Teachers, Knowledge, Building Relationships: Invitation and Hospitality
Relationships are key in education, and I will stand by my belief that if we do not have an established relationship with a child, we cannot possibly teach them in a positive relational way. In my experiences over the last twenty-five years, I have witnessed many teachers creating hospitable and invitational educational environments and relationships with students either quietly or more openly in the classroom.
Quiet ways teachers create invitational and hospitable learning environments, begin each morning. Greeting students with a positive attitude, allowing the day to be a clean slate, asking them questions about their life, and actively engaging with them. Teachers know that kids are kids, and they need to feel accepted and loved. Other quiet ways I have seen teachers promoting positive learning spaces involve adjusting work expectations and goals within the classroom. Giving the student work that allows them to be successful and gain confidence while still learning along with their peers is a wonderful way to promote an invitational environment. Teachers have utilized their knowledge by using the multiple intelligences as a guideline and have created classrooms that suit the learning styles of the students in their classroom. For example: visual schedules, movement breaks, learning through song, guest speakers, and utilizing the outdoor spaces for reading, and group work.
Open ways I have seen teachers support invitational and hospitable environments include inclusive wall art, engaging activities, including other languages and cultures in everyday curriculum, showing interest in students’ lives and activities, and allowing students to have a choice in how they do an assignment, whether that is writing, drawing, slideshow presenting, etc. Teachers who are walking around the room, getting on students’ level, and helping from beside instead of above, create relational classrooms. Teachers who are communicating, promoting students to develop critical and creative thinking techniques, and allowing the student to become independent and grow as an individual, are the teachers who make a huge impact and foster relationships within their classroom.
Community and safety are very prominent teachings in my current classroom environments. Teachers I work with make sure to show respect and to help children learn to show respect for others, as well as care for others. Every morning, and after each new teaching we do a check in, to see how they are feeling that day or about that assignment. If a student is having a rough day, we can brainstorm with a student to help them make positive choices for themselves. We can offer a break, a snack, a quiet place, sometimes even a nap if needed. We are here to help the student be at their best and reach their highest potential. Positive affirmations are on school walls to help students remember they are worth it, and that they are amazing, and if they say they cannot do something we remind them, that they cannot do it, yet!
I am very happy to experience many great classrooms where students have felt they were engaged in the learning, safe and loved. I hope that my future classroom will feel the same.
Students & Learning Environment: Focus on places, spaces, and boundaries
Why does growing older mean that our classrooms have to be more boring and colder? Growing up my experiences in the classroom changed as I entered different grades. In the younger grades my experiences with teachers and the classroom were a lot more relational and involved hands on learning compared to that of my experiences in the older grades. University was also a very object-based teaching style, which was hard for me as a new young high school student from a small town.
In my early years, pre-kindergarten to about grade five, our classrooms were always very bright, colourful, warm and welcoming. Teachers actively engaged with us at our level with hands on learning materials. Teachers appreciated us as individuals and valued the relationship with us and our peers. We were seated in table groups with our friends, allowing us to share materials, and learn how to co-habitat a space.
As I grew older our classrooms became plainer and emptier. Rows and rows of desks facing forwards with the teachers’ desk at the front of the room, no more colourful photos, no pictures, no warmth. Although group work was allowed it was harder to do when you were separated from friends, and in small-town friends are very important. Bullying was very prominent in my school, myself a victim, and unfortunately our teachers did not protect us from the awful experiences the bullies put us through, even if they witnessed it.
Teachers began to lecture, shifting into that object-based teaching approach and away from the relational based approach. Teachers remained at the front of the room, no longer engaged in our learning or our personal lives. The teachers who did try to get to know us helped us get through high school. They actively engaged in our lives and activities. Some of our best grades were in their classes because they cared enough to help us learn, once again proving that students and teachers need a relationship before learning can take place.
University was a new experience for me completely. Extreme object based, lecture style teaching that I was not used to. It was hard to go into a school situation in which the teacher just talked to you and you had to figure out how to learn from it.
Teachers can and should create relational learning environments by always being open, caring, valuing students’ mental health, opinions, and by engaging and meeting students at their level of ability. Teachers literally shape future generations, and as the new generation of people shapers, we need to be extra cautious and inclusive in all that we do. Words ripple and actions make waves. I strive to create a welcoming and relational space in my future classroom where all students feel loved, safe, and engaged in learning.
Truth and Reconciliation
Growing up my education was very white privileged based. I learned all my information about Indigenous people and their ways of knowing and doing through the perspectives of white teachers reading textbooks or material written by predominantly white male authors. Textbooks skimmed over Indigenous peoples, talking as if they were in the past, some how written out of history. They skimmed over treaties, residential schools and so much more. All of these materials benefited the white viewpoint, teaching that some how the colonizers made Indigenous lives better by coming to Turtle Island, invading their lands and ripping away their culture, language and everything they’ve ever known.
The media portrayed only negative stigmas and lies my elders grew up hearing, the media of course being run by white colonizers. I never understood these lies and stigmas, yet unfortunately I believed them growing up in my small white hometown. When I started University, I was exposed to so many more cultures and people. I took Indigenous studies 100 and finally began to learn what I had been missing in my past education. I learned and began to truly understand the truth and the lies about the treaties, residential schools, and all the other awful things our colonizing relatives did to the Indigenous people and what were still doing to this day.
Learning about the loss of culture and other atrocities that have happened to so many innocent children and their parents in the residential schools and the sixties scoop makes my heart break into a million pieces. I would be a complete mess if someone ripped my babies away from me and told me I couldn’t see them anymore, it is just so awful the experiences they went through. Loss of language, culture, family dynamics and their ways of knowing and doing were ripped away from them by the Canadian government. The government only began to accept these horrors when they realized Indigenous languages and cultures were going extinct. The Truth and Reconciliation booklet highlights the trauma and experiences of the Indigenous peoples, but it also explains ways we can accept the guilt and learn from our mistakes. We need to begin learning from each other and never let this happen again.
Indigenous teachings are so beautiful and create impactful meaningful relationships. Something that really resonated with me were the Indigenous relational teachings in the film, “Let’s talk about decolonization: understanding and finding our way.” One of the teachings was about what you as an individual will contribute to society, and I plan on contributing an open, relational, culturally inclusive, tāpwē takahki (“truly great” in Cree) classroom.
References
Federation, S. T. (2021, June 21). Understanding and Finding our Way: Decolonizing Canadian Education [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWkPBm_0C1s&feature=youtu.be