Course connects students to inner city

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This article was published 09/03/2021 (1723 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new high school course at Maples Met School is bridging the gap between Winnipeg’s suburban and inner-city communities.

Community activist Mitch Bourbonniere developed and teaches Dynamics of the Inner City at the University of Winnipeg. But this year, it’s also being offered for the first time to high school students in The Maples.

Through the course, students have learned about how urban centres develop, why affluent populations tend to gravitate toward the periphery of a city and what kind of effect that has on a city as a whole.

“This idea of kind of transgressing that boundary between these bubbles on the outskirts of the city and the city’s core is an important part of re-establishing that sense of community,” said Jason Neufeld, a Maples Met teacher who has been working alongside Bourbonniere.

The course also explores challenges inner-city community members often face, such as poverty, racism and inequity, Bourbonniere explained.

“Some of our students grew up in the inner city, and some of our students have grown up more in the suburbs. So that divide is actually right in our classroom, and it’s so cool to have each side kind of teach the other about their realities.”

Alycia Roussin, Grade 12, is one of the students who grew up in the inner city.

“I do like that this stuff is sort of being talked about, because there does need to be some changes in the way that we treat others,” Roussin said. “We don’t always treat people with kindness or recognize them as humans because they’re not the same as us, and we create sort of an ‘otherness.’

“I think having courses like this could really help with your empathy towards others and understanding circumstances.”

Meanwhile, Roussin’s classmate, Manpinder Dhillon, has never lived in the inner city.

“I think for me, it’s really about understanding how people who are unsheltered really live. And I think (it’s important to) take what we’ve learned to other people, because there is a big stigma around people who are in poverty,” Dhillon said.

The pandemic has pushed regular outings out of reach, but students recently had the opportunity to leave their traditional classroom and get out into the community. On March 2, students joined Bourbonniere at a private gathering outside of Thunderbird House on Main Street, where the Village — a project of 22 tiny homes meant for unsheltered people — will be built. The purpose of the event was to ask Mother Earth’s permission to construct the village there, Bourbonniere explained.