Chris Colley: 0:13

So here we are, another episode of ShiftED podcast. Today. I am just reaching not too far over to Concordia University, where I have Shannon Bell coming in. She is a part of the Quebec English Speaking Communities Research Network and, shannon, I'm going to butcher this, but I want try .

Shannon Bell: 0:35

, yes.

Chris Colley: 0:37

Cool, I love acronyms, me. Yeah, I saw Shannon do a Lunch and learn webinar on challenges in early learning and child care for Quebec English speaking communities and we're going to get into that research. But, shannon, before we get into the nuts and bolts of what you do, how did you get to this stage in your career? What were some of the pinnacle moments that kind of you know weaved your journey to where you are now?

Shannon Bell: 1:09

That is a great question and I often answer it with how much time do you have? Because it's been a long journey. But I will say I am originally from the US and I moved here a little over 10 years ago and found myself popped into the English speaking minority quite quickly, quite immediately. And, you know, just anecdotally, looking into community activities, I was able to find, you know, some, some friendship there, and then, right through that, I found, you know, some friendship there, and then through that, I found, you know, my first job. It was, you know, looking for a job in English at the time.

Shannon Bell: 1:52

But my background, my educational background, is that I was a journalist. I studied journalism as an undergrad, worked for newspapers and magazines and then, coming here, I realized that I needed to get some French under my belt real quick, and so I finished my master's in public administration at Concordia, and so I was interested in the community sector from the get go, and so my first job was at the Yellow Door in Montreal, which is an intergenerational community organization, and I'm now on the board there. So I'm still really involved. I really love that organization and everything that they do. But you know, this idea of linguistic policy was always at the forefront of my Quebec existence, and so I you know, for better or worse, that's how I ended up here.

Shannon Bell: 2:43

Then, after we spent about five years in Montreal, when I first moved here, my husband's francophone from Quebec we went to Trois-Rivières because he went to school and there was a program there only offered in Three Rivers, and there I started working at a community organization that is under the umbrella of the CHSSN community organizations, and so I was a liaison between the local CIOs and the English-speaking community, and so that was a really wonderful experience where I learned a lot about the history of English-speaking Quebec and how we got to where we are today and and just a really like on the ground experience Met some really great people working within the sector as well. So that was a really big opening, eye-opening experience for me as far as the community sector goes. And then I worked at universities in various capacities I worked at. We moved to Sherbrooke, so we live in Sherbrooke now even though I work.

Shannon Bell: 3:50

I worked at Bishop's for a time, and then I saw this opening for this research project going on at and I was just like oh, I have to do that, you know, so I that's so. I've been with for almost two years now working on this research briefs project amazing, amazing.

Chris Colley: 4:09

And did you? Did you have french coming up to quebec like? Were you able to like? I saw this research that said only two percent of of people living in quebec have no understanding of french. I mean, mean, it's a very, very low percentage. Were you functionally French when you first moved up from the States?

Shannon Bell: 4:30

Not functionally, but I did, just coincidentally in high school, took French instead of what most people took was Spanish, because I lived in New Mexico and that was sort of the second language that made the most sense for a lot of people. But I was always interested in French, and that was sort of the second language that made the most sense for a lot of people, but I was always interested in French and so I took, I had what you might call a base. You know I knew more than just one through 10. And hi, so when I arrived in Quebec I was able to go straight to the more intermediate courses and really learn to be functionally conversational. But it took, you know, for me it was the really valuable thing was having a partner who's Francophone and all of our friends were Francophone, and so I was like immediately immersed in Francophone culture, music, movies.

Shannon Bell: 5:21

you know my husband's friends, you know we, just you couldn't operate in English in that atmosphere, and so it came.

Shannon Bell: 5:30

Yeah, it came that way, um, really just yeah, personally that way, rather than I did take the um immigrants, um French classes that were by the ministry of immigration, classes that were by the ministry of immigration, right, that was a good program. They were free, they had, it was really high quality, I found, and so I got a lot of good base there and uh, and then the rest is, like you know, like they all say, you just gotta live in it, right that's right, that's right, that's right well it's amazing too now that you're kind of delving into english language research here within quebec, which I I mean it's really fascinating, like, as an English speaker.

Chris Colley: 6:09

I was born, you know, raised here, not knowing all that stuff. You know, and that's what struck me so much when I saw the Lunch and Learn, is that how little I knew about the foundations and how the educational system got started and all that. And we'll jump into that. But what brought you to , like, what was it about that offering that you saw, that sparked something in you that you wanted to go for that?

Shannon Bell: 6:37

I think it had that perfect blend of professional goals that I had for myself and personal experience professional goals that I had for myself and personal experience. You know you want to be able to bring something to your professional role, something that makes sense for you and how you identify with your professional role, and I think that for me, I really need a cause. That was always kind of my driving force behind my education. I was like I need to work for a cause. Whatever the cause is, it almost didn't even matter what it was, I just need a cause.

Shannon Bell: 7:12

You know I wanted to work in the public sector, in the community sector a part of the cause a little bit. You know you feel like you're working towards something that is going to help people that you know and people whose experiences and challenges you have also experienced and have, you know, know those challenges. So I think that it was really important for me to to get back into the community sector after having left it briefly to work at Bishops and you know it's just something. That was that fulfillment that can be twofold right, because sometimes you're working in these situations where you're like am I having an impact? Is any of it working? Um, and it can feel like an uphill battle a lot of the time, but, um, there's just nothing better than feeling like you're working toward a common goal or you know something for the betterment of the community at large, and so that was what really drew me to Westgate.

Shannon Bell: 8:13

And then the research part was just something I'd always been wanting to get into. So I have, you know, done some research in my master's, but never like professionally. But I had worked community sector and so this job post was a perfect like marriage of those two things, like knowledge of the community sector, the english speaking community, and having, you know, um, experience academically with with writing and reading. Because this project is important to note, it's secondary research, so I'm not conducting new research.

Shannon Bell: 8:47

I'm what is essentially literature reviews, so I'm looking at research that's been done in any given topic and I'm putting it together and making it accessible for anybody, whether it's a government official or community worker or just a member of the community, you can look at it. You're not going to spend too much time. It's not a deep dive. It's a broad understanding of a particular topic and there's context for today. There's, if necessary, historical context put in there so that someone can look at that and, like, get a pretty good understanding of the global picture oh, I'm sure your, your journalism, um work too, at your younger age is also um informed that practice as well, right?

Chris Colley: 9:36

because I mean, in essence, journalism does a lot of that where you you're finding stuff and then is there a pattern, is there something that is popping out from from the research that was done? Yeah, yeah.

Shannon Bell: 9:48

You may ask my employers that they might say that that was actually one of the reasons they decided to hire me for this is because of that very angle that I could take with it. You know, I'm used to looking at a bunch of stuff that maybe not everybody wants to look at some pretty dense academic material, you know, and and bringing that into um, a document that you know just makes sense of all of it, and so, like I'm doing heavy lifting for you, essentially is the idea, right, right.

Chris Colley: 10:16

well, I think too, like some of the research that you were doing anyway with the, with the early um, the challenges in the early childhood learning, um, it had that kind of idea of simplifying things for people and kind of like giving them that information as well, that I mean you'd have to sift through quite a bit of stuff to be able to get the information that you presented to us. So it I totally like, and I think, in a way too, that those are some of the aha moments of you kind of knew about this and that and this and that, but assembled together in this story, in this picture, really kind of spoke to me, you know, in a really cool way, like I loved it.

Shannon Bell: 10:55

Well. I'm glad that you got something out of it. That's good.

Chris Colley: 10:57

Absolutely Well, and I also like your comment on sometimes it feels like are we making a difference? You know it's I'm one person in this huge lake of it can kind of feel I feel that at times too, as an educator Like you seem, you know you work really hard and you put so much effort and love and attention and you're like oh, yeah, I hope.

Shannon Bell: 11:22

Yeah, I'm sure you've heard what they say about you know, if you can reach one child, no, you've done, you've done your work. Or you can say that you've accomplished something, and so I guess I would say it's probably similar for the research world. If you can reach one person who understands better some subject, then you've done, you've done your part. At least you know a little bit.

Chris Colley: 11:43

Absolutely, absolutely Could you know a little bit, absolutely, absolutely. Could you tell us a little bit about the organization? I mean, you're kind of you're tiptoeing around it a bit, but like, what's the function of the Quebec English-Speaking Community Research Network? Is it to do as you were saying, where you're gathering lots of research from that is out there and then making it accessible for people? Is that the main crux of what the organization does?

Shannon Bell: 12:12

Yeah, so we are. We kind of like to consider ourselves a sort of one-stop shop for research and information on English-speaking Quebec. So we do that in many different ways. We have a lot of resources Speaking Quebec. So you can go on our website and you can search thousands and thousands of publications, scholarly works, articles, anything mentioning English Speaking Quebec. Like you know, it's a great resource, so that's something we host.

Shannon Bell: 12:45

We have the Community Open Knowledge Library, which is another database that you can search to find great literature that comes out of community organizations. And then we also have a researcher member network which connects other academics working on things that might be interesting to English speaking Quebec and they can communicate, we can promote their work. We have we also host forums and academic conferences, and then we have our in-house produced research as well as some commissioned research that we'll do. You know we'll. We'll have some funding to get some researchers to do, um, some briefs or a working paper or something like that. So we're also producing research, but we're also like bringing it all into a hub. So we look at ourselves as kind of a hub for information on, and with the goal being to understand english people back. We know, how does it exist within the greater um province, and how does it also exist within other um, ol and on lc, as we call, official linguistic minority communities in canada. You know what's?

Chris Colley: 13:47

how does it exist in all these different landscapes, and so that's, that's really what we're, what we're about amazing what a great resource, great resource for us to have because I mean, I'm sure it informs a lot of stuff. I mean not just policy, but you know education, how we go about it, you know being aware of and maybe we'll shift over to your research because there's so many great examples in it. But what I found really interesting so like I said before, there was this Lunch and Learn and Shannon was doing the webinar and it was about challenges in early learning and childcare for Quebec's English speaking community out kind of how it all evolved from the 80s to the 90s to nowadays. Could you walk us through how early child care has kind of evolved here in Quebec since the 80s?

Shannon Bell: 14:44

Yeah, so that for me, especially as just a consumer of information, I find it easier to start, you know, some from some beginning point. You know you have to decide on what that beginning point will be. But a lot of the research that I looked at was the starting point of that seemed to be talking about the 70s and the 80s and you know this idea of, you know, going from just when women started working outside of the home, that's when we started seeing a need for child care for, you know, obvious reasons. And so the evolution, the my brief looks at the evolution of just simple child care, like essentially what we might think of as like babysitting, to educative care. So we know there's actually a program being implemented, we're trying to, we're looking at development of the child, preparing them for school, and those programs really started coming out more in the 70s and the 80s when research was looking at child development. And so in Canada that's, you know, it's it's kind of the western world in general, that's what was happening and they started as like two different things right, you had your child care and then you had um, like what we would call something a bit more um, fancy, kind of elitist, like the, the fancy child care, that those would have the developmental programs, and then you would have programs that meant for children who were perhaps facing socioeconomic challenges or they have developmental problems. So that's how there were like two tracks of programs up through the 90s and then you started seeing a convergence of the two. We'll put them all under one umbrella and we'll develop programs for everyone that's meant to be addressing both like regular development of a child and also trying to, you know, bring up anybody who might have some challenges, and we're addressing those challenges too. And so this is all called early learning and childcare and it includes, like the preschool programs.

Shannon Bell: 16:53

And so in the 90s, late 90s, you started seeing a need for, well, society was like looking for ways to do this in an affordable way and something that you know everybody could access. So in Quebec, our sort of what a lot of us look at as a flagship program, which is the Centre pour la Petite Enfance, the CPEs, and that became such a big example for the rest of Canada that we were able to, you know, not without its flaws. There were obviously a lot of people who pointed out those flaws. That were very valid points, but it's such a huge project that actually succeeded in being implemented. Um, you know, with a standard rate. Basically, it goes up every year, but there's one flat rate for every family. You know, depending, no, has nothing to do with your socioeconomic status and meaning that it's universal everyone can go. The obvious, obvious big problem that we have today with that is that there's just not enough places for every child, even though every child technically has a right to it.

Shannon Bell: 18:06

And that's you resources, and that's across the board, whether we're talking about the actual or if you're talking about other educative or like professional resources. You know like and speech pathology, just across the board, not even a linguistic problem. There's just not enough resources for everyone. So that's what the brief kind of looks at like. You know who's suffering the most from this suffering is a big word who are facing the most challenges and what can, what can we do, what's being done, if anything at all, and what you know what were some of those?

Chris Colley: 18:57

um, you know the current efforts that were being made to kind of, I know, with the new cycle program in preschool, where they open it up to to four-year-olds, so it's a four, five cycle was, was that intent? I mean, if, if you can answer this based on what you've observed was that intent to to open up more spaces? Or like, because I also know, like the, the four and fives, they, they are off on the summer, right? So if you are working, um, what do you do once summer hits? You know you got three months where you're gonna have to find and those spots, if you give them up, are like they seem to be like these gems now, like you just don't give them up right, right.

Shannon Bell: 19:41

Yeah, you're talking about the k4, right?

Chris Colley: 19:43

yeah, that's right. Did that program when they opened that? I think it's maybe three years or four years old where they started bringing in the force um, was there a noticeable change in in in spots being available?

Shannon Bell: 19:57

Right. So the K4 program is interesting from what I found out from this project is that it actually existed in different ways since the 70s.

Shannon Bell: 20:06

You know, originally it was, to you know, it was exclusively in neighborhoods that were worth with socioeconomic challenges and so to add some help with developmental challenges that might be having problems or accessing affordable daycare. They were really limited to those areas and then with the CAC government they made an objective of making K-4 universal, so that it was largely to address the problem with not having enough places in. The CP is a huge thing that people were excuse me, my cough comes. That was a big thing, that people are a big challenge.

Shannon Bell: 20:48

So, yeah, the problem with that again was resources, so they had this great objective, but there weren't enough teachers qualified to implement these programs, and so they have opened a lot of them, but one of the things that I saw an article I read for this was that they then were kind of I don't know, poaching is not the right word, but I just said it anyway is not the right word, but I just said it anyway. Educators from the daycares were then going to the K-4 programs because they were looking for people who were qualified, and even then there was a question of qualifications, because the qualifications to be an educator in a daycare are not the same qualifications to be a teacher in a primary school, which is essentially what K-4 is it's primary school. There are quite a few challenges. Yes, there are more places, but then there was also the issue of being able to actually meet the objective, which they haven't yet.

Chris Colley: 21:47

So, they're trying. They're saying by 2029, they want00 k4 classrooms. Right, and are they? Is that is that? Is that a realistic? I mean, I guess it's hard to tell the future right it is hard.

Shannon Bell: 22:05

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't. I mean if, at the rate they're going um, you know who knows.

Chris Colley: 22:11

A lot of clusters, yeah, they've had to cut back clearly.

Shannon Bell: 22:14

So far there have been some programs to incentivize educators working in CPEs to get some other certifications. So while they're working, there's like a work program. So while they're working a couple of hours at a CPU, for example, they can become based on some other criteria. I don't remember exactly what it is. They can be enrolled in some programs where they're, you know, getting continuing education, basically working for a certificate that will allow them to work, if they wanted to, in a K-4 program or work full-time. Because the cpes have a a different way of they have a special way of their qualifications. They have to have a certain number of qualified educators for the um number of kids, for a certain number of kids as a ratio, but not every. Every person, not every employee in the cp has to be as qualified.

Shannon Bell: 23:11

so some of these other sometimes they're part-time, you know they'll those are the kind of people who would maybe be interested in these kind of programs to obtain a certification in order to work full-time in a CPA or perhaps in another kind of program. So there are tools being implemented, there's, they're trying. First, they're being made, but you know who knows how long it'll take to really achieve the lofty objectives that they have.

Chris Colley: 23:38

Right, and what are the greatest surprises that you encountered as you were kind of going through this, or things that you didn't expect to find, or that you were like yeah, that's quite obvious Like were there some of those occasions that you could share?

Shannon Bell: 23:59

Definitely like. Particularly with this, I mean throughout this whole project, all the different topics that I've looked at. I've had a couple of like whoa moments, but if just talking about this particular brief, I would say that something I found really interesting was when looking on the website, the web registries of daycares, the La Place 05, I was finding that while the website itself is available in English, you can click and have the English version you can't sort any of the facilities by like English language the way, way that it works. They do have a filter system and this is some some primary research quote of it that I did myself um, as a parent as well, I was familiar with the site.

Shannon Bell: 24:44

Um, you can filter your results by several different types of criteria um, whether the cpe or the daycare facility does you know outdoor activities, or you know like, or if they have cloth diapers, or then criteria is multi linguistic groups, and so that was the only criteria that you can check to potentially find information on a facility that maybe they offer services in a language other than French, and it's definitely multi-lingual. So it's not, it's like any kind of. It could be any language, could be Spanish, so definitely nothing that you can look at. That's English specific. And then also, from what I can tell, these facilities are the ones that are sourcing the information on the website about themselves. So there's no like standardized process from the site that you know to be able to sort by these different things. It's like if the CPE says they have that you know they check the box or whatever. So it's kind of an informal way of sorting and so it's. It's definitely I could see that that being a challenge for potentially a unilingual English speaker looking for service.

Shannon Bell: 25:57

You know, can I send my kids to daycare? Because what's also very interesting is that the CP network and the daycare network, the early childhood education network, is not governed by Bill 101.

Shannon Bell: 26:11

It is under the Minister de la Famille, which is kind of obvious, I guess, but I think we're. So in those conversations about education and bill 101, we kind of you could. You could potentially forget that it's not under falling under either. So that's interesting. Theoretically, an english speaking parent like myself who doesn't have the right to english education for my child because I'm an immigrant and my husband is french-speaking from quebec, I could theoretically send my kid to an english-speaking daycare because you know bill 101 doesn't apply there. But am I going to find one? Possibly not. The search criteria is set up. I may not find it, so that was really interesting.

Shannon Bell: 27:03

I mean, it was something that I also experienced personally, but to really see it in action you know, in order to verify this, I called up the Minister de la Famille and I had a conversation with the person who answered the phone. How do you open a CP in English? Can you open a CP in English? You know they were like first of all, I think, a bit jarred by my question, but very kind and very, you know, willing to answer my questions and they said well, there's no nothing to say that you can't do that. But we're not. You know everything. All your communication, your correspondence with the government must be in french. You must still correspond with the parents in french first. You know you must follow all of the regular linguistic laws, but if you want to offer reading time in english at your cpu, you know kind of a thing you know.

Shannon Bell: 27:58

So learning about how that system works and how different the rest of the educational system was was really interesting, I found.

Chris Colley: 28:05

Yeah, because you think, yeah, like, like, logically, maybe you know like okay, we can just choose. Are you sure about that? I like the way that you described it too. If you choose to, there's nothing stopping you how would I know that?

Shannon Bell: 28:20

information if yeah, I wasn't asking exactly.

Chris Colley: 28:24

You kind of have to ask, it's not necessarily you're gonna accidentally stumble upon it probably right, yeah, and I think, too, some of your research pointed to the PLAS05. Like, it's hard to understand that, as you were alluding to, and I think you said, like 50% of first-time users, and you're trying to look at schools, and it's like, yeah, I've heard a lot of those stories too, from friends and colleagues as well.

Shannon Bell: 28:59

um, really fascinating thing came from the statistic de quebec. So that's the province. You know a provincial organization that is theoretically aware of this. So I don't know what efforts are being made to to address that. But it's definitely not just on a linguistic basis.

Chris Colley: 29:17

A lot of families are having well, I mean, I think the work that you guys do is so necessary because it can be very daunting, particularly if you don't even know where to start.

Chris Colley: 29:29

You know like it's, it's and there's stuff everywhere you know, and it like I love the idea that you've gone through and kind of like here are some things and there's stuff everywhere you know, and it like I love the idea that you've gone through and kind of like here's some things to be aware of, here's you know, this is what we know and here's some solutions that we're trying to develop. I mean it only is great stuff for for for our community for sure. So I thank you guys for pursuing that. Maybe just to wrap Shannon, what Shannon? What's next for you? Like, I mean, this research is really great. I mean I've really it's informed me from my practice in helping and supporting teachers and consultants as well. What are some other research that you guys are working on now that you could tell us about that you're allowed to tell us about?

Shannon Bell: 30:11

Yeah, definitely, oh no, I'm not always happy to talk about upcoming things. You're allowed to tell us yeah, definitely, oh no, I'm not always happy to talk about upcoming things. I am working at the moment on another brief that talks about community vitality research and how we can apply it to English speaking Quebec. So first of all, just understanding what is community vitality research. It's something we hear a lot words we hear thrown around a lot in conversations about our community as a linguistic minority. We hear like vitality this word is thrown around a lot in conversations about our community as a linguistic minority. We hear like vitality this word is thrown around exactly is that and and and.

Shannon Bell: 30:41

It's a big, actually it's a big area of research. Um, there's a big body of it, not only just about english-speaking quebec, which is, you know, communities in general and they have measurement. You know units of measurement. How do we tell the health you know, and the vitality of a community by certain criteria? So looking at that is really interesting and so I'm excited to be able to share that That'll be coming out next spring. I'm also working on in a similar vein of the early childhood education, looking at programs for older adults, seniors, what kind of challenges they're facing in terms of public services, healthcare access, those kinds of things. And then actually a colleague of mine is working on one about identity. We talked briefly about how do Anglophones or English speakers in Quebec perceive themselves and what is identity in this idea of?

Chris Colley: 31:36

yeah, I've heard about that coming out, um, but that hasn't dropped yet, right, but it's on its way, that's right no, it's not a, it's not out yet, but um, all of these, like the project we're working on now.

Shannon Bell: 31:47

This goes through um march of next year, so there's gonna be just like a bunch of things coming out amazing before march, um. But yeah, so we have um, we have some on immigration and uh and health care as well. So all the good, all the good topics we'll have, we'll have a little something to learn about there. Yeah, well.

Chris Colley: 32:07

I recommend, uh, the listeners out there to attend one of these lunch and learns that concordia offers I'll put put the link in this podcast describer, because they're really good, they're well done. And again, thank you, shanivich, for just making us smarter. I think the work that you do makes us smarter and allows us to be aware of our identity and how we fit into this multicultural, shifting province of ours, in education in particular, too, which is really fascinating. So thank you for that.

Shannon Bell: 32:40

Yeah, well, thank you for having me on, and I'm always happy to talk about what we're up to. And we actually have our education and vitality forum next year that we're in the process of putting together. So there's always more people to come together and share their knowledge, so, but yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

Chris Colley: 32:56

Cool, well, I'll reach back out, for sure. I mean, we'll see this as the beginning of our conversation and not the end. So, we'll have Shannon back on eventually, so thanks again.