Teacher's Layoff Follows Olympic-sized Learning Experience

[Editor's note: This article is drawn from articles on the Vancouver Observer's education blog, 'School View.' Featuring ground-breaking stories from writers involved in the Vancouver public school system, School View is one of the city's best sources for developments parents and teachers need to know about. The Tyee is pleased to be running a 'Best of the Vancouver Observer' article weekly.]

Strathcona Elementary School, where I have been a teacher, is located in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. This neighborhood, known as Canada's poorest postal code, has a history of community activism and is the neighbourhood that has been most affected by Vancouver winning the 2010 Olympic bid.

Anyone who traces the history of the International Olympic Committee can see similarities between what takes place in each city that hosts the Olympics. As is typical, the Olympic "economic cleansing" (better known as gentrification) began soon after Vancouver was declared winner of the Olympic bid. Some residents of the DTES were forced out of their housing units so the housing could be renovated or torn down to make room for condo development. Market housing development in the DTES rapidly outpaced the development of affordable housing. Promises that better social housing would be created were broken.

I was thrilled in September 2009 when I came into contact with a group of activists and teachers dedicated to providing an alternative to the pro-Olympic materials that had inundated our schools and classrooms. The Vancouver-based Olympic Resistance Network had created a workshop titled Teaching 2010 Resistance. I attended the first meeting where different lesson plans were shared in order to get feedback from other teachers.

An example of a lesson was using pie charts to track how much money had been put into the Olympics (an estimated $6.7 billion dollars) and what programs could have been put into place had this money been spent elsewhere (social housing, shelters, schools etc.). Unfortunately, the meeting did not attract very many people, and so I suggested that we host another one in my classroom.

Perhaps teachers would feel more comfortable if it were held in a familiar venue. The workshop would be held after school and would be an opportunity for teachers to browse through some lesson plans and give them some ideas of how to teach critically about the Olympics in their classrooms.

A few days before the workshop was to be held in my classroom, the media got ahold of one of the flyers. The Vancouver Sun ran a front-page article claiming that anarchists and radical politics were entering the school system and that students were being indoctrinated and brainwashed. Parents and the media frantically began calling our principal demanding answers, and an emergency meeting was called.

My colleagues were furious. People declared, "politics have no place in this school" and "you shouldn't be pushing your own agenda!" I asked them why supporting the Olympics was not political but not supporting them was political, but no one had a good answer for me. In their article "Shifting out of 'neutral': Beginning teachers' struggles with teaching for social justice," Kelly and Brandes discuss how many teachers feel that their role as an educator is to remain neutral or unbiased about issues. This was a recurring theme in our discussions that day; teachers felt that it was not appropriate to talk about their view or opinions on issues, especially controversial ones.

However, critical pedagogues agree that teaching is "inevitably political and that teachers cannot be value-neutral." In the end, my administrator did not allow me to host this workshop in my classroom, and the workshop was moved to another location. This, however, was only the beginning of a series of long, isolated months where I was given very little support and much trouble for my political views and opinions.

The corporatization of schools

Corporatization of schools has long been the subject of debate. Proponents such as Peter Cowley from the Fraser Institute argue that corporate sponsorship can benefit schools, especially those in low-income neighbourhoods, such as Strathcona, by providing enriched learning opportunities that they otherwise could not afford. The opposing side of the debate argues that increased commercialism in schools raises concerns such as loss of accountability and increases inequalities.

The loss of accountability is particularly worrisome as it does have serious implications with regard to decision-making, for example, regarding program funding. Much research has been done linking the activities of corporations in schools to building lifelong brand loyalty in consumer students. "Building brand loyalty while kids are at school has been known to be an effective long-term strategy since the 1960s, when psychologist Lester Guest showed that one quarter of consumers brand preferences were established in childhood."

So, under the pretext of providing students and educators with "a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the excitement of an international event held in in British Columbia," the Olympic Games proved to be a great cover for corporations to enter our schools. Coca-Cola, no stranger to school corporatization, the Royal Bank of Canada, and many other corporations were given access to our students under the guise of the Olympic Games. When the torch ran by our school, Coca-Cola representatives waltzed into our school grounds passing out flags and other freebies to the kids, and no one blinked an eye. The Royal Bank of Canada was also there, and nobody seemed too bothered by the fact that our students were being used as marketing agents for these companies.

When a wealthy businessman decided to give Olympic mittens to every child who attended an inner-city school in Vancouver, everyone was thrilled. No one asked questions about who this man was, what motives he might have, and why, if he really wanted to help inner-city children, had he not donated money for providing school supplies or much-needed food and clothing.

I talked to my staff about how the Olympic committee, VANOC and the IOC act as corporations just like Coca-Cola or McDonald's. They are in the business of "marketing" the Olympic brand, and their profits come from selling the rights to the five-ring logo to broadcasting companies, sponsors and companies like HBC (the maker of the mittens). The logo is such a moneymaker that they do not even let the Paralympics use it. Naomi Klein writes in her book No Logo about "the corporate shift from marketing products to marketing brand names." The IOC owns a very profitable brand: the Olympics. The Olympic mittens are selling a product (the Olympics) to children, and in turn, children are used to market that product without their full knowledge or consent.

The staff at my school were very defensive and not open to this line of argument at all. The Olympics are about fun and sports, they felt, and what was wrong with that?

Olympic rings as elementary school artwork

Schools, as they are currently set up, are based on a supposed system of meritocracy. There is no analysis of class, race, gender or any other category that might be a major factor in determining whether or not you succeed in school. The Olympics fit in perfectly with this idea that you can achieve anything if you just put your mind to it.

Athletes visiting our school always sent the message to the kids that, "as long as you work hard, you, too, could be an Olympic athlete." There was no mention, of course, that it takes money to be an Olympic athlete: economic privilege and commitment on the parents' part. In reality, not every family has the money to hire a coach and buy expensive equipment, and most parents do not have the time and the ability to dedicate their lives to making their child's dream come true.

I draw upon Paulo Freire's education philosphy known as Critical Pedagogy. This pedagogy is different from the current discourse around critical thinking in schools. The mainstream notion of critical thinking is that kids need to learn to think about various issues from different points of view.

The Critical Pedagogy philosophy, on the other hand, sees children as participants who can analyze unequal power structures that exist in our society and the groups that are most affected by them. Students draw from their own experiences and their life experience is seen as valuable to the learning process. By looking at the world critically, and questioning and challenging it, children are able to transform their world.

As a critical pedagogue, I am used to hearing repeated arguments about how kids are not capable of thinking critically at such a young age. One teacher suggested that perhaps in high school we should talk about these larger issues of gentrification, human rights violations, corporatization, environmental degradation, etc., but in Grade 1, children would not be able to understand such complex issues. One study showed that even though teachers claimed that age was not a barrier in teaching about social justice issues, teachers for the most part felt that young children were not developmentally ready to learn about social justice issues.

Another recurring theme is that of childhood innocence: the idea that it is better for children to be oblivious to the inequities that take place in the world and "enjoy their childhood." I have seen in my own classroom how this is truly impossible, especially with inner-city children. Oppression is part of my students' everyday lives, so how can someone say that they can't understand it?

My students who are students of colour know what it is like to be made fun of because of your race. My students who are poor know what it is like not to have rights and privileges because of your economic class. The families of the students at our school were the ones directly being affected by the gentrification, the cost we paid to host the Olympics. Despite that, some parents were strongly opposed to their children hearing arguments against the Olympics.

The fallout

It cost the Canadian and B.C. taxpayers billions of dollars ($6 billion, by some estimates) to host the Olympic Games. A few weeks ago, I received a layoff notice. Due to the budget cuts, teachers with low seniority are getting laid off.

Teachers across the province are outraged, and parents are furious. There is no doubt that it will dramatically affect our classrooms. While the Vancouver School Board has to cut programs and lay off teachers and support staff because of a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall, the cost of the Olympic opening ceremonies alone was $38 million.

Now that the Olympics are over, I hope other cities will learn from the resistance movement that took place here in Vancouver. We need to work together with other cities and educate people so that they are aware of what could happen if the IOC uses their city to host the Olympic Games. Teachers here in Vancouver need to help teachers in other cities around the world to cope with the challenges that their schools will face leading up to, and during, the Games.

As a beginning teacher, I learned a lot from this experience. I felt disillusioned and isolated on too many occasions and I came to realize the importance of allies. I found one experienced teacher at my school who was very supportive and encouraged me to keep on fighting for what I believed in, even when I felt like I could not do it any more. I realized the importance of knowing school policies and what my rights were as a teacher. I learned that I should always ask questions and always demand answers. For months, I had feelings of disillusionment, hopelessness, and isolation, but I survived it.

It was all worth it, just listening to my six-year-old students discuss their feelings around the Olympics amongst themselves in the lunchroom or during class. "I wish we could give all that money and instead make sure everyone has a place to live and can eat lots of food," one student said.

"Yeah, not everyone loves the Olympics," another one added.