My most salient experience this Thursday had to do with the Socials Studies project the students were working. This experience left me with questions and hope.

The students are making a booklet on ancient man. As I was showing the students how to complete the second part of the assignment, note taking, I noticed a heading in their textbook, “Agriculture: A Giant Step Forward”. This gave me pause. I come from a culture that never developed agriculture because it was just not feasible in our part of the world. British imperialist used this fact as an excuse to say my people were uncivilized and not making use of the land. What they didn’t realize was that what farming did for their civilization, fishing did for ours. The First People of the Pacific North West developed complex civilizations and belief systems because of our stable food sources – salmon, herring, herring eggs, seaweed, halibut, etc. The discourse has always been “Hunter Gatherer Society” leaping to “Agriculture” leaping to “Civilization”. However, that is a European narrative of the devleopment of civilization. In this part of the world, the path to our complex civilization was different. It was the abundance of the sea and the careful cultivation of those resources (maintaining salmon creeks, seeding salmon eggs from one creek to another, clam gardens, etc.) that allowed people’s jobs to just be “thinking” – leaders, shamans, etc – the mark of any truly complex society.

Anyway, I was a bit disappointed in the textbook discourse. It ignored other paths to civilization all over the world. Out of curiosity I went to look at the new curriculum and found some great indicators of a move away from Eurocentric discourse found in the textbook and old curriculum.

Firstly, it’s one of the Big Ideas that “geographic conditions shaped the emergence of civilizations.” Which means that it acknowledges other pathways to civilizations. That it acknowledges the plurality of civlization. I was impressed.

Next, in curricular competencies, “explain different perspective on past or present people, issues, and events, and compare the values, worldviews, and beliefs of human cultures and societies in different times and places”, validates that there are multiple perspectives on issues that need to be explored. It is dangerous world when we are presented perspectives as facts, which unfortunately Social Studies has been doing since I was in school.

In terms of content there was much to be hopeful about. In a personal level the two I was most please to see present in the BC curriculum were “origins, core beliefs, narratives, practices, and influences of religions, including at least one indigenous to the Americas” and “social, political, legal, governmental, and economic systems and structures, including at least one indigenous to the Americas”. 

I was still left with some lingering questions. From year of experience with policy, I know that we can have the best curriculum in the world but it is up to individuals to implement it. If the individual hearts and minds are not changed, nothing changes. How the new curriculum really change what is being taught in classrooms? My second questions is about the texts themselves. To my knowledge the new curriculum does not come with a whack of money for new texts that are more in line with the new discourses. So how are teachers to access new resources, materials, and texts with discourses more in line with the new curriculum?

 

Remembrance Day was this week. The grade 7’s recited “In Flanders Fields”. I was really proud of them for working hard t memorize the poem and how seriously they took the assembly.

During the assembly I was filled with mixed emotions and many conflicting thoughts. The next day I posted this status to my Facebook page:  “While I respect that many Canadians gave their lives in the first and second world wars, I am painfully aware that all the First Nations soldiers were stripped of their Indian Status as thanks for serving their country. First Nations people volunteered in both world wars at a rate higher than their proportion of the population. They served a country that did not count them as citizens, that did not give them the right to vote, that had made their culture illegal. If they survived the war and returned home, Canada stripped them of their rights as Native people and refused them veterans services because they were Native. Lest we forget”

Reconciling my feelings about living as a Native person in a modern colonial country is difficult. I never expected to be faced with this conflict in practicum… Yet, on the first day of the very first thing that happened was the students stood, faced the Canadian flag, and sang O’Canada. I was confused and lost in that moment. Without knowing what else to do and not wanting to offend anyone, for the very first time in my life I stood up and faced the Canadian flag during the anthem. It felt so wrong but I just didn’t know what else to do.

Canada is a country that committed horrible atrocities against people I know and love. All four of my grandparents and all of my Aunts and Uncles were forced to attend Indian Residential Schools. The most fundamental ceremony of our culture was made illegal… My great grandfather was jailed for practicing his faith. The systems created by colonization continue to negatively affect my family to this day. The systemic issues of colonization are still very real in every part of Canadian society.

This week I moved through my feelings and thoughts. I never let on that I was disturbed by any of it. I only spoke my experience within safe circles, but I believe that it is important to bring into the light how broken the trust still is between Canada and First Nations people. That’s why I’m writing about this. The first step in  true reconciliation is acknowledging the hurt and broke nature of the situation. I hope that one day Native children and people will feel proud to be from Canada. That they will look back at all of the hard work of past generations and say “They were honest. They worked hard to repair the damage. They really did make it better for us.”

Now to switch topics, I taught four lessons this week. My first was in PE and I designed a lesson around traditional cooperative game. It went well. The students were engaged in the game and shared about their experiences in the debrief.

Next, I taught a Math lesson on the order of operations. This was the first time I ever taught a Math lesson. Getting through the instructing part was interesting… There were many opportunities to learn in that first part of the lesson, in particular, being more specific with my language. I was grateful for the feedback from my SA on the specifics. The second part of the lesson was a game called Havoc. I placed 12 PEDMAS problems around the room and the students had to work in pairs to solve as many as possible in the time limit. I was surprised at how engaged the students became the second it was a game where they were competing. They were rushing around the room  and working very hard on the problems. It was a 360 degree turn around in engagement from the start of the lesson to the second part. The next day my SA picked up and extended the activity where I had left off and we co-taught the next lesson. We didn’t plan this and she asked me out of the blue, but I’m always game for anything. She thanked me afterwards and told me “You could have said no. I know I didn’t ask you before.” It was a nice moment of turning something I wasn’t completely happy with into a learning opportunity.

My next lesson was Art. I took the students through two sketches, a wolf howling and a Spanish marlin. Then the students were able to customize their drawing. I used the document camera for this lesson which was a great way to teach sketching. The students loved it and by the end were more comfortable with some of the sketching techniques. I taped the erasers of all the pencils I handed out and at first some of the students were quite upset they weren’t allowed to erase, but as the lesson went on they became more comfortable with starting lightly and then darkening the lines they liked. Overall it was pretty successful.

Finally, I taught a Science lesson on ecosystems. The first activity was for the students to make an ecosystem web with string. Each student had one or two cards with an animal, plant, or non-living part of ecosystem on it (For example water). They then had to have at least two separate connections in the web. I split the class into two groups for this. One group was much quicker than the other but both completed the activity successfully. Next the students had to create a web on the paper of the connections they’d made with “live, eat, need” on the lines between the words. This was successful lesson with the students highly engaged and focused on how each item was connected. I think the social aspect of the first activity really helped with keeping them engaged. They had to work together and share knowledge to ensure everyone had two connections. I was thrilled to hear some of the questions they were asking and coming up with.

The beginning of the week started out rough around the edges. This could be due to some events in my personal life, but as the week progressed I really noticed a difference in my comfort level with the class. At first I didn’t even know all 29 students names. This became a point of concern for me – how was I going to teach a lesson on Friday if I didn’t even know their names? In the beginning of the week, I struggled to find a role in the class that wasn’t too passive or intrusive. I found that sometimes I was just awkwardly standing or sitting around without a clue what I should be doing to be more helpful. As my school advisor and I became more comfortable with each other we found a nice balance. Through conversation we got to know each other and started to build a working relationship.

By mid-week I was knew when to pitch in. I was interacting with the students more. The students became more comfortable asking me for help. I started to get to know some of the students as individuals by watching them in class and through our interactions. I really started to view these two weeks as at time to build relationships with both my school advisor, the students, and  other staff at the school. It’s nice to spend time getting to know them for longer than a few hours on Thursdays. I’m sure they appreciate the opportunity to get to know me before trusting me to teach the class. My personal philosophy in life includes the sentiment that relationships are the fundamental building blocks of our learning. As I started to apply this to my time in the school the experience became more meaningful.

By the end of the week, I felt more at ease and found an rhythm in the classroom. The SEL lesson plan was the first I delivered to the class. I am doing four next week: PE on Monday, Math on Tuesday, Fine Arts on Thursday, and Science on Friday. I was surprised to find that I was nervous before and in the beginning of the lesson. While I have taught other lessons before, I’ve never been formally observed before and I think that may have contributed to my nervousness. I feel like the lesson went well and I accomplished what I intended to for the most part. Timing was an issue but I’m confident that with practice that will become easier to gauge. By the end of the week, I rather liked hearing “Ms.Brown” which I never thought I would get to used to.

I’m excited for next week and look forward to the opportunity to be uncomfortable, grow, and learn some more.

 

Reflection:

This week I helped the students run the haunted hallway they had decided to do last week through a democratic process. The students were all highly engaged in the process. Everyone had a role. They all took ownership of their roles. I often heard them saying “I have an idea…” and then make some suggestion about how to play the role better. People often think of youth as disengaged but my experience with the haunted hallway really reinforced that if young people take ownership of a project they will highly engaged in all aspects of the process.

The students worked very hard to make the haunted hallway. They had to spend hours at a time in their roles. Often they had to be in rather uncomfortable positions, for example with a fish tank over their head or in a garbage can.  Not once did I hear anyone complain. They wanted to be there and completely bought into the process of hosting the haunted house.

There were a few bumps along the way. The students made a mess of the bathroom while applying their makeup and didn’t clean it up. This required a class discussion at the end of the day.  The students who made the mess took responsibility for their mistake and apologized. The mess situation seemed like a the typical instance of over-excitement and lack of forethought that often occurs in grade 7’s. The second issue occurred after the grade 6/7 class visited the haunted hallway. The class went too far with their “scares” and made contact with several of their peers. This violated the issues of consent that was discussed at length when the class made the decision to host the haunted house. The class felt bad about what happened and wanted to make things better by inviting the class back again. So they could make it right which showed great maturity on their part. Besides these two minor instances the day went very smoothly.

The class discussion at the end of they day was very enlightening as to why the students took such ownership of the project. About two thirds of the class expressed that their favorite part was making the younger students in the school happy. The students really enjoyed giving back. After listening to Dr. Lieberman talk about how social we really are as human beings, especially pre-teens and teens, the level of engagement and ownership showed by the class made a lot of sense.

Possible Inquiry Questions:

1. How can Indigenous ways of knowing support success in the classroom for Indigenous learners?
2. What is the relationship between the deep-rooted, inter-generational trauma of colonization and the lack of Aboriginal success in Western school systems?
3.  What are the roles of Indigenous peoples and Settlers in decolonizing curriculum?
4. Considering how different Indigenous ways of knowing are from Western ways of knowing, how does reconciliation apply to the classroom?