jeewan chanicka

jeewan chanicka is the Superintendent Equity, Anti-Racism & Anti-Oppression at Toronto District School Board. His work is focused on embedding an anti-oppressive approach through structures that impact student achievement and well-being. This work has included using an Inclusive Design approach to support School Improvement Planning (in approximately 600 schools and serves approximately 250 000 students) to close gaps for marginalized students. Additionally has supported the development and implementation of Equity as a Leadership Competency to shape organizational behaviours and expectations of staff to address equity and diversity. jeewan's professional past includes his work as an Education Officer at the Ministry of Education in Ontario in the Inclusive Education Branch and prior to that, a principal and teacher in York Region District School Board. He has also worked in the international education setting as a teacher and curriculum writer. He has a BA in Conflict Resolution and Culturally Appropriate Forms of Mediation and his Masters Degree in Education. jeewan has had a rich career which includes consultation with the United Nations University of Peace as part of a team to develop a curriculum framework on Peace Education in the Islamic context implemented in various parts of the world. He was also a torchbearer for the 2015 PanAm Games held in Toronto. In 2015, jeewan and his school staff & community received the Premier's Safe and Accepting School's award. The school used Inclusive Design as transformative process with a focus on social justice to shift school culture and practice. In June of that year, Jeewan was hosted at the Anne Frank House where he shared this journey with educators from around the world. Prior to that he worked for two years in Abu Dhabi, UAE where he helped to open an international school and develop/write curriculum following IB requirements with an explicit social justice narrative embedded within it focused on social identities, race and the environment. In his spare time, jeewan is engaged in community activism and mobilization and has an extensive background in AntiOppressive approaches to supporting communities and development. This has included addressing issues of Anti-Indigenous, Anti-Black racism, racism, patriarchy, homo/transphobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia and white supremacy. Some of the pieces he wrote are available on the huffington post Canada:

Education, Service to others, Communuity, Travel, Personal Growth, Service Oriented Leadership, AntiOppression as an approach for organizational transformation and Gardening

Inclusive Design as an approach for school and system improvement - in order to close gaps over represented by marginalized/racialized children and which no system has been able to effectively address since public education was created.

Cooking. Art