Addressing Injustice: A Conversation with Sarah Evis (Part 2)
By: Ashleigh. A. Allen
The Addressing Injustices Project began in 2013, developing from discussions between Sarah Evis and Rob Simon. Since then, they have brought generations of grade 8 students from Sarah’s classroom together with teacher candidates from Rob’s classroom to explore issues of equity and social justice through the arts.
In August 2021, teacher/ researcher/ artist Sarah Evis and researcher/ poet/ writer Ashleigh A. Allen met up to discuss Addressing Injustices. Below is the second part of their two-hour conversation.
Sarah and Ashleigh acknowledge they live and work as uninvited guests on traditional, ancestral, unceded land of the Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe and Mississaugas of the Credit River peoples in the Dish With One Spoon territory called Toronto/Tkaranto.
AAA:
So, how does AI support or interrupt your students' school year as a whole?
SE:
Oh, big time. The project is always privileged; whatever else is going on in the school doesn't matter, because we're doing what we're doing. And I always believe that it is worth it, but that's because I'm not teaching math or science or something where the kids are missing half of their lessons. So, you know, friction with colleagues. And in many or most situations, I could see that it would be impossible to expect that a colleague would just allow me to take the kids out of the school whenever I want.
You know, I had one student the last time we taught Beautiful Music whose mother pulled him out of school. And partly that was the book and partly that was AI, because, you know… he couldn't get out of it. And so it was my hold on it. I was like, "Fine, go for it" to the parents. It's really hard for me when I have a student who is pushing back, because I just take it for granted that we all have the same worldview about things, which, for the most part, is true. And it's challenging for me because I don't believe in balance. You know, I don't believe that if I teach “vaccinations are right,” that I should give equal time to anti-vaxxers. There just isn't time for that. You know, if I'm looking at the riots in Charlottesville, I'm not teaching that there were good people on both sides. So I'm not supporting the kids whose parents have views that have come down to them by saying, "Yeah, that's another way of looking at it." It's like, "no, that's wrong." And so that's a huge challenge for some kids and their parents.
I think the expectation is that you are going to all be in a project, like with some previous students who we worked with. They couldn't do their usual “ignoring everything”. I think it was way more work than they wanted to do or could do. So I think for the kids that just didn't want to do that work, and … with some students, it was just a "fuck you" not a "I can't do this." So that was a difficult thing. I don't think anybody ever complained about the subject matter. I don't think anybody said, "I don't want to learn about this." It was just sort of like there was no understanding that they probably could have said, "I don't want to do this." It was probably hard for the very odd kid whose parents didn't sign on for them to be a part of a research project, although maybe they didn't even know that their parents had done that…
AAA:
You sort of talked about this with Beautiful Music... Did you notice anything emerge with a unique group or student? Or a general shift after working with a particular book or project with AI?
SE:
Yeah, with Maus the first time around, a student lost herself a bit. And I always feel… I always feel that Maus was a jumping off point for that. She just took the project over. Ty brought in just a short clip of a video in black and white of the Liberation of Auschwitz as people were walking out of the camp. It was the first moving image that we had looked at in all our studying, and there was something about that. I think - and I have written about this, too - that just really pulled us all in, but it pulled her in especially. You know, there's that line of being an observer of what's going on and like an epic, epic observer and being over the line, of being so absorbed and overwhelmed with what's going on that you take it on. And for sure she was on the other side of that…It was like a can opener.
AAA:
Oh, my gosh..
SE:
I feel very strongly that our reading of that book was too much for her. But then there were other people. One was starting to question her own identity as a biracial person and she took that opportunity to really think about her life and her world and the research that she did about her grandparents was something that was really interesting to her. One of our students found out that his uncle disappeared during the war, and no one ever found him. One of my students, whose family was Dutch, learned that her family hid other people, and she had no idea about that. So there was this whole spectrum of students who found out things about their family that were tremendous.
Other people found out things about their family that were incredibly disturbing and upsetting to them. I think Rob’s and my feeling was that we were always able to support the students with whatever came up. And I think that that was a conceit. You know? I’m really strong in that department; you know, I have a whole lot of feelings. That is where I am. And Rob has years and years of teaching experience, and he’s very empathetic towards the kids and totally supportive of everything that happens, but we couldn’t contain everybody… All of the books we look at are deeply troubling, it’s a social justice issue and that’s why we look at it – we’re trying to look at the dark side and shine a light on it...
AAA:
That’s right. I mean, there’s something about looking at the dark underbelly of society or a small section of it, really, and seeing how that plays out in your life. Because we’re all connected and we all have access to power in some capacity, and you’re starting to get them to think of themselves as citizens of this world and part of this world is trans rights, homophobia, anti-Semitism, racism – it’s all of these things… I think these novels are just one entry into it. It’s “here’s one narrative, one entry way into one instance of this,” whether it’s fiction or nonfiction…
SE:
You know, there are the kids, like the team who made that pyramid. They didn’t give a whole lot to the project, they did what they needed to do, they learned some, and they filed that information away. I don’t feel like they were terrifically impacted. Then there was the group that didn’t give a shit, and maybe some of it went in somewhere… Then there was the tree stump group, and it was like god coming down from the sky and speaking just to them. I have no doubt that that was a significant help on one student’s path to her mental well-being. But I wonder now, even just as we’re talking, the kids with mental health issues, especially serious ones, I wonder about their filters…
AAA:
Yeah, how in a single lesson or activity can you really hold space for all of your students? I think one way is a way that you engage this on maybe a subconscious level, because you have a class where they’re caring for each other. It’s not as if you’re the centre, where if they need to be cared for, they come to you or you’re the only one who can offer it. And maybe this goes back to power, too. They have power and can offer care to their own experiences and to each other and each other’s experiences… What are you thinking?
SE:
I think I don’t think enough about it. And not to put this on Rob – he has a tremendous amount of self-confidence. He thinks “We’ll find a way.” And I have a lot of self-confidence in my own teaching practice. I know full well that I have students with serious mental health issues, and I know it’s important to look after them, but I think I haven’t thought enough about the fact that maybe learning about the holocaust and learning about the trans day of remembrance and those (mainly women) who have been violently murdered is maybe more than they can take in because they’re all already full of mental trauma. Or they don’t have a way of processing or distancing themselves from it. But I can’t ask those kids to step out of the room, and I can’t make assumptions.. I need to think more about that.
AAA:
Yeah, I think it’s a huge disservice to not have students engage in literature that is real or difficult... I mean a lot of it is really beautiful, too. I read Night in grade nine, and it wasn’t too difficult in that sense for me, and I had grandparents who were prisoners of war and one who was Jewish and in hiding during world war two. When I teach difficult classes or texts, I warn students of what we are reading and try to support them every step of the way. Sometimes we even talk about what we’re not paying attention to and talk about that silence around what’s difficult … I think that when it comes to difficult texts or curriculum, we are also taking a lot on as teachers by saying, “We’re willing to have this difficult conversation with you, are you willing to have this conversation with us?” …
***
SE:
It was important for us in the project to have an expert in the field/ on the topic we were looking at. For Part Time Indian, I have a degree in indigenous studies from UofT. It certainly didn’t make me an expert, but I had enough knowledge to feel comfortable with being able to guide the class when I thought that they were being respectful or disrespectful or knowing where to get information if I didn’t have it myself. When we taught Maus, of course, there is Rob’s connection to the Holocaust. When we taught Beautiful Music, we had benjamin. I think we agreed that we wouldn’t teach Beautiful Music if we didn’t have benjamin. And then we did Fahrenheit 451, which is part of the literary canon, so I think we felt like anyone can take a crack at it. It doesn’t talk about race at all in that book, but I automatically assumed they were white people. I don’t know why. So, that was part of our decision making in teaching those books…
AAA:
I wonder how to ethically produce curriculum that doesn’t exhaust the people who occupy those spaces and are in those positions in society. What books or what curriculum can we have that supports them in their absence... because it risks being unethical when it falls into the wrong hands or falls into the hands of people who have no relationship to caring for those people. For example – men who don’t care for women in their daily lives or people who don’t care for queer and trans people, how could they care for the stories of women and queer and trans people? Does that make sense?
SE:
And I’m not part of any of the groups of any of the books we’ve taught.
AAA:
Right. But you’ve cared for those people. I know there are queer people in your life you care for-
SE:
Right. But it’s not like I’m a queer person teaching queer issues that are things that I have to deal with on a daily basis myself. I am always a very caring outsider.
AAA:
Right. But I think that’s what literature does – it asks you to be in that position. To be in the position of the storyteller, the protagonist, or to enter into the scene and see what happens there and see how you feel there, including scenes that are violent or anti-Semitism in reading Night. I think some of those things can be difficult, but I think part of your praxis and teaching philosophy is teaching these texts that aren’t just difficult, they’re also beautiful and powerful and I think they give power as they amplify voices and truths. I think for some of your students it’s their first time experiencing those voices and perspectives. Because, thinking about me as a student -- a white girl growing up in Scarborough, I was always reading across gender but never reading across race –
SE:
Or class or culture –
AA:
Yeah. But I think there is real power in reading different experiences, or in some cases, experiences like your own… When I think about your teaching, Sarah, I know we have similar values even though we have very different life and teaching experiences.
SE:
One of the things that I know is that I am the same person that I am as a teacher as I am talking to you, talking to my neighbours walking my street… Another teacher I know is a little bit like that except he can’t be his whole self at school. A former colleague said that he absolutely had a teaching persona, and it did not reflect his actual self, and when I went to his house his partner had no idea what happened in his classes because the minute he went in the door to his house it was gone. He was a really good teacher in a lot of ways, but he wasn’t a perfect teacher and that was the reason.
I have no doubt about how much it costs me to teach this way, because I care so deeply about it, but I mean, I don’t know how to teach any other way. It’s not like I made a choice about it. This is just the way I do things, but it also involves me in my teaching, so I’m not bored and I’m never doing things by rote. Because I’m all in, and I think that I model for the kids to be all in. I think that they understand that on an emotional level, which may or may not be fair, if they question what we’re learning then they’re questioning me too. And I think a lot of people think that that’s unethical but I just, I’m teaching from one human’s point of view and I’m bringing everything to that point of view and I’m pretty tolerant of a lot of disagreement. I mean, if people are saying, “Trump’s a great guy” I’ve got zero tolerance for that, but you know, the people at different public schools in the city - it’s their way or the highway. Always. When they talk about anti-Black racism, when they talk about the treatment of women, when they talk about police… It’s either “you buy into this 100%, or there is no room for you here.” … And I can’t do that. Not that I don’t every now and then get angry because I’m so upset at something that’s just plain wrong, but in theory, my students can disagree with me about important things.
AAA:
Yeah, that goes back to who has the knowledge, who has the power… And you want your own autonomy; you don’t just want autonomy for your students.
SE:
I mean, maybe once a year I say to them, “It’s important for you to know that as much as we share the power in here, because of the structures we work in, I ultimately have all of it, so just know that. It’s not pretence that you have more choice than I do. I always have more choice… The smart kids get it and the ones who aren’t paying attention; it goes over their heads I think.
AAA:
So there are two final questions… First, what insights from these AI experiences would you want to share with other classroom teachers?
SE:
I really want other teachers to have the confidence to let go of their power and see what happens. Because that’s when the great stuff happens! I mean clearly there has to be some sort of boundary, but just let the kids go with just some information and support them in what they’re doing. I think that’s something that a lot of teachers don’t do because it doesn’t occur to them or they’re scared, and if they’re comfortable with their own power or leadership or their own self, they can take it back if they think things are getting out of control. You know, they can let the rope out and know that they can pull it back in again.
I want teachers to be open to seeing what it is they get from kids. To encourage them to think of kids as being just as smart as we are. We may have more wisdom and general or specific knowledge about certain things, but I think the difference in intellect is negligible. To be comfortable with that, to give kids choices and to figure out how they can teach the difficult subjects. To not just say, “No, I can’t do that,” or “That’s not my background,” to really think, okay, what do you need? Do you need to have conversations with someone who has had those experiences? Do you need to find a speaker? You know there are a hundred ways to do a good job of something. You can invite your guidance counselor to sit in on your classes or talk to other parents… You know, there are so many different ways. Don’t just negate the responsibility.
I would encourage teachers to make an authentic effort and know that even if you screw up in some ways when you take chances, what you get back is so positive and enriching. For me, it’s the reason that I teach.
AAA:
And my final question is: What are your hopes or goals for AI in the future?
SE:
I want there to be a book. I badly want there to be a book, and I don’t want it to be for scholars. I want it to be for classroom teachers, so they can use it and learn from it as a resource.