A Conversation with Neil Debassige, Principal at Lakeview School, M’Chigeeng First Nation, Ontario
With: Neil Debassige Berkley Center Profile
June 16, 2015
Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Fellowship, in June 2015 student Caitlin Snell interviewed Neil Debassige, the principal at Lakeview School at M’Chigeeng First Nation in Ontario, Canada. Promoting mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being, Lakeview School acknowledges the traditional cultural teachings of the Anishinaabe people. In this interview, Debassige expands on the particular mission of the school and certain obstacles the education system faces, including poverty and inequity, as well as ways to effectively incorporate culture into academics.
How did you get involved in the education industry?
Well, I went to school here as a child, in this particular building, from kindergarten to grade eight. My parents are teachers: my mom was a principal before she passed, and my dad was also a principal, both of them here and in other parts of Ontario. So my foundation, and the only thing I know is this, is the life of a teacher and as a student and now as an administrator.
What are your roles and responsibilities as principal?
My 7-year-old asked me yesterday morning at breakfast, and she said, "Why is it called principal?" and I paused for a second and I said, "I'm the principal teacher, I'm the main teacher at the school," and that's the heart of the role of principal is to be the role model teacher, if you will. My youngest then said, "But you don't teach," and I said that was also a good observation, and I don't teach the way her teacher does, but my role is to help other teachers and to make their jobs easier so that they can affect the 20 students in their class. I think that for me, what makes it a little bit clearer is to really understand the role of the principal is number one: you have to want to teach. The way it happened for me, anyway, was I thought I could do an okay job of reaching 20 students in my classroom, but it felt like I could maybe expand that circle of influence.
When it comes to responsibility, the most important responsibility for any administrator is to create a safe environment for students. That has to be number one because without it, if it's not safe or if a student doesn't feel safe in that environment, they're not going to learn. It's an exercise in futility because their focus is on something else, they're afraid, whether it’s because of a bully or they’re afraid of what's going to happen as an extension of home, and all of that…
…Getting [a student] to come to terms with telling the truth, which is a part of our seven teachings, which is our belief system and the foundation of how we do our discipline. How we do our discipline is relating everything back to what teaching is presenting itself. When I asked a child, “Did you cut that seat?” he knows what the truth is, what his truth is. I don't, but he does. He's afraid, that's part of his truth, and he’s embarrassed, and all of the above. Him sharing that truth, first acknowledging it, and sharing it is bravery and sharing that is honesty. “I have to be brave enough to tell you,” and that's the honest thing, “I'm going to be honest with my truth.”
What's the mission or vision of the school?
I wanted to be able to effect change here in a way that put students first, and so we decided as a staff 10 or 11 years ago that we were going to change the fundamental purpose of the school. It was going to be a subtle change, and it was just semantics or wording, but it was going to have a big difference, and the focus was going to change from teaching to learning. We had a lot of dialogue around what that meant, because at the onset for a lot of staff they didn't clearly see what the meaning was. If we take it off of teaching, we're going to take the emphasis off teachers. If we place it on learning, we're going to place the emphasis of all of our decision-making process on what's good for the learner.
…The mission statement evolved into “Creating…” (it's our responsibility to create), “…the safest environment possible…” (number one), “…that nurtures…” (we spent a lot of time picking that word, which had a very parental role or feel, nurturing), “…the development of the medicine wheel for students,” because when we talk about medicine wheel as our belief system, it incorporates the values of the seven teachings, being honesty, bravery, love, truth, wisdom, respect, and humility.
…And it also pays attention to the four quadrants of self, the social and emotional, physical and mental aspect, and lots of times schools are devoted to one and not necessarily the other, so by doing you're going to develop into the best version of yourself.
What are some of the challenges of implementing the mission?
Our challenge from the First Nation perspective—and I think it's a generalization for most First Nations across Canada—our biggest challenge is poverty. How do you go about changing poverty and affecting poverty? It's not something that happens overnight; it’s something that takes decades to change because the motivation has to come from within, but in those poor nations, there's so much despair. Deprivation theory is so entrenched into the psyche of the population that there isn't enough to go around. That mindset is very hard to change, and it creates envy and it creates animosity towards anyone that isn't poor. It creates all kinds of complex emotions that can't be separated. Intelligence has nothing to do with it, but it's very hard to change, so I think poverty is our biggest obstacle, and I think the way out of that is creating confident learners.
How do you balance children's cultural background and the academic curriculum?
It's easy to say that language and culture is important, it's simple, but to show it, and do it, and chase it, and hound it until it happens requires a ton of motivation, and most of it has to be intrinsic, that people have to want and see value in that.
When I started 10 years ago, a year in, a year and a bit in, the directorship opened up, and I was back filling it at the time anyway, and I thought it would be a good idea and I said, “Let's centralize [the language program], let's actually do it,” because the paradigm shift was teaching to learning, so we called it that, and we centralized education services in admin, and I said if we really want to affect change that is inclusive of language and culture, we have to answer that first key question that comes up when it comes to changing any educational system: what is it that we expect students to know and be able to do in order for them to meet our definition of success? What is that? Have we ever defined that? And we haven't. We had taken over the administration of education in 1980. We were one of the first reserves to do it—it's our claim to fame—but what does that mean? It should mean that we should be able to determine what we teach and make it relevant to where we are. So in order to do that we're not just going to jump into immersion programs, because we've already done that and it hasn't worked. So instead, why don't we create a funding pool and use that at the back end to rewrite the curriculum so that when the money runs out, the “what” of what we teach is different.
So we took that to the chief and council, and we said, “Here's what we want to do, we want to have Anishinaabemowin (which is Ojibwe language revival). We have a plan, it's a five-year plan, and we want that plan to create a program that's going to carry on for another five years.” So they jumped at it, and it created our ARP, Anishinaabemowin Revival Plan. So next year is our big transition year: this is what we've been working towards since I came on board, is how do we create more time, and getting those little guys for an extra year in their year four is one of the ways to do that. So they're coming over in August, and some of them are only 3 [years old] so they're little…but we'll have a program that is developed for them that is language- and culture-based but also literacy- and numeracy-based, so we're going to look at that whole notion of how do we do that and how do we mandate that confident learner to develop in language, culture, literacy, numeracy.
Well, I went to school here as a child, in this particular building, from kindergarten to grade eight. My parents are teachers: my mom was a principal before she passed, and my dad was also a principal, both of them here and in other parts of Ontario. So my foundation, and the only thing I know is this, is the life of a teacher and as a student and now as an administrator.
What are your roles and responsibilities as principal?
My 7-year-old asked me yesterday morning at breakfast, and she said, "Why is it called principal?" and I paused for a second and I said, "I'm the principal teacher, I'm the main teacher at the school," and that's the heart of the role of principal is to be the role model teacher, if you will. My youngest then said, "But you don't teach," and I said that was also a good observation, and I don't teach the way her teacher does, but my role is to help other teachers and to make their jobs easier so that they can affect the 20 students in their class. I think that for me, what makes it a little bit clearer is to really understand the role of the principal is number one: you have to want to teach. The way it happened for me, anyway, was I thought I could do an okay job of reaching 20 students in my classroom, but it felt like I could maybe expand that circle of influence.
When it comes to responsibility, the most important responsibility for any administrator is to create a safe environment for students. That has to be number one because without it, if it's not safe or if a student doesn't feel safe in that environment, they're not going to learn. It's an exercise in futility because their focus is on something else, they're afraid, whether it’s because of a bully or they’re afraid of what's going to happen as an extension of home, and all of that…
…Getting [a student] to come to terms with telling the truth, which is a part of our seven teachings, which is our belief system and the foundation of how we do our discipline. How we do our discipline is relating everything back to what teaching is presenting itself. When I asked a child, “Did you cut that seat?” he knows what the truth is, what his truth is. I don't, but he does. He's afraid, that's part of his truth, and he’s embarrassed, and all of the above. Him sharing that truth, first acknowledging it, and sharing it is bravery and sharing that is honesty. “I have to be brave enough to tell you,” and that's the honest thing, “I'm going to be honest with my truth.”
What's the mission or vision of the school?
I wanted to be able to effect change here in a way that put students first, and so we decided as a staff 10 or 11 years ago that we were going to change the fundamental purpose of the school. It was going to be a subtle change, and it was just semantics or wording, but it was going to have a big difference, and the focus was going to change from teaching to learning. We had a lot of dialogue around what that meant, because at the onset for a lot of staff they didn't clearly see what the meaning was. If we take it off of teaching, we're going to take the emphasis off teachers. If we place it on learning, we're going to place the emphasis of all of our decision-making process on what's good for the learner.
…The mission statement evolved into “Creating…” (it's our responsibility to create), “…the safest environment possible…” (number one), “…that nurtures…” (we spent a lot of time picking that word, which had a very parental role or feel, nurturing), “…the development of the medicine wheel for students,” because when we talk about medicine wheel as our belief system, it incorporates the values of the seven teachings, being honesty, bravery, love, truth, wisdom, respect, and humility.
…And it also pays attention to the four quadrants of self, the social and emotional, physical and mental aspect, and lots of times schools are devoted to one and not necessarily the other, so by doing you're going to develop into the best version of yourself.
What are some of the challenges of implementing the mission?
Our challenge from the First Nation perspective—and I think it's a generalization for most First Nations across Canada—our biggest challenge is poverty. How do you go about changing poverty and affecting poverty? It's not something that happens overnight; it’s something that takes decades to change because the motivation has to come from within, but in those poor nations, there's so much despair. Deprivation theory is so entrenched into the psyche of the population that there isn't enough to go around. That mindset is very hard to change, and it creates envy and it creates animosity towards anyone that isn't poor. It creates all kinds of complex emotions that can't be separated. Intelligence has nothing to do with it, but it's very hard to change, so I think poverty is our biggest obstacle, and I think the way out of that is creating confident learners.
How do you balance children's cultural background and the academic curriculum?
It's easy to say that language and culture is important, it's simple, but to show it, and do it, and chase it, and hound it until it happens requires a ton of motivation, and most of it has to be intrinsic, that people have to want and see value in that.
When I started 10 years ago, a year in, a year and a bit in, the directorship opened up, and I was back filling it at the time anyway, and I thought it would be a good idea and I said, “Let's centralize [the language program], let's actually do it,” because the paradigm shift was teaching to learning, so we called it that, and we centralized education services in admin, and I said if we really want to affect change that is inclusive of language and culture, we have to answer that first key question that comes up when it comes to changing any educational system: what is it that we expect students to know and be able to do in order for them to meet our definition of success? What is that? Have we ever defined that? And we haven't. We had taken over the administration of education in 1980. We were one of the first reserves to do it—it's our claim to fame—but what does that mean? It should mean that we should be able to determine what we teach and make it relevant to where we are. So in order to do that we're not just going to jump into immersion programs, because we've already done that and it hasn't worked. So instead, why don't we create a funding pool and use that at the back end to rewrite the curriculum so that when the money runs out, the “what” of what we teach is different.
So we took that to the chief and council, and we said, “Here's what we want to do, we want to have Anishinaabemowin (which is Ojibwe language revival). We have a plan, it's a five-year plan, and we want that plan to create a program that's going to carry on for another five years.” So they jumped at it, and it created our ARP, Anishinaabemowin Revival Plan. So next year is our big transition year: this is what we've been working towards since I came on board, is how do we create more time, and getting those little guys for an extra year in their year four is one of the ways to do that. So they're coming over in August, and some of them are only 3 [years old] so they're little…but we'll have a program that is developed for them that is language- and culture-based but also literacy- and numeracy-based, so we're going to look at that whole notion of how do we do that and how do we mandate that confident learner to develop in language, culture, literacy, numeracy.
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