Erin Dej, associate professor in the department of criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University, has been helping craft a curriculum to teach high school students about homelessness.
“We recognize that young people are seeing homelessness, that they are aware of it, and they have questions,” Dej said. “We wanted to create curriculum to help them work through and think through this challenging social issue.”
Dej says the curriculum consists of 2 mini lessons and 4 full sized lessons. The two mini lessons cover facts and figures around homelessness in Canada, and how to have respectful, productive conversations about big complex social issues where people may have disagreements.
The four main lessons are on stigma faced by people who are homeless, what happens when people who are homeless have no place to go, the diverse experiences of people experiencing homelessness, and solutions to homelessness.
Creation of the curriculum was inspired by a documentary that Dej worked on called Bridging Divides, which explored the topic of homelessness in mid-sized Canadian cities.
People First Radio spoke with Dej about the curriculum, in a segment that also incorporates sections of Bridging Divides.
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