The following link is to my video sharing my learnings from over the time in this course. Enjoy!

Through my education math was always a subject I had better at. Through all of elementary I was not very challenged and understood it well. Through high school most of it came pretty naturally to me. In university it hit me like a truck but to be expected. In most of my experiences I have known a lot of people who happened to struggle. With math being mostly memorizing rules it just wasn’t always a good way to remember, especially if math wasn’t your thing. The main thing I think that really didn’t help was that most teachers teaching math wouldn’t teach or try to teach or word math in more then one way. When they would help someone they would just repeat the same thing which didn’t do anyone any favors.

Through Inuit ways of teaching math, they take a different approach then what we are used to. Firstly, they do it by 20’s as a main stepping stone instead of 10’s like we use. Secondly, they attach it more to the environment and the world around. Lastly, they also do math very orally compared to writing it down and memorizing it by writing it down (Poirier, 2007)

Multilingualism in Canada has become a more and more common thing as we have people with all different backgrounds more than ever before. In this student in the classroom are also bringing more language and culture to the class. This is where English Additional Language shows. The use of this terminology is a lot more accepting to the students as it shows their understanding of multiple languages as a strength and not a damper on their knowledge.

Some teachers have even included a portion of class daily where an EAL student can teach their fellow classmates and teacher a word from their first language. This is beneficial as it opens up vocabulary and teaches the student that it is helpful to poses multiple languages (Cummins, 2019).

There are many other avenues to implement multi lingual ways into education and more ideas come as it is becoming more of the norm and accepted. These help the EAL students, their classmates, and improve grades and writing across classes.

References:

Cummins, by: D. J., by: Dr. Shelly Russell-Mayhew, K. M., by: Miriam Miller, D. D. B., & Hagerman, by: D. M. S. (2019, February 26). How can teachers maximize engagement among multilingual students? EdCan Network. Retrieved March 24, 2023, from https://www.edcan.ca/articles/multilingual-students/

Some starts to the systems we use to teach is our own curriculum and textbooks do not go into depth if even mention anything to do with queer and trans people. A big step in the right direction would be working towards mentioning these in class and teaching despite what the curriculum outlines. These can be worked into a handful of classes to build knowledge for students and introduce it to them from a young age. This can help in some cases where students can know about it from an educational standpoint which may lead to them not being taught by someone who may be homophobic/transphobic and cause the student to not learn for themselves and continue the viscous cycle. 

We can also fight for more queer and trans representation in the curriculum so that it can be taught more so, and has to be. This can also grow knowledge and awareness for teachers who may be undereducated on the topics and can learn for themselves before teaching in their classrooms. To push this not through curriculum and teaching we can also address students differently. We can use inclusive language like “students” or “class” or a whole variety of other words instead of “boys and girls”. 

A large part of why teachers may be afraid to teach these is due to backlash from students, parents or possibly even colleagues. Being able to teach about this is protected and allowed under human rights, however. This can also be used to educate students on their human rights as, at least from my personal experience, something that you’d think would be common knowledge such as human rights are not something taught or even talked about (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education p.4).

Hello, (Whoever this ma concern)

Treaty education is a crucial tool we must use in the Canadian education system. Regardless the population of Indigenous students at the school may be it is important we teach all students about the cause of trauma and the injustices done to indigenous peoples since the land was colonized. Teaching students in a school with less indigenous culture may actually be more important to the students then the opposite. In these cases, students have less natural exposure to the history and hardships given throughout time. There also tends to be that incentive of relevancy when it’s just as if not more relevant to teach in these situations. It also can give a better perspective as these students may also have not learned in their younger years as their classes were likely similar in culture where they had close to none if no indigenous representation in their education careers.

Part of treaty education that is crucial to teach is that we are treaty people. You may hear it a lot and think it’s some corny saying. That couldn’t be further from the truth when you are able to have proper education in the treaty ed. We are all treaty people and it is all our responsibility to make sure everyone we live with and share the land with is able to live their lives fairly and sustainably. We can say this, however it is not a reality yet as many people living on reservations don’t even have access to clean water. There is also racism still happening daily everywhere. In some forms it is used as humor even by students. This behavior isn’t condoned and learning about trey ed and why we are all treaty people helps us to understand why these behaviors should not be tolerated and why they should be called out, and how they only harm the community.

Sincerely, Brodi

Cultural relevancy in a classroom is more and more important as we move forwards in education. It is important to keep teaching and learnings to be open and culturally appropriate. Making the classroom a more open place of learning gives students a place of belonging, and further can educate other students who may not have been able to have access to such education and learnings other than in the classroom. In doing this there also has to be the respect to keep any teaching educated and respectful and not to make it offensive or share misinformation. This can also be tailored into many classes through English to science in some respects.

In elementary education, in respect to music education, there is more to music than just playing instruments and belting music. There has to be a relevancy to other classes, the world around them and possibly even in making a sense of place making it more culturally diverse than just western music. There are many ways you can do this by introducing instruments, the history and relevancy of them. You can incorporate dance into the music as well, just keep in mind if it’s going to be cultural you should make sure beforehand that it’s respectful and if possible, get someone from the culture to properly teach and inform the students of the dance in hand with the music. Music education in elementary can be very diverse and help teach students many different topics through many avenues as it is a diverse topic.

Citizenship is more of an open definition. It is largely thought to be your stereotypical Canadian who knows all the facts and history from over the years of Canada. Truthfully and as stated by the article this couldn’t be less true as citizenship is less how we are the same and more about how we are all different and unique living together as a community. We have the freedom to express our differences amongst each other and that’s what makes us citizens of Canada. It’s the people who live in our cities, in our neighborhoods and our neighbors. There is no right way to define citizenship but everybody may see it as slightly different.

Treaty Education alongside citizenship shows the insight to the original people of the land we are living on. It shows the culture and ways of living for how fellow Canadians used to live and how we as fellow citizens help, reconcile and move in the proper direction going forwards. It also is good information relating to holistic and spiritual ways of living that many may be able to learn from.

In the Levin article it states that the development and implementation of new curriculum and curriculum development is taken through many steps. It goes through more groups of people including being influenced by funders and politics which I had always more or less assumed but never actually realized quite how much. It also gets revised through many of the steps which diminishes the original idea at hand that the board would have started with. New perspectives that I have following the article is that their is lack of actual educational influence as teachers who are the ones actually pushing these on the students have little say in the decision of curriculum. I also find it concerning how much of it gets influenced by outside factors and politics which can ultimately sway the curriculum in a less effective way and aim at more at the intentions of investors or politicians.

The correlation to the treaty education article is very similar as it has it’s bigger outcomes as a whole then narrows it down to specific topics they want to meet by the end of each grade and the end of a students schooling. It’s also similar in the fact it goes through a large group of people who narrow down the aim and implementation of the teachings. In the development of Treaty education I feel like it would have been a struggle to get the ball rolling as through politics and funders it may not have been in their interest to introduce it as it doesn’t help them get their agenda across. I say that as the article was made in 2007 when teaching proper indigenous studies was not as big of a thing as it should have and I assume politically it was not of interest to politicians.

A “good student” is described in many ways. Through common sense being a good student means to be a student who is your perfect little quiet, listening, attentive student who studies hard and participates in class all while getting everything in on time. The issue with this is it’s unrealistic and almost never in the case realistic or achievable. In real life all the students have lives outside of the classroom varying in intensity and maturity needed. Some students may be able to go home and continue being a kid while others go home and have to grow up and take on responsibilities.

Through Kumoshiro’s story about M he shows what a “bad student” is. Now in all reality M may not have been the best student by common sense standards but who’s to say it wasn’t being caused by a factor out of her control at home resulting in poor behavior at school. Being a good student by these standards is easier said than done but people who are more likely than not to benefit are those that are upper-class families, who have good relationships with each other. The benefit of beginning upper class means when you’re in school you don’t have to worry about getting to and from school, because regardless of whether you’ll have a way to get to and from. You also can concentrate on school because you don’t have to worry about if you’re going to eat that day. Also having good healthy relationships with your family when you get home means you can get help with work, you will be able to talk openly about emotions and won’t have to worry about getting into a fight when you get home.

The “good student” is shaped by decades old definitions of students that they built through barbaric means of teaching. We no longer beat kids into line during class or need to teach them to go work in lines in factories. Nowadays we understand every student is different with their different needs and that hitting them with a meterstick won’t do any good, but will only make things worse. Now the aim is to tailor to each student to help them reach their goals and learn the material at their own rate.

For my assignment one, the scholar I’ve been looking at is Arlo Kempf. He is currently a professor at the University of Toronto for education. One of his big focuses is the High-Stakes Standardized Testing (HSST) within curriculum. HSST is the portion in curriculum in Canada and the US recently that is the cause for so much testing so frequently and causing tests to be the be all end all.
Kempf’s viewpoint is that everything being tested is a stupid way to test knowledge and that HSST in the US and Canada should not be being used. The problem with HSST is that it causes too much emphasis on tests to be gauging comprehension. In certain circumstances tests are not a bad thing and can be a great way to benchmark where students are at. But having tests be the be all end all in all classes does not create a great way of teaching and learning.
What I’d like to learn and need to find out going forwards in the assignment is what other approaches can be taken to combat the current teaching methods. In some classes using HSST to a degree might still be useful. Not at the rate it is right now but certain classes like ELA for example, it makes no sense to have so many parts of the class to be tested.