Write On! Chapbook Showcase

Featuring the work of grade 8 Kitigan Zibi Kikinamadinan grade 8 and grade 7/8 Fisher Park Summit Alternative School

With teachers Mike McPake and Kelly Diabo, writer Keri Cheechoo and illustrator Patrick Cheechoo and with teacher David Farley and spoken work poet Jamaal Jackson Rogers.

The Authors

Jamaal Jackson Rogers

Jamaal Jackson Rogers; stage name Just Jamaal the Poet, is an award winning poet, arts educator, social engagement officer, and recording/performance artist. In the last 7 years he has brought his work to audiences nationally and abroad, and served as Ottawa's poet laureate from 2017-2019. His defining moments occur when he makes intimate connections with his participants during workshops and performance sets. His topics range from emotional maturity to world issues, from parenting to the human condition. He is a father of six and resides in Ottawa, Canada, using the capital and his performance studio, The Origin Arts & Community Centre as his launch pad to teach, mentor and advocate for the arts.  

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Keri Cheechoo

Keri Cheechoo is a Cree Iskwew from the community of Long Lake #58 First Nation. She is a mom, kookum (grandmother), and part-time professor who resists daily the systemic and institutional racism that is deeply embedded within society and higher education. She is also a Doctoral Candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa, and is in the very exciting space of completing and defending her dissertation. A published poet, Keri uses poetic inquiry (an arts-based methodology) in a good way that connects her spiritual aptitude for writing with educational research. Keri seeks to share the missing histories, and the intergenerational and contemporary impacts of colonial violence on Indigenous women’s bodies, as a part of her commitment to the educational and reconciliation process toward Indigenizing school curricula.

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Marc St. Dennis

Education and Public Engagement Coordinator, First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada. Born in Manitoba and raised in Ontario, Marc is Métis with ancestral roots in the Red River Valley. Marc has a Master’s degree in Indigenous and Canadian Studies and a keen interest in Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy. Marc is an engaging and knowledgeable public speaker and facilitator. He has spoken to people of all ages and backgrounds about the history and contemporary realities of colonization in Canada and the many ways we can all positively impact the lives of Indigenous children, youth, and their families.

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Patrick Cheechoo

Patrick Cheechoo is a proud father of 5 and Mooshum (grandfather) to 2. He is a Mushkego (James Bay Cree) from Constance Lake First Nation. Mr. Cheechoo loves to sketch, paint, carve and create unique jewelry from organic materials such as antler, wood and bark. He is also an avid wildlife photographer and an award winning graphic design artist. You can learn more by visiting his PatCheechooFineArt & PatCheechooPhotography Facebook pages.

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Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández

Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández research and scholarship are concerned with questions of symbolic boundaries and the dynamics of cultural production and processes of identification in educational contexts. He is a Full Professor and the Director of the Youth Research Lab at the Centre for Urban Schooling of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where he is Principal Investigator of the Youth Solidarities Across Boundaries Project, a participatory action research project with Latinx and Indigenous youth in the city of Toronto.  At the YRL, he also oversees and supports several youth participatory action research projects, including the editorial board of in:cite, a youth-run online research journal, as well as a study of the practices of participatory facilitators. His theoretical work focuses on the relationship between creativity, decolonization, and solidarity.  

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Wendy Luttrell

Wendy Luttrell is Professor of Urban Education, Sociology and Critical Social Psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.  Her research on educational inequality examines the interplay of social structure and subjective experience in school settings, focusing on how a sense of belonging, exclusion, entitlement, constraint, possibility, success and failure take root in young people’s self-evaluations and actions. She is the author of two award-winning books on this topic, School-smart and Mother-wise: Working-Class Women’s Identity and Schooling (1997) and Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds: Gender, Race and the Schooling of Pregnant Teens (2003) and is also the editor of Qualitative Educational Research: Readings on Reflexive Methodology and Transformative Practice (2010).  Her forthcoming book, Children Framing Childhoods: Working-class Kids’ Visions of Care (Policy Press, 2020) examines the role that gender, race, and immigrant status play in how diverse, young people growing up in urban, working-class communities portray their lives through photographs and video.  Following thirty four children over a ten year period, her research explores how the young people used their cameras to counteract stereotypes and deficit views of working-class childhoods; highlight the value of care as a collective, not individual imperative; and frame their learning and growth on their own terms.  At a time when distorted and increasingly fractious visions of “marginalized” communities proliferate, the book and its multimodal platform of photographs and videos compels readers/viewers to reconsider their ways of seeing and valuing poor and working-class children of color, their childhoods and implications for educational justice.  Throughout her career, Luttrell has directed community-based, university, and teacher inquiry projects dedicated to advancing social justice in and around schools and that promote innovative research and teaching practices, as well as curriculum development initiatives.  She also serves as Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in Urban Education.    http://www.wendyluttrell.org/

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