Nostalgia made a comeback under COVID-19. In the context of enforced lockdowns, there was an increase in nostalgic activities such as watching classic films, baking and reminiscing with family and friends.

Nostalgia can be defined as a feeling of .

When it isn’t excessive, nostalgia can be a productive feeling that provides a sense of .

As writer Danielle Campoamor explains, “nostalgia serves as a kind of emotional pacifier, helping us to become accustomed to a new reality that is jarring, stressful and traumatic.”

But nostalgia can create an overly simplistic picture of the past that hinders attention to the present and limits the imagination of a different future.

Read the full article co-authored by Associate Professor Lisa Farley (Faculty of Education, �첥��Ƶ) in .

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Critical race theory has a lot of people upset. In the United States, some parents are calling for schools to ban critical race theory. They claim it distorts reality and invokes shame for white students.

This is not a new battle in the U.S. or Canada (remember when Prime Minister Harper said “?” or when President Trump chastised ?). But it has picked up steam recently. Since January 2021,  and 17 states have given in to these demands.

But critical race theory is not an abstract concept — it is actually simply a reflection of us: of our unequal laws and systems already in place. It points out the history of our society and its ongoing inequalities. And asks us to look at issues as systemic instead of as individual problems.

Today we explore how applying critical race theory in classrooms across Canada helps both students and teachers.

Listen to the full podcast with guest, Ph.D. student Dwayne Brown (Faculty of Education, �첥��Ƶ) in .

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Jermaine Brown became Toronto’s 15th homicide victim of 2006. His murderers shot him five times — once in each of his legs, twice in his torso; the final bullet maliciously tunnelled through his neck and out of his side.

Jermaine Brown was my older brother.

I often imagine how he felt, as he laid on the cold concrete, motionless as the life left his body. The pain. The fear. The loneliness.

It always brings me back to the profound sadness and anger I felt when I was 15. The restless nights where my mind would do nothing but wander and cogitate revenge. That was a word I fixated on — revenge — a word that began to govern each of my breaths. I was slipping down an emotional slide from which a return could be impossible.

This emotional slide is not unique to me. It is a commonplace narrative of despondency among youth in the  of Toronto — a neighbourhood where nearly a quarter of residents are on social assistance and high school graduation rates are low.

Mental health and emotional intelligence must be a focus in communities like this — communities that are home to marginalized Black youth.

If it wasn’t for basketball, a few caring mentors and teachers, family and my brother’s constant reminder to, “focus on ball and school… be the best,” .

As a teacher with the Toronto District School Board and a Ph.D. candidate in �첥��Ƶ’s Faculty of Education, I now focus my research on mental health and its influence on the success of Black youth throughout our education system.

I am also the co-founder of a program called .

Read the full article written by Ph.D. student Dwayne Brown (Faculty of Education, �첥��Ƶ) in .

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In the remote Andean community of El Cisne in Ingapirca, Ecuador, one of the first things you’ll notice is children’s laughter. In a courtyard, women gather with their children to trace ancestral knowledge and memories — and they do this using wool.

The alpaca wool that helps them reconnect has been carefully sheared, cleaned and the combed into a soft material that will be easier to spin and work with.

While the practice of spinning and weaving has dwindled in the community, as other work takes precedence, most of the women gathered here have some knowledge of the activity. They’ve learned by observing their own mothers, grandmothers, aunties and other adults.

Reviving and helping strengthen ancestral knowledge is one of our goals as researchers and educators facilitating a project called Uncommoning in the Andes. The project is part of the Climate Action Childhood Network — an international group of educators and researchers who create and experiment alongside young children and early childhood educators to generate responses to climate change.

Read the full article by Assistant Professor Cristina Delgado Vintimilla in .

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Masks, social distancing and increased ventilation are all necessary pandemic measures in classrooms, but they can make for a difficult listening and hearing environment for students and teachers. While this is true for students with hearing loss, the capacity for COVID-19 measures to affect all students’ ability to hear clearly should also be considered.

Before COVID-19, classrooms already represented less-than-optimal-acoustic environments. It’s also true that young children, children who are learning a new language, children with language difficulties and children with recurrent ear infections have particular difficulty understanding speech in noisy situations.

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario recognizes classroom noise as a barrier to teaching and learning. Read news coverage based on evidence, not alarm. COVID-19 measures potentially degrade the listening situation further because of masks, which remove visual cues for speech-reading and muffle the speaker’s voice, social distancing, plexiglass barriers or ventilation systems, which can add significant noise into the room.

Read the full article written by Associate Professor Pam Millett on .

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Many young students are facing problems getting back into the swing of school after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to learn from home, where parents were nearby and rigid schedules were often replaced with loosely structured days.

Sarah Barrett, an education researcher and associate professor at �첥��Ƶ, said the pandemic also taught some kids how to be adaptable. As schools shifted from in-person to online — and back and forth again — kids learned flexibility and empathy, she said: “The pandemic made it possible to understand that the whole world was going through something.”

Barrett, who published a study on equity in online classrooms during the pandemic in March, recently reached out to the same 50 Ontario teachers she interviewed for that previous research to ask how students are adjusting to in-person learning.

Respondents mostly taught younger grades, though teachers of kindergarten to Grade 12 were represented. Barrett said the general consensus was that kids were “glad to be back, face-to-face with their friends.”

Because teachers are used to addressing the annual summer slide, she said many aren’t concerned by lags in reading or writing. But they do worry about students’ mental health.

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A desk with teaching supplies for children.

Amy Found said she remembers reading with kindergarten children from Grade 4 to Grade 6. She said it was her favourite thing to do. Her elementary school, Briargreen Public School in Ottawa, offered a program called reading buddies where older students were paired with younger ones to read together. 

It was programs like reading buddies and working with children at summer camps that Found said motivated her to become an educator. Found just finished her first year in early childhood education at Algonquin College.

A new research examining how childhood memories influence future educators who are preparing to work with children found her personal connection to teaching was not uncommon. 

In 2016, the researchers of the new study looked into different aspects of childhood for a journal called the . According to Lisa Farley, a researcher and education professor at �첥��Ƶ, the research team was interested in investigating how children are represented in classrooms and curriculum. This area of focus led them to research how teachers’ understanding of childhood might be affected by their own childhood memories. 

"If future educators analyze the impact of social structures on their experiences, it can help them recognize and challenge the inequities their students might face"

Professor Lisa Farley

Read the full article on

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The 2021 federal budget and to create a . In response to this, Faculty of Education assistant professor Cristina Delgado Vintimilla along with other members of the , co-authored an article for the Conversation Canada outlining actions that the Federal government can take to build a sustainable and relevant early education system responsive to the concerns of the 21st century in response to the Federal Budget 2021.

Read the article .

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