Module 1 Post 2

In this second blog post, I would like to address how I have tried to include the 94 Calls to Action into my ESL Classes. While it is always a danger to use material designed for children with adults, I do use the Spirit Bear version with my International ESL students: Spirit Bear’s Guide to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action | First Nations Caring Society (fncaringsociety.com) For an adult, false beginner language class, just going through the Table of Contents and the Introduction can be taxing as a vocabulary activity. The proper Affective Domain scaffolding must be included prior to delving into any of these issues.

This also needs to be contextualized for how individual minorities groups were treated in Canada historically. Living in the Kootenays, close to one of Japan’s sister cites (Nelson Izu-Shi Friendship Society – Home (nelsonizushi.com)), we get a lot of Japanese exchange students who have never heard of Nikkei, the historically preserved WW2 Japanese Internment Center: The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre – New Denver. One can visibly see the students cringe and slouch in shock and fear that such an event could happen in Canada. While not wanting to scare the students, I do want them to know the truth of their ancestors.

I also share with them the stories which I feel comfortable to tell about the lands on which we study.  While we always begin with Indigenous Territorial Land Acknowledgements and I take them for a visit to the Gathering Place to meet college and community elders, the white settler history of the region also includes Doukhoubour pacifists (Doukhobor Discovery Centre – Visit Castlegar (doukhobor-museum.org)) who were funded by Tolstoy’s sales of ‘Ressurection’ (Tolstoy’s Canadian Doukhobors Return to Russia Over 100 Years After Fleeing – The Moscow Times) to come to Canada because they did not want to fight the Japanese in the Sino – Japanese – Russio – Siberian wars at the turn of the 20th century.

Talk about coming full circle.