Schooled by Sekou_Dec11
Thu, Dec 11, 2025 10:00PM • 19:09
SPEAKERS
Amanda, Moises Frank, Sarah, Sekou Osbourne James, Eternity Martis, Nicole Osbourne James, Mariam Kourabi, Kymane , Man's voice

Mariam Kourabi  00:04
This is We Met U When...a podcast by journalism students at Toronto Metropolitan University. This is Season four, and I'm your host, Mariam Kourabi. Every year we go back in time, dig up new stories from Toronto's past and track down the people in those stories. This season, we're going back to 2015.

Sekou Osbourne James  00:30
I was just very confused. There was just a lot of photographs, but not a lot of asking people how they feel or what words they want to attach to these photos. It was just like the story was being told for us by shaping the narrative.

Sara Calnek  00:46
It's a field where a lot of really bad things happen. You know, I've been assaulted and I've been spit on and I've been yelled at and all kinds of stuff thrown at me. I've had my life threatened. 

Mariam Kourabi  00:55
We want to know what happened after their names were in the news. 

Moises Frank  01:10
This story does take a turn as life does. I don't know if you want to go this route. I don't even know if I if I should tell you, but I'll tell you, just because it's reality.

Mariam Kourabi  01:24
No one was in a position of power, but many of them felt the power a news story can have. 

Nicole Osbourne James  01:31
There was a lot of negativity in the traditional news media. There was a lot of abuse. There was a lot of Oh, you want to segregate your kids. 

Amanda  01:41
It's really frustrating because it can feel very click bait when you like, open an article and you're like, blind person runs a marathon, and you're just like, why?

Mariam Kourabi  01:53
We're exploring the difference a decade makes, and the difference we journalists can make going forward by first going back to 2015. You're listening to We Met U When... Season four. This is "Schooled by Sekou."

Nicole Osbourne James  02:16
Sometimes I wouldn't even know that somebody had talked to my kid until somebody else would send me a clipping and be like, is this your kid in the in the CBC, in the Toronto Star? My kids pictures were out there. We were everywhere. It was, it was difficult.

Kymane   02:37
That's Nicole Osborne James. Her son, Sekou, was a student of the first and only Afrocentric alternative school in Toronto. It opened in 2009.

Sekou Osbourne James  02:48
If people don't know the school was an Africentric alternative school, meaning they focused on Africentric learning. They focused on Black youth, because at the time, there was a very high dropout rate of Black students within Toronto, but there was a lot of adversity that came with that, lot of racism anti-Blackness that came with that.

Kymane   03:07
According to the Toronto District School Board, the Africentric alternative school was created in response to a call from the community. It says the goal was to address a high dropout rate and achievement gap affecting students of African descent, but it quickly got controversial.These are just some of the headlines from that time. 

Man's voice  03:30
A coalition of black leaders will come out against Toronto's proposed Africentric public school, and school trustees meet tonight to vote on the scheme.  Some say it's just segregation by another name. The Black school's plan called immature. Opponents of Toronto Africentric school vent rage in emails. Who's afraid of Africentric?  Africentric school outcomes hindered by unclear vision. 

Kymane   03:52
That last headline, that's from the 2015 story where we found Sekou's name. He was in grade seven. Looking back now, he says much of the coverage did not reflect his experience. 

Sekou Osbourne James  04:06
It was just a lot of stuff about a lot of news articles didn't think the school was going to last even 10 years. We were a small school. We were attached to Sheppard public school, so, like, it was half and half. So a lot of coverage was like, do they have the numbers? Will this last? Will students somehow become racist when they leave because they only see themselves, you know? Will it? Will it have the opposite impact that people think it's going to have? Yeah, it got very, very political.

Kymane   04:36
From Sekou's perspective, no matter how much students were thriving inside the school outside, many people had already made up their minds.

Sekou Osbourne James  04:46
Like a lot of pictures were taken, and that's something like early on, I was just very confused about there was just a lot of photographs, but not a lot of asking people how they feel or what words they want to attach to these photos. The story was being told for us by shaping the narrative and shaping the unsafeness of the school. 

Kymane   05:04
We wondered how his parents remembered all of this, so we met up with his mom at her office.

Nicole Osbourne James  05:11
Well, one thing I can say about sending your kids to the Africentric school, it was really like being in the constant glare of the spotlight at all times, all times I did not like that part. I'm an intensely private person when it comes to the media. I studied journalism myself when I was at university, journalism and then communications, and I never liked that loss of privacy or control that can come from just being perceived as a famous person. So all of the kids that went to the Africentric school were subject to that at all times. The CBC did a feature that had my youngest child in it, and they had a picture of him in class with a friend, and they had put both their names, full names, full legal names in the caption. So I contacted them, I sent an email, and I said, Hey, that's not safe. Like, I don't want people to see my son out there and be like, hey, you know my son's name. I don't even put their names in my own social media on Facebook that is private. I don't put their names out there. Why would you just have like, these are children. Nobody asked me for permission. Can you can you take it down?

Kymane   06:32
Nicole showed us a screenshot of the message she sent to CBC audience services in 2019. She asked if the names of the children in the photo could be removed from the caption. She explained she didn't think it was safe to include photo names and school name. CBC audience services responded saying, quote, we will forward your request to CBC News in Toronto for review. End quote.

Nicole Osbourne James  07:01
I looked for it the other day. It's still there. They've never taken it down.

Kymane   07:07
Our team checked, and yes, the CBC article is still up with Sekou's brother's full name. We emailed multiple editorial leaders at CBC to ask why and if it's possible to take it down. It's been two weeks and no one has responded to us. Usually, parents need to sign a consent form before school allows reporters to speak to students. So we asked Nicole about that.

Nicole Osbourne James  07:38
You have to say two different things, like, yes, it's okay for my kids to have their picture taken within the school, and yes, it's okay for news media or external to use my child's image for any purpose whatsoever, anywhere in the world. I think it's a most ridiculous ask for parents really. 

Kymane   08:00
Nicole and her husband have four kids, that means a lot of school forms to sign. She doesn't have a copy of the original consent form, so we checked out the form that's on the school board website now. It says it was revised in 2010. The consent form is confusing. There are two sections. Part one is called events. Part two is called Media specific a parent might assume that if they do not sign the media specific part, their kids won't show up in the media. But if you read the events section carefully, it does indicate that if you sign this part, your child's name, image or recording could be broadcast on television or radio. We've read it multiple times, and honestly, we are still confused by it. So that got us thinking about informed consent. Is it really enough for journalists to rely on these forms? Maybe when interviewing minors, we should be taking an extra step and contact the family ourselves. We need to make sure parents understand where this interview or photo of their child is going to show up. Parents should have the opportunity to make an informed decision. For Nicole, her experience with journalists at the time left a negative impression.

Nicole Osbourne James  09:31
They tended to be looking for a reason that the school would fail, which just made us double down more to make it not fail. There was just a sense of, I guess, hyper vigilance is the word. I remember the first year that they did some test where you had to check the scores of the fifth graders, and the Africentric school blew other schools out of the water, like we tested so high. Which was a really great moment for us. But then all of the coverage after that was looking for all of the reasons that to explain because there is just no way that a school full of Black children could have such reading at a high level or doing math at a high level. There was a lot of negativity in the traditional news media and even on social media, or what little of it there existed at the time, there was a lot of abuse. There was a lot of, Oh, you want to segregate your kids, you know? And you feel confident, but at the same time, you feel like, Am I making the right decision? Are these people right? Is this about segregation? Am I racist? Because I want my kids to go to school with other Black kids. You know, there was all of that inside.

Kymane   10:47
It's painful to hear that news coverage made this Black mother question herself. She just wanted her kids to be educated in a space where blackness is celebrated.

Eternity Martis  11:00
I think any time that Black folks gather in spaces for themselves or in protests for themselves, the media and the general public tends to see that as righteous and as entitlement.

Kymane   11:13
Eternity Martis is a journalism professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. She created the course "Reporting on race", and she's conducting a research study about reporting in Black communities.

Eternity Martis  11:26
I think that black parents, especially are constantly fighting for their children. They're fighting for their children at school, against bullies, against other teachers, against unfair policies and practices. There's a phenomenon called adultification, where Black kids are seen as adults, for young Black girls, especially from the age of five, they're seen as adults. So I think that there's this understanding, especially considering who's in a newsroom at that time, Black children are not Black children, Black children are adults. And so we can take these photos, and I'm sure that that internal bias, whether someone admits to it or not, was playing a role. 

Kymane   12:00
Okay, this caught my attention. If we know Black children are so often treated like they're older or tougher than they are, then we have to be extra aware that they're still kids with feelings and limits. Being careful is about being accountable and making sure we're not causing harm in our reporting.

Eternity Martis  12:20
Pew Research Center had just done a study on this that that also the results are very similar to our results of our research, which is that Black people still overwhelmingly see themselves in negative news coverage, and they still feel that journalists have don't quite understand them. They still feel that their stories would be better told by Black Journalists, which is quite difficult, given in Canada, our our industry is is very white, about 75% according to the CAJ's latest diversity study.

Kymane   12:52
CAJ stands for Canadian Association of Journalists. As a Black journalist, I'm thinking about how my work can better serve Black communities. I recognize a lot of that has to do with building trust. And listening to Sekou, I am realizing that trust starts with amplifying the good that already exists in Black spaces. 

Sekou Osbourne James  13:15
I call them legends, you know, like these are like teachers that would not go home after school, you know, because it's like, okay, like, this student may not be able to leave school till 8pm because her mom is working till like seven. There's just different things like that. Like with the Africentric school, I saw a real care from humans. 

Kymane   13:34
What shaped Sekou was the care.The kind people don't always associate with Black institutions. Sekou says he didn't get that care in the one year that he attended a different school. 

Sekou Osbourne James  13:47
Like, I was getting C's and D's, the teacher basically told my mom, like, well, at least he's getting C's. That's what I think he's capable of. And like, that glass ceiling of like, this is all I believe in you that didn't exist at the Africentric school, you know, like my I look at some of my teachers like my mother, like how I respect my mother. I think the same care that my mother had for me, the teachers had for me as well. There was no like you got a C and that's, that's what I see in you. I see an A in you, you know. So it's like, imagine, like, if I would have stayed in that system, I would probably be subject to that kind of thinking about myself, right?

Kymane   14:28
Sekou completed Elementary School at the AfrIcentric alternative school. Today, he's 21 and he's studying design in university. 

Sekou Osbourne James  14:37
I started my clothing brand 2023 before I started school. I started at OCAD for material art and design, which is textiles and jewelry. I think the school did what it was supposed to do, because we all had that natural pride of like, This is who I am. This is where I belong. Being around that creativity definitely somehow guided me to fashion.

Nicole Osbourne James  15:01
I don't know if you know rights of passages, but in our family, we have, you know, family rights of passage, and then there's community rights. So Sekou had his first family rights at the age of seven, and this was so crazy, you know, he had to go upstairs to get dressed. And you know, with his his older brother was two years older than him, so they went upstairs to get him ready, and everybody was downstairs for the party. And then ceremoniously, he was going to come down the stairs, and Sekou came down in a full suit, seven years old, and he came down in a suit, and then he had somebody put like a sheet on him, so that he came down kind of like a king with, you know, with his brother or somebody holding the back of the cape as he came down. I was like, this kid is so extra. Like, it was funny, because nobody told him to do that and I didn't know what he was going to wear. 

Kymane   15:51
We loved hearing that memory from Nicole. It helped us understand why Sekou chose fashion. He hopes his brand will be the foundation for something bigger. 

Sekou Osbourne James  16:03
So the main goal of MBS, which is Made By Sekou, is, like, giving youth a safe place to be, and whatever that looks like. So I kind of work on that goal right now, like I do, like workshops of like teaching youth how to design. I did one for young Black boys this year as well. It's easy to break one stick, but it's hard to break like a bundle of sticks. And those are proverbs that I learned at Africentric school. Like every morning we had a proverb, we would read a proverb, and that proverb would set the tone of the day. We have to work together any situation you think of. There's no one person dealing with that. Like, we have to, like, pull together, to like, move somewhere. But yeah, we were kind of just all drawn back to, like, the arts and creativity, because that's what the school really was like, yes, creativity as in, like, drawing. We did drumming. I remember there was, like, my teacher taught me how to sew as well. You got to be creative and, like, train yourself to think in a positive way.  Sometimes, when it's like, the walls are closing in the media is in your face. It's like, you really have to be creative. 

Kymane   17:05
Sekou isn't opposed to media in general. He would just appreciate more control over how he is represented. 

Sekou Osbourne James  17:12
Often we see like media can be very like, good and useful, but it could also be very like, detrimental and like, it could take down people. So it's like, if I have the opportunity and the luxury to like, be hands on with the way I'm documented, I love it. 

Kymane   17:28
When we heard this, we wondered, how can we do better in the way we document people and their stories? Maybe it's about treating this work as something we build with people, not just about them. Sort of like something Sekou said that stayed with us.

Sekou Osbourne James  17:48
There's an African proverb that I really like. If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.

Mariam Kourabi  18:07
We Met U When… is a production by journalism students at Toronto Metropolitan University. This episode was narrated by Kymane Fermerly. It was produced by Cindy Zogu, Kymane Fermerly, and Praise Ditep. Shari Okeke is our executive producer and professor. Steph Colburn, CEO of edit audio, is our story editor. Leo Dias is our senior producer and teaching assistant. Angela Glover is our audio specialist. Our theme music was composed and performed by Eric Kroda. New logo design by Victoria Learn. Web design by Lindsay Hanna and Victoria Learn. And special thanks to the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at TMU for supporting Season four with a Learning and Teaching grant.  I'm your host, Mariam Kourabi, thanks for listening. 








1
Transcribed by https://otter.ai