Nya Richards

Analyze. Define. Plot. Evaluate. Outline. These command terms are the words I thought were missing from my lexicon. Leading me this unwavering feeling of displacement in an IB CAIS school, as someone who envisioned themselves returning to the public board that raised them. Thankfully, the profession I chose is a reflective practice that calls upon the teachers to do much more than ‘fail at excelling in the field’ [from the adage : If one cannot not do they teach]. The profession calls upon practitioners to do much more than provide a simple set of to be instructions for the success of those they are teaching, it even requires more than triangulation as we are taught in Teacher education programs. To be successful in this profession, teachers must become educators who are willing to engage in fractal assessment of the needs of their learners. 

Long since my time as a student in Canada’s second largest public board, in the big sea of the PDSB, as a student, I experienced the need to have students pursue careers that would effectively change the world. Whether that be from the earthquakes in Haiti, the injustices occurring in the African continent to children being forced attempt to heal from a flawed decolonization strategy, or the influx of refugees Canada saw between 2010s to 2020s. These topics are reflected in the public education system to now generate understanding in what is now being called Global Studies. These are the courses I fell for in school. The intellectual engagement of understanding how the world came to be utterly so complex. With my first experience in the IB, I have learned I was fascinated with how systems operate. This course at my school, reinforced my subconscious feeling that, maybe the words were just that. This is a historical concept via societies varying weight into language (as can historically be seen though latins replacement to french then french to english as the ‘professional’ global language). A concept discussed in my first year of post-secondary education at Brock University via the adage, I learned during my first post-secondary years at CHYS 1F90 from Professors Hannah Dyer and John McNamara: “childhood is contingent on time and space”. I have learned in the IB that these topics are covered within Category Three / Individuals & Societies embedded in many of the MYP Courses.

So, with teachers as more than transferrers of understanding [than, just passing on knowledge,] they have the capacity to support, not just the development of affective skills for success. Teachers can begin implementing themselves in the system that can help to repair and strengthen Canadian society; alike the Japanese art of kintsugi. Rather, these ‘teachers’  are educators who consistently perform fractal assessment that supports the collective providership to their learners. Education here is not about the language, it is about the ability to connect language ([concepts]; the unspoken need for a senior qualification, the specialization of how language is used within a subject). I have been reminded throughout my short time in CAIS, that relationship-building is foundational to successfully “teach” anything. To affectively educate someone else common understanding, gives a sturdy foundation to establish more; not through the command terms, but using our own external social-emotional understanding (SEU) to conduct fractal assessment of their students’ learning environments efficacy. Thus, being able to provide for students the workable solutions that support them in authentically and agentically navigating the world around them. I will explore this concept through future discussion of a post-modern bank model metaphor; not to be confused with the Freire Banking Model.

_______________________________________________________________________

“I’m not the kind of guy to complain about 5s but my Mom wants me to get 6s now”, an authentic conversation a student had with his peer when walking from Community Break to his next class. This is the language that I truly needed to understand. Not for its literal meaning of [command] terms but the relational and fractal understanding needed to educate rather than ‘teach’; moving towards teaching students to be the fisherpersons of their own lives not reply on someone else to bring them fish. The IB can seem to students as the top of the educational hierarchy. 

This is, after all, how I saw the system before joining CAIS and my school in August. From my own experience as a student I saw three tiers of learning accessible to students and the tier that you’re in dictates the likelihood of you being able to find success in certain fields of work as they shift. This is something students are inadvertently told in the French Immersion (F.I.), ‘you need to stay in French cause it will help you get a job’, but that statement misses the real educational value of diverse language instruction; that learning a language requires a different intelligence (Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences). I had seen F.I. students in the middle of the pyramid, matched with the public-catholic school (which heavily focuses on moralistic education and can have more funding access through papal or church affiliations). With, the base of the pyramid being the generalized public schools. In my experience these students feel the least hopeful towards their own agentic and authentic capacity at a systemic level; because they have been told the narrative that without two languages they will likely never surpass their F.I. or IB peers. The IB was at the top of the pyramid, specifically schools like John Fraser and Glenforest; these were the schools where students regularly went to the Ivey (Western Ivey). This is not to say that IB students do not struggle with agentic and authentic learning capacity, only it is not as regularly recognized as being a struggle due to their location in the student-minded-educational-hierarchy.

Students understand the model of education because they have spent seven to eleven years in it by the time they reach secondary school. But here’s what’s fundamentally different about their childhood compared to mine: they’re navigating a post-modern, crisis-affected, globalized society shaped by post-Cold War geopolitics and COVID-19. As I learned at Brock, childhood is contingent on time and space—and the “space” these students inhabit demands earlier agency and responsibility than previous generations experienced. This is the tall order for Category 3 educators: providing students with skills to adaptively balance the complexities they grapple with daily. Soon—sometimes seemingly instantaneously—they transition from learners to providers.

A colleague from COSSOT Relay Leadership team (who previous worked at the College but is now in a different role within COSSOT Relays lead schools) shared a metaphor that illuminates this shift: the educator-student relationship mirrors a bank-teller-client model—but not in the way Freire envisioned. This is a post-modern bank system that recognizes something fundamental about today’s students: the “time and space” they inhabit demands that they become co-account holders earlier than ever before. The parent cannot always maintain control of the account (as the Age of Majority and Accountability Act recognizes), and students understand this intuitively. This is where CAIS and Cohort 21 supported me in understanding which terms would be beneficial to students taking agentic, authentic control of where they choose to contribute in the world. As the student mentioned, he’s not concerned about getting 5s—his progression pathway is clear to him through living the experience of learning. But now he must communicate why he feels his achievements are agentic and authentic.

Students have long since been told that they are to go to the bank with their parents, learn how to take money out (extraction knowledge) and then model how the money can be used. Upon entering secondary school students are told variations of what their future role as co-account holder is going to be. They know it is about time for them to begin taking the money out and going to the bank for themselves, along with the added responsibility of learning how to use or spend it wisely. With the post-modern aspect to them being the need to self-assess their usage of the bank. This is where conflicting messages begin to arise. Educators encourage agentic learning, while other stakeholder may push students to ‘wisely’. But to whose definition, this is the value of authentic and agentic education for the student to instruct and embed balance holistically in “how” they engage with leaning; without limiting themselves. Thus, the stakeholders as Bronfenbrenner states in his Ecological Systems Theory must recognize the need to understand that educators are constantly engaging in fractal assessment of the learners on behalf of the bank, not just those in their teller-line. Often, needing to further consider where their client might be going to ensure they give them the correct “division of bills” (to avoid dispute between the co-accountholder(s) and the bank as an institution.

Students know that they are learning to be in control of their own bank account. Students know that they are soon to be the main account holder, co-holding an account can only exist for so long in a post-modern society so hyper focused on individuality. Students know that they are okay with the “5” bills, yet understand that someone might have wanted them to get “6” bills. Yet students are still developing cognitively and emotionally. Thus, my focus this year has been identified as: How might we… establish effective relationships that empower students to become agentic stakeholders in their education? Learning how to communicate with students who have that understanding. Students in the other two tiers of the educational hierarchy impose expectations on themselves, expecting to produce or risk “falling” from their position in the educational “hierarchy”. Refocusing on the holistic understand necessary to participate in knowledge and learning. They are students living at the top of the educational hierarchy in Canada by no choice of their own. At my school, we strive to teach the students about providing the private benefit to the collective/public – this is the co-education of the IB Cat 3 and the OSSD History subject I chose which allowed me into this space. These IB terms are supportive of their ability to express to other bank-account stakeholders (Bronfenbrenner, EST) that the student is on the track to have the necessary skills for success using the money they have [l]earned, in the way that the student authentically request from the teller. 

Teaching students to understand their agency and empowering them to define success not through the ATLs, but relationally; the personal project is a prime example of agentic and authentic engagement which can be possible in the IB. At my school UCC, collective value is reinforced through the five pillars of: Community, Learning, Pluralism, Wellbeing, and Service. These support students in understanding that while they might be several people telling them how to spend the bills they have taken from the teller. It is crucial to affirm their authority, such that they can spend the money how they wish. Empowering them in an authentic way (Wellbeing, Learning). Others will always have opinions about how someone should spend money – because they’re not the ones actually spending it [adage: it’s always easier to spend money when it’s not your own]. These school pillars are supportive to the students’ development of agentic and authentic leadership of their banking accounts, by way of achieving the underlying mission of my CAIS school, UCC, to educate as a private school for public purpose (Service & Community). While the fractal assessment piece conducted by the educator engages in pluralistic agentic developing of affective environments supportive to multiple students identity-affirming; which educators are called upon to do as an epistemology of educating.

While students live, within this system and clearly understand it from their relationality, educators must prepare them to live within [possibly fractaled] systems and manage their own accounts. While simultaneous and consistently balancing the different expectations of their co-account-holders, that their money be used to protect different personal interests within current society (Community, Wellbeing, Learning); these frameworks are acknowledged in various districts of education as the learning skills (i.e., executive functioning). This is what my understanding of command terms has developed to be in the IB: a language they are familiar with responding to. My experience in CAIS and Cohort 21 has deepened my understanding of these students who sit at the top of this education hierarchical system with depth.

Cohort 21 reminded me of something fundamental: inquiry-based agentic learning is what drew me into the field and I have the power to provide those spaces for students now. The inquirer design and model for learning is what excited me most about “Teacher” as a profession. I’m grateful to work in an environment where students take genuine pride in their learning within CAIS and my school because it has truly allowed me to develop into myself as a new(er) educator, with community and counsel. Most simply, establishment of an understanding, supportive relationships is key to success. Students already know stress and work – that’s why students need educators who can conduct the fractal assessment, to help them find and learn balance. With this as a point on the educators fractal assessment, the foundations for establishing an effective learning environment, are well within any the capacity of community or system.