TORONTO, ON – The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) has presented Rabia Khokhar, a teacher with the Toronto Occasional Teachers Local, with its 2021 Anti-Racist and Equity Activism Award for creating a monthly newsletter that models and shares anti-racist and equity-focused strategies, book recommendations and other resources. 

This award recognizes an ETFO member or group of members for their active involvement in anti-racist and equity activism in the classroom or community.

Khokhar has always been interested in teaching from an anti-racist and equity lens. As a new teacher, she found it difficult to bring theory to practice in different teaching assignments and classrooms, and found this was shared by other teachers. As such, Khokhar was interested and encouraged to share the strategies and books she was using to carry out this work in long-term occasional teaching assignments. This led to Khokhar creating the first monthly newsletter titled “Moving Beyond Kindness to Anti-Racism” in September 2020. 

Khokhar believes that books are critical tools to be used in classrooms to engage in equity, build critical consciousness and springboard conversations. Each monthly newsletter, which is sent to over 700 subscribers, explores a specific inquiry and offers three to four cross-curricular, practical strategies, as well as literacy connections through book recommendations. 

“Rabia’s work embodies ETFO’s equity and social justice priorities to ensure that all public elementary students have inclusive classrooms and equitable learning opportunities. Her inspiring newsletters are extremely well-received by educators, equity consultants, city workers, authors, professors, school administrators and student teachers,” says ETFO President Sam Hammond. “Rabia’s work highlights the importance sharing ways equity theory can be put into practice in classrooms.”

ETFO represents 83,000 elementary public school teachers, occasional teachers and education professionals across the province. Its Building Better Schools education agenda can be viewed at BuildingBetterSchools.ca. 

Media Contact: Carla Pereira, ETFO Media Relations, 416-576-9074 or cpereira@etfo.org