Overview

Miriam Miller, M.A.,

is an educator and researcher passionate about social and emotional learning (SEL). Miriam supports educators in ongoing professional development as they consider how to embed SEL into learning activities in various subject areas and across all disciplines.

Landscapes of Injustice (LOI), provides learners with opportunities to engage in rich and meaningful explorations of a dark time in Canadian history while provoking deep reflection, critical thought, historical empathy, and compassionate action. Landscapes of Injustice weaves together Social Studies content and personal and social responsibility; aspects of social and emotional learning (SEL) are embedded within lesson content and activated through learning activities.

Through various learning activities (e.g., discussions, games, journals), students recognize their own and others’ thoughts and biases, emotional reactions, and actions. Students keep a Reflection Journal which helps to build personal- and social- awareness and responsibility; the journal documents growth and development of understanding in both the SS content and SEL skills. Given this time in history, the curriculum develops historical empathy skills, by building emotional vocabulary and understanding as students as explore emotions such as sorrow, despair, shame, loneliness, and confusion. Students engage in perspective taking, an essential element of empathy, as they imagine different experiences from a Japanese Canadian’s perspective (e.g., through the story board/Powell Street simulation activity). Perspective taking is a cognitive skill that enhances both empathy and critical thinking. Critical thinking skills are embedded and activated as students puzzle through challenging issues related to race, equity and inequality. Many of the reflection questions and activities allow students to deepen their understanding of their own positionality and bias while exploring Canada’s past (and current?) biases, racism and prejudice, which develops intrapersonal skills such as self-awareness and metacognition. Finally, as students explore the notion of redress, they are prompted to consider how their sense of empathy might motivate them to act to support the UNCRC (i.e., compassionate action). The unit can be used to introduce themes of social justice, race and equity and can serve as a foundation on which to consider other times of racism/prejudice in Canada’s past and present. Ultimately, LOI is designed to develop insightful, compassionate, and empathic citizens—a beautiful combination of head, heart and hands (heart and mind education/hands-on, hearts-on, minds-on education).

Note: In this resource, SEL is infused throughout the content (nature of the content) and also through the activities (cooperative learning, reflective journals, etc.).