Lesson 2: Reading and Understanding “‘The poverty was intended’: Health, Residential Schools, and Education”
By: Doriane Ossene

Doriane Ossene
Education Collaborator
Doriane’s background includes education in France and learning a lot about Canada through her studies at York University in International Studies and Canadian studies, which she will be graduating from in 2023. She is passionate about stories people don’t know about and loves making them known. Her dream is to work in a field that supports underrepresented communities, in Canada and around the world.
This lesson supports reading and understanding the article “The poverty was intended”: Health, Residential Schools, and Education,” the second article in Émilie Lebel’s series. The activities included can be used in the context of history, social studies, physical education, and/or interdisciplinary studies courses at the high school level.
This lesson’s learning goals are for students to:
- understand the residential school system in Canada,
- understand the conditions of life in residential schools,
- understand the consequences of bad living conditions on Social Determinants of Health for Indigenous individuals and communities, and
- connect different types of sources to understand the living conditions in residential schools.