Just Food Project: Facilitator Toolkit

Introduction

Dear food justice educator,

We believe that a critical part of engaging in food justice pedagogy is centering equity in our teaching practice. While there are limits to the scale and scope of the change we can enact in our classrooms, we as students and instructors strive to uphold equitable guiding principles, outlined in this guide.

These modules were born from students' desires for their education to centre issues of injustice that they saw in their daily lives. As a project spearheaded by students, we hope that these learning modules will aid those looking to incorporate an equity lens and framework into their teaching and learning. This is an ongoing journey for us all and we are grateful to everyone who has supported us in this endeavour, including our mentors, elders, the Teaching Learning Enhancement Fund, food justice professors, and community members.

Signed,

The Food Justice Educational Resources Team

Guiding Principles

Uphold Lived and Personal Experiences

• Each individual has something to contribute and is able to speak from their lived experiences. This attitude needs to be intentionally set from the get-go.
• Centre marginalized voices. Acknowledge the power dynamics of class while not burdening those in marginal spaces with more emotional labour than they already engage in. There are times when education from available resources is appropriate as not to re-traumatize individuals and their communities.
• Emotions are valuable, and awareness of emotional reactions can be used to shape a learning environment, but there is a difference between feeling unsafe and feeling uncomfortable (Teaching Tolerance’s guide on talking about race provides a helpful distinction that can be applied to other topics as well). Resist the temptation to fix emotions as they are not always your responsibility, but if triggering experiences come up, ask “what do you need right now?”

Address Power Dynamics of the Learning Environment

• Physical environments shape relational and emotional environments. Is the classroom a lecture hall with seating facing towards the front to assume that the professor is the expeller of knowledge, or are the tables and chairs moveable for various modes of collaboration (ie. large circle, small clusters). If the physical environment is limited, what are some creative ways to disrupt its intended design?
• Authority is not always bad, but can be used to shape space and allow for important care work.
• Alternatively, share the responsibilities and leadership by blurring traditional student-teacher hierarchies. Think about the activities that are enacted in the classroom (ie. discussions, lectures) and how students can bring their own skill sets to share with their peers (without tolkenizing diverse students).
  • Have students engage with land acknowledgements by taking turns saying them. This should be done with care and attention to each student's own positionality and grounded within a discussion of the importance and limitations of land acknowledgements. Land acknowledgements are a starting point to unsettle settler colonialism and should not be the ending point; they must be accompanied with the repatriation of land and life.
  • Land acknowledgements, when practiced without intention and contextualization, may only amount to performative allyship and virtue signalling.
  • See this video for an example of the dangers of land acknowledgments without further appropriate actions.
  • For further resources: Native Land, Native Governance Centre

• Collectively define terminology where appropriate. This not only allows for students to have a better grasp of vocabulary by critiquing and synthesizing their understandings of a concept, but also allows for the sharing of lived experiences.
• Academia plays a role in anti-oppression and in steps towards social justice, but there are limitations to all knowledge traditions. Take care with citation politics. Within the reading list provided, choose from a variety of authors, and make adjustments, understanding that the historical and contemporary privileges of academia affect whose voices are valued and validated.
• We also suggest sharing the facilitator guide in its entirety to students so they can learn from it as well.

Foster a Community of Learners

• All participants, including both educators and learners, bring unique perspectives that help illuminate a particular aspect of complex food system issues. To foster a community of learners is to strive to create a respectful and safe learning environment that promotes inclusion and encourages dialogue. Without diminishing the responsibilities of each participant, establishing a culture of a community of learners is a central approach to addressing the problematic belief that certain participants have more or less to contribute. Educators are positioned as having expertise in their field, rather than being the absolute authority on a certain topic. Learners are expected to actively engage with concepts and critically evaluate the multiple sources of information presented throughout the class. By participating in respectful dialogue and collaboration within our community of learners, we will all emerge with an enhanced understanding of key concepts.
• Write a community guideline. Facilitators and students can collaborate on how the learning environment is shaped by outlining how they choose to interact with each other and the course content. This can make it easier for the facilitator to run the module while holding participants accountable for their actions.
• Questions to ask the learners can include:
  • How do we want to show up for each other in this space?
  • How do we take ownership of our own learning?
  • What responsibilities do we have to ourselves and each other? And how do we honour these?
  • Include setting group guidelines as an activity: This activity guide provides multiple options for facilitating community guidelines as well as examples of community guidelines.

• Write out “truths”, values, assumptions, biases and beliefs in which to base understandings of justice. This comes from a place of accepting that there are different concepts of what justice is and how to enact it.
  • What are the systems of oppression that exist in our society?
  • What are the moral grounds we believe in that make these oppressions wrong?
  • In the Global Citizenship Education Otherwise Study Guide, the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective has outlined three primary “illusions” that Western enlightenment thought has brought us to:
    1. Illusions related to separation (from land, other beings and each other) and superiority - denial of entanglement;
    2. Illusions related to human centeredness, merit and innocence - denial of systemic violence and complicity in harm;
    3. Illusions related to linear progress and the possibility of continuity - denial of the limits of the planet.

• Co-author a food justice manifesto. This might be a higher level task that occurs near the end of a course.
  • The point in creating these manifestos is not to create rigid, blanket statements, but rather to create frameworks from which learners can critique and continue shaping.

Positionality and Context

Positionality

Food systems are contextually oppressive and have been structured historically, politically, and economically. We encourage facilitators to position these learning modules within the context they are situated in—for example, using community-based resources and considering injustice in regards to marginalized people within the context of your community. Academics and facilitators play a key role in developing critical thinking skills and challenging dominant ideological systems, which is necessary to understand and redress inequalities in the food system.

These learning modules have been developed on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations in what is dominantly called British Columbia, Canada. These modules were created by undergraduate and graduate students situated within a public research institution that has, and continues, to benefit from wrongs perpetuated across systematically marginalized and oppressed social groups (see the “About Us” page for more information about the individuals behind the project). We recognize the tension between our own privilege of attending the university and our concern that we not speak on behalf of marginalized communities or their lived experiences. The intention of these modules is to navigate our positions within the food system in a way that is anti-oppressive and works to uphold those who have been and continue to be silenced by asymmetrical systems of power. Academia can often devalue, delegitimize, and exclude the voices and knowledge of marginalized people. As such, we seek to actively use community sources and case studies for intimate knowledge on the subject.

Attunement to Vulnerability and Discomfort

Within these learning modules and the resulting discussions, we must be attuned to the centrality of race to food justice. This will likely include moments of vulnerability and discomfort for participants—it is important to facilitate safer learning environments for students of different identities and life experiences. These activities are intended to be introspective—if participants feel unsafe sharing their experiences, variations to the activities should be considered (for example, writing down responses individually or in a journal). It is especially important to design and choose equity-oriented activities that empower, rather than disempower, learners of marginalized identities.

We suggest creating an inclusive classroom culture based on transformative learning and anti-oppressive practice. Many identities will be visible in the classroom (such as race, gender, ethnicity, and class) and many others will remain invisible (such as sexual orientation, gender, disability)–an environment should be created that facilitates challenging dialogue while maintaining the values of anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and trauma-informed practice. This will allow participants to reflect and engage in conversations surrounding positionality, intersectionality, and structural causes of inequality. For more resources on anti-oppressive practice, see the Facilitation Guide created by the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance.

It is also important to co-create a brave space where participants may discuss how they are feeling and processing the learning material–this can be done through check-in questions before and after the activities begin. For further reading: From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces by Brian Arao & Kristi Clemens.

Addressing Microaggressions

Microaggressions are brief and often commonplace verbal, behavioural, or environmental insults or indignities targeting members of an oppressed group or minorities, such as people of colour or members of the 2SLGBTQ+ (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer+) community. These derogatory interactions communicate bias and hostility, however may be delivered unintentionally.

Tips for addressing microaggressions in the classroom: (Adapted from Jody Gray, Diversity Outreach Librarian, University of Minnesota)

1. Model the behavior you want to see from those you are confronting—stay away from being sarcastic, mocking, or arrogant when confronting microaggressions. The goal here is to educate and help people understand different perspectives rather than creating defensiveness.
2. Pause from assuming or reacting right away. If it is the first time the microaggression has occurred, you could ask the person to repeat what they said or did to begin the conversation.
3. Focus on the event, not the person, to decrease the chances of defensive behaviour.
4. Offer definition(s) of microaggressions and why they are harmful.
5. Use yourself as an example. Discuss how you have “unlearned” certain hurtful, inaccurate, or misleading information.

These principles have been built on the backbone of critical pedagogy and social and emotional learning perspectives. Challenging norms is not only beneficial, but a necessary part of teaching food justice and embodying its values.

Importance of Self-Reflexivity

The importance of self-reflexivity, and learning alongside your students, cannot be understated. As mentioned, these modules will lead you through some challenging-to-navigate terrain: there will be moments that feel emotionally charged and difficult. To prepare for those moments, it is critical for a facilitator to do their own ongoing self-work and background research in order to be able to hold space for their learners. This self-work will not only help with facilitating activities, but will also provide the foundation for creating safer learning spaces and allowing your students to feel comfortable asking questions and interrogating their own biases.

The personal resonance and effects of the oppressions explored in the modules will vary widely among learners and facilitators. Facilitators who are driven by a general sense of justice and equity-seeking, rather than from a place of personal experience and investment, run the risk of discussing topics as if they were solely theoretical. Without reflexivity, this has potential to cause harm for learners who have a greater personal investment in the topics. The resources outlined below will provide some insight on how to navigate this reflexivity and incorporate it into your teaching practice.

How to use the modules

There are seven food justice modules, each a work in progress, that you as a facilitator, instructor, or educator can integrate into your curriculum. Employ what is appropriate in your context and sample from the provided framework as you see fit. These modules have been created with a Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, where the content can be remixed, adapted, and built upon, as long as credit is provided and the content is licensed under the same terms. If you use any of the modules’ content in your classroom or another educational space, please reach out and let us know how it went or if there are any suggestions to improve the modules.

These modules were designed to be a standalone learning experience, however, if at all possible, it could be very beneficial to start with the Food Justice Primer to ensure that students have a handle on some of the topics that come up in the other modules. Depending on your students' backgrounds, some of these topics may be more familiar than others. However, the modules strive to make concepts accessible to learners regardless of where they are on their educational path. For example, students from an agricultural science background may be intimately aware of sustainable growing practices, however, those same students may not be as aware of the exploitation that exists within the migrant labour programs on ecological farms. Nutrition students may have a strong grasp on food insecurity topics, but may not know how they interact with gender. Students from a social science background may have strong understandings of topics like intersectionality, equity, and power dynamics, so part of the Food Justice Primer may be less relevant to them. Ultimately, you know your learners best and so you should choose the activities that may be helpful.

The entirety of a module has been created to fit within a 90 minute block, with pre-readings done individually by the students. The bulk of class time should be spent in discussion of those readings and one learning activity for further understanding. More activities can be combined together for a richer experience and more fully reach the learning outcomes (e.g., use two activities and increase discussion for a 2-3 hour seminar class). We also encourage you to modify and use what you see fit from these modules as some of the learning activities may complement an existing lecture you have. For example, if you have a class size of 100 or more students, the positionality and reflexivity exercises that require in-depth conversation and follow-up are probably not the most appropriate. Consider your own capacity to facilitate meaningful interactions between learners and content.

View this recording of a workshop for a walk-through of the website how to use the modules.

Module Format

The modules are structured in this format:

1. Introduction & Key Themes
2. Learning Outcomes
3. Background
4. Key Terms
5. Activity Outline
6. Additional Resources (depending on the module)
7. References

1. Introduction & Key Themes

A short summary of the module topic for facilitators. Each module has several thematic areas attached to it to help facilitators determine which module may fit in their class, as well as which content area the module will cover. Key themes are short phrases that describe the content of the module.

2. Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes have largely been shaped by the equity competency framework developed by Valley et al.. We define learning outcomes as the tangible and measurable knowledge, awareness, and skills that learners will walk away with after the completion of the module. Keep in mind, though, that learners may interact with the modules and not have their “aha” moment until weeks, if not months, later.

Equity Competency Framework

Domains	Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, and Practices
Awareness of Self	Become aware of one’s own assumptions, values, and beliefs that contribute to personal biases (implicit and explicit)
	Understand one’s own social and cultural locations and related identities and group memberships, and how these relate to working with others
	Practice preventative self-care in order to remain productive and constructive
Awareness of Others and One’s Interactions with Them	Recognize the assumptions, values, and beliefs that contribute to others’ personal biases (implicit and explicit)
	Recognize the extent to which socio-cultural structures and values may oppress, marginalize, alienate, or enhance privilege and power in others’ lives
	Tailor communication strategies to effectively express, listen, and adapt to others to establish relationships to further collective action
Awareness of Systems of Oppression	Identify historical and current systemic inequities (e.g. organizational, institutional, legal, and legislative) that affect different social groups and individuals
	Describe how policies impact racial equity in the food system
	Examine current and historical systemic expressions of racism and its intersections with class, gender, and other forms of systemic oppression in the food system
Strategies and Tactics for Dismantling Inequity	Build awareness of historical and current strategies and projects of resistance at the individual and collective scales
	Identify potential policy solutions and strategic opportunities to create a more racially equitable food system
	Use knowledge of the effects of oppression, discrimination, and historical trauma to guide the co-development of socially just planning and interventions
	Assess community assets and needs in ways that gather information, increase participation, and strengthen social cohesion, ensuring community needs are centred
	Co-formulate strategies and tactics with affected individuals and groups to set goals, generate program ideas, make organizational decisions, respect differences in communication and conflict styles, and take steps for collective action

3. Background

This provides an overview of what the module topic is about. This section can be just for the facilitator to read or can be shared with learners to frame their conceptualizations of the topic.

4. Key Terms

These include a selection of terms that are important for learners to be aware of. As previously noted, it may be helpful to collectively discuss what these words mean, rather than assuming pre-knowledge. Definitions are provided, but they are merely a starting point. It is not a complete list and should not be considered complete as these definitions offered are subjected to change and should be presumed as universal. We encourage facilitators to collectively define key terms as a way to build foundational knowledge for delving deeper and adapt these definitions in your own specific context.

5. Activity Outline

• There are 4-6 activities per learning module that the facilitators can choose between depending on the context of their use.
• Activities include a description, estimated time frame, materials, learning outcomes and detailed instructions.
• Each module has a reading discussion activity that should be completed.
  • Within the activity, there are instructions on how to guide a group discussion to unpack the resources as they relate to the learning outcomes.
  • Multiple resources are listed underneath each learning outcome. One reading should be chosen from each desired outcome, unless otherwise indicated.

• Each module contains a “Reading Discussion Activity” which would take up the most of class time.
  • The reading discussion activity contains several resources along with associated discussion questions and instructions for leading a discussion activity.
  • Multiple resources are listed underneath each learning outcome.
  • Learning outcomes are often based on the equity competency framework above. While these will often overlap, learners can curate the various resources to best suit the needs of the classroom.
  • Questions are listed below each of the readings for further class discussions.

• There are also suggested assignments and assessments that can be used by facilitators to gauge and evaluate participant learning.
  • We suggest using the activities as proxy assessments, or the assessments themselves. For example, a policy paper can be used as an in-class group discussion and also as a graded course assignment.
  • We also suggest that reflections be used if going through multiple learning modules as they will provide helpful indicators of the progress of student learning. A sample critical reflection rubric can be found here.
  • Rubrics are not provided. Reach out to the equivalent department in your institution if needed.

Critical Pedagogy & Facilitation Resources

These resources below will help you do the self-work and background learning to best facilitate these modules. Navigating new terrain can always feel daunting—facilitators may never feel ready to take on these more difficult topics. To actively work towards food justice means courageously confronting one’s own assumptions and internalized biases. Instructors and facilitators can model self-work, minimize potential harm, and create the conditions for a community of learners to grapple with the diverse ways of knowing and being that can enable aspirations of food justice.  

Equity Statements

• Sustainable Agriculture Education Association Equity Statement

Power and Privilege:

• Diversity Toolkit: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power and Privilege
• Is Everyone Really Equal? by Özlem Sensoy, Robin DiAngelo
• How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi

Addressing Whiteness

This section is directed towards white and white-passing people.

• Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving
• White fragility: why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism by Robin DiAngelo

Racial Equity Resources

• Hard conversations: An introduction to racism and its undoing - month-long online seminar, weekly classes, $99
• Hard conversations: Whiteness, race, and social justice - month-long online seminar, weekly classes, $99
• A month-long list of daily activities, curated and assembled by Autumn Gupta and Bryanna Wallace
• 21-day racial equity challenge
• Reconciliation through Indigenous Education - with Jan Hare
• Indigenous Canada - MOOC

Trauma-Informed Practice

• Trauma-Informed Practice Principles and Reflective Questions
• Trauma-Informed Practice Guide

Facilitation Resources

• Liberating Structures - includes activities that can help disrupt power dynamics of a class room by engaging everybody
• Let's Talk: Facilitating Critical Discussions with Students - by Teaching Tolerance

Pedagogy

• We Aren’t Here to Learn What We Already Know by Kyla Wazana
• The Ultimate Cheatsheet for Critical Thinking
• Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom - bell hooks
• Introducing Forum Theatre as a tool to explore issues of equality and discrimination - Theatre of the Oppressed;

Books

• Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
• The art of gathering: how we meet and why it matters by Priya Parker
• Art of Hosting - world cafe, open space
• Tamarack Institute
• Beyond Inclusion Beyond Empowerment

Reading Lists

• JStor’s Institutionalized Racism syllabus
• Beth Kamunge’s decolonial/anti-racist/postcolonial/feminist reading list on local food