About Benjamin Smith
Benjamin Smith is the Cross Curricular Head of Equity and Lead Student Success Teacher at Chinguacousy Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario. He is a 2023 national recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence, the highest national honour for teachers in Canada, is as 2024 recipient of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Pin, two time recipient of the Peel District School Board’s Award of Distinction (2017 & 2019), and an Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation Certificate of Achievement recipient (2017).
Ben has had the privilege of learning and working with educators and community partners from across the globe, including being an ambassador to international and national delegations visiting the Peel District School Board in learning more about culturally responsive and relevant learning practices, has worked with esteemed community partners ranging from Ontario’s Poet Laureate, Randell Adjei, Anishinaabe activist, advocate and artist, Sarain Fox, nationally recognized chef, Roger Mooking, nationally renowned civil rights activist, youth empowerment expert, and former CFL player, Orlando Bowen, and rising motivational speaker and youth excellence advocate, Sam Demma, and has experience serving in nearly every facet of public education.
Ben has been the driving force in transforming the Chinguacousy Secondary School’s culture through deep involvement and dedication. He empowers students from grades 9 to 12 to take ownership and agency over their educational journeys while simultaneously building teacher capacity to create classroom environments that are culturally responsive and accessible to students of all backgrounds and abilities.
Connect with Benjamin Smith: Email | Twitter
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Resources Mentioned
Chinguacousy Secondary School
District School Board
The Transcript
**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.
Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma. And today we are joined by my friend and educator extraordinaire, Benjamin Smith. Ben is a nationally recognized educator at Chincusee Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario, who serves as the cross-curricular head of equity and lead student success teacher, earning Canada’s highest teaching honor with the 2023 Prime Minister’s
Sam Demma
Award for Teaching Excellence. His dedication to culturally responsive education has made him a sought after ambassador and collaborator, working with renowned activists, artists, and community leaders to enhance students’ educational experiences.
Sam Demma
A recipient of multiple distinguished awards, including the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Pin and the Peel District School Board’s Award of Distinction, Ben has demonstrated excellence across nearly every facet of public education. Ben also made me feel incredibly welcomed at their school community and doesn’t miss an opportunity to rep the Timberwolves merchandise.
Sam Demma
Ben, Benjamin, thank you so much for being here today on the show. I appreciate your time.
Benjamin Smith
Thanks so much for having me, Sam. And likewise, I echo the same sentiments when it comes to collaborating with you. Every opportunity, every space that I’ve shared with you is a space that your presence, your enthusiasm, your joy and your knowledge has really transformed.
Benjamin Smith
So when I had the invitation to chat with you today, I could not turn it down. So thank you.
Sam Demma
I know a little bit about you because of our interactions. The listener doesn’t yet. So please take a moment to introduce yourself and share what got you into education.
Benjamin Smith
Oh, wow.
Benjamin Smith
Well, hearing you list off some of my experiences, I got a bit of the imposter syndrome. I can’t lie. It’s like, wow, is that really where I am, who I am, those sorts of things. But I think that like in addition to or beyond some of what you shared already, I think it starts with authentically who I am. When I think about my lived experience and my ancestry, that informs so much of what I’ve been able to do, and it informs so much of what I prioritize in the space.
Benjamin Smith
So you know, for a long time when people asked me to sort of share my identity, I would start with well like I’m kind of what you envision or what at least what I envision to be a genuine and authentic Canadian. Because when I think about Canada, I think about a culturally diasporic space. I think about a space where people of all backgrounds, all lived experiences, all communities should feel welcomed. And that’s really what I try to do through education. So, I mean, when it comes to my parents, I come from mixed-race ancestry.
Benjamin Smith
First of all, my mom, who’s one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met, she’s of European ancestry, Dutch-German, and some other components as well. And that gives me a lot of privilege with the way that I guess that I present, the way that I appear, and I recognize that and I try to use that privilege to pay it forward in supporting all communities. When it comes to my dad, my dad was born in 1949 in Durban, South Africa.
Benjamin Smith
And for those folks who may be listening who don’t know that much about international or African history, 1949 is the year that apartheid came into effect in South Africa. And he was the, I believe, the fourth child from my grandparents. When my grandparents got married, you know, it was fine for them to be together. They were a mixed race as well, of Welsh, African and South Asian ancestry, with some different mixes there.
Benjamin Smith
So when they were married, that was before that apartheid regime, it was fine. It was legal for them to be together. When my dad was conceived, it was legal for them to be together. But literally, while my grandmother was pregnant with my dad, the law has changed in South Africa and made it so, you know, their marriage was essentially illegal.
Benjamin Smith
So my dad was actually born, different parts of his family, you know, my aunt’s uncle, my grandparents were required to live in different parts of that city. And it’s through that Welsh ancestry that they were eventually able to emigrate to the UK and then to Canada. And then my parents met in rural Ontario. We’re talking Caledonia, Ontario. That’s where I was kind of born and raised,
Benjamin Smith
bringing in sort of the intersections of my, my ancestry, but then even when we get to that lived experience component, I’m growing up as a racialized person in the 90s, early 2000s, in a very rural area, but we’re directly connected to the largest Indigenous reservation, the First Nations of the Grand River, in the country. And thus, you know, growing up, some of my best friends from then and to this day are First Nations, are Métis. My first actual professional teaching experience was on Six Nations of the Grand River at Emily C. General
Benjamin Smith
Elementary School. So I think it’s really exploring those elements of my identity and my lived experience that informed so much of what I try to do now in the
Sam Demma
space of public education. Thank you for sharing that. It provides so much insight and context and I’m curious with your upbringing, what drove you towards education? You could have taken many paths. Why teaching? Why working with young people? Tell me more about
Benjamin Smith
the journey into education. Yeah, great question. Like it’s always in so many ways, it has always been my calling. To be entirely honest, the first thing that kind of put me on the track was kind of petty. I had a situation in elementary school where there was a teacher who I didn’t entirely see eye to eye with, so I’m like, you know what, I’m going to become a teacher so that I can try to change some of the system. But little did I know that that would literally become kind of my
Benjamin Smith
calling card as an educator, which maybe we’ll get to later. But then like more realistically, as I got into high school, started to explore my passions in greater detail, had some incredible educators, in elementary I had great educators too, don’t get me wrong. And then in high school I had some incredible educators who just went above and beyond, who made me begin to envision really what was possible in this space, and probably from about grade 10 I was contemplating, okay,
Benjamin Smith
do I want to go into law, do I want to go into politics, or do I want to go into education? And then, you know, my interests, my hobbies become more and more diverse. I’m heavily involved in the arts in high school, heavily involved in athletics in high school, beginning to scratch the surface with activism work. And, you know, in education,
Benjamin Smith
I could bring all of those things together. And that’s really what kind of sealed the deal for me. If we’re really going to pour ourselves into a profession, if we’re gonna try to keep showing up and be our best selves every day for 20, 30, 40 years, it needs to be something that really speaks
Benjamin Smith
to who we are at our core. And that’s why education became the pathway for me.
Sam Demma
You mentioned you had some phenomenal educators who went above and beyond. Can you speak about what those individuals did specifically that had such a big impact on you for the educator who’s listening and wants to have that same impact on the young people in their classrooms?
Benjamin Smith
Great question. The first thing that comes to mind for me is going beyond the curriculum and recognizing that what is captured in those documents, while it is obviously a goal that all educators need to teach to, like we need to ensure that we’re empowering students with the skill and the knowledge that so many professionals have vetted in developing those curriculum documents.
Benjamin Smith
But we also need to recognize that those documents don’t speak to and don’t serve every person who’s in the classroom. So those educators who really made the greatest impact on me were the ones who first took time to get to know me, to get to scratch the surface on,
Benjamin Smith
you know, what am I interested in? What is my pathway? What is my lived experience? Being willing to stick around a little bit at lunchtime, after school, maybe answer an email on the weekend or in the summertime, or honestly, even when I was in first year university, I had several high school teachers who remained
Benjamin Smith
available to give me some feedback to support me in those ways. And then those educators who ran the extracurriculars, like the extracurriculars in Canada, they’re not paid gigs. So the ones who showed up at seven o’clock in snowstorms like what we’re experiencing right now here in Ontario, the ones who gave up their lunchtime, who are eating their lunch during rehearsal or during practice, who made the time after school and were willing to listen before speaking.
Benjamin Smith
Those were some of the ones who really transformed my high school and elementary experiences.
Sam Demma
You mentioned that your calling card would be changing education in one way, shape, or form. Tell me more about that goal, that vision that you’ve had, and how you strive to bring to life now?
Benjamin Smith
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I was really hoping we’d have a chance to talk about something like that. So my education is in English and history with a minor in theatre as well. So I read a lot, I’m exposed to a lot of ideas. So I’m really big on quotations and I start a lot of my classes with a quotation, a sort of provocation, get students thinking about that. And one of the activists, the philosophers who really I circle back to the most is Angela Davis. So many quotes that I can think of, but in
Benjamin Smith
relation to this question, I think about her quote with, I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. And to any young teachers who are listening to this, I never imagined in Teachers College or in my first few years teaching that some of the things I’ve been able to collaborate on,
Benjamin Smith
including the work that you and I have done, and then so many other educators I’ve had the privilege of working with, so many community partners. I had no idea that we could create some of the things that we have created and that we will continue to create. So, like, just keep pushing. And when you have an idea for bringing something to life, of course, getting to know, understand how identify an inequity, when you identify a part of the system that does not actually serve those individuals, those communities
Benjamin Smith
who need it most, that it is possible to ensure that the system adapts, adjusts in order to speak to those needs that you identify. So that’s kind of what comes to mind. I don’t know if you want to talk about examples. Should I share a couple of examples of that?
Sam Demma
I was going to say, tell me a little bit about the things you didn’t ever imagine you could create that you’ve brought to life that has been student-led. I got to witness the brilliance of the young people you bring together for the Unity Council and just the amazing work that they do. But I would love to hear more about the young people you bring together for the Unity Council and just the amazing work that they do. But I would love to hear more about the other projects you’ve worked on that have really opened up doors for people and amplified voices.
Benjamin Smith
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, and Unity Council, definitely one of those phenomenal spaces. I think the first thing that comes to mind, partially because we are recording in February, Black History Month, and one of the courses that I got to pilot and create in my school, really it kind of came about in collaboration with some of the other thought leaders in the Peel Board. And our global studies head, Brandon Osborne, I got a shout out, he ensured that all the resources were in place to make sure that it was successful.
Benjamin Smith
But I had the privilege of three years ago creating a course CHI4U, the history of Canadians of African descent. And like when I think about my experiences growing up in high school, even in in post-secondary, culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. It didn’t exist. It didn’t exist really in rural Caledonia, even growing up next to the Six Nations of the Grand River.
Benjamin Smith
The representation there was not where it needed to be, and especially the representation for members of the African diaspora wasn’t there. And then, you know, it took, I think, eight, nine years of me as a teacher to eventually be able to create a course that spoke to those experiences. And the way that that course is designed, it’s meant to inspire all students who take that course to recognize that Black history is Canadian history first and foremost, and that we all collectively benefit from the efforts of members
Benjamin Smith
of the African diaspora in Canada. And as such, we all have a collective responsibility to be giving back regardless of our identity. The kind of grounding philosophy of that course, and it’s something that you and I have talked about, something that we shared with Unity Council and shared in your amazing keynote presentation
Benjamin Smith
with our entire school, is the South African philosophy of Ubuntu, I am because we are. And that philosophy came to life to bring together post-apartheid South Africa. Thought leaders like Desmond Tutu, like Nelson Mandela, dove into that ancestral knowledge
Benjamin Smith
of several South African nations, recognizing, hey, we have a cultural mosaic here in South Africa. We are not going to be able to rebuild this community by focusing on any individual identity or ancestral group, we need to create the conditions for communities to work together. So that Ubuntu philosophy, it’s core to what we do in that CHI course, it’s core to what
Benjamin Smith
we do in our Unity Council and throughout so much of our school. And then it’s just creating opportunities for students to see like, hey, these are ways that I’ve benefited from Black Canadian history, and as such, I need to pay it forward in other ways. Then one other thing I would speak to within that course, every summative that students do,
Benjamin Smith
so we’re addressing the curriculum, we’re exploring Canadian history from like pre-confederation up to the present era, but every summative in that course gives students the opportunity to create a product that is directly related to their post-secondary pathway. And in that way, we are able to draw students not only who are members of the African diaspora,
Benjamin Smith
not only who have an interest in majoring in history, in English, in the humanities. I’ve got computer science students. Chincoozee Secondary School, we have a science and technology regional program. We have an arts and culture, specialist high skills program,
Benjamin Smith
a manufacturing, a health and wellness. We’re gonna be launching an aviation program pretty soon. So I wanted to create a course where all of those students could find ways to learn about the history of Canadians of African descent, but then also think about it and begin to experiment with,
Benjamin Smith
okay, I have this knowledge, now how can I create products that are going to serve those communities and other equity-seeking communities once I enter my profession? So like you can see right now on my camera,
Benjamin Smith
like in my office right now, I’m staring at a living edge table. It is like, if you think, if anybody wants to Google a living edge table, it’s created with hardwood and resin. You can see on the screen right now,
Benjamin Smith
all of those figurines are hand painted. This is a student who was torn. They’re like, well, I might want to go into policing. I also might want to go into carpentry. So what can I create for my products? Well, it’s like, OK, well, let’s research
Benjamin Smith
a black Canadian who served in the military. So there’s that sort of policing side of things. And then they had the brilliant idea of bringing that to life through the carpentry side and building that table. And then when it comes back to that transforming educational experiences, the student came to me, they’re like, Mr. Smith, this table is going to cost a lot of money.
Benjamin Smith
I cannot make this happen on my family’s budget. So that’s where developing the ability to apply for grants, you know, just not taking no for an answer, asking partners in the school, asking community partners, doing some of the research, finding ways to make this happen for the students so then they were able to bring it to life. So there’s that example. There’s another student who is now at a full-ride scholarship. I forget where they were offered,
Benjamin Smith
like five full ride scholarships, I can’t even lie. But a computer engineering student, they’ve been featured on CBC, they’ve done some incredible things. And at first they’re thinking, okay, I’m taking this history course,
Benjamin Smith
how’s that gonna help me on my pathway? Well, one of their, I’ll give a couple of their summatives. One of their summatives was they looked at the safe houses, every documented safe house for the Underground Railroad. They then modified a Google Maps app and created an extension where when you hovered over any of those safe houses, it then tied into their research so they had a description, some interesting
(Speaker 3)
facts of how that safe house was used. houses, it then tied into their research so they had a description, some interesting facts
Benjamin Smith
of how that safe house was used. So just like endless possibilities there. I could go on and on, but I don’t want to belabor that example too much. So yeah, that’s one that comes to mind. And then I think Unity Council, do I have time to talk about Unity Council?
Sam Demma
Yeah, please.
Benjamin Smith
Okay, amazing. So with Unity Council, we had the privilege of working with that group together and we continue to come back to some of the projects that you talked about. So when Sam visited us, he challenged our Unity Council to develop a set of small consistent actions. He visited our group early in the school year so that they can really set the framework to an entire year-long project to really take root. And that council is a collection of all of the student groups in our school. So we have
Benjamin Smith
affinity-based groups coming together, identity-affirming groups coming together, but then we also have some of your standard groups. We have our athletics council, we have our student council, we have our Robotics Team, we have our, I mean, you name it. All of those groups come together. They get to share some of their learning. We start a lot of those meetings. Recently what we’ve been doing, we’ve been asking each Affinity Space group to begin with an identity-affirming land
Benjamin Smith
acknowledgement. So with it being February again, we had some of our BSA executive write sort of a land acknowledgement that honored their African ancestry as well. Then we’re gonna be working with some First Nations community partners to have some of our other student groups
Benjamin Smith
develop that capacity too. So with that Unity Council, the students become experts. The students can share some of their best practices. You saw it firsthand. We had one group saying like, hey, like we’ve run this program.
Benjamin Smith
Why don’t you try this idea? You bring in community partners like the Sam Demma who could say like, hey, like when I was in high school, I did this really cool thing too. I was able to mobilize thousands of people around this effort.
Benjamin Smith
Have you thought about these different ideas? And just sort of in that way, we’ve been able to create a space where some of the excellence of these student groups, it’s not siloed, there’s more organic and consistent collaboration. And yeah, we’re really excited for some of what we have planned for the rest of the school year and a lot of it
Sam Demma
thanks to some of your work. So appreciate that. You do such a great job of ensuring the students are at the center of the work and the students are the voice and the students are taking initiative for the projects that are leading. And I appreciated how there was very few teachers or adults in the room.
Sam Demma
It was like, no, this is for the students. The students are gonna discuss and the students are gonna plan and the students are going to figure it out. Aside from providing the pizza and some direction, it’s really cool to watch the students collaborate with one another on such a deep level. How do you get a young person excited about their education?
Sam Demma
How do you get them excited about making a difference and making a change? Everyone was so passionate in that room to speak up and share their ideas.
Benjamin Smith
Yeah, yeah, another great question. And I guess two thoughts come to mind. The first one that comes to mind is we can’t take care of other people if we’re not taking care of ourselves. And that is something that, you know, I learned. I’m continuing to learn, but I learned through trial and error and just constantly trying to find that work-life balance. I’ve got a young family at home, incredibly supportive. I’ve got extended family who, you know, they’re reaching an age where they need that support, where they need that
Benjamin Smith
love. So it’s a constant balancing act there. But when you’re able to get those things in balance, like one example for me is I start most of my days with a I’m a distance runner. So I’ll start most of my days by by by giving to myself. It means cutting out some of the non-essentials. I’m not watching a lot of Raptors anymore as much as I love basketball.
Benjamin Smith
But I start my day by pouring into myself, and then that gives me the capacity then to continue pouring into others. And then the next component is really trying to lead by example. And if we’re trying to excite and empower students
Benjamin Smith
to believe that these transformative actions can occur, we need to develop the reps, we need to develop the examples to show them at least in some way, hey, we’ve done it ourselves. And sometimes it means that we need to take some risks. It means that we have to push some boundaries. And that’s part of where I think your work with our Unity Council was so impactful because not only did you come in with the philosophies, the strategies, the resources to help students get organized, but you had the lived
Benjamin Smith
experience in multiple ways to be able to share, hey, these are some critical challenges I’ve encountered, these are some personal hardships I’ve encountered, being willing to be vulnerable with students when it comes to those hardships, and then like actually having the ability to say like, hey, I created, I was able to create this incredible course for example, I was able to work
Benjamin Smith
with these community partners. When I had this idea, I recognized I didn’t have the resources yet. So these are the ways that I work to get those resources. Yeah, and it’s tough. It’s one of the most,
Benjamin Smith
like those are probably the two most difficult asks. One, creating that work-life balance, and two, being able to lead by example. But when we’re able to develop some of the reps to make that happen, it becomes a lot easier to empower and to excite students about really transforming their conditions.
Sam Demma
You’re doing it. You’re leading by example from what I’ve witnessed and experienced in our interactions. I know the students are so excited and passionate when we were in the space with them all together. And I think a large part of that is the container that’s been created by you and the team at the school and the students themselves. So I’m grateful for the work you’re doing.
Sam Demma
I’m excited to watch the work continue to unfold and follow the journey. It’s been a pleasure learning a little bit more about your own upbringing and your history, your ancestry, and some of the things that you believe about education. So thank you for investing the time to chat. Safe drive, home, happy shoveling, and keep up the great work, Ben. It’s been a pleasure. Awesome. Cheers, Sam.Benjamin Smith
Thank you so much. Likewise, looking forward to hopefully many more years of collaborating, and thank you for all the work that you do, inspiring younger generations, inspiring aging generations like me. inspiring aging generations like me. It’s a real pleasure.
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