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You won’t find Shakespeare in Michelle de Braux and Tobie Loukes’ Grade 11 English class. Instead, their students may be studying the works of Indigenous authors like Tanya Talaga, Duke Redbird and Lee Maracle.
De Braux and Loukes are teachers at the Toronto District School Board’s Kapapamahchakwew — Wandering Spirit School, which provides an Indigenous-focused education by centring the voices, cultures and values of First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples. But their Grade 11 class is not unique.
The pair are just two of approximately 370 educators across the board who are currently teaching this course at some 100 Toronto schools. By the end of the academic year, the new Grade 11 English class will be offered at all 114 high schools in the TDSB. It’s part of a broader plan to replace the existing curriculum and make the course mandatory for all students — a necessary change, educators and students say, that will help promote truth and reconciliation, and shine an important spotlight on Indigenous perspectives.
“As someone who has Indigenous heritage, it’s so important to hear these voices in the classroom to help understand who you are, to give your own life context and your family’s history context,” said Loukes, teaching the class with de Braux for the first time this year.
The board-wide implementation of the new course — Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Métis and Inuit Voices or NBE3 — comes after TDSB trustees voted last year to replace its compulsory Grade 11 English curriculum with one focused on Indigenous writers. The course, as outlined by Ontario’s Ministry of Education in its revised 2019 curriculum, can be used to fulfil the mandatory English credit requirement for Grade 11 students.
For educators and student advocates who’ve pushed to make the course mandatory across the board, the change has been a long time coming. And, in many cases, it’s also deeply personal.
“It feels absolutely phenomenal,” said Tanya Senk, system superintendent of Indigenous education at the TDSB. “I graduated from Monarch Park Collegiate Institute from the old Toronto Board of Education and, certainly, something like this didn’t exist. I remember I took two English courses in Grade 13 — one was called British and European English, and the other was Canadian and American English — and there were no Indigenous authors on the syllabus at that time.”
Though the NBE3 course has been offered at select TDSB schools for the better part of a decade, its broader adoption has only come more recently. It follows the TDSB’s 2022 motion to “embed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (TRC) and the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in all areas of board processes and practices.”
The TDSB joins several other boards across the province that have introduced the course at their schools. Jennifer Brant, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education whose research has focused on the implementation of this curriculum, said the rollout is in direct response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report, specifically call number 63.
Some advocates, however, note that the changes have only come after years of inaction from Ontario’s publicly funded schools. In 2022, some seven years after the commission issued its report, the Yellowhead Institute found that only 13 of the 94 calls to action had been fully implemented, none of which were those focused on education.
What the new NBE3 course looks like in classrooms will vary widely across the province. While the ministry’s curriculum outlines specific learning goals, it does not offer a list of mandatory texts. Instead, it’s often up to individual school boards to help develop the recommended reading lists for teachers, often in consultation with Indigenous leaders, noted Brant.
At the TDSB, for instance, NBE3 instructors this year were provided a list of 300 to 450 suggested materials, including poetry, novels, films and other types of media.
The breadth of the curriculum, said de Braux, who is also Indigenous, allows teachers to tailor the course to their students, keeping the material contemporary and relevant.
In the NBE3 class that she co-teaches with Loukes, students this past week studied texts concerning the Grassy Narrows First Nations and the devastating effects of industrial mercury poisoning in the region. It was a relevant issue to study; on Wednesday, de Braux, Loukes and their students attended the Grassy Narrows First Nations rally in downtown Toronto, meant to draw attention to the ongoing pollution in the region.
(The event generated controversy when pro-Palestinian slogans were among those being chanted. The TDSB said it was investigating.)
“For many non-Indigenous students, the course has the possibility to offer a window into the worldviews and experiences of Indigenous peoples,” said Brant, who belongs to the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk Nation) with family ties to Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. “On the other hand, for Indigenous students, whose realities are not often reflected across mainstream curricula, Indigenous literatures offer reflections of their lived experiences and community narratives.”
Derian Westra, the TDSB’s Indigenous student trustee and a Grade 12 student at R.H. King Academy, took the NBE3 course last year and said he’s pleased the board decided to make the course mandatory.
“Instead of learning stuff like Shakespeare … it’s more focused on something you never really hear about in school,” he added. “When I took English in Grade 10, Indigenous Peoples were never mentioned. In Grade 9 English, it was only mentioned once. And other courses don’t even touch the topic.”
Westra, however, does have some concerns about the implementation of the new curriculum and he feels that not enough educators are getting qualified to teach the course.
It’s an issue that Brant has observed across the province in other school boards. Some teachers, particularly non-Indigenous educators who do not have the lived experience or were never taught about Indigenous issues, may feel hesitant to take on these courses, she said.
Brant added that professional development opportunities vary widely between school boards, and that there needs to be more support for teachers so they don’t feel like they’re “holding more responsibilities on top of an already busy workload.” (At the TDSB, teachers hoping to teach the NBE3 course are required to attend a minimum of two professional learning sessions.)
While Senk said that enough teachers in the TDSB are signing up to teach the NBE3 course, she acknowledged there’s still more work to be done. Indigenous teachers are still under-represented in the system despite efforts to hire and retain these educators, she said, adding that the board needs to continue to follow the calls to action outlined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the articles of the United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“Ultimately, there should be Indigenous perspectives centred in all courses across the TDSB through all grades,” she said.
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