Shaheen Shariff

Photo: Owen Egan

When Shaheen Shariff dropped off her daughter a year and a half ago at McGill, she was smitten by the university and its old architecture. She recalls walking through the Roddick Gates, and feeling that she "didn't want to leave." At the time, Shariff was living with her family in Vancouver, and in the early stages of research for her PhD in education at Simon Fraser University. Being hired by McGill's Faculty of Education couldn't have been further from her mind.

Life can work in funny ways, and last year, when a position at McGill for professor of leadership and policy studies came up, Shariff applied and was hired even though she was six months from finishing her dissertation. On the job at McGill since January, the elegant new professor is counting her blessings all the while teaching two courses, Intercultural Education and Educational Leadership Issues, finding a house for her family and getting accustomed to Montreal winters.

She apologizes for the spartan state of her office. Once her boxes are fully unpacked, there will be titles related to understanding school-place bullying, the legal responsibilities of schools and educating students to be socially responsible.

Shariff comes to the field of education through the backdoor. At age 40, having worked for 20 years, managing the litigation departments of a few law firms, she decided to return to school. Law seemed the obvious choice but she felt she would be too old for the profession once through her studies. Instead she opted for Simon Fraser's Centre for Education, Law and Society, where she had already worked on a few projects.

In the centre's founder Michael Manley-Casimir, Shariff found a mentor and in short order became an associate of the centre, while doing her master's thesis on the subject of recent book bannings by a Vancouver area school. During her PhD, she developed and taught a new course on the legal context of teaching.

For her dissertation, the subject of bullying, in its various physical and psychological forms such as taxing, harassment, exclusion and stalking, was a natural for Shariff who saw her daughter be bullied. At the meeting organized by the seventh grade teacher between Shariff's family and the bullying girl and her parent, it was all too clear to Shariff that the bully is a child in pain. The girl's father, who suffered from mental illness, was constantly making racial slurs against non-whites.

The school, in this situation, put an end to the bullying simply by bringing the two families together. But Shariff points out that it's not always possible to bring the families together, and the technique doesn't always work.

Furthermore, not all schools take the issue of bullying seriously enough, she believes. "Schools have a responsibility to ensure a safe environment, one that is conducive to learning. The child who is being bullied loses that."

Beyond the media excitement over bullying and book censorship, it's clear to Shariff that schools need to gain a general understanding of the legal, educational and mediation aspects of the rights and obligations of schools and the social organizations with which they have contact.

"Law has an impact on all aspects of education," she notes, adding that when you have a culturally diverse society, rights and obligations can be in competition and in conflict. "The kirpan [the ceremonial dagger worn by male Sikhs and contested in some schools] is a case in point. You have to look at the rights and legal obligations of all the stakeholders."

She also believes that teachers must have a sound understanding of the role that cultural difference plays in the classroom. In her class on intercultural education, she has each student make a circle which will later be incorporated into a symbolic quilt.

"The circles represent their heritage. Some will divide them into four. One student is part Irish, part Lebanese and his circle symbolizes both. At the end of class, the students will explain their circle and it's amazing how differently you see the person."

Shariff, who is Ismaili Muslim and grew up in Kenya, uses this exercise not only as a way for her and her students to get to know each other and appreciate their various heritages, but also as a model of something they may do in their classrooms. "If I do it with them, then they can do it with their own students."

That teachers provide good role models, especially where acknowledging and respecting difference is concerned, is one way of combatting bullying and Shariff is concerned that there aren't enough models of respect in the classroom. It's one of her goals to find ways to rectify that.

Bronwyn Chester