There was an assembly on the third week of practicum. This assembly was to hand out the “G Awards” to recognize those students who had received all G’s for their hard work in the previous term. There were several other announcements as well. The final announcement was that the professional CD of Annieville’s school rock song had finally come in the mail. The song had been composed early in the school year and this was the first time the school would hear it again.

The grade seven’s were very excited about the song. They were singing very loudly. They only knew the chorus but grew louder each time it repeated. By the end of the song some of the grade seven’s were screaming out the words. Many of the other students in the school were also singing the chorus very loudly by the end of the song.

Despite this the principal decided to play song once more as the children exited the gym. The sing got even more loud. Since the grade seven’s are the last to exit the gym they stuck out because of their loud shouting of the lyrics. After the assembly the grade seven’s stayed to help reset the gym.

The principal was clearly very disappointed in their behaviour and gave the students a lecture over the microphone. Several of the students did not freeze and listen but continued to pull tape off the floor. This made their teacher very angry. As the clean up continued two of the boys decided to play toss with the tape ball the had made from the tape they’d pulled off the floor. This was not a strong choice as their teacher was already quite upset.

When we arrived back in the classroom the statement was. “I don’t even have words anymore. You tell me what went wrong.”

The students mentioned somethings. The teacher asked “How can we do better? How can we support each other to do better?” She very earnestly wanted a student solution to this problem. The class had some ideas about what they could do.

The the principal came into the classroom. The lecture started up again from both the principal and the teacher. This lasted for the remainder of the day.

I don’t really know what to think about what happened. While I was surprised at how carried away the students got from the song I was also surprised with an hour long correctional talk. I know there are no easy answers to these kinds of situations. It left me with more questions than answers that’s for sure.

For example, where exactly is the line between over excited and disruptive? How much control can we expect from grade seven students? Mostly, how useful was a fifty minute lecture about their mistakes?

During my second visit this term I taught a lesson on writing stories to the students. I mentioned to Ms. Dolejsi that I needed a writing sample and she said “Okay, so you’ll teach a writing lesson today.” I thought she would just have me copy one of the students prior pieces, instead she gave me the opportunity to practice teaching. It was a pleasant surprise.

I started with the prompt word “star”, draw from Ms. Dolejsi’s prompt word jar. The jar was created by students writing down as many things that they could think of that they would want to write about. Ms. Dolejsi has had the jar for several years. She only uses it every other year as she doesn’t want students she has two years in a row to become bored with the topics.

I started the lesson out by doing a group idea webbing exercise with the class. I drew names out the popsicle stick jar and each student shared their idea. All of the students were very eager to participate and share their ideas. Some of the ideas were related and others were totally new ones. Here is a photo of our “finished” web.

Afterwards, I asked the class to think of a good story they had read. I then asked what makes a good story. The students shared their ideas. I wrote them on the board.

Finally, I wrote a list of three things pulled from their list that I thought they should concentrate on in their stories.

1. Main Character: Who are they? Name? Age? Gender?
2. Setting: Where? When?
3. Problem: What does your main character have to overcome?

The students began to write. When I informed them that time was up they asked for more time. Ms. Dolejis and I agreed and gave them ten more minutes.

A few students finished their stories in the allotted time. I had them check their stories based on three questions I had written on the board.

Does my story have:

• A beginning, middle, and end?
• details, description?
• Is my story interesting/funny/engaging/scary? Does it do what I want it to do?

I paired up a few of the early finishers and had them share their stories with each other. All of the students were very excited about getting to writing after

I had a great last day with the class for the year. They’re practicing two songs for the Christmas concert. Both parodies of popular songs – Hotling Bling by Drake and Call Me Maybe by Carley Rae Jepsen. They have actions and it’s totally hilarious and awesome. One of the songs they are preforming with another class. It was interesting to see the difference in their performance with the other class present and without the other class present. They were definitely more reserved and self-conscious with the other class. This was probably because it was their first time practicing together. I’m sure it will be great come performance day. The students wrote the  parody lyrics the last time I was in class and it’s incredible how improved and how much ownership they are showing over the song just one week later.

The next highlight of my day were these decimal pockets. The students were wrapping up a unit on very large numbers – billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion – and moving on to decimals. It’s rare to see manipulative in Grade 7 Math but the students loved these pockets and it was a great way to check if they were getting the concepts.

When the Fine Arts block came around several students were excited and asking me what we were going to do today. One young man said  “I’m really excited because I didn’t get to do that”, pointing at the jellyfish. It was nice to know they’ve been enjoying my Art lessons. They were disappointed when I told them we would be practicing their song. However, I turned it into an opportunity to have a discussion about different art forms and how performance and sing are art too.

Note: I added the photo of the students jellyfish to the last post.

Report cards were due on Monday. Some of the students had not completed all of their work. Our day started by creating lists on the board of students who needed to turn in different assignments. I spent most of the day going through piles of student work and creating check lists for each assignment. I was also working on a large flipchart sized chart with all the students names and assignments. I marked, made notes, and handed back French booklets.

I gave a mini lesson on how to make a flow chart in excell with ten students for social studies. I helped several students work on their French and other assignments.

I also taught an Art lesson to the students who had finished all their work. First, I showed the students six different oil pastel techniques. I had them divide their first page into six sections and practice each technique in a different section. I explained warm colours and cool colours. Then let them know that they were to choose their three warm colours or cool colours for their jellyfish. Second, I walked them through a sketch of a Jellyfish and showed them how they could use some of the techniques to finish the drawing. Ms. Dolejsi had asked me to make the project assessable. Before beginning , I let the students know the criteria. They had to use at least three of the techniques in their drawing. The jellyfish had to look like a jellyfish (having the top part, middle part, and tentacles). Their colour selection reflected an understanding of warm and cool colours. Their technique practice sheet had all six techniques. The criteria I set out for the drawing made it relatively easy to mark the students drawings.

Below are some example I drew and showed the students before we started.

Student Jellyfish

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?