Anne Rovers is conducting research under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Allen on Othermothering practices in Francophone high schools (A. ROVERS/FILE/CANVA STOCK/University of Windsor)
By Kate Hargreaves
Throughout their high school years, students look for academic and social support from teachers, peers and others in the school community.
For Black and Afro-descendant students in Francophone high schools — especially recent immigrants to Canada — this support can be all the more critical as they try to navigate a new and unfamiliar social and linguistic environment.
Anne Rovers (BA ’98, B.Ed. ’99, M.Ed. ’05), a doctoral candidate in the Joint PhD in Education, is exploring how Black women educators engage in the practice of Othermothering to support and care for these students.
A teacher at a Toronto high school in the Francophone school system, Rovers found herself drawn to this topic through her research into the shortcomings of white feminism while studying for her master’s in women’s studies at Western University.
She was further inspired by her research into Black feminism, Womanism and critical pedagogies during her doctoral work at UWindsor.
When Rovers encountered Dr. Annette Henry’s work on Othermothering — in which Black women create a caring and supportive learning environment for children who are not biologically their own — she saw similarities to the work of educators in her own school and board.
“I had never heard of the concept before,” Rovers explains, “but I thought, ‘this is going on at my school.' The more I read about it, the more I saw it and realized this is a really special practice that is not at all talked about nor reported on within the Francophone community.”
Rovers realized that while research had been done on Othermothering practices of Black women teachers in the Anglophone system, there was no information about such a practice in Francophone schools.
“Our student body includes students who have recently arrived from formerly French- and Belgian-colonized countries in Africa and the Caribbean as well as from other regions shaped by French colonial histories or ongoing political relationships. Many are first- or second-generation immigrants, and I was seeing their disenfranchisement,” Rovers says.
In the hallways at school, French-speaking students may find themselves disconnected from peers, even in the Francophone system.
“Every kid coming to a French school still speaks English with their peers, which further ostracizes the new kids coming from French-speaking countries that were colonized by France or Belgium," says Rovers.
“They have culture shock on many levels, not even having the English to make friends.”
The challenges faced by Black students are not limited to those who have recently arrived in Canada, Rovers explains.
“While some newcomers encounter barriers related to migration and schooling transitions, these challenges are not limited to newly arrived students," she says.
"Black students born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area also navigate tensions between home, community and school cultures, often within educational environments that do not fully reflect or affirm their identities and experiences."
This marginalization and isolation means that students may turn to staff members at the school for much-needed support, and Black women educators step in to act in an Othermothering capacity.
“The English system has been doing the work, they’ve had their Black graduation coaches and training about anti-Black racism on a school-board level,” Rovers says, contrasting this to limitations in the French board where responsibility for such training and mentorship often falls unofficially on the shoulders of Black women.
For her dissertation project — supervised by Dr. Andrew Allen in the Faculty of Education — Rovers wanted to better understand the experiences these Black female educators had related to Othermothering in the French board, interviewing five women working within the Francophone school systems in the Toronto area.
In recruiting for her study, she realized that the women who identified themselves as engaged in Othermothering practices were not necessarily teachers but those with other student-facing roles in the system, often positioned more precariously than permanent teachers.
A strong level of trust was therefore required for Rovers to recruit participants and engage in discussions that inevitably became quite vulnerable.
Additional challenges arose around the question of language itself, with interviews being conducted mainly in French but the dissertation project to be presented predominantly in English.
While Rovers is bilingual, she has had to navigate the complexities of presenting participant stories sometimes verbatim and sometimes in translation in order to best represent their lived experiences.
“I haven’t figured it all out yet, but I might have to leave some things in French that might not translate,” she says. “It won’t be the same in English, and I want the participants to see their work in French also. After all, these are their stories. The methodology is critical and collaborative. My job is to listen."
Outside of translation considerations, Rovers’s research also brings up some interesting and sometimes difficult tensions around understandings of race and racism and the way these concepts are mediated by language and culture.
“Ontario policies are not necessarily meeting the mark in terms of who anti-Black racism policies are recognizing,” she explains, emphasizing the diversity of experiences of Black Francophone students from various parts of the world.
“The histories and trajectories are all very different,” she says, problematizing the way these experiences are often flattened into one assumed narrative.
“Students and educators are navigating more than we think, and that needs to be highlighted.”
Rovers may still be deep in the analysis phase of her research, but she is already clear on how important the often unrecognized work of Black women educators is within the French system.
“It’s not easy,” she says, “but it is definitely joyous, important and transformative."
To learn more about doctoral studies in education, visit the Joint PhD in Education website.