‘Here, I feel OK to speak up’
Talking about racism can be uncomfortable. This Toronto high school encourages its students to confront the issue head on, starting from their own experience
“My first experience with the system was five to six years ago,” says17-year-old Emmanuel Adegboyega.
In the background, teachers, students nod. They are in a Google Hangouts group chat where Adegboyega, the student council president at Chaminade College School, shares his encounter with police one Halloween night — he and his friends were stopped on suspicion of robbery. The boys were in Grade 6.
“A couple of my friends were arrested and brought to the station,” he adds. “In Grade 6,” he repeats. In the comment section of the video
“We know about anti-racism, and in order to tackle that we have to get to its foundations (in the school). It tells a child to respect human dignity, find out who they are, put themselves in other people’s shoes.” Marlyn Morris, educator and founder of Ontario College for Development Training, who has worked with students at Chaminade
chat, teachers praise Adegboyega, a Grade 11 student at the all-boys school near Jane Street and Lawrence Avenue, for his bravery in sharing a story that has clearly shocked the chat participants.
Marlyn Morris unmutes herself on the chat. She thanks Adegboyega for sharing, noting that his experience growing up
Black and being able to express it is inspirational to others. Morris, who has a PhD in philosophy, is the founder and program manager at Ontario College for Development Training and a longtime educator fighting for equitable education through social and emotional learning.
The chat is actually a town hall that took place this week, inviting those in the education system — from students up to principals — to share their experiences of racism on an even playing field.
But this town hall isn’t happening in response to the protests rocking the U.S. following the death of George Floyd or because of a rise in social media awareness about police brutality against Black people. Chaminade, part of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, has always pushed the envelope in ensuring its students are able to speak about racism, sexism and social injustices openly — even if it is uncomfortable.
Just a few months ago, for Black History Month, Adegboyega and his classmates were encouraged by staff to dive deep into a subject that for many still brings discomfort. In a video called “The Power of a Word,” Adegboyega interviews Chaminade students, including Black students, about the N-word, and later explains the historic significance of the slur, linking it back to America’s slave trade.
With an increase in the usage of the word on social media platforms, particularly among non-Black people, he felt it was necessary to educate his classmates, as well as school staff, about its origins. “We took it as an opportunity to educate people because a lot of people don’t know what the word means,” Adegboyega says, adding that the project was done with the full support of staff and even posted on the school website.
That encouragement for students to think critically and challenge norms comes from the top. It’s a mandate that viceprincipal Anthony Perrotta has implemented through programs with experts like Morris to improve the holistic learning experience of staff and students.
“As an all-boys school it provides us educators with an opportunity to be responsive and to actively reimagine what masculinity looks and feels like,” Perrotta says. In his mentoring sessions, he often talks about his daughter and his wife as strong female figures in his life, in order to instil in young men a thorough respect for women and each other.
Perrotta joined Chaminade as a teacher in 2014, then quickly rose up the ranks thanks to student successes from his course on communications technology, offered to all grades. Perrotta’s class, which he taught from 2014 to 2019, is praised in many student testimonials as being transformative and life-changing because class discussions tackle the uncomfortable subjects of racism, sexism and fighting for social justice.
In 2017, the class took a field trip to see the Jordan Peele movie “Get Out.” Afterward, Perrotta arranged for the class to talk with acclaimed film historian and UCLA professor Tananarive Due, who joined them over video to discuss colonialism and the movie. The next year, Due returned via Google Hangouts to do a deep dive into “Black Panther,” inspiring a rich conversation about white supremacy.
After the learning comes the application through video projects, where Perrotta challenges his students to think critically and creatively. In one such project, Cole Brown, now in Grade 12, made a 59-second short film about the quiet time in the early morning before his father leaves for work to provide for the family. In a second video asking him to reflect on his work, Brown said the process of creating the film gave him a new appreciation for this father’s immigrant grind — one that many other first- and second-generation immigrant children know well.
Perrotta, who became viceprincipal this school year, is making progress with staff to nurture his students’ sense of identity, critical questioning and creativity.
“I’m a bit of a disrupter,” Perrotta says, adding that perhaps this comes from his roots as a film student at Brock University. “I have a passion for people’s stories.”
Now, for Perrotta, it’s all about redefining what it means to be a man for the boys at the school. “It starts with the foundation, a school system that supports their kind of open and shared learning, and not through a singular lens.”
Perrotta is the type of viceprincipal who knows all his students and their projects and is unafraid to sing their praises. That includes Jimmy Huynh, whom Perrotta called on during the town hall to speak about his successes, both academic — Huynh has the highest grades of his graduating class — and creative.
“I don’t just see myself as a math and science kid anymore,” says Huynh, crediting the change to Perrotta’s classes. Because of those challenging video projects, Huynh now has a passion for film. Recently, he wrote a piece on Vietnamese boat people, collecting stories from his parents and grandparents and bringing them to life after being inspired by a film. “I’m grateful for the support by getting the opportunity to make videos about my narrative or my experience,” he says.
Lately, his favourite class hasn’t been the math or science he excels in, but English, where teachers and students discussed Ava DuVernay’s film on police brutality and the criminalization of Black people, “13th.”
That type of initiative-building, caring about more than just marks, is something that is important to Huynh. Even after the hour-and-a-half-long town hall, he decided to create his own chat with other friends and peers to build on the topics that were discussed.
“We discussed the protests and the rioting while trying to discuss how we got to this point,” he says. “I think although our school isn’t perfect, we are definitely getting better at going beyond the textbooks with incorporating real-world teachings into our education.”
Vincent Pham is a testament to Perrotta’s encouragement to go beyond academics. Now finishing his first year at the University of Toronto, Pham reflects on how the high school shaped his activism and prepared him for his adult life. It laid the groundwork for more philosophical and social justice readings, and also taught him that his critical thinking experiences on topics like race could be used outside of the classroom, in his everyday life.
For Adegboyega, the notion of being placed in a box for being Black is one that’s all too common.
“Glorified for their athletics, but not glorified for academics, or the way they think or the way they critically think, that’s why you see even in the NFL there’s not a lot of Black coaches or GMs,” he says.
But at Chaminade, whether you’re Black, a person of another colour or white, everyone is forced to have those conversations and encouraged to think critically, Adegboyega says. That’s what gave him the confidence to speak out and become student council president.
Now, as he moves into Grade 12, he has his sights set on studying criminology in post-secondary school because of his passion for justice. “Here, I feel OK to speak up, and I have staff support to do that,” he says.
“This is one school that really takes the charge with social and emotional learning,” Morris says. Having consulted across Ontario, she says that what Chaminade does goes beyond academics. The school is building character through discussing racism in the school.
“We know about anti-racism, and in order to tackle that we have to get to its foundations (in the school). It tells a child to respect human dignity, find out who they are, put themselves in other people’s shoes,” Morris says. “When you teach these things to students they begin to understand their relevance of being brother’s keeper, so to speak. They’re able to understand the difference is only about the colour of the skin.”
In seeing the growth of these boys to men, tackling topics that are still difficult for many adults to understand, she sees hope in the learning environment Chaminade has created. “What they’re doing should be broadcast right across the GTA so that we do not have to necessarily in our schools wait on the government or ministries,” Morris says.
“The evidence is there.”