Nathalie Sirois

Nathalie Sirois is an experienced education professional who has worked locally and internationally at many levels in the education system, including as a teacher, a consultant and a system leader. She is a passionately curious educator and a lifelong learner committed to developing and promoting socially just practice required to create and maintain educational contexts built for human flourishing in all its diversity. A fundamental concern regarding equity and anti-oppression has been a thread linking all the chapters of her unconventional career path. She currently works as the Equity, Human Rights and Pluralism Advisor for the CEPEO, the French Public School Board of Eastern Ontario. 

Her quest to understand and shape her own role as practitioner and vector of educational change – both pedagogically and structurally – has brought her to examine how to bridge research and action while including the lived experience and the voices of the marginalized, this in the midst of the rich complexity that characterizes education and society today. Her work evolves more specifically around how to best adapt and apply the said bridge in a French-language minority context. She has spent the last two decades in practitioner inquiry mode using a broad social ecological perspective to champion student success and well-being. This journey has meant experimenting with findings stemming from a variety of fields while also applying a critical and trauma-informed lens to her work. The problems of practice she has grappled with have incited her to learn and borrow  – in a sometimes unorthodox mix – from such disciplines as Developmental Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Genocide Studies, History, Philosophy, Organizational Theory, as well as Cultural and Intercultural Studies and Practice.

In her present work pertaining to the K-12 student socio-demographic data collection, analyses and use, she is exploring how some critical theories including Indigenous and De-colonial Research Methodologies can help ensure the how of this project is ethically coherent with its why.

The tensions inherent to socially just professional and organizational development integrating principles of Adult Development inspired her to become a certified Dare to Lead Facilitator in the category of Courage Catalyst. She locates her work in a lineage of interculturally aware, responsive and sustaining Service-leadership.

Beyond her work in Canada, she has contributed to a variety of collaborative learning initiatives with K-12 teachers and other educational leaders internationally in contexts such as Haiti, Lebanon, France, Morocco and the Democratic Republic of Congo.