#1: Teachers, Knowledge, Building Relationships: Invitation and Hospitality
I see teachers honouring different ways of knowing and doing in the classroom by providing multiple ways of assessment and not only hand-written tests or assignments. My grade 12 English teacher at Campbell Collegiate had discussion Fridays. This meant that every Friday we would discuss a new topic and express our own opinion in a judge-free zone. This built a comfortable atmosphere and was an interesting way of teaching as I learned a lot from other students and was able to see things from a different point of view. Teachers can build a sense of community by creating trustful relationships with their students and being very friendly. By starting conversations with the students about their lives and making personal connections with them, helps to build a stronger bond. Having a safe, warm, and welcoming classroom allows the students to feel more comfortable and vulnerable. This leads to how teachers can create a hospitable, and invitational education environment. Making each student feel accepted in the classroom can be achieved by greeting each individual at the beginning and end of class, spending one on one time with each student, and being a very positive and encouraging teacher. It is taking the curriculum to the next level and promoting diversity. Mainly, accepting everyone no matter their differences and making the students feel like they will be valued in the classroom by others and the teacher, and the freedom to be who they are. Creating a classroom that is inviting persuades children into being successful students who enjoy being at school.
#2: Students & Learning Environment: Focus on places, spaces, and boundaries
The learning environment that I am most familiar with was always what I enjoyed. The desks would be paired up in rows. You would always be sitting beside one person whether they were your best friend or a stranger. Sometimes there were seating arrangements which I didn’t always enjoy, but I can now say I have met a lot more people than I would have if I had only surrounded myself with my friends in the classroom. This was what my learning environment mainly resembled throughout my elementary education. As I entered high school, I found that my learning environment drastically changed. I found that the typical partner seating arrangements were something in my past because we moved to primarily sitting individually. Interactions between my peers were reduced which I found to be very difficult to be productive. I am a person that needs to interact with others in order to work at my highest potential, which meant I was not able to be entirely myself in the classroom. I would try to sit in the front if it was a hard class because it helped me focus more as I was near the teacher. The power of space in my elementary classrooms is what I preferred. I was always moving seats throughout the year; where you sit at the beginning of the year, would be different at the end of the year. This made the student-teacher power more equal because I was able to interact with the teacher more and the teachers were more willing to hear me out. In high school, I found that with some of my teachers, by the end of the semester, they would not even remember my name. Those are the types of teachers that I never had a bond with and never felt comfortable enough to even ask questions. Of course not all my teachers were like that because I also had amazing teachers who would put in so much effort to connect with their students. This makes a great difference with the overall class and high school experience. I think student-student relationships are very essential and help make students more comfortable with being who they are and asking questions without feeling like they are getting judged. That is mainly what I feared when in a class with people I was unfamiliar with. Some people are extremely shy so I cannot imagine them feeling very welcomed without a fairly strong connection with the students and/or teacher in the class. Teachers could make the classroom more relational by reaching out and sharing common interests with each student, as well as by taking the teacher-student relationship built and using it as an educational tool.
#3: Indigenization Core Questions
When I look back into my kindergarten to grade eight education, I do not remember learning a lot about Indigenous history in Canada. Residential schools have been briefly mentioned but not deeply discussed. I remember having a speaker come in and talk about treaties and Indigenous history, but up to this point I do not remember in great detail the information he shared. Unfortunately, nothing really stuck with me from what I learned in elementary school as it was not until high school that I started to get taught more. In my Psychology 30 class, we had a speaker come in and talk about their experience during the Sixties Scoop and I felt very engaged as it was very personal and had introduced me to the reality of life back then. I learned briefly about residential schools although based on this course I feel more educated. I feel like it is very important to learn about Indigenous history because it’s important to understand different cultures and the struggles that each one has gone through. I personally like to learn through activity-based lessons or scenarios as I feel more involved and get to somewhat experience what it would be like without actually going through the trauma. A resource that majorly stood out to me was the documentary “Muffins for Granny”. Hearing about someone’s personal experience keeps me very engaged and my heart broke listening to the awful things that happened. As I am taking these steps on my Journey to Reconciliation, I have learned more in this class than I have in my whole life about indigenous history. For example, truly understanding how hard it would be to have my language, culture and families stripped away from me without a warning.