• A brief history of the group
• Education/Trainiers for Office Equity and Inclusion Education Officer posting has been released
• Once the persons are hired, we should setup a meeting with them to see potential partnerships
• Will arrange a meeting with Gurdeep Parhar
• Lack of concrete strategy provides CTLT with an opportunity to “play ahead of the game” and start relationships with other/new staff and units
• Look into Universal Instructional Design for face-to-face classes
• Some work has already been done by the DBL team
• Maybe collaborate with Equity office for resources
• What about language inclusion? (e.g. Afsaneh’s culturepedia)
• Ask others what else have we been doing regarding Equity and Inclusion
• Shaya wants to plan a workshop for the next ETUG workshop (http://etug.ca/2013/07/29/fall-workshop-2013-call-for-proposal-open/)
• Hanae will do a Doodle for next meeting

Questions for Gurdeep

• What do you have on your plate?
• Information exchange
• Include mission, blog of the Intercultural Working Group in email

Work related to Equity and Inclusion

• Offer Classroom Climate Workshops
• Workshop Request (e.g. Peer Programs, TA Training, Go Global, JUMPStart)
• Challenges regarding student-instructor relationships, peer mentorship
• History of Aboriginal at UBC Timeline workshop
• Accessibility in distance learning courses
• TRC-related projects
• Pecha Kucha at Intercultural U
• Intercultural Understanding Working Group
• “Who Are You” Session at ETUG Fall Workshop
• Participated in the IdleNoMore Conference, Encounters in Canada Conference (relationship between immigrants and Aboriginal peoples)
• Living Lab

CTLT Dialogues Article

• Write an article after the TRC
• Reflections from different projects
• Maybe for now a short list of TRC related projects for the CTLT homepage
• Target the October Newsletter
• Digital signage in the Library
• Shaya will send an email to Sukhi about digital signage

Attendees: Amy, Hanae, Judy, Shaya, and Zack

1. Report on the Implementing Inclusion meeting on July 30 (Judy and Hanae attended.)

• New structure for equity and inclusivity at UBC
• Some of the key concerns addressed at the meeting pertaining to our work at CTLT: How can we support the teaching and learning of students, faculty, and staff?

2. Future actions

• Next meeting (Hanae will initiate a Doodle poll for the last week of August): Review the final and full version of the equity implementation and discuss how we may be able to act proactively to insert our work into the new structure of equity and inclusivity.
• Hanae will propose a meeting with kele, Alden, Gurdeep (Acting AVP), and someone from the Intercultural Working Group to discuss how we may be able to be part of the new equity and inclusivity initiative at UBC.
• Other activity/action ideas:
  – Create an email template to announce our monthly meeting, which the facilitator of the meeting for the month uses to send out to CTLT-All email list (to encourage more CTLT staff to participate in our initiative).
  – Inform widely about our initiative through CTLT Dialogues (Possible themes: flexible learning, identity, colonial perspective/space)
  – Present at ETUG (Education Tech Interest Group), Intercultural U

1. Email signature tag line

• Diane’s response: No unit standard on the line on the Musqueam land. Land claim with Musqueam peoples has not been finalized (Currently on lease). There are still open claims. Making a standardized email signature including a line on the land issue as a unit can have serious legal implications.
• As a unit, we can’t create a standardized a line on Musqueam territory in the email signature (i.e., work email), while we can do it at an individual level (e.g., personal email). It’s ultimately an individual choice for each staff member.
• The second part of the email signature on the TRC event (“September 18, 2013 is the Observance of Opening of West Coast National Event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Learn more at http://irsi.aboriginal.ubc.ca”): We will run by kele to get approval.

2. Debrief of the cross-team TRC workshop on May 22

Intercultural Working Group team members will lead the proposed project at the workshop.

Luisa’s team (with Emily) – Resource development (i.e., module development)

• Pull together different resources that are available (e.g., MOA) rather than developing new content. Want to have faculty consultation.
• Connect with Leah Walker (On-line course on implications of colonization to medicine) and Jennifer Kramer (curator of MOA)
• Amy and Luisa will touch base on a regular basis, rather than Amy always being involved in the process.

Jarrad’s team – Staff engagement in the TRC event

• September 18th is not only for students. Can UBC HR make it explicit that staff is entitled to participate in the event? Jarred consults kele with our suggestions/questions and bring them to Lisa Castle in HR:
• Can HR facilitate lunch sessions for staff? When is HR’s regular staff BBQ? Is it during the event? Or, if it is after the event, it may serve as an opportunity for staff to reflect on the event.
• Can AAPS (union for staff) do something?
• At CTLT: Can CTLT make an announcement on the CTLT website to encourage other units to make it possible for their staff to participate in the event?
• We may be able to make a video to announce what we are doing at CTLT to encourage people to think about how they could engage in the event and to invite them to our events.

Mali & Hanae’s team (with Sarah Ling, Roselynn, and Gillian)

• Lobby exhibition at IKB – Get in touch with Sarah Dupont (who helped the Aboriginal Month exhibit in IKB). Mali will email Sarah Dupont to have a meeting with the team
• Main Mall – Michelle’s suggestion: Keep the material simple and reusable. Resource may be available.
• Set up a historical timeline in the Pharmacy Building
• Electronic signage with questions or quotes to provoke people’s thinking. We create texts, such as: “Don’t we have treaties here?” “Residential School happened a long time ago. Why don’t we get over it?” “My family is new to Canada. Why does it matter to me?”
• Develop some resources that illustrate how we may be able to answer these questions? (e.g., The “Really?” campaign postcards) We can create a response to illustrate situated personal narratives rather than abstract responses (e.g., A particular person responding to the question from his/her social position)
• Run by Sukhi to see if the market team can design and distribute the signs across campus

Judy’s team – Workshop

• Workshop similar to what Amy and Hanae did on Learning Lab or Mali’s idea (i.e., physical mapping activity – “Where were you 10 years ago? Where were you 20 years ago?”…)
• Have a series of workshops during the summer and tie them together in September
• May develop resources through the workshops (CoP model?)
• Include workshops on basics? (Linda’s suggestion at the cross-team workshop)
• Judy is looking for a co-facilitator – Mali and Hanae are happy to help

Zack’s team

• How can we coordinate everything we do so that everything looks coherent rather than fragmented?
• We need to coordinate based on theme or question, rather than based on events
• Cross-team monthly workshops can be a place where we coordinate different projects.
• Create a Wiki to keep the language consistent and to avoid redundant work/reinventing a wheel. Wiki title: “TRC CTLT initiatives”

3. Continue the activity from the last meeting on what CTLT can do to support the TRC event

• At the next cross-team workshop, based on the whole staff meeting (in which we did the sticky note exercise on what our role could be in the TRC event), we will match CTLT staff’s skills, suggestions, connections/networks with our projects proposed at the cross-team workshop.

Facilitator: Amy Perrault
Notetaker: Zack Lee

1. Review & Reflections of the Pecha Kucha Presentation

Thoughts About the Event

• Fun event, speakers came from diverse backgrounds
• Some presentations were a bit problematic:
  • students on exchange
  • previous exchange students became mentors
• Need to have time to unpack for discussions
• Audience was very diverse

Team Presentation

• Surprise that people participated and responded at both the pecha kucha night and at the all-staff meeting
• Notice more facial responses
• CTLT does not have a lot of opportunities to ask bigger questions or gain understanding of issues
• Audience member at the Pecha Kucha night noted the presentation’s use of space and breaking of roles
• CTLT staff member wanted CTLT to do something similar with things we’re thinking about or are already doing

2. Ideas to help promote the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Event on 18 SEP 2013

• Presentation by Rick Ouellet during the CTLT all-staff meeting (March 27, 2013) did not give new information that wasn’t previously shared
• It was good to emphasize the symbolism of UBC’s decision to suspend most classes on 18 SEP 2013
• Do students know the symbolism of the day of suspended class?
• Repetition of the information, history is important. Helps things to sink in.
• CTLT Senior Management is considering organizing a more than 1 hour session to help CTLT staff come to a greater understanding of the significant of the TRC.
  • Maybe the Intercultural Working Group can design the session?

Amy typed up and printed out the responses from the CTLT all-staff meeting regarding the question: “What is CTLT’s role in the TRC event?” We then put them into three groups, which you can see below:

We had some ideas on how we can move forward as you can see from the image below:

Timeline for Work

There was a focus on sharing the small things CTLT staff can do right now and bigger actions we can plan ahead for. For the next all-staff meeting (24 APR 2013), we suggested to announce the following:

1. Keep the date 18 SEP 2013. Ask people to set it in their calendars, see how that date is going to affect certain deadlines, if possible move due dates, etc.
2. Add Musqueam Territory to our email address signatures.
3. Share that there will be more plans coming in a few months.

A few of the suggestions for future plans were developing an infographic, tagging related work with something like #trc, how can we share stores.

What are the other ways we can engage people in the history and importance of the residential schools and the work of the truth and reconciliation commission?

3. Next Meeting

Time & Date: 2:00PM – 3:00PM, Thursday, May 23, 2013
Place: CTLT Resource Room, IKBLC
Facilitator: Zack Lee
Notetaker: TBD

1. We looked at and refined our mission statement and we agreed on the following:

Based on the lived/living experiences of the collective the group will develop strategies to integrate intercultural intention, awareness and embodiment towards transformative teaching and learning spaces.

•  We looked at and defined the following words:

Embodiment: Practice; Values; Model; Style; Situated learning; Being; Deep understanding; Lived experience (the role of the body in shaping the mind)
Intention: Purpose; and Hanae and Judy’s not so positive definition for the word intention
Awareness: as leading to awakening
Transformative Learning: Implies a need for change or transformation; implies that there is a gap of lack of understanding; It’s a process (a full circle that starts with providing support); It involves critical engagement
We also looked at reflective teaching as an on going process of reflecting on an engagement with intercultural intentions, awareness and embodiment.

Amy highlighted intention, awareness, and embodiment as stages of learning.
We debated whether intention should come before awareness.

2. We decided on the name for our group:

 Intercultural Working Group

We debated whether we need to use a word that includes other forms of diversities.
*We decided to define culture broadly

3. Now what? Action Plans

*Invite new members to join our group.

• Staff meeting-on March 27
• Do our Pecha Kucha presentation at the Staff meeting

*Take forward how CTLT engages with the TRC event (deadline Sept 18, 2013)
*Our next meeting is on April 11
*We are starting a Word Press blog 🙂