Shannon Bell is our guest, and she's got quite the story to tell! From her beginnings as a journalist in the United States to becoming a leading voice for the English-speaking community in Quebec, Shannon's journey is filled with fascinating turns. She shares how embracing Francophone culture and learning French, all with the help of her Francophone husband and friends, has enriched her life and work. Her dedication shines through her involvement with influential community organizations like the Yellow Door and the Centre for Access to Services in English (CASE) in Trois-Rivières Trois-Rivières, revealing her passion for linguistic policy and community engagement.
We explore the essential role of the Quebec English-Speaking Community Research Network (QUESCREN) in supporting and connecting English-speaking communities across Quebec. The network serves as a vital hub for research and information, providing valuable resources like the Community Open Knowledge Library. As we navigate through the evolution of early learning and childcare in Quebec, discover how societal changes have transformed these services into structured educational programs aimed at fostering child development and school readiness.
The conversation shifts to the challenges Quebec faces in integrating its early learning programs into a universal system, such as limited spaces and a shortage of qualified educators. Shannon provides insightful perspectives on identity issues faced by Anglophones in Quebec and highlights initiatives aimed at supporting older adults. We also discuss exciting upcoming projects on immigration and healthcare, with findings expected soon. Join us as we dive deep into these pertinent topics, offering a comprehensive look at Quebec’s diverse communities and the ongoing efforts to support them.
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Episode Transcript
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Chris Colley (00:13):
So here we are, another episode of ShiftED
podcast.
Today.
I am just reaching not too farover to Concordia University,
where I have Shannon Bell comingin.
She is a part of the QuebecEnglish Speaking Communities
Research Network and, shannon,I'm going to butcher this, but I
want try .
Shannon Bell (00:35):
, yes.
Cool, I love acronyms, me.
Yeah, I saw Shannon do a Lunchand learn webinar on challenges
in early learning and child carefor Quebec English speaking
communities and we're going toget into that research.
But, shannon, before we getinto the nuts and bolts of what
(00:57):
you do, how did you get to thisstage in your career?
What were some of the pinnaclemoments that kind of you know
weaved your journey to where youare now?
That is a great question and I often answer it
with how much time do you have?
Because it's been a longjourney.
(01:18):
But I will say I am originallyfrom the US and I moved here a
little over 10 years ago andfound myself popped into the
English speaking minority quitequickly, quite immediately.
And, you know, just anecdotally, looking into community
activities, I was able to find,you know, some, some friendship
(01:42):
there, and then, right throughthat, I found, you know, some
friendship there, and thenthrough that, I found, you know,
my first job.
It was, you know, looking for ajob in English at the time.
But my background, myeducational background, is that
I was a journalist.
I studied journalism as anundergrad, worked for newspapers
and magazines and then, cominghere, I realized that I needed
(02:03):
to get some French under my beltreal quick, and so I finished
my master's in publicadministration at Concordia, and
so I was interested in thecommunity sector from the get go
, and so my first job was at theYellow Door in Montreal, which
is an intergenerationalcommunity organization, and I'm
(02:24):
now on the board there.
So I'm still really involved.
I really love that organizationand everything that they do.
But you know, this idea oflinguistic policy was always at
the forefront of my Quebecexistence, and so I you know,
for better or worse, that's howI ended up here.
Then, after we spent about fiveyears in Montreal, when I first
(02:46):
moved here, my husband'sfrancophone from Quebec we went
to Trois-Rivières because hewent to school and there was a
program there only offered inThree Rivers, and there I
started working at a communityorganization that is under the
umbrella of the CHSSN communityorganizations, and so I was a
(03:07):
liaison between the local CIOsand the English-speaking
community, and so that was areally wonderful experience
where I learned a lot about thehistory of English-speaking
Quebec and how we got to wherewe are today and and just a
really like on the groundexperience Met some really great
(03:28):
people working within thesector as well.
So that was a really bigopening, eye-opening experience
for me as far as the communitysector goes.
And then I worked atuniversities in various
capacities I worked at.
We moved to Sherbrooke, so welive in Sherbrooke now even
though I work.
(03:50):
I worked at Bishop's for a time,and then I saw this opening for
this research project going onat and I was just like oh, I
have to do that, you know, so Ithat's so.
I've been with for almost twoyears now working on this
research briefs project amazing,amazing.
Chris Colley (04:09):
And did you?
Did you have french coming upto quebec like?
Were you able to like?
I saw this research that saidonly two percent of of people
living in quebec have nounderstanding of french.
I mean, mean, it's a very, verylow percentage.
Were you functionally Frenchwhen you first moved up from the
(04:29):
States?
Shannon Bell (04:30):
Not functionally, but I did, just coincidentally
in high school, took Frenchinstead of what most people took
was Spanish, because I lived inNew Mexico and that was sort of
the second language that madethe most sense for a lot of
people.
But I was always interested inFrench, and that was sort of the
second language that made themost sense for a lot of people,
but I was always interested inFrench and so I took, I had what
you might call a base.
(04:52):
You know I knew more than justone through 10.
And hi, so when I arrived inQuebec I was able to go straight
to the more intermediatecourses and really learn to be
functionally conversational.
But it took, you know, for meit was the really valuable thing
was having a partner who'sFrancophone and all of our
(05:14):
friends were Francophone, and soI was like immediately immersed
in Francophone culture, music,movies.
you know my husband's friends,you know we, just you couldn't
operate in English in thatatmosphere, and so it came.
Yeah, it came that way, um,really just yeah, personally
(05:35):
that way, rather than I did takethe um immigrants, um French
classes that were by theministry of immigration, classes
that were by the ministry ofimmigration, right, that was a
good program.
They were free, they had, itwas really high quality, I found
, and so I got a lot of goodbase there and uh, and then the
rest is, like you know, likethey all say, you just gotta
live in it, right that's right,that's right, that's right well
(05:58):
it's amazing too now that you'rekind of delving into english
language research here withinquebec, which I I mean it's
really fascinating, like, as anEnglish speaker.
Chris Colley (06:09):
I was born, you know, raised here, not knowing
all that stuff.
You know, and that's whatstruck me so much when I saw the
Lunch and Learn, is that howlittle I knew about the
foundations and how theeducational system got started
and all that.
And we'll jump into that.
But what brought you to , like,what was it about that offering
(06:32):
that you saw, that sparkedsomething in you that you wanted
to go for that?
Shannon Bell (06:37):
I think it had that perfect blend of
professional goals that I hadfor myself and personal
experience professional goalsthat I had for myself and
personal experience.
You know you want to be able tobring something to your
professional role, somethingthat makes sense for you and how
you identify with yourprofessional role, and I think
(06:59):
that for me, I really need acause.
That was always kind of mydriving force behind my
education.
I was like I need to work for acause.
Whatever the cause is, italmost didn't even matter what
it was, I just need a cause.
You know I wanted to work in thepublic sector, in the community
sector a part of the cause alittle bit.
(07:25):
You know you feel like you'reworking towards something that
is going to help people that youknow and people whose
experiences and challenges youhave also experienced and have,
you know, know those challenges.
So I think that it was reallyimportant for me to to get back
into the community sector afterhaving left it briefly to work
at Bishops and you know it'sjust something.
That was that fulfillment thatcan be twofold right, because
(07:49):
sometimes you're working inthese situations where you're
like am I having an impact?
Is any of it working?
Um, and it can feel like anuphill battle a lot of the time,
but, um, there's just nothingbetter than feeling like you're
working toward a common goal oryou know something for the
betterment of the community atlarge, and so that was what
(08:12):
really drew me to Westgate.
And then the research part wasjust something I'd always been
wanting to get into.
So I have, you know, done someresearch in my master's, but
never like professionally.
But I had worked communitysector and so this job post was
a perfect like marriage of thosetwo things, like knowledge of
the community sector, theenglish speaking community, and
(08:34):
having, you know, um, experienceacademically with with writing
and reading.
Because this project isimportant to note, it's
secondary research, so I'm notconducting new research.
I'm what is essentiallyliterature reviews, so I'm
looking at research that's beendone in any given topic and I'm
(08:56):
putting it together and makingit accessible for anybody,
whether it's a governmentofficial or community worker or
just a member of the community,you can look at it.
You're not going to spend toomuch time.
It's not a deep dive.
It's a broad understanding of aparticular topic and there's
(09:17):
context for today.
There's, if necessary,historical context put in there
so that someone can look at thatand, like, get a pretty good
understanding of the globalpicture oh, I'm sure your, your
journalism, um work too, at youryounger age is also um informed
that practice as well, right?
Chris Colley (09:36):
because I mean, in essence, journalism does a lot
of that where you you're findingstuff and then is there a
pattern, is there something thatis popping out from from the
research that was done?
Yeah, yeah.
Shannon Bell (09:48):
You may ask my employers that they might say
that that was actually one ofthe reasons they decided to hire
me for this is because of thatvery angle that I could take
with it.
You know, I'm used to lookingat a bunch of stuff that maybe
not everybody wants to look atsome pretty dense academic
material, you know, and andbringing that into um, a
(10:09):
document that you know justmakes sense of all of it, and so
, like I'm doing heavy liftingfor 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 earlychildhood learning, um, it had
that kind of idea of simplifyingthings for people and kind of
like giving them thatinformation as well, that I mean
you'd have to sift throughquite a bit of stuff to be able
(10:36):
to get the information that youpresented to us.
So it I totally like, and Ithink, in a way too, that those
are some of the aha moments ofyou kind of knew about this and
that and this and that, butassembled together in this story
, in this picture, really kindof 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 somethingout of it.
That's good.
Chris Colley (10:57):
Absolutely Well, and I also like your comment on
sometimes it feels like are wemaking a difference?
You know it's I'm one person inthis 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 hardand you put so much effort and
(11:18):
love and attention and you'relike 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 onechild, no, you've done, you've
done your work.
Or you can say that you'veaccomplished something, and so I
guess I would say it's probablysimilar for the research world.
If you can reach one person whounderstands better some subject
, then you've done, you've doneyour 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 bitabout the organization?
I mean, you're kind of you'retiptoeing around it a bit, but
like, what's the function of theQuebec English-Speaking
Community Research Network?
Is it to do as you were saying,where you're gathering lots of
research from that is out thereand then making it accessible
(12:06):
for people?
Is that the main crux of whatthe organization does?
Shannon Bell (12:12):
Yeah, so we are.
We kind of like to considerourselves a sort of one-stop
shop for research andinformation on English-speaking
Quebec.
So we do that in many differentways.
We have a lot of resourcesSpeaking Quebec.
(12:38):
So you can go on our websiteand you can search thousands and
thousands of publications,scholarly works, articles,
anything mentioning EnglishSpeaking Quebec.
Like you know, it's a greatresource, so that's something we
host.
We have the Community OpenKnowledge Library, which is
another database that you cansearch to find great literature
that comes out of communityorganizations.
And then we also have aresearcher member network which
connects other academics workingon things that might be
(13:00):
interesting to English speakingQuebec and they can communicate,
we can promote their work.
We have we also host forums andacademic conferences, and then
we have our in-house producedresearch as well as some
commissioned research that we'lldo.
You know we'll.
We'll have some funding to getsome researchers to do, um, some
briefs or a working paper orsomething like that.
(13:21):
So we're also producingresearch, but we're also like
bringing it all into a hub.
So we look at ourselves as kindof a hub for information on,
and with the goal being tounderstand english people back.
We know, how does it existwithin the greater um province,
and how does it also existwithin other um, ol and on lc,
(13:43):
as we call, official linguisticminority 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 greatresource, great resource for us
to have because I mean, I'msure it informs a lot of stuff.
I mean not just policy, but youknow education, how we go about
it, you know being aware of andmaybe we'll shift over to your
(14:09):
research because there's so manygreat examples in it.
But what I found reallyinteresting so like I said
before, there was this Lunch andLearn and Shannon was doing the
webinar and it was aboutchallenges in early learning and
childcare for Quebec's Englishspeaking community out kind of
(14:33):
how it all evolved from the 80sto the 90s to nowadays.
Could you walk us through howearly child care has kind of
evolved here in Quebec since the80s?
Shannon Bell (14:44):
Yeah, so that for me, especially as just a
consumer of information, I findit easier to start, you know,
some from some beginning point.
You know you have to decide onwhat that beginning point will
be.
But a lot of the research thatI looked at was the starting
point of that seemed to betalking about the 70s and the
(15:06):
80s and you know this idea of,you know, going from just when
women started working outside ofthe home, that's when we
started seeing a need for childcare for, you know, obvious
reasons.
And so the evolution, the mybrief looks at the evolution of
just simple child care, likeessentially what we might think
(15:27):
of as like babysitting, toeducative care.
So we know there's actually aprogram being implemented, we're
trying to, we're looking atdevelopment of the child,
preparing them for school, andthose programs really started
coming out more in the 70s andthe 80s when research was
looking at child development.
(15:49):
And so in Canada that's, youknow, it's it's kind of the
western world in general, that'swhat was happening and they
started as like two differentthings right, you had your child
care and then you had um, likewhat we would call something a
bit more um, fancy, kind ofelitist, like the, the fancy
(16:10):
child care, that those wouldhave the developmental programs,
and then you would haveprograms that meant for children
who were perhaps facingsocioeconomic challenges or they
have developmental problems.
So that's how there were liketwo tracks of programs up
through the 90s and then youstarted seeing a convergence of
(16:30):
the two.
We'll put them all under oneumbrella and we'll develop
programs for everyone that'smeant to be addressing both like
regular development of a childand also trying to, you know,
bring up anybody who might havesome challenges, and we're
addressing those challenges too.
And so this is all called earlylearning and childcare and it
(16:51):
includes, like the preschoolprograms.
And so in the 90s, late 90s, youstarted seeing a need for, well
, society was like looking forways to do this in an affordable
way and something that you knoweverybody could access.
So in Quebec, our sort of whata lot of us look at as a
flagship program, which is theCentre pour la Petite Enfance,
(17:15):
the CPEs, and that became such abig example for the rest of
Canada that we were able to, youknow, not without its flaws.
There were obviously a lot ofpeople who pointed out those
flaws.
That were very valid points,but it's such a huge project
(17:38):
that actually succeeded in beingimplemented.
Um, you know, with a standardrate.
Basically, it goes up everyyear, but there's one flat rate
for every family.
You know, depending, no, hasnothing to do with your
socioeconomic status and meaningthat it's universal everyone
can go.
The obvious, obvious bigproblem that we have today with
(17:59):
that is that there's just notenough places for every child,
even though every childtechnically has a right to it.
And that's you resources, andthat's across the board, whether
we're talking about the actualor if you're talking about other
(18:23):
educative or like professionalresources.
You know like and speechpathology, just across the board
, not even a linguistic problem.
There's just not enoughresources for everyone.
So that's what the brief kindof looks at like.
You know who's suffering themost from this suffering is a
(18:45):
big word who are facing the mostchallenges and what can, what
can we do, what's being done, ifanything 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, withthe new cycle program in
preschool, where they open it upto to four-year-olds, so it's a
four, five cycle was, was thatintent?
I mean, if, if you can answerthis based on what you've
observed was that intent to toopen up more spaces?
Or like, because I also know,like the, the four and fives,
(19:24):
they, they are off on the summer, right?
So if you are working, um, whatdo you do once summer hits?
You know you got three monthswhere you're gonna have to find
and those spots, if you givethem up, are like they seem to
be like these gems now, like youjust 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 theyopened that?
I think it's maybe three yearsor 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 isinteresting from what I found
out from this project is that itactually existed in different
ways since the 70s.
You know, originally it was, toyou know, it was exclusively in
neighborhoods that were worthwith socioeconomic challenges
and so to add some help withdevelopmental challenges that
(20:19):
might be having problems oraccessing affordable daycare.
They were really limited tothose areas and then with the
CAC government they made anobjective of making K-4
universal, so that it waslargely to address the problem
with not having enough places in.
(20:39):
The CP is a huge thing thatpeople were excuse me, my cough
comes.
That was a big thing, thatpeople are a big challenge.
So, yeah, the problem with thatagain was resources, so they had
this great objective, but thereweren't enough teachers
qualified to implement theseprograms, and so they have
(21:00):
opened a lot of them, but one ofthe things that I saw an
article I read for this was thatthey then were kind of I don't
know, poaching is not the rightword, but I just said it anyway
is not the right word, but Ijust said it anyway.
Educators from the daycareswere then going to the K-4
programs because they werelooking for people who were
qualified, and even then therewas a question of qualifications
(21:24):
, because the qualifications tobe an educator in a daycare are
not the same qualifications tobe a teacher in a primary school
, which is essentially what K-4is it's primary school.
There are quite a fewchallenges.
Yes, there are more places, butthen there was also the issue
of being able to actually meetthe objective, which they
(21:44):
haven't yet.
Chris Colley (21:47):
So, they're trying .
They're saying by 2029, theywant00 k4 classrooms.
Right, and are they?
Is that is that?
Is that a realistic?
I mean, I guess it's hard totell the future right it is hard
.
Shannon Bell (22:05):
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't.
I mean if, at the rate they'regoing 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 inCPEs to get some other
certifications.
So while they're working,there's like a work program.
So while they're working acouple of hours at a CPU, for
example, they can become basedon some other criteria.
(22:36):
I don't remember exactly whatit is.
They can be enrolled in someprograms where they're, you know
, getting continuing education,basically working for a
certificate that will allow themto work, if they wanted to, in
a K-4 program or work full-time.
Because the cpes have a adifferent way of they have a
special way of theirqualifications.
They have to have a certainnumber of qualified educators
(22:59):
for the um number of kids, for acertain number of kids as a
ratio, but not every.
Every person, not everyemployee in the cp has to be as
qualified.
so some of these other sometimesthey're part-time, you know
they'll those are the kind ofpeople who would maybe be
interested in these kind ofprograms to obtain a
(23:22):
certification in order to workfull-time in a CPA or perhaps in
another kind of program.
So there are tools beingimplemented, there's, they're
trying.
First, they're being made, butyou know who knows how long
it'll take to really achieve thelofty objectives that they have
.
Chris Colley (23:38):
Right, and what are the greatest surprises that
you encountered as you were kindof going through this, or
things that you didn't expect tofind, or that you were like
yeah, that's quite obvious Likewere there some of those
occasions that you could share?
Shannon Bell (23:59):
Definitely like.
Particularly with this, I meanthroughout this whole project,
all the different topics thatI've looked at.
I've had a couple of like whoamoments, but if just talking
about this particular brief, Iwould say that something I found
really interesting was whenlooking on the website, the web
registries of daycares, the LaPlace 05, I was finding that
(24:22):
while the website itself isavailable in English, you can
click and have the Englishversion you can't sort any of
the facilities by like Englishlanguage the way, way that it
works.
They do have a filter systemand this is some some primary
research quote of it that I didmyself um, as a parent as well,
I was familiar with the site.
(24:44):
Um, you can filter your resultsby several different types of
criteria um, whether the cpe orthe daycare facility does you
know outdoor activities, or youknow like, or if they have cloth
diapers, or then criteria ismulti linguistic groups, and so
that was the only criteria thatyou can check to potentially
(25:08):
find information on a facilitythat maybe they offer services
in a language other than French,and it's definitely
multi-lingual.
So it's not, it's like any kindof.
It could be any language, couldbe Spanish, so definitely
nothing that you can look at.
That's English specific.
And then also, from what I cantell, these facilities are the
(25:34):
ones that are sourcing theinformation on the website about
themselves.
So there's no like standardizedprocess from the site that you
know to be able to sort by thesedifferent things.
It's like if the CPE says theyhave that you know they check
the box or whatever.
So it's kind of an informal wayof sorting and so it's.
It's definitely I could seethat that being a challenge for
potentially a unilingual Englishspeaker looking for service.
(25:57):
You know, can I send my kids todaycare?
Because what's also veryinteresting is that the CP
network and the daycare network,the early childhood education
network, is not governed by Bill101.
It is under the Minister de laFamille, which is kind of
obvious, I guess, but I thinkwe're.
So in those conversations abouteducation and bill 101, we kind
(26:22):
of you could.
You could potentially forgetthat it's not under falling
under either.
So that's interesting.
Theoretically, an englishspeaking parent like myself who
doesn't have the right toenglish education for my child
because I'm an immigrant and myhusband is french-speaking from
(26:43):
quebec, I could theoreticallysend my kid to an
english-speaking daycare becauseyou 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 wasreally interesting.
(27:03):
I mean, it was something that Ialso experienced personally, but
to really see it in action youknow, in order to verify this, I
called up the Minister de laFamille and I had a conversation
with the person who answeredthe phone.
How do you open a CP in English?
Can you open a CP in English?
You know they were like firstof all, I think, a bit jarred by
my question, but very kind andvery, you know, willing to
(27:30):
answer my questions and theysaid well, there's no nothing to
say that you can't do that.
But we're not.
You know everything.
All your communication, yourcorrespondence with the
government must be in french.
You must still correspond withthe parents in french first.
You know you must follow all ofthe regular linguistic laws,
but if you want to offer readingtime in english at your cpu,
(27:54):
you know kind of a thing youknow.
So learning about how thatsystem works and how different
the rest of the educationalsystem was was really
interesting, I found.
Chris Colley (28:05):
Yeah, because you think, yeah, like, like,
logically, maybe you know likeokay, we can just choose.
Are you sure about that?
I like the way that youdescribed it too.
If you choose to, there'snothing 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 accidentallystumble upon it probably right,
yeah, and I think, too, some ofyour research pointed to the
PLAS05.
Like, it's hard to understandthat, as you were alluding to,
and I think you said, like 50%of first-time users, and you're
(28:44):
trying to look at schools, andit's like, yeah, I've heard a
lot of those stories too, fromfriends 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 provincialorganization that is
theoretically aware of this.
So I don't know what effortsare being made to to address
that.
But it's definitely not just ona linguistic basis.
Chris Colley (29:17):
A lot of families are having well, I mean, I think
the work that you guys do is sonecessary because it can be
very daunting, particularly ifyou don't even know where to
start.
You know like it's, it's andthere's stuff everywhere you
know, and it like I love theidea that you've gone through
and kind of like here are somethings and there's stuff
everywhere you know, and it likeI love the idea that you've
gone through and kind of likehere's some things to be aware
(29:38):
of, here's you know, this iswhat we know and here's some
solutions that we're trying todevelop.
I mean it only is great stufffor for for our community for
sure.
So I thank you guys forpursuing that.
Maybe just to wrap Shannon,what Shannon?
What's next for you?
Like, I mean, this research isreally great.
I mean I've really it'sinformed me from my practice in
(30:01):
helping and supporting teachersand consultants as well.
What are some other researchthat you guys are working on now
that you could tell us aboutthat 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 aboutupcoming things.
I am working at the moment onanother brief that talks about
community vitality research andhow we can apply it to English
speaking Quebec.
So first of all, justunderstanding what is community
vitality research.
It's something we hear a lotwords we hear thrown around a
(30:31):
lot in conversations about ourcommunity as a linguistic
minority.
We hear like vitality this wordis thrown around a lot in
conversations about ourcommunity as a linguistic
minority.
We hear like vitality this wordis thrown around exactly is
that and and and.
It's a big, actually it's a bigarea of research.
Um, there's a big body of it,not only just about
english-speaking quebec, whichis, you know, communities in
general and they havemeasurement.
You know units of measurement.
(30:52):
How do we tell the health youknow, and the vitality of a
community by certain criteria?
So looking at that is reallyinteresting and so I'm excited
to be able to share that That'llbe coming out next spring.
I'm also working on in asimilar vein of the early
childhood education, looking atprograms for older adults,
(31:16):
seniors, what kind of challengesthey're facing in terms of
public services, healthcareaccess, those kinds of things.
And then actually a colleagueof mine is working on one about
identity.
We talked briefly about how doAnglophones or English speakers
in Quebec perceive themselvesand 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 notout yet, but um, all of these,
like the project we're workingon now.
Shannon Bell (31:47):
This goes through um march of next year, so
there's gonna be just like abunch of things coming out
amazing before march, um.
But yeah, so we have um, wehave some on immigration and uh
and health care as well.
So all the good, all the goodtopics we'll have, we'll have a
little something to learn aboutthere.
Yeah, well.
Chris Colley (32:07):
I recommend, uh, the listeners out there to
attend one of these lunch andlearns that concordia offers
I'll put put the link in thispodcast describer, because
they're really good, they'rewell done.
And again, thank you, shanivich, for just making us smarter.
I think the work that you domakes us smarter and allows us
to be aware of our identity andhow we fit into this
(32:32):
multicultural, shifting provinceof ours, in education in
particular, too, which is reallyfascinating.
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 whatwe're up to.
And we actually have oureducation and vitality forum
next year that we're in theprocess of putting together.
So there's always more peopleto come together and share their
knowledge, so, but yeah, thankyou 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 thebeginning of our conversation
and not the end.
So, we'll have Shannon back oneventually, so thanks again.
So here we are, another episode of ShiftED
podcast.
Today.
I am just reaching not too farover to Concordia University,
where I have Shannon Bell comingin.
She is a part of the QuebecEnglish Speaking Communities
Research Network and, shannon,I'm going to butcher this, but I
want try .
Shannon Bell (00:35):
, yes.
Cool, I love acronyms, me.
Yeah, I saw Shannon do a Lunchand learn webinar on challenges
in early learning and child carefor Quebec English speaking
communities and we're going toget into that research.
But, shannon, before we getinto the nuts and bolts of what
(00:57):
you do, how did you get to thisstage in your career?
What were some of the pinnaclemoments that kind of you know
weaved your journey to where youare now?
That is a great question and I often answer it
with how much time do you have?
Because it's been a longjourney.
(01:18):
But I will say I am originallyfrom the US and I moved here a
little over 10 years ago andfound myself popped into the
English speaking minority quitequickly, quite immediately.
And, you know, just anecdotally, looking into community
activities, I was able to find,you know, some, some friendship
(01:42):
there, and then, right throughthat, I found, you know, some
friendship there, and thenthrough that, I found, you know,
my first job.
It was, you know, looking for ajob in English at the time.
But my background, myeducational background, is that
I was a journalist.
I studied journalism as anundergrad, worked for newspapers
and magazines and then, cominghere, I realized that I needed
(02:03):
to get some French under my beltreal quick, and so I finished
my master's in publicadministration at Concordia, and
so I was interested in thecommunity sector from the get go
, and so my first job was at theYellow Door in Montreal, which
is an intergenerationalcommunity organization, and I'm
(02:24):
now on the board there.
So I'm still really involved.
I really love that organizationand everything that they do.
But you know, this idea oflinguistic policy was always at
the forefront of my Quebecexistence, and so I you know,
for better or worse, that's howI ended up here.
Then, after we spent about fiveyears in Montreal, when I first
(02:46):
moved here, my husband'sfrancophone from Quebec we went
to Trois-Rivières because hewent to school and there was a
program there only offered inThree Rivers, and there I
started working at a communityorganization that is under the
umbrella of the CHSSN communityorganizations, and so I was a
(03:07):
liaison between the local CIOsand the English-speaking
community, and so that was areally wonderful experience
where I learned a lot about thehistory of English-speaking
Quebec and how we got to wherewe are today and and just a
really like on the groundexperience Met some really great
(03:28):
people working within thesector as well.
So that was a really bigopening, eye-opening experience
for me as far as the communitysector goes.
And then I worked atuniversities in various
capacities I worked at.
We moved to Sherbrooke, so welive in Sherbrooke now even
though I work.
(03:50):
I worked at Bishop's for a time,and then I saw this opening for
this research project going onat and I was just like oh, I
have to do that, you know, so Ithat's so.
I've been with for almost twoyears now working on this
research briefs project amazing,amazing.
Chris Colley (04:09):
And did you?
Did you have french coming upto quebec like?
Were you able to like?
I saw this research that saidonly two percent of of people
living in quebec have nounderstanding of french.
I mean, mean, it's a very, verylow percentage.
Were you functionally Frenchwhen you first moved up from the
(04:29):
States?
Shannon Bell (04:30):
Not functionally, but I did, just coincidentally
in high school, took Frenchinstead of what most people took
was Spanish, because I lived inNew Mexico and that was sort of
the second language that madethe most sense for a lot of
people.
But I was always interested inFrench, and that was sort of the
second language that made themost sense for a lot of people,
but I was always interested inFrench and so I took, I had what
you might call a base.
(04:52):
You know I knew more than justone through 10.
And hi, so when I arrived inQuebec I was able to go straight
to the more intermediatecourses and really learn to be
functionally conversational.
But it took, you know, for meit was the really valuable thing
was having a partner who'sFrancophone and all of our
(05:14):
friends were Francophone, and soI was like immediately immersed
in Francophone culture, music,movies.
you know my husband's friends,you know we, just you couldn't
operate in English in thatatmosphere, and so it came.
Yeah, it came that way, um,really just yeah, personally
(05:35):
that way, rather than I did takethe um immigrants, um French
classes that were by theministry of immigration, classes
that were by the ministry ofimmigration, right, that was a
good program.
They were free, they had, itwas really high quality, I found
, and so I got a lot of goodbase there and uh, and then the
rest is, like you know, likethey all say, you just gotta
live in it, right that's right,that's right, that's right well
(05:58):
it's amazing too now that you'rekind of delving into english
language research here withinquebec, which I I mean it's
really fascinating, like, as anEnglish speaker.
Chris Colley (06:09):
I was born, you know, raised here, not knowing
all that stuff.
You know, and that's whatstruck me so much when I saw the
Lunch and Learn, is that howlittle I knew about the
foundations and how theeducational system got started
and all that.
And we'll jump into that.
But what brought you to , like,what was it about that offering
(06:32):
that you saw, that sparkedsomething in you that you wanted
to go for that?
Shannon Bell (06:37):
I think it had that perfect blend of
professional goals that I hadfor myself and personal
experience professional goalsthat I had for myself and
personal experience.
You know you want to be able tobring something to your
professional role, somethingthat makes sense for you and how
you identify with yourprofessional role, and I think
(06:59):
that for me, I really need acause.
That was always kind of mydriving force behind my
education.
I was like I need to work for acause.
Whatever the cause is, italmost didn't even matter what
it was, I just need a cause.
You know I wanted to work in thepublic sector, in the community
sector a part of the cause alittle bit.
(07:25):
You know you feel like you'reworking towards something that
is going to help people that youknow and people whose
experiences and challenges youhave also experienced and have,
you know, know those challenges.
So I think that it was reallyimportant for me to to get back
into the community sector afterhaving left it briefly to work
at Bishops and you know it'sjust something.
That was that fulfillment thatcan be twofold right, because
(07:49):
sometimes you're working inthese situations where you're
like am I having an impact?
Is any of it working?
Um, and it can feel like anuphill battle a lot of the time,
but, um, there's just nothingbetter than feeling like you're
working toward a common goal oryou know something for the
betterment of the community atlarge, and so that was what
(08:12):
really drew me to Westgate.
And then the research part wasjust something I'd always been
wanting to get into.
So I have, you know, done someresearch in my master's, but
never like professionally.
But I had worked communitysector and so this job post was
a perfect like marriage of thosetwo things, like knowledge of
the community sector, theenglish speaking community, and
(08:34):
having, you know, um, experienceacademically with with writing
and reading.
Because this project isimportant to note, it's
secondary research, so I'm notconducting new research.
I'm what is essentiallyliterature reviews, so I'm
looking at research that's beendone in any given topic and I'm
(08:56):
putting it together and makingit accessible for anybody,
whether it's a governmentofficial or community worker or
just a member of the community,you can look at it.
You're not going to spend toomuch time.
It's not a deep dive.
It's a broad understanding of aparticular topic and there's
(09:17):
context for today.
There's, if necessary,historical context put in there
so that someone can look at thatand, like, get a pretty good
understanding of the globalpicture oh, I'm sure your, your
journalism, um work too, at youryounger age is also um informed
that practice as well, right?
Chris Colley (09:36):
because I mean, in essence, journalism does a lot
of that where you you're findingstuff and then is there a
pattern, is there something thatis popping out from from the
research that was done?
Yeah, yeah.
Shannon Bell (09:48):
You may ask my employers that they might say
that that was actually one ofthe reasons they decided to hire
me for this is because of thatvery angle that I could take
with it.
You know, I'm used to lookingat a bunch of stuff that maybe
not everybody wants to look atsome pretty dense academic
material, you know, and andbringing that into um, a
(10:09):
document that you know justmakes sense of all of it, and so
, like I'm doing heavy liftingfor 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 earlychildhood learning, um, it had
that kind of idea of simplifyingthings for people and kind of
like giving them thatinformation as well, that I mean
you'd have to sift throughquite a bit of stuff to be able
(10:36):
to get the information that youpresented to us.
So it I totally like, and Ithink, in a way too, that those
are some of the aha moments ofyou kind of knew about this and
that and this and that, butassembled together in this story
, in this picture, really kindof 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 somethingout of it.
That's good.
Chris Colley (10:57):
Absolutely Well, and I also like your comment on
sometimes it feels like are wemaking a difference?
You know it's I'm one person inthis 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 hardand you put so much effort and
(11:18):
love and attention and you'relike 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 onechild, no, you've done, you've
done your work.
Or you can say that you'veaccomplished something, and so I
guess I would say it's probablysimilar for the research world.
If you can reach one person whounderstands better some subject
, then you've done, you've doneyour 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 bitabout the organization?
I mean, you're kind of you'retiptoeing around it a bit, but
like, what's the function of theQuebec English-Speaking
Community Research Network?
Is it to do as you were saying,where you're gathering lots of
research from that is out thereand then making it accessible
(12:06):
for people?
Is that the main crux of whatthe organization does?
Shannon Bell (12:12):
Yeah, so we are.
We kind of like to considerourselves a sort of one-stop
shop for research andinformation on English-speaking
Quebec.
So we do that in many differentways.
We have a lot of resourcesSpeaking Quebec.
(12:38):
So you can go on our websiteand you can search thousands and
thousands of publications,scholarly works, articles,
anything mentioning EnglishSpeaking Quebec.
Like you know, it's a greatresource, so that's something we
host.
We have the Community OpenKnowledge Library, which is
another database that you cansearch to find great literature
that comes out of communityorganizations.
And then we also have aresearcher member network which
connects other academics workingon things that might be
(13:00):
interesting to English speakingQuebec and they can communicate,
we can promote their work.
We have we also host forums andacademic conferences, and then
we have our in-house producedresearch as well as some
commissioned research that we'lldo.
You know we'll.
We'll have some funding to getsome researchers to do, um, some
briefs or a working paper orsomething like that.
(13:21):
So we're also producingresearch, but we're also like
bringing it all into a hub.
So we look at ourselves as kindof a hub for information on,
and with the goal being tounderstand english people back.
We know, how does it existwithin the greater um province,
and how does it also existwithin other um, ol and on lc,
(13:43):
as we call, official linguisticminority 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 greatresource, great resource for us
to have because I mean, I'msure it informs a lot of stuff.
I mean not just policy, but youknow education, how we go about
it, you know being aware of andmaybe we'll shift over to your
(14:09):
research because there's so manygreat examples in it.
But what I found reallyinteresting so like I said
before, there was this Lunch andLearn and Shannon was doing the
webinar and it was aboutchallenges in early learning and
childcare for Quebec's Englishspeaking community out kind of
(14:33):
how it all evolved from the 80sto the 90s to nowadays.
Could you walk us through howearly child care has kind of
evolved here in Quebec since the80s?
Shannon Bell (14:44):
Yeah, so that for me, especially as just a
consumer of information, I findit easier to start, you know,
some from some beginning point.
You know you have to decide onwhat that beginning point will
be.
But a lot of the research thatI looked at was the starting
point of that seemed to betalking about the 70s and the
(15:06):
80s and you know this idea of,you know, going from just when
women started working outside ofthe home, that's when we
started seeing a need for childcare for, you know, obvious
reasons.
And so the evolution, the mybrief looks at the evolution of
just simple child care, likeessentially what we might think
(15:27):
of as like babysitting, toeducative care.
So we know there's actually aprogram being implemented, we're
trying to, we're looking atdevelopment of the child,
preparing them for school, andthose programs really started
coming out more in the 70s andthe 80s when research was
looking at child development.
(15:49):
And so in Canada that's, youknow, it's it's kind of the
western world in general, that'swhat was happening and they
started as like two differentthings right, you had your child
care and then you had um, likewhat we would call something a
bit more um, fancy, kind ofelitist, like the, the fancy
(16:10):
child care, that those wouldhave the developmental programs,
and then you would haveprograms that meant for children
who were perhaps facingsocioeconomic challenges or they
have developmental problems.
So that's how there were liketwo tracks of programs up
through the 90s and then youstarted seeing a convergence of
(16:30):
the two.
We'll put them all under oneumbrella and we'll develop
programs for everyone that'smeant to be addressing both like
regular development of a childand also trying to, you know,
bring up anybody who might havesome challenges, and we're
addressing those challenges too.
And so this is all called earlylearning and childcare and it
(16:51):
includes, like the preschoolprograms.
And so in the 90s, late 90s, youstarted seeing a need for, well
, society was like looking forways to do this in an affordable
way and something that you knoweverybody could access.
So in Quebec, our sort of whata lot of us look at as a
flagship program, which is theCentre pour la Petite Enfance,
(17:15):
the CPEs, and that became such abig example for the rest of
Canada that we were able to, youknow, not without its flaws.
There were obviously a lot ofpeople who pointed out those
flaws.
That were very valid points,but it's such a huge project
(17:38):
that actually succeeded in beingimplemented.
Um, you know, with a standardrate.
Basically, it goes up everyyear, but there's one flat rate
for every family.
You know, depending, no, hasnothing to do with your
socioeconomic status and meaningthat it's universal everyone
can go.
The obvious, obvious bigproblem that we have today with
(17:59):
that is that there's just notenough places for every child,
even though every childtechnically has a right to it.
And that's you resources, andthat's across the board, whether
we're talking about the actualor if you're talking about other
(18:23):
educative or like professionalresources.
You know like and speechpathology, just across the board
, not even a linguistic problem.
There's just not enoughresources for everyone.
So that's what the brief kindof looks at like.
You know who's suffering themost from this suffering is a
(18:45):
big word who are facing the mostchallenges and what can, what
can we do, what's being done, ifanything 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, withthe new cycle program in
preschool, where they open it upto to four-year-olds, so it's a
four, five cycle was, was thatintent?
I mean, if, if you can answerthis based on what you've
observed was that intent to toopen up more spaces?
Or like, because I also know,like the, the four and fives,
(19:24):
they, they are off on the summer, right?
So if you are working, um, whatdo you do once summer hits?
You know you got three monthswhere you're gonna have to find
and those spots, if you givethem up, are like they seem to
be like these gems now, like youjust 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 theyopened that?
I think it's maybe three yearsor 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 isinteresting from what I found
out from this project is that itactually existed in different
ways since the 70s.
You know, originally it was, toyou know, it was exclusively in
neighborhoods that were worthwith socioeconomic challenges
and so to add some help withdevelopmental challenges that
(20:19):
might be having problems oraccessing affordable daycare.
They were really limited tothose areas and then with the
CAC government they made anobjective of making K-4
universal, so that it waslargely to address the problem
with not having enough places in.
(20:39):
The CP is a huge thing thatpeople were excuse me, my cough
comes.
That was a big thing, thatpeople are a big challenge.
So, yeah, the problem with thatagain was resources, so they had
this great objective, but thereweren't enough teachers
qualified to implement theseprograms, and so they have
(21:00):
opened a lot of them, but one ofthe things that I saw an
article I read for this was thatthey then were kind of I don't
know, poaching is not the rightword, but I just said it anyway
is not the right word, but Ijust said it anyway.
Educators from the daycareswere then going to the K-4
programs because they werelooking for people who were
qualified, and even then therewas a question of qualifications
(21:24):
, because the qualifications tobe an educator in a daycare are
not the same qualifications tobe a teacher in a primary school
, which is essentially what K-4is it's primary school.
There are quite a fewchallenges.
Yes, there are more places, butthen there was also the issue
of being able to actually meetthe objective, which they
(21:44):
haven't yet.
Chris Colley (21:47):
So, they're trying .
They're saying by 2029, theywant00 k4 classrooms.
Right, and are they?
Is that is that?
Is that a realistic?
I mean, I guess it's hard totell the future right it is hard
.
Shannon Bell (22:05):
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't.
I mean if, at the rate they'regoing 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 inCPEs to get some other
certifications.
So while they're working,there's like a work program.
So while they're working acouple of hours at a CPU, for
example, they can become basedon some other criteria.
(22:36):
I don't remember exactly whatit is.
They can be enrolled in someprograms where they're, you know
, getting continuing education,basically working for a
certificate that will allow themto work, if they wanted to, in
a K-4 program or work full-time.
Because the cpes have a adifferent way of they have a
special way of theirqualifications.
They have to have a certainnumber of qualified educators
(22:59):
for the um number of kids, for acertain number of kids as a
ratio, but not every.
Every person, not everyemployee in the cp has to be as
qualified.
so some of these other sometimesthey're part-time, you know
they'll those are the kind ofpeople who would maybe be
interested in these kind ofprograms to obtain a
(23:22):
certification in order to workfull-time in a CPA or perhaps in
another kind of program.
So there are tools beingimplemented, there's, they're
trying.
First, they're being made, butyou know who knows how long
it'll take to really achieve thelofty objectives that they have
.
Chris Colley (23:38):
Right, and what are the greatest surprises that
you encountered as you were kindof going through this, or
things that you didn't expect tofind, or that you were like
yeah, that's quite obvious Likewere there some of those
occasions that you could share?
Shannon Bell (23:59):
Definitely like.
Particularly with this, I meanthroughout this whole project,
all the different topics thatI've looked at.
I've had a couple of like whoamoments, but if just talking
about this particular brief, Iwould say that something I found
really interesting was whenlooking on the website, the web
registries of daycares, the LaPlace 05, I was finding that
(24:22):
while the website itself isavailable in English, you can
click and have the Englishversion you can't sort any of
the facilities by like Englishlanguage the way, way that it
works.
They do have a filter systemand this is some some primary
research quote of it that I didmyself um, as a parent as well,
I was familiar with the site.
(24:44):
Um, you can filter your resultsby several different types of
criteria um, whether the cpe orthe daycare facility does you
know outdoor activities, or youknow like, or if they have cloth
diapers, or then criteria ismulti linguistic groups, and so
that was the only criteria thatyou can check to potentially
(25:08):
find information on a facilitythat maybe they offer services
in a language other than French,and it's definitely
multi-lingual.
So it's not, it's like any kindof.
It could be any language, couldbe Spanish, so definitely
nothing that you can look at.
That's English specific.
And then also, from what I cantell, these facilities are the
(25:34):
ones that are sourcing theinformation on the website about
themselves.
So there's no like standardizedprocess from the site that you
know to be able to sort by thesedifferent things.
It's like if the CPE says theyhave that you know they check
the box or whatever.
So it's kind of an informal wayof sorting and so it's.
It's definitely I could seethat that being a challenge for
potentially a unilingual Englishspeaker looking for service.
(25:57):
You know, can I send my kids todaycare?
Because what's also veryinteresting is that the CP
network and the daycare network,the early childhood education
network, is not governed by Bill101.
It is under the Minister de laFamille, which is kind of
obvious, I guess, but I thinkwe're.
So in those conversations abouteducation and bill 101, we kind
(26:22):
of you could.
You could potentially forgetthat it's not under falling
under either.
So that's interesting.
Theoretically, an englishspeaking parent like myself who
doesn't have the right toenglish education for my child
because I'm an immigrant and myhusband is french-speaking from
(26:43):
quebec, I could theoreticallysend my kid to an
english-speaking daycare becauseyou 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 wasreally interesting.
(27:03):
I mean, it was something that Ialso experienced personally, but
to really see it in action youknow, in order to verify this, I
called up the Minister de laFamille and I had a conversation
with the person who answeredthe phone.
How do you open a CP in English?
Can you open a CP in English?
You know they were like firstof all, I think, a bit jarred by
my question, but very kind andvery, you know, willing to
(27:30):
answer my questions and theysaid well, there's no nothing to
say that you can't do that.
But we're not.
You know everything.
All your communication, yourcorrespondence with the
government must be in french.
You must still correspond withthe parents in french first.
You know you must follow all ofthe regular linguistic laws,
but if you want to offer readingtime in english at your cpu,
(27:54):
you know kind of a thing youknow.
So learning about how thatsystem works and how different
the rest of the educationalsystem was was really
interesting, I found.
Chris Colley (28:05):
Yeah, because you think, yeah, like, like,
logically, maybe you know likeokay, we can just choose.
Are you sure about that?
I like the way that youdescribed it too.
If you choose to, there'snothing 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 accidentallystumble upon it probably right,
yeah, and I think, too, some ofyour research pointed to the
PLAS05.
Like, it's hard to understandthat, as you were alluding to,
and I think you said, like 50%of first-time users, and you're
(28:44):
trying to look at schools, andit's like, yeah, I've heard a
lot of those stories too, fromfriends 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 provincialorganization that is
theoretically aware of this.
So I don't know what effortsare being made to to address
that.
But it's definitely not just ona linguistic basis.
Chris Colley (29:17):
A lot of families are having well, I mean, I think
the work that you guys do is sonecessary because it can be
very daunting, particularly ifyou don't even know where to
start.
You know like it's, it's andthere's stuff everywhere you
know, and it like I love theidea that you've gone through
and kind of like here are somethings and there's stuff
everywhere you know, and it likeI love the idea that you've
gone through and kind of likehere's some things to be aware
(29:38):
of, here's you know, this iswhat we know and here's some
solutions that we're trying todevelop.
I mean it only is great stufffor for for our community for
sure.
So I thank you guys forpursuing that.
Maybe just to wrap Shannon,what Shannon?
What's next for you?
Like, I mean, this research isreally great.
I mean I've really it'sinformed me from my practice in
(30:01):
helping and supporting teachersand consultants as well.
What are some other researchthat you guys are working on now
that you could tell us aboutthat 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 aboutupcoming things.
I am working at the moment onanother brief that talks about
community vitality research andhow we can apply it to English
speaking Quebec.
So first of all, justunderstanding what is community
vitality research.
It's something we hear a lotwords we hear thrown around a
(30:31):
lot in conversations about ourcommunity as a linguistic
minority.
We hear like vitality this wordis thrown around a lot in
conversations about ourcommunity as a linguistic
minority.
We hear like vitality this wordis thrown around exactly is
that and and and.
It's a big, actually it's a bigarea of research.
Um, there's a big body of it,not only just about
english-speaking quebec, whichis, you know, communities in
general and they havemeasurement.
You know units of measurement.
(30:52):
How do we tell the health youknow, and the vitality of a
community by certain criteria?
So looking at that is reallyinteresting and so I'm excited
to be able to share that That'llbe coming out next spring.
I'm also working on in asimilar vein of the early
childhood education, looking atprograms for older adults,
(31:16):
seniors, what kind of challengesthey're facing in terms of
public services, healthcareaccess, those kinds of things.
And then actually a colleagueof mine is working on one about
identity.
We talked briefly about how doAnglophones or English speakers
in Quebec perceive themselvesand 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 notout yet, but um, all of these,
like the project we're workingon now.
Shannon Bell (31:47):
This goes through um march of next year, so
there's gonna be just like abunch of things coming out
amazing before march, um.
But yeah, so we have um, wehave some on immigration and uh
and health care as well.
So all the good, all the goodtopics we'll have, we'll have a
little something to learn aboutthere.
Yeah, well.
Chris Colley (32:07):
I recommend, uh, the listeners out there to
attend one of these lunch andlearns that concordia offers
I'll put put the link in thispodcast describer, because
they're really good, they'rewell done.
And again, thank you, shanivich, for just making us smarter.
I think the work that you domakes us smarter and allows us
to be aware of our identity andhow we fit into this
(32:32):
multicultural, shifting provinceof ours, in education in
particular, too, which is reallyfascinating.
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 whatwe're up to.
And we actually have oureducation and vitality forum
next year that we're in theprocess of putting together.
So there's always more peopleto come together and share their
knowledge, so, but yeah, thankyou 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 thebeginning of our conversation
and not the end.
So, we'll have Shannon back oneventually, so thanks again.
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