OSSTF/FEESO’s Common Threads VII— Human Movement

by Rachelle Bergen, TBU Teacher, District 25, Ottawa-Carleton and Rosemary Judd-Archer (she/her), OSSTF/FEESO Educational Services Department

Effective teachers and education workers establish and foster relationships with their students. They create safe, caring, and inclusive classroom environments. Great teachers and education workers also recognize that students thrive when they can make meaningful connections and see themselves reflected in the content they study. But how do educators address the changed classroom and respond to the needs of some of our most vulnerable students in a meaningful, sensitive, and responsive way? The most recent OSSTF/FEESO Common Threads—Human Movement research and writing project begins to address this need. The long-standing Federation project uses an OSSTF/FEESO Member-based research and writing team approach to create meaningful curriculum resources to support learning and teaching about a specific social justice topic.

Every two to three years, a group of selected volunteers from the OSSTF/FEESO Membership are tasked as researchers of a specific issue and then work together to develop supplemental curricula materials to be used in Ontario secondary schools. Over the last twenty years, the Common Threads teams have travelled to places including Guatemala in 2001, where the team looked at the international garment industry and sweatshops, to South Africa to explore ways of combating HIV/AIDS on a global scale in 2004, to Bolivia in 2006 to conduct research on the privatization of water resources, and the 2009 team travelled to Brazil to consider progressive approaches to agriculture and food distribution. The 2016 program took half the team to Norway and the other half to Venezuela to research approaches to sustainable societies. Common Threads VII—Human Movement, slated for rollout in 2025, provides materials specifically designed to explore the implications of human movement.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are the latest buzz words in industry, business, and education. School boards are hiring consultants, creating new positions, and offering workshops and professional development opportunities that support DEI initiatives. But these concepts are as important as they are complex. In a 2016 speech, cultural change advocate Verna Myers famously illustrated the concept of inclusion, stating, “Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance” (Myers). In education this means diversifying curriculum and including the voices and stories of people who look like and sound like students in our classrooms today.

Look around any classroom, walk down any hallway in an Ontario school. Classes and schools look a lot different than they did just twenty years ago. There is still giggling in the halls. There are still clusters of kids sharing weekend tales and cramming for quizzes. What has changed is the diversity of the faces doing the giggling, sharing the details of their weekends, and studying for quizzes. The languages are more diverse than just English and French, and the lived experiences of the students are as diverse as the food in lunch boxes. According to Statistics Canada, there are over 200 different languages spoken in Ontario, with a student body that represents more than 250 different ethnic groups (Brampton Geo-Hub).

Some of the students’ families have moved to Ontario for employment opportunities, to be closer to family or to start a new life. These are stories we are familiar with. Perhaps our own parents or families moved to Canada for the same reason. But when we dig a little deeper, we realize that some students in the seats in front of us haven’t just left their homes, they’ve escaped and fled. Many of these families have had to leave their homes under duress. The children who sit in front of us may bring with them trauma, scars (emotional and physical), and an understanding that they may never return to their home country. They carry with them memories of lush landscapes and family gatherings that stretch on for days—filled with love, laughter, and vibrant celebrations of culture. But they often also come with tales of near escapes, fear and terror, and of loss. When I’ve looked into students’ eyes, I’ve seen deep, unfiltered anger—and in others, a quiet dread so heavy it takes my breath away. How we, as educators, respond to this matters deeply.

Topics the Common Threads team choose must resonate with students. It is also important that the work of Common Threads, including the resources it creates, acts to fill gaps in the current curricular content. The full team spends a year researching and planning, followed by travel and another year dedicated to writing, revising, and refining. In the final year, the Provincial Office team edits and polishes the work before it is launched online.

Common Threads VII, July 2023 (Miami)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Travel is an important component of the Common Threads process. Land-based experiences, conversations with local communities, and meetings with education unions allow the team to gather first-hand accounts and deepen their understanding of the issues. We speak to real people telling real stories. In early spring of 2023, with snow still piled high outside a generic Ontario chain hotel, the Common Threads VII—Human Movement team was called together and met for the first time to get to know each other, brainstorm, and hear about the travel and research details.

Location and travel for the upcoming project was a bit of an issue. This year’s focus was going to be researching and creating curricula about human movement and refugees. Obviously, many of the countries and locations refugees are fleeing are unsafe at best, dangerous at worst. Obtaining approval to travel was a significant hurdle this time around. In the end, the team of five volunteer educators and two OSSTF/FEESO Provincial Office staff split up into two teams and travelled to two separate locations—Miami, Florida, and Calais, France coupled with Dover and London, England.

Miami has been the landing pad for tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Cuba, South America, and various countries throughout the Caribbean. The waters that lap up onto the iconic Miami beaches have swallowed hundreds of women, men, and children fleeing oppressive and violent homes and searching for safety. In 2023, over 150,000 refugees landed in Miami (Florida Department of Children and Families).

This team was able to visit places like Little Havana, Little San Juan, and Little Haiti; communities where thousands of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Haitians live, work, and celebrate life. Members of the research team sampled authentic food, visited museums, and walked neighbourhoods to get a feel of what life is like for refugees finding solace and safety in these new communities far from home. They also visited Wynwood; an eclectic place that boasts the most street art and murals of any place in the world. The team walked through the area under the sweltering July heat, deeply moved by the towering artworks that told stories of pain, oppression, joy, and loss—echoing both past and present.

The second team researched the unique experiences in the Calais-Dover corridor, one of the most historically travelled routes for people escaping Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

In Calais, the team was fortunate enough to be able to volunteer for Care 4 Calais (C4C). This is an non-governmental organization (NGO) powered predominantely by volunteers. C4C provides legal advice as well as provisions for refugees in the middle of their journeys to safe harbour. On the day the Common Threads team volunteered, we spent the morning preparing snacks, tea, small shelter provisions, and activities for the afternoon. After lunch (also cooked by a group of volunteers) the C4C volunteers loaded up vans and headed out to create something that almost resembled a pop-up. We were told that they had just moved to this location; an abandoned cul-de-sac surrounded by empty fields because the local police had kicked them out of their last location.

When we first arrived to begin setting up a table of tea and biscuits and a hair-trimming station, there were a few men walking over to meet the convoy of vans. But gradually and quietly, men began to walk out of the distant trees of what was once called the Calais jungle. It was a drizzly and cold summer afternoon but that didn’t stop many of the men from washing up with cold water in a large reservoir. Cellphones were quickly plugged in at the charging station powered by a noisy generator. Some men played cricket together. Others laughed and joked as they trimmed each other’s hair. It was humbling to serve this group of predominantly men. Many of them thanked us for the hot tea, sugar cookies, and the new tarpaulins that were handed out. As some of the men broke into a spontaneous dance, the Common Threads team was moved by the feeling of hope and joy we witnessed that cold and grey afternoon. But there were also quiet men and teens who drank their warm tea and tried to fade into the background. They were men who by any standard were barely men yet at all. Some were making the journey alone. Others were adolescent siblings or friend groups that had formed along the way. In the weeks and months after our visit, we became aware of some of these men—people with whom we had laughed, danced, and broken bread with—died in their attempts to reach England.

The Common Threads research team also took the ferry from Calais, France to Dover, England, the two cities separated by only 56 kilometres of water. We knew we could never truly imagine what it was like to set off in the dark on an overcrowded boat or dinghy. As we quietly breathed in the sea air, the iconic White Cliffs grew larger with each passing wave, as we got closer to England.

In Dover, we interviewed employees at Samphire—which is a charity in England that works to improve the lives of migrants and of people who have experienced immigration detention. In London, the team met with the National Education Union, the largest education union in the United Kingdom. We listened to teachers share their experiences of how they support immigrant and refugee students and their families. The Common Threads research team also went to London’s UNICEF office and interviewed a representative who works on a variety of projects aimed at supporting refugee children and educating the public about the benefits of diverse communities—here asylum seeker Paddington Bear even plays a role.

The result of this two-team travel project is a resource that the entire Common Threads VII—Human Movement team is incredibly proud of. It includes complete units of study, standalone activities, art-based projects, and book club initiatives. There are lesson and unit plans for most subject areas. Together, the writers worked to create easy entry points to include all types of learners and learning styles.

Common Threads VII—Human Movement will resonate with education workers and teachers; it is applicable to the current Canadian immigrant and refugee experience. Approximately one million refugees have moved to Canada since 1980, and according to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, immigration numbers nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024. The research behind Common Threads helps enrich learning and teaching; Canadian communities benefit from immigration and growing the diversity, and educators must embrace this phenomenon and work to address the needs of learners new to the country. Diversity creates richer and more interesting communities and schools. Classrooms are great places to help students begin to see themselves reflected in the course content. As educators, we have the opportunity to centre stories we have heard and know very little about. We encourage teachers and administrators to engage with the Common Threads VII—Human Movement resource and use it as a launching point to create space for stories not only of fear and loss, but also of resilience, transformation, and hope.

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WORKS CITED
“Immigration & ethnocultural diversity.” geoHUB.ca, https://geohub.brampton.ca/pages/profile-diversity. Accessed February 24, 2025.
Myers, V. Speech to Cleavland Bar Association. Cleveland, Ohio. Cited in ““Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance,” Verna Myers tells Cleveland Bar.” Cleveland.com, https://www.cleveland.com/business/2016/05/diversity_is_being_invited_to.html. Accessed February 24, 2025.
“Refugees in Canada.” UNHRC, https://www.unhcr.ca/in-canada/refugees-in-canada/. Accessed February 24, 2025.
“Refugee Services Statistics.” Florida Department of Children and Families, https://www.myflfamilies.com/services/public-assistance/refugee-services/refugee-services-statistics. Accessed February 24, 2025.
Statistics on official languages in Canada. Statistics Canada, https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/official-languages-bilingualism/publications/statistics.html. Accessed February 24, 2025.