Learning to name
what I once
navigated alone.

I see a difference between having parents who value education and having parents who already know how the local school system works. My parents cared deeply about my future. Their unfamiliarity with some opportunities did not mean they lacked interest in me.

They also supported my interests in practical ways. They bought me a sports equipment or technology, such as a laptop, because they recognized my interests. The skills needed for this webpage I'm building now are a direct result of that support. Therefore, I had advantages worth acknowledging, even when I compared myself with wealthier classmates. My father's work also reminds me not to assume that a person's occupation tells me everything about their abilities or the choices available to them.

The lunch change seems small, but it shows how I learned to manage other people's reactions by adjusting myself. I did not need an explicit rule telling me to hide part of my culture. A few comments were enough to influence what I felt comfortable bringing to school.

The ESL experience was not a problem because language support is undesirable. The problem, as I experienced it, was the assumption about who needed it. These memories help me connect culturally responsive teaching to ordinary decisions about food, language, names, and expectations, not just special celebrations.

This experience sits alongside, rather than erases, my more difficult memories of school. I remember feeling that my Grade 4 teacher treated white students more favourably, while my Grade 5 teacher helped me feel capable and valued. Both experiences shaped my expectations of teachers.

Reading bell hooks's “Engaged Pedagogy” helped me understand the relationship in this memory. Her emphasis on knowing students and building a learning community gives language to what my teacher did. He recognized an interest, offered a challenge, and trusted me with meaningful responsibility.

The suspension confirmed some of my mistrust without making every teacher untrustworthy. I had many positive experiences too. What stayed with me was the habit of assessing whether someone might hold racial biases before feeling fully at ease.

I also need to examine what I did not notice. I remember hearing friends say things like “that's so gay” or "you're retarded" as lighthearted insults towards something or someone. I did not use the phrases myself, but I was not shocked by them, nor did I challenge their use. I tried to be friendly to students who were targets of bullying due to various reasons such as their appearance, size, personal interests, etc. At the same time, I also knew to keep some distance as my association could lead to bullying towards me. I wish I had more strength as a child to stand up for what I believed to be right.

These memories make intersectionality personal. I could be alert to racial exclusion while missing forms of exclusion that did not target me. My comfort as a straight male was not evidence that the environment was comfortable for everyone.

My path was much less direct than the careers I knew about growing up. Opportunities became imaginable as I encountered people, workplaces, and problems that expanded my understanding of what I could do.

Work also made social difference more visible to me in another way. I noticed who seemed comfortable connecting with whom and heard comments about race, religion, gender, and sexuality when people discussed opportunities or promotions. I cannot know the reasons behind every decision, but those experiences contributed to my awareness of belonging in professional settings.

Being male sometimes gave me a way to connect with other men even when race felt like a possible barrier. I also now hold educational qualifications and professional experience that give me forms of credibility. Remembering exclusion does not remove the need to examine the advantages I bring into a room.

I question whether a test always measures the understanding I want to assess. I think about how writing speed, English fluency, prior opportunities, and access to support might affect what a student can demonstrate. I also see the importance of providing support before assessment, rather than waiting for a disappointing result to reveal a need.

Connecting that reflection to my MCAT teaching creates a useful tension. I can take students' goals and examination preparation seriously without treating a score as a complete description of their capability. I also need to ask whose experiences I see when I teach a course and whose circumstances may remain outside my view.

This does not mean dismissing tests or assuming that every difficulty has the same cause. It means being more curious about the conditions behind a result and less willing to turn that result into a fixed judgement about a person.

This contrast is about the settings I encountered, not a judgement about every school or community in either region. I also cannot determine students' identities by looking at a classroom. What I can say is that moving changed my awareness of issues I had previously given less attention.

It has also made me question the limits of my own experience. Being racialized does not mean I understand Indigenous students' lives or the particular histories affecting their education. I need to learn about those histories and local relationships rather than fitting them into a story I already know.

My reflections on language, identity, and colonial histories have made me ask whose knowledge I learned to recognize as authoritative. In science education especially, I want to question what I treat as the obvious starting point and what I leave at the margins.

The shift for me is from privately navigating social difference to considering my responsibility when I have authority in a classroom. Silence may have helped me get through situations as a student, but I do not want that instinct to determine how I respond as a teacher.

The historical and systemic course material also pushes me beyond asking whether an individual meant well. In my own story, I can examine how students were selected for support, how discipline was applied, and which experiences were treated as ordinary. bell hooks's chapter on decolonization helped me think about change as ongoing work rather than a single moment of becoming aware.

At the same time, bringing issues forward should not mean demanding public disclosure. Sharing responsibility for a safe classroom is different from making a student share a painful experience. I want to name harm without taking control of someone else's story.