Wow!!! Looking back, I have come a long way with my learning, especially from a poor background. However, please be mindful that my education may differ from some of you, who may have more resources than I did growing up. Growing up as a child, my learning career didn't begin until I emigrated to Canada. When my learning career started, I had no choice but to be resilient and determined to work hard to be where I am today, and as I grew older, I have always pursued learning opportunities. Nevertheless, never in a million years would I have thought I would be where I am today, then St.Clair (2015) said, "Quite often, it can help to underline the point that an individual's history may not be a barrier to learning. There can be a sense that if the learners with the most complex histories can be here after all the challenges of their life and be successful, then other folks can be too" (p.35). 

 

In January 1996, I emigrated from Jamaica to settle permanently in Canada to live with my mother and little sister. Growing up in Jamaica was extremely difficult, especially from a poor background. For example, when I lived in Jamaica for nine years with my grandma and cousins, I hardly ever attended school because my grandmother could not afford to pay our school fees. Because of that, I struggled academically; when I first started school in Canada, I was way below my grade level and the Canadian curriculum. As a result, I had to relearn from JK right up to high school. I was also placed in an ESL class to learn English and integrate the Canadian curriculum. In addition, throughout elementary school and some high school years, I was always put in a special learning class with a minimum of five students. Initially, I never had a problem being in a special class, but the more confident I felt about my reading and writing, the more I thought I no longer wanted to be placed in a special category. After a while, I started to feel embarrassed and ashamed that I had never experienced being in a regular mainstream class with my peers since beginning school in Canada. Grade eleven was when I first experienced being in a mainstream class with my peers. As a youth, I was always open-minded and eager to learn when I lacked basic academic literacy. I asked questions when unsure, and because of that, my choices in my learning now have a long-lasting impact on my career. However, my eagerness, dedication, determination, and discipline in wanting to learn the Canadian curriculum to succeed have helped me develop the lifelong knowledge and skills I have today.

 

 

 

 

As a woman of color, I am beyond humbled and grateful to have migrated to Canada and call Canada my home. As mentioned earlier, life in Jamaica was rough regarding education. However, living in Canada, I have had the privilege of attending elementary and secondary school for free, which is impressive because, in Jamaica, students must pay for their education. Coming from firsthand poverty, I feel most privileged that I had the privilege to attend college twice as a woman of color and now to be in my first year of university; we cannot pretend that systemic discrimination doesn't exist here in Canada; being where I am today is an honor and a privilege. The only barrier that I have ever faced was intersectionality; when I was working at McDonald's, all my managers were predominately Caucasian. I worked at McDonald's for six years and never once called in sick, and I was always available each time I was called in on my days off. I was a dedicated worker who knew all the positions there were to learn. However, each time I asked to be moved up to become a manager, there was one excuse after another, and each time they would promote an individual to a manager position, they were mainly Caucasian. However, I voiced how I was feeling, and the management team assured me that it wasn't because of my skin color and that racism was unacceptable in their place of employment. They apologized and voiced how much they appreciated me as a great worker.

Nevertheless, not long after graduating from college, I ended up quitting, and again, having the privilege as a woman of color to attend college has opened many doors for me. As we know, for many years, and even living in the 21st century, there has been racism and discrimination predominately against Indigenous and people of color. Therefore, achieving all I have today is a privilege I am most grateful for.

 

Q: As future Educators, how will you use your platform to promote equity, inclusion, and diversity?

Reference
St. Clair R. (2015). Creating courses for Adult: Design for learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

I graduated from high school in 1986 with a non-academic diploma. My general high school diploma lead me to work in hospitality and retail rather than attending university after high school. I completed a community college diploma from the Culinary Institute of Canada in 1989, and since then, I’ve held many different jobs and owned a business for twenty years. Throughout my career, I’ve taken university courses on and off since 1991 and have completed two years of credits in subjects including Environmental studies, Feminism and Sexuality, and now this program at Brock. A few years ago, I became a Certified Sexual Health Educator through Options for Sexual Health in Vancouver.  

Opportunities and Barriers 

I’m a 54-year-old queer, cisgender, white woman and the daughter of a Northern Irish immigrant mother who worked in retail and a father who was born in Canada and was an officer in the military until he retired. English is my first and only language. I am not currently living with any mobility issues or other physical disabilities.  I live with a loving wife in a two-income home in a relatively safe neighbourhood. I can afford the technology I need to learn and nutritious food, dental care, and the other essentials of life that impact learning and health. I see myself as benefiting from an abundance of privilege. 

There have been some barriers related to education and being a queer woman. I’ve recently been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and ADHD, which has been a blessing as I now have the information and support to understand my learning history and meet my learning goals moving forward. However, these two challenges have interfered with my ability to learn and achieve academically since I was in grade 4, which has taken it's toll on my self-confidence. Being a woman means feeling limited in the world in a physical way related to safety. Being a queer woman, especially at this point and time where forces are working hard to turn back the clock on rights, doesn’t feel particularly safe. I limit my movements when things flare up as they did during the convoy occupation near my home in Ottawa last year and during large gatherings such as on July 1 or sporting events. The rhetoric coming out of the States reminds me of the horrible things I heard about queer and trans people as a teenager. 

One final note, I partly chose this program at Brock because, as an older student, I find attending classes in person challenging. I’ve experienced ageism in the classroom from fellow students and instructors. Something I love about this program is the diversity of learners (age and otherwise) and the relative autonomy of asynchronous and online learning. 

I am a Caucasian female, born and raised in Canada which is a great privilege on its own due to our access to education from a young age. My first language is English, which has been very beneficial for both learning and teaching in this country. I was expected to go to university after highschool and I did so, graduating with a general BA. Since then, I attended college to study massage therapy where I did quite well and have been working in the field for 7 years now, and teaching at the college level for 3. I consider these all to be privileges in my life and I’m grateful I have had the opportunity for formal post-secondary education. I have also benefitted greatly from being involved in sports from a young age – another privilege granted to me when my parents saw value in enrolling me in competitive soccer. This is an area where a massive amount of informal learning took place. I remember looking up to my male coach, as I didn’t have a close relationship with my dad at that time. Looking back on those formative years brings up some emotions about how impactful that male role model was for me, and I still carry a lot of what I learned through sport with me in life and in teaching. 

Some personal barriers I have identified are that I am a first-generation university student. Neither of my parents attended university, although I was still encouraged to go, primarily by my mom. I would classify my family as middle-class, but perhaps on the lower end of middle-class. We could afford one extra-curricular activity, but we were not able to go on vacations or travel, and if our vehicle or home needed repairs, it would be months and months before we could afford to do so. It was very evident that money was more of a stress than an abundance in our household, which meant that pursuing my university education was difficult financially, and I required many loans to make it happen. I can remember my mom saying that she wanted me to have more educational opportunities than she did, and this was why it was so important to her that I attended a post-secondary school. Although she was very encouraging, the entire university experience was foreign to everyone in my house, so we were unprepared for things like tuition deadlines arriving before OSAP came in, and even how to navigate the learning management systems of the university. I can remember not even knowing I should be looking at the course syllabus to learn about deadlines in my courses, and when the syllabus was mentioned in class, it took me a long time to understand what that word meant, as many profs assumed the students already knew. I couldn’t afford all my textbooks in first year and was embarrassed to ask questions in class. I often didn’t go to class if I felt like I would be singled out or ‘found out’ for not knowing the content. For this reason, I struggled academically in my first few years at university. Things gradually improved as I learned to navigate the student life, applied for bursaries, and took some ownership over my grades and outcomes. I got a part-time job to help with my expenses, but I consider this a small barrier as well, since I couldn’t focus solely on academics like some other students could. 

I try to keep an open line of communication with my current students, and always tell them to ask if they need more time for assignments, a copy of the text, recordings of lectures, or extra help with the content. It isn’t always easy to recognize learners come from very different backgrounds, but it should be made a priority in all learning situations to get to know your students to better serve them. I realize in the grand scheme, my privileges greatly outweigh any barriers I have experienced in life and education, and I will always be grateful that I'm able to continue my education and become more mindful as a person and teacher. I do believe that some of my small barriers have served as motivation to do well, particularly in the last 5-10 years of my educational journey, because I want to prove it to myself that I can achieve some of the harder to reach goals that I have set out for myself, so in that way my barriers have acted more like speed bumps, and have propelled me forward in my education and in my career.

Where my partner has faced more barriers being a black man, developing our relationship has unfortunately created additional barriers, with some of the relationships we carry with others. Where I don’t experience day to day racism, my partner does; but i am also affected by biases’. I hold a lot of privilege in my life and have not experienced many barriers. My parents have generational wealth that had helped me to achieve post secondary education, and many other opportunities that I have had access too. My parents lived in an affluent neighborhood, so I had access to good schools. When I struggled my parents had the financial stability to provide me with tutoring as a child, that allowed me to continue in school and develop skills that I had a hard time picking up in traditional classrooms. This allowed me to continue with my education and grow to receive my college accreditations and university accreditation as I had gotten older, my parents helped with the financial burden of education, which allowed me to graduate with less debt which gave me more financial freedom as I became an adult. I have never had barriers or access to my education which I am grateful for and recognize. All these combined pieces have put me in a position of privilege. I had a lot of support as a child and younger adult, and now as an adult less so, not just due to growing up but because my lifestyle isn’t accepted and has created barriers to family support and engagement. We have also faced hostility and stereotyping in our day to day lives, we have had to ignore or disengage with external forces on our relationship. I keep in mind I am more in a place where I need to learn from others barriers, others have many more barriers or hardships then I will ever encounter as a person and as a facilitator, so it is my job as a facilitator to listen to the shared experiences that I am privileged to hear and try to keep open lines of communication to assist where I can, Whether that be understanding of someone’s position and providing lenience to assignments or being told curriculum needs to change to be more accessible or diverse.

I grew up with a single teenage mom, so money was tight for most of my childhood, I was even bounced around from family member to family member at some points. After high school I was strongly encouraged to go to university, although my family could not afford to help me financially and I was unable to qualify for OSAP. I worked in a factory during the summer and on weekends while my peers enjoyed the freedom of financial freedom and had more time to focus on their schooling as well as enjoy the typical lifestyle that comes with being a university student. After my first year I had realized that I was struggling and wasn’t enjoying what I was learning and switched to a college Pharmacy assistant program. During my second year of college, I was due with my first child, so I decided to take a year off to take care of her, during this year I was learning how to be a parent, be responsible for another human life and ultimately who I was going to be now that I had a tiny human depending on me. I went back to school the following year and finished my diploma and worked in my career path for a few years before having my second child. I stayed home for a couple years with my kids before re-entering the workforce taking a position as a pharmacy assistant instructor at a local private college. While my role here is to be an educator, I spent the first couple years learning how to take my experience and turn it into teachable material. I learn from my students every day whether it is relevant to course material or cultural differences, and how they can relate their own experiences to course content, this forces me to realize my privileges daily. This year I decided to start the journey to achieving my BA in Adult Education and the barriers that I faced the first time I attended post-secondary school are no longer holding me back. 

As a white cisgender female, I have not experienced many barriers to learning except for the financial struggles straight out of high school and the lack of guidance being the first one in my family to attend post-secondary school. Being that I experienced these struggles and am now able to complete my education barrier free I realize that I am very privileged. I do not experience racism or gender discrimination in my education. I live in a nice neighbourhood and can now give my children a life free of the barriers that I faced when I was a child. 

 

St. Clair, R. (2015). Creating courses for adults: Design for learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 

I am a Caucasian female, and for the most part I feel like I’ve experienced minimal barriers in my learning. A specific barrier that comes to mind that could potentially impede on my access to educational opportunities is financial limitations. Unfortunately, in a common-law relationship, it is not so easy to access student loans as they consider both parties income. This enrages me as I feel as though they aren’t considering other expenses like bills, a mortgage, groceries, etc., as inflation continues to rise as everything becomes more expensive. This is a large barrier for many, including myself, as I must take breaks from completing my degree between semesters to work fulltime in hopes to save for my courses. At the same time, I am hoping to continue my degree while starting to build a family of my own,. Therefore, in order to complete my degree, it is only possible to lengthen the amount of time it takes to complete it. This can also be a stressor on its own, due to the prolonged academic demand and anxiety involved in just being in school alone. Personally, intense academic stress can impact my mental and physical health. It can contribute to my already present anxiety, sleep, and healthy lifestyle, which can further impact my overall health and academic performance. Although, this is a personal barrier, I also feel like it is a privilege at the same time, as I am fortunate enough to still attend, as some may not be able to afford it at all. - Mikayla

 

As a white female, I had little to no barriers. I reside in a safe neighbourhood with a loving and caring spouse; I was privileged to have the help of speech therapists in school and therapy when needed under my health care benefits and through the school’s benefits program. With anxiety sitting at my bedside table that puts me to sleep and wakes me up an hour before my alarm every morning, I have faced challenges in being productive on the goals that I set on a daily and weekly basis for me. I am currently working on using and setting calendar reminders and checklists to help keep me on track. Even at work, having a manager who has my back and reassures me that I am doing something correctly helps with balancing learning and do by walking through problems as they come up. Through this, I want to continue to apply compassion, understanding, and thinking about facilitating as a whole to those who have disabilities or trouble with public speaking. I want to make sure that I am sensitive to certain traumas and stories and how people portray them; people learn through various ways and can be audio learnings, visual learners or musical learners who need to have information presented to them in certain ways for information to stick. I hope perusing this degree along with my Masters propels me into the future.  

 

St. Clair, R. (2015). Creating courses of adults: Design for learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Regarding my social location, I am aware of the many privileges I have experienced and will continue to experience because of it. I am a white, cisgender, middle class female with a university education. While being a female has led me to experience some barriers, I have experienced many privileges because of my social location. One of my parents has a university degree and there was never any question of whether I would go to university or not- it was expected. I was able to go to university as a young person and then again as an adult to finish my master’s degree. The road for life for me can be a little bumpy but overall my privilege allows it to be fairly smooth. 

I have definitely reflected on the privileges I have enjoyed being raised in a family that was able to pay for my undergraduate education. I was fed and housed by my parents for the entire time. This made focusing on school much easier then others who are not as privileged. I was also raised with English being my first language which made school, which puts much emphasis on communication skills and vocal participation easier and natural. The Johnson-Bailey & Alfred (2006) article describes very well how much of a privilege this is - to just be able to step into tutorial and easily participate.

Barriers 

The one barrier that I reflect on a lot is that I was the first person in my family to attend university in a field none of them could help me with. My family was always extremely supportive of me, but I felt that navigating university life, applications, grants, writing, and science in general often felt like I was “going it alone”. As much as my family wanted to help, they couldn’t. Although now this is less of an issue, whenever I TA or teach I ALWAYS give a whole 15 minutes lecture on how if my students need help with ANYTHING, or just advice on anything that I’m here. Iv actually been able to help a lot of students in similar situations by making myself available to them which has been quite a rewarding experience for me. 

 

 

After reading St. Clair (2015), I have a more genuine appreciation of my learning story. I believe my learning line is straightforward, with some darker sections.  
I am a Caucasian female from Canada with an English and French-language-speaking household. My generation is the first to graduate from university in my immediate/semi-immediate family.    Although my parents were not working in healthcare, there was a subtle (maybe not so at times) push for me to find a healthcare career; perhaps it was the most stable job market at the time.  

Despite my direction, my support always encouraged me to pursue more as the phrase “the more tickets you have, the better off you will be” was always present despite financial strain. Perhaps needless to say, my adults were mainly tradesmen, farmers, and stay-at-home parents who wanted more for me.    

Privileges

I feel I have lived a privileged life. Although money was always tight, my parents ensured I never went without necessities and sometimes wants. Despite the waves of low financial status, I feel honored that I could enroll and complete three college diplomas and one university degree (not including Brock).   

Barriers

As a first-generation university student, I found my supports did not always understand my stressors, and therefore they could not fully relate to my situation. 

Another barrier was deciding which school I was to continue my studies after high school. I have a twin sister, and although we could choose what we wanted to study, we needed to be in the same city (preferred same school) for housing purposes. The expenses would have been too significant if my sister and I had studied in different cities.  

Lastly, being from a small northern Ontario town, my accessibility to additional education (especially in childhood) was minimal. Socioeconomic status was the driving force to who could access the limited education in this town. This was a factor in my narrow vision of what I can accomplish educationally speaking. 

I have been privileged enough to have been given the opportunity to work for the public and the private sector in The Dominican Republic. I have seen the differences that exist in both education systems. I am a female of color and Latina in Canada. I am also fluent in 3 languages, and completing my second bachelor’s degree. In the Dominican Republic, there is a public education system and a private one. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to experience both and observe the differences that exist. While students who attend private k-12 schools and university benefit from rooms with air conditioning, classroom technology, and better security systems, students who attend public schools struggle with the heat, small classrooms without a computer, and security cameras in the hallways.

As an immigrant, that experience back home has opened my eyes and has made me reflect on the inequalities and differences that exist in the world. Those experiences have shaped the teacher that I am today. 

 

 

 

Barriers

 

Being a person of color had very little impact. Toronto is extremely gentrified as a city and by the time we finished moving around I was in University once again in an environment that is wholly accepting of everyone. The fact that we grew up poverty was a greater factor in going to school. By the time it was time to make a choice, I was forced to go to the closest option and meant going to school for post-secondary education would result in a substantial cost that would not be something that would have been possible without being in Ontario and having access to loans. My parents were unable to afford going to school in India and that would have carried through here if I had been born and raised there. 

 

Privilege 

 

As a male, regardless of my skin colour, I have found some semblance of a success in the field of work that I do. In the program for paramedicine, we were informed that despite the female to male ratio being higher, women in first response will always have skeptics. My partners who were females would get “but how can a little girl like you lift someone”, and nobody would question the same sized male standing beside them. I can confirm with some certainty that my partners can outlift me in the gym and they can lift patients just fine, but by simply being a male, that type of interaction never creeped in. Similar arguments persisted when I worked for the Hamilton Police, even the instructor there was aware that most dispatchers are females and would have a harder time than the male trainee’s would and let me know it was an advantage. Breaking down the barriers that exist between the genders is a bit baffling to me especially within the job. I have never met a female paramedic that couldn’t do the same job as me without restriction and while that is one of the simplest interactions to break down those older mindsets that still exist within the field.