A Discussion with Dave Gallant, Teacher and Academic Program Leader, Espanola High School, Ontario, Canada
With: Dave Gallant Berkley Center Profile
June 12, 2015
Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Fellowship, in June 2015 student Caitlin Snell interviewed Dave Gallant, a teacher at Espanola High School in Ontario, Canada. With over 25 years of teaching experience, Gallant has facilitated the growth of the high school’s Native studies program to include a more comprehensive curriculum. In this interview, Gallant reflects on the purpose of a well-rounded education, as well as the challenges he faces as a teacher within the Espanola High School community.
How did you get involved in the Native studies program?
Being a teacher after having worked with youth for 10 years and settling in Espanola, I needed to find a job in Espanola, so I was like, I can teach high school and became very involved in the community. I'm from southern Ontario as well, and being in this community really was my first ever, honest introduction into people that were First Nation heritage. And this even before I became a teacher, visiting powwows down on Manitoulin Island and seeing them present and visible in the community and then being in Espanola High School; eventually I taught in a couple of schools in Sudbury to see how the First Nation students, the significant size of the student population here at Espanola High School, I think it's the most heavily populated schools for our school board, the Rainbow District School Board.
So becoming a teacher and then being hired for a program leader in the school, the First Nations umbrella was just placed in our department so with that, that duty was assigned to me, and that's fine. My background is geography and I've had the opportunity to whip around the world a few times, work in many different places, and it is my intention to introduce students to various cultures in all my classes, because First Nation students have such a presence in our school and certainly in our region, and to allow them an opportunity across the classes to share what they know and hopefully expand on their sense of who they are within the classroom.
What do you enjoy most about your position?
Working with the young people. They are very curious about many different parts of the world that surrounds them, tapping into that natural curiosity and giving them an opportunity to poke around. So it is working with young people that's brought me here, and it still remains as why I’m still here. I've been offered the vice principal's job leading into the principal's job here at the school, however, I said I don't think I want to; I think my interest and my kids are grade eight coming into high school next year, and I enjoy the interaction that I have on a daily basis with the kids, and I'm not willing to give that up.
What are some of the challenges of your position?
The challenges are numerous, they really are, within having had an opportunity, I've worked with male young offenders in the remote bush camp setting, I've worked with very gifted students in an international exchange setting, and coming into a classroom with four walls and a roof setting and trying to bring the world into that classroom presents a challenge in itself, and as an educator, it's constantly trying to be creative and innovative and tapping into students’ curiosity in delivering the curriculum. The school itself provides challenges in that the students come from an economically depressed region. They come to the school, we always say that the parents deliver the best kids that they have to the school, but we understand that they come from challenging situations and they carry that with them, so there's challenges to have the kids open up on a regular basis in the classroom, attend class, present themselves in an appropriate manner in the classroom, here in the school. So, you know, constantly working with the kids to allow them to work through the curriculum, be present in the school, really has been a challenge the last few years.
Attendance in Espanola High School is one of our big issues here, making sure the kids are making their way to the classroom. The relationship between students of various heritages here has never been an issue. I understand there have been challenges in the past, kids that have struggled relating to other cultures, but as a community, as an Espanola High School community, it's been very positive, I think.
What does the Native studies program consist of?
It changed, it's constantly evolving, and I think that as the curriculum advances, the First Nation studies now has their own curriculum that those classes didn't exist five years ago, but now First Nations English and history and art classes weren't a part of the curriculum, but now have been written in, and I think it's an important part. Right now within our school we do offer, and we've always offered, Ojibwe as a language. That's always been a part of how students can get their second language credit, but having First Nations English and history does offer students an opportunity to go back.
What is the purpose of education?
It has to be the whole child. You can't break the student down into the math brain or the English brain or the physical education brain; you get the child that walks into the classroom, and you have to receive them and work with that whole child. What we're doing in Canadian and world studies when we talk about the history of the earth and we're talking about the creation of the solar system and the planets, and I as a Roman Catholic appreciate that there are going to be many different beliefs that are out there, and I said that I welcome that as part of our discussion in the classroom. It might not be within our total curriculum alignment, but it's part of the students that are sitting there questioning themselves, questioning me, questioning what we're discussing, and if we don't work with those issues it's hard for us to move forward with what we're teaching in the classroom. So I do think that education as a role has to embrace all of the beliefs and the whole physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual person that walks through that door in the classroom setting.
We also have in our grade nine geography classroom, so that is a mandatory credit that all students have to get, one of the chapters in the textbook, but also one of the parts of our population unit that we focus on is First Nation studies so that you don't have to take a First Nations course to discuss it. I've tried to embody that as something that all of us as geography teachers make sure that students in all of the classes have the chance to do that, and part of that First Nations section that we do discuss residential schools and some of the impacts. We do discuss a little bit of history, but also what would it have been like to have been the first people and to have watched the colonies move in and take over and the impacts of laws, resource laws, on First Nations, so those are some of the things we discuss in the grade nine setting.
Being a teacher after having worked with youth for 10 years and settling in Espanola, I needed to find a job in Espanola, so I was like, I can teach high school and became very involved in the community. I'm from southern Ontario as well, and being in this community really was my first ever, honest introduction into people that were First Nation heritage. And this even before I became a teacher, visiting powwows down on Manitoulin Island and seeing them present and visible in the community and then being in Espanola High School; eventually I taught in a couple of schools in Sudbury to see how the First Nation students, the significant size of the student population here at Espanola High School, I think it's the most heavily populated schools for our school board, the Rainbow District School Board.
So becoming a teacher and then being hired for a program leader in the school, the First Nations umbrella was just placed in our department so with that, that duty was assigned to me, and that's fine. My background is geography and I've had the opportunity to whip around the world a few times, work in many different places, and it is my intention to introduce students to various cultures in all my classes, because First Nation students have such a presence in our school and certainly in our region, and to allow them an opportunity across the classes to share what they know and hopefully expand on their sense of who they are within the classroom.
What do you enjoy most about your position?
Working with the young people. They are very curious about many different parts of the world that surrounds them, tapping into that natural curiosity and giving them an opportunity to poke around. So it is working with young people that's brought me here, and it still remains as why I’m still here. I've been offered the vice principal's job leading into the principal's job here at the school, however, I said I don't think I want to; I think my interest and my kids are grade eight coming into high school next year, and I enjoy the interaction that I have on a daily basis with the kids, and I'm not willing to give that up.
What are some of the challenges of your position?
The challenges are numerous, they really are, within having had an opportunity, I've worked with male young offenders in the remote bush camp setting, I've worked with very gifted students in an international exchange setting, and coming into a classroom with four walls and a roof setting and trying to bring the world into that classroom presents a challenge in itself, and as an educator, it's constantly trying to be creative and innovative and tapping into students’ curiosity in delivering the curriculum. The school itself provides challenges in that the students come from an economically depressed region. They come to the school, we always say that the parents deliver the best kids that they have to the school, but we understand that they come from challenging situations and they carry that with them, so there's challenges to have the kids open up on a regular basis in the classroom, attend class, present themselves in an appropriate manner in the classroom, here in the school. So, you know, constantly working with the kids to allow them to work through the curriculum, be present in the school, really has been a challenge the last few years.
Attendance in Espanola High School is one of our big issues here, making sure the kids are making their way to the classroom. The relationship between students of various heritages here has never been an issue. I understand there have been challenges in the past, kids that have struggled relating to other cultures, but as a community, as an Espanola High School community, it's been very positive, I think.
What does the Native studies program consist of?
It changed, it's constantly evolving, and I think that as the curriculum advances, the First Nation studies now has their own curriculum that those classes didn't exist five years ago, but now First Nations English and history and art classes weren't a part of the curriculum, but now have been written in, and I think it's an important part. Right now within our school we do offer, and we've always offered, Ojibwe as a language. That's always been a part of how students can get their second language credit, but having First Nations English and history does offer students an opportunity to go back.
What is the purpose of education?
It has to be the whole child. You can't break the student down into the math brain or the English brain or the physical education brain; you get the child that walks into the classroom, and you have to receive them and work with that whole child. What we're doing in Canadian and world studies when we talk about the history of the earth and we're talking about the creation of the solar system and the planets, and I as a Roman Catholic appreciate that there are going to be many different beliefs that are out there, and I said that I welcome that as part of our discussion in the classroom. It might not be within our total curriculum alignment, but it's part of the students that are sitting there questioning themselves, questioning me, questioning what we're discussing, and if we don't work with those issues it's hard for us to move forward with what we're teaching in the classroom. So I do think that education as a role has to embrace all of the beliefs and the whole physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual person that walks through that door in the classroom setting.
We also have in our grade nine geography classroom, so that is a mandatory credit that all students have to get, one of the chapters in the textbook, but also one of the parts of our population unit that we focus on is First Nation studies so that you don't have to take a First Nations course to discuss it. I've tried to embody that as something that all of us as geography teachers make sure that students in all of the classes have the chance to do that, and part of that First Nations section that we do discuss residential schools and some of the impacts. We do discuss a little bit of history, but also what would it have been like to have been the first people and to have watched the colonies move in and take over and the impacts of laws, resource laws, on First Nations, so those are some of the things we discuss in the grade nine setting.
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