Module 4: Aboriginal Learning Links

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I wanted to post this site Aboriginal Learning Links because I am very interested in knowing what extension opportunities are available for aboriginal learners in Canada. We have spent a fair bit of time in our course discussing the tragic number of Canadian aboriginal students who do not graduate, but I was thinking about the ones who do, and the students who are on a trajectory to be successful in academia. This site is useful to aboriginal learners who do graduate or intend to, and who are looking for some financial assistance through bursary or scholarship opportunities. The site provides links to key institutions (colleges and universities), and information about transfer details. The site may be useful to ambitious students, motivating teachers, parents, even interested friends.

There is also a simple survey tool in the margin that asks potential students to register what they perceive as a challenges to their educational path. This may help to chart paths, opportunities and support for aboriginal learners. Some of the site’s entries are dated, but the links are current and provide a wealth of information about how to move forward.

Community Based Learning – Mod 4, Post 5

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My final post for ETC 521 is about Community Based Learning.

A few months ago, I caught up with on of my former school leaders, her name is Louise Marzinotto. I worked with her at Villa Maria School in Montreal years ago. I would compare her to an elder in my community because since the day I met her, she has supported me and offered wisdom and guidance.

She found my name on LinkedIn and sent me a note to give her a call sometime. When we chatted, I learned all about the work she had done, with a team of others, with the English sector of the Quebec Ministry of Education. Like francophones across English speaking Canada, anglophones are a minority in Quebec.

 

On a recent trip to Montreal, i went out for supper with Louise and heard about Community Based Learning. We discussed how  the concept could be applied, and is already being developed within Indigenous communities.  The English sector started to develop community based learning centres in order to promote the English language and culture in isolate and urban  areas in Quebec. The focus is to figure out what makes up the individual culture of your specific area (place) and promote a learning community around the authentic experiences, people, support networks in that community. For example, a community close to the Gaspe had a pile of old crab traps. They created a community project around crab traps and learned about the history of fishermen in the area. Alternatively, a community closer to Quebec city chose Maple Syrup and created projects around “La Cabane a Sucre”. The key aspect that differentiated the projects from “school projects” was the involvement from a wide variety of stakeholders from the community, not “just” students and educators. The “school” is the community.

The leaders within the community learning centres connected through  video conferencing and networks to connect and collaborate. Instead of working in isolation, they worked together..

The different centers were able to promote their similarities and differences while still supporting one another. More information about Community Based Learning and Community Learning Centres in Quebec can be found at: http://www.learnquebec.ca/en/content/clc

Thank you for a great course!

Verena 🙂

Module 4 Weblog

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Post 1 

Aboriginal Content Validation

http://education.alberta.ca/media/646281/content.pdf

This pdf document contains very interesting information that should be used by educators when teachers intend to incorporate Aboriginal resources into an educational context.  The document was created by Alberta education and outlines the many characteristics of resources that should be examined before integrating it as a educational resources for teaching and learning.   The document identifies a very robust set of characteristics which include historical validity, cultural authenticity, cultural diversity, language and technology, and presentation of Aboriginal women.  When resources accurately portray Aboriginal culture, students will better understand the significance of Aboriginal communities to culture and history.

 

Post 2

Storytelling in a digital age: digital storytelling as an emerging narrative method for preserving and promoting indigenous oral wisdom

http://gqrj.sagepub.com/content/13/2/127 (sometimes doesn’t work)

http://www.nasivvik.f5sitedesign.com/media/docs/lega50b7dd866d492-dsforhealthresearch&policy_hamiltonetal2012.pdf

This article describes the research process of a group of individuals who developed storytelling method to engage a rural community in Labrador.  The storytelling narrative served as a means to examine the connection between climate change, physical, mental, and spiritual health.  The study aimed at finding an effective and appropriate method that the community could identify with.  The researchers discovered that Indigenous storytelling, in combination with digital tools and resources, could prove to be an effective platform to engage participants belonging to the Aboriginal community.

 

Post 3

Community-based Indigenous Digital Storytelling with Elders and Youth

http://www.ourelderstories.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/CommunityBasedIndigenousDigitalStorytelling_2011.pdf

This research article describes the process and impact of digital storytelling and how Indigenous communities, including elders and youth, should be involved to share a cultural perspective and narratives.  The benefit of researchers working with a community provide avenues for the Indigenous to control their portrayal in order to better express their culture to a wider audience.   This article delves into the many stages of digital storytelling including capturing images, editing, converting to film, and most importantly honoring the stories and traditions.

 

Post 4

Stories of My Life: Sharing Aboriginal Experiences Through the Written Word

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/waubgeshig-rice/aboriginal-literacy_b_3618190.html

As part of a four-part series by the National Reading Campaign, five participants with experience in writing, education, and journalism, describe their joy of reading.  This article represents Waubgeshig Rice’s perspective and she dicsusses  the role of reading within an Aboriginal context and it’s significant impact on culture.  Rice discusses her childhood and the importance of stories that were told to her by the elders and her parents.   The stories shared and passed down to her, instilled in sense of a pride in her and an enthusiam for stories.  She feels that the role of new media and reading resources that could benefit young readers and encourage and enhance literacy.

 

Post 5

Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC)


http://www.abtec.org

The Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace Project/Site housed at the Concordia University in Montreal.  This site provides information and resources that are web-based.  The resource available on the network are aimed at the youth and empowering youth to take a more active role in the creation of technology rather than just consumers.  Learning material on the site also include digital stories, 3d games, animations, performance art and workshops.

Module 4, Post 5 – Do your readings support colonial ideals?

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Johnston, I. (2006). Engaged Differences: School Reading Practices, Postcolonial Literatures, and Their Discontents. . In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (116 – 130). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 

For any of you language arts teachers out there, this one is worth a read. The author discusses the phenomenon that exists in Canadian language arts classrooms, in which certain texts have become ‘canonized’. How many of you think of “Romeo & Juliet” as the Grade 10 play, “Macbeth” as the Grade 11 play, and “Hamlet” as the Grade 12 play, when the curriculum actually doesn’t even call for Shakespeare, just an understanding of drama? We have an option to change the readings, making choices that reflect the place and cultures of our students. Nothing says that “All Quiet on the Western Front” has to be read – why not check out Thomas King’s new novel, “The Inconvenient Indian”? One reason that resistant teachers might have is that there aren’t established lesson plans or public support for new materials, another might be that teachers are unwilling to introduce material with controversial topics because of anxiety about how to facilitate the conversations that will ensue. The thing is, to teach all students effectively, teachers must be willing to step outside of their comfort zones and make readings choices that support the removal of colonial ideals. Johnston makes a strong argument towards this case.

 

Module 4, Post 4 – Is Hybridity a Good Thing, or a New Word for an Old Idea?

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Richardson, G. (2006). Singular Nation, Plural Possibilities: Reimagining Curriculum as Third Space . In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (283-301). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

“The question arises of how to reconceptualize curriculum in terms that do not maintain colonial structures of privilege and dominance” (284). Indeed.

This chapter calls for a deconstruction of the current cultural biases that exist within curriculum, so that a new curriculum, “open to multiple discourses, and plural assumptions and strategies” (284) can be realized. This newly realized curriculum would be the Third Space, a place of cultural hybridity.  I support the goal of classrooms that encompass multiple discourses and plural assumptions, but I’m not sure that I understand this author accurately – all the other essays and studies in this book resonate as sensitive and accurate arguments, but to me this Third Space seems like a reincarnation of the ‘cultural melting pot’ idea. I agree that there is a need to deconstruct biased curriculum and replace it with culturally sensitive/inclusive material, I just am not certain that cultural hybridity should be the end goal. The author states that with cultural hybridity, “national identity is seen to be [a] continual and dynamic process of encounter, negotiation, and dislocation among and between cultural groups” (285); to me, negotiation and dislocation sound like assimilative terms.

Module 4, Post 3 – Postcolonial Poetry Project

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Willinksy, J. (2006). High School Postcolonial: As the Students Ran Ahead with the Theory . In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (95-115). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 

This chapter reads as a narrative case study, by an academic who joined a Grade 12 English class in Vancouver as a guest teacher. The purpose was for the guest teacher to teach a postcolonial poetry unit that was an accurate reflection of the time and place that the students were learning in. One idea that stood out for me was that it is misleading for teachers to teach about colonialism as if it was over, if their curriculum still reinforces colonial or assimilative ideals.

The writer engaged the students in a collaborative poetry project wherein each student had to source a poem that reflected their cultural heritage, in its original language and in an English language translation. Each student created a section of their new postcolonial poetry anthology, including the bilingual poetry presentation, a poetry analysis, and discussion questions. The hope was that other teachers would choose to use this new anthology as well, rather than the previously used one which represented an older, Caucasian view of Canada. The students in the study “were engaged in nothing more than providing an additional sense of Canadian identity and landscape to the scope of their curriculum” (110).

 

Module 4, Post 2 – Teaching ESL in a Non-Assimilative Way

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MacPherson, S. (2006). To STEAL or to TELL: Teaching English in the Global Era . In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (71-94). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

 

The acronyms in the title are: STEAL (Surreptitiously Teach English as an Assimilative Language) and TELL (Teach English as a Liberatory Language).

This chapter tackles the assimilative goals of English language instruction head on. It provides quotations from historical documents that unabashedly claim the goal of assimilation, and it also uncovers less purposeful but still harmful effects of current instructional practices.

MacPherson makes the point that it is not sufficient for minority languages to be used in the personal realm alone – this might help to ensure the languages’ survival, but only at a conversational level. For the full texture and depth of a language to survive, it must be used academically and professionally.

The author is not against the teaching of the English language; she/he teaches English to speakers of other languages. The point is that the English language is not necessarily fit to convey the ideas of other cultures, and so must not be allowed to dominate minority languages. When the higher level words of a language are lost through disuse, because the language has been relegated to the private conversational realm, then the ideas that those words expressed can also be lost.

Module 4, Post 1 – Kinder Curriculum

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Mason, R.T. (2006). A Kinder Mathematics for Nunavut. In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as Cultural Practice (131-148). Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

 

This chapter introduced me to the idea of “ethnomathematics”. It’s exactly what it sounds like – the acknowledgment that there are cultural aspects in math curriculum. I don’t teach math, but the idea is transferable to any discipline, in my opinion. “It is most useful to view the curriculum as a site of struggle in which pupils, teachers, parents, as well as voices from industrial, commercial, and other settings have at various times competed in various ways and with varying relative strengths to assert their priorities…From this perspective, the curriculum is neither free from nor determined by the economic and political space in which it operates: it makes more sense to ask how ideas fit with society, how they encourage particular ways of seeing particular ideologies” (135). I found this quote striking because of course the curriculum that we teach is value-laden – someone has chosen to prioritize some knowledge over others, and as such the chosen knowledge is laden with the beliefs and values of the curriculum-maker. It does make sense to question the curriculum and to make choices that create culturally sensitive lessons, as this chapter instructs.

Vancouver Board of Education

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Vancouver School Board: Aboriginal Education
Module 4. Blog # 5
Website: http://www.vsb.bc.ca/aboriginal-education
The Vancouver Board of Education (VBE) website hosts an internal link on Aboriginal Education with the Vancouver School district. It is a partnership initiative, between Aboriginal Communities, Ministry of Education and Vancouver School Board to improve the educational success and experience of Aboriginal Culture and Community. Basically the website is a silo that provides information to programs and services available within the VBE for Aboriginal Students. this also includes information about non-academic support services, cultural projects and initiatives that are related to Indigenous students.
This website, provides a glimpse into the cooperative nature of communities coming together and addressing the negative impact of colonization. Education and community health, I believe start as a process when you are young. The VBE is starting a process of reconciliation, by working together with Indigenous communities to address the needs of the youth and their academic needs. As I examine the whole VBE website, it seems to be an umbrella organization that tries to meet the needs of a very diverse cultural community. Although this is a partnership, the VBE still works with the system of education developed as a tool of colonization, thus it underlying purpose is to support the needs of the state. Maybe I read too much into this, but the Prussian Military developed the 12 step education program during the Napoleonic era to create law abiding, loyal product citizens for the state. This website links with the module fours concept of cultural awareness and partnership. It does not directly connect to my project, but does provide and insight into a contrast between the Nisga’s initiatives in education verses the Provinces.
The Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreement 2010 – Year One Annual report, is a pdf file. This document is the basis for inclusion, direction and initiatives being taken to address the educational needs of Indigenous youth within the VBE area of control.
Link: http://www.vsb.bc.ca/sites/default/files/school-files/Programs/Aboriginal%20Education%20Enhancement%20Agreement%202010%20Year%20One%20Annual%20Report-%20Final.pdf

Facebook: Another Medium to Promote Cultural Idenity

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Native Canadian Center of Toronto (Facebook)
Module 4: Blog #4
Website: https://www.facebook.com/nativecentre

The Native Canadian Center of Toronto is a cultural center located with the city that provides links as website, on Facebook and Twitter. I will examine the Facebook site, as an example of using a social media site to promote activities, programs for Indigenous Peoples in the Toronto area. One key activity, posted and in the photo section is a fashion show, that showcased tradition apparel, set in the context of modern fashion for everyday use. This was designed and organized by Indigenous communities. The use of Facebook to promote cultural identity directly relates to the widespread use of social media in today’s society. This site represents the control and establishing a Native cultural identity online in the medium used by mainstream internet consumers. Unfortunately, I am not a Facebook users, having only set up my first Facebook account while on enrolled in the MET program. However, it is an excellent place to take control of cultural identity.

The use of Facebook represents a proactive approach to establishing a Indigenous voice online in the context of control the content and promoting cultural identity and awareness. I initially tried to use the Native Center of Toronto website, but decided their Facebook link would be an interesting exploration.  This concept of proactive approach ties directly into my project on the Nisga’a as it supports the proactive approach of controlling the content.  

The links within the Facebook site are broad, covering a variety of social, cultural events, programs and resources for Indigenous Peoples in the Toronto region. I was interested in the iTunes app link  In the announcement section, the news is about “First Story Toronto” an iTunes app. After downloading the app, it is a map resource that links and event, activity territory and interactively provides direction to the event. It was developed in 2013. I am from the Toronto area, as youth some of places are familiar, but I did not relate them to First Nations cultural heritage.If you want to download this app, go to iTunes and search “First Story Toronto”