-and-more inclusive. Over three decades later, there is still a long way to go to make sure all our schools are accessible spaces where all children can thrive.
Since the colonial era, Indigenous peoples have been subject to forced assimilation under the guise of schooling. At residential schools, students were isolated, and their cultures were disparaged and scorned. This amounted to children leaving these institutions disoriented and insecure, with the feeling that they belonged to neither Indigenous nor settler society. We are still grappling with the effects of this racist and colonial education policy in the form of intergenerational trauma. Today we correct for some of the harm by working to embed Indigenous ways of knowing and being into our schools and classrooms.
All of this to say that schools haven't always been spaces where every child feels accepted, valued, and/or safe. We can't change what happened in the past, but in St. James-Assiniboia School Division we continue to work to make our schools safe and more inclusive for each one of our students because every child deserves to feel the joyful optimism that I feel each September.
With that said, I would like to wish everyone a happy and joyful start to the new school year.
Holly Hunter
Chair of the Board of Trustees
St. James-Assiniboia School Division
For more information on Trustee Hunter, visit her bio.
