Professional Learning

Here are some snippets of my field experience reflections:


“The first day in my field experience was very good. It was enlightening, challenging and fun all at the same time. Me and my field experience partners were placed at Glenn Elm school. This school faces some socio-economic challenges. This generally means that there are more behavioural students in school. I believe this is going to be a great experience and it was already showing today. Me and the other students placed with me are getting to see how children behave in the classroom and how their living situations may be affecting them in school.”

“I’m really glad our school makes a conscious effort to represent diversity. I believe it’s important to have representation for all students otherwise their education won’t mean as much to them. This is one major reason many kids commonly become uninterested in certain subjects like history. If they aren’t represented or are even having their culture put down by the classic European, British grand narrative than they will not want to learn about it.”

“Our teacher focuses on ways of teaching that are generally not the traditional European ways. He likes to use group work and seems to want to instill independent work habits in the students. I believe that the group work does encourage this and makes the students help one another which is good. Group work encourages the students to help teach one another. I’ve heard many people say that the mastery of something means you can teach it, so if this is true then students teaching the other students is a great way for them to learn.”

Here is a poem I wrote for one of my education classes and a little explanation at the end: Tradition Lost

A rich culture with sophisticated morals and laws

A culture that is open and accepting 

A culture and people with their own art

Determined people with oral tradition always remembering

This same culture helping another despite its flaws

A new culture takes over in the traditional lands

A new people telling the other what to do

This new culture does not like the traditional one

Now a new people saying what is true

A great loss of power for the old bands

A rich culture now being erased

A new type of school is being pushed

Tradition is bad

Native language is shushed

This is where the anger is based

We must attend this new school

While some say good things about the school most do not

They hurt people here

There are bodies in the dirt covered in rot

This place is way to cruel

These schools took the ‘Indian’ out of the ‘Indian’

They tried to leave a whole culture in the past

A culture broken for no good reason

But a resilient people refuse to come in last

But the question that’s left is where do we fit in

Now a lack of education means we still shouldn’t have a celebration

The past needs to be properly taught in our current schools

Everyone needs to know why traditions were lost

Todays young people need to be given proper tools

That is, if we want the next generations to do better so we can truly begin reconciliation

            In this poem I’m writing about residential schools and the attempt to destroy an entire culture. At the end I’m talking about what our schools need to do to help with reconciliation. I wanted to focus on the emotion and on how harsh residential schools were, but I also wanted to talk about what we need to do today to truly begin reconciliation. I attempted to start at the beginning, talking about the rich culture of the Indigenous people before European influence. I then tried to progress to residential schools while expressing how the Brittish took over in Canada and started to tell their truth. Then I ended with expressing how I feel about reconciliation and what we have to do today.