W
e’re standing in front of a massive mural on a street near our school, the faces of happy children smil-
ing at us from a cinderblock wall. Te piece is a collaborative project between Canadian and Chilean muralists. Te artist is political activist Giovanni Zamora, and the Grade 8 class observing it is asked what they think is being communicated through the artwork. “Children are the future!” someone sug-
gests with a groan. Clearly, he’s been around this block before. “Hope? It says ‘hope’ on the kids’ shirts,”
replies another student. “Well, it’s true that this mural is called
Roots of Hope,” I offer. “But why hope? Let’s continue this conversation when we get back to the classroom where you can do some research.” During the 1970s and ’80s, many Chilean
refugees made our neighborhood in west To- ronto home aſter escaping the military dic- tatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Te students discover that the Canadian and Chilean gov-
20 ETFO VOICE | WINTER 2024
ernments have been close friends for a long time. So close, in fact, that it took a mere three weeks for the Canadian government to recog- nize Pinochet’s leadership following the 1973 coup he led with his military junta. Tou- sands died, tens of thousands were tortured, and hundreds of thousands were exiled. “Our government recognized Pinochet?” “Quickly, yes.” “I didn’t know that…” We’ve been thinking a lot this year about
the idea of making the invisible visible, as a crucial first step in responding to injustice. As we turned the corner into springtime, I wanted to create classroom time for stu- dents to take up space in a new way. Tat’s when the spray-paint cans came out onto the front desk.
MAKING THEIR MARK
It’s International Women’s Day. I’ve intro- duced the graffiti art project: find a woman who inspires you, print a stencil of the per- son, cut it out and spray-paint her image on the walls of our hallway. Today, next week, next month. Whenever you like.
“Do you mean we get to spray-paint on
the wall? Like, it’s not coming down?” asks Maddy. Tere’s something powerful about per-
manence. Te kind of mark that’s not peeled off the wall in the sweltering last days of June. I bump into one of our teacher candidates, Roddie, who is musing about this tiny hall- way. “Tere’s something here about perma- nence in a space you’re passing through,” he says. “And connection, making yourself a part of a place.” He’s also talking about the idea of diffusing power in a learning com- munity. Now I’m musing along with him. Tere’s something important, too, about
an ongoing invitation, an inoculation against a blinkered view of justice where special days and months are celebrated, but there’s no sus- tained, year-round integration into the cur- riculum or young people’s lives. Our students have become cautious
about doing things to “tick the box.” Ives, in Grade 7, says, “I think having special days and months is good because it very much encourages people to talk about things that they normally wouldn’t. But unfortunately, it
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