18Aug 2020 by Kathryn No Comments

Where Do We Go From Here?

Education, Reconciliation, Uncategorized
Where Do We Go From Here? Summary of Progress: As you can read in previous posts, none of the Calls to Action for Education have been fulfilled. This is disappointing, seeing as they were released over five years ago. However, some progress has been made. The current Liberal Government of Canada has promised and provided more funding for Indigenous educational initiatives and schooling. However, no project has been completed and more often than not, the funding that is actually provided is less than was promised originally. The gap in access and quality of education between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students still very much exists. Advocacy is Key! A lot of the time, it can seem overwhelming to realize the amount of progress that has yet to be made. This is a…
Read More
14Aug 2020 by Kathryn No Comments

Culturally Appropriate Programs

Uncategorized
Early Childhood Educational Programs We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to develop culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for Aboriginal families.TRC, 2015 Final Report Culturally Appropriate Programs In order to preserve Indigenous culture and languages, it is so crucial to have quality and culturally appropriate educational programs. As the TRC Final Report shows, Residential Schools were a blatant attempt at assimilating Indigenous children by removing them from their families, forbidding them from learning about their cultures, and from speaking their languages. You can read more about that in detail here. In order to reconcile with these past events, the TRC recommends creating culturally appropriate early childhood educational programs that teach about Indigenous languages and culture. It is important to teach Indigenous children about their culture and…
Read More
10Aug 2020 by Kathryn No Comments

New Aboriginal Education Legislation

Uncategorized
Educational Legislation We call on the federal government to draft new Aboriginal education legislation with the full participation and informed consent of Aboriginal peoples. The new legislation would include a commitment to sufficient funding and would incorporate the following principles:- Providing sufficient funding to close identified educational achievement gaps within one generation.- Improving education attainment levels and success rates.- Developing culturally appropriate curricula.- Protecting the right to Aboriginal languages, including the teaching of Aboriginal languages as credit courses.- Enabling parental and community responsibility, control, and accountability, similar to what parents enjoy in public school systems.- Enabling parents to fully participate in the education of their children.- Respecting and honouring Treaty relationships.TRC, 2015 Final Report Drafting New Aboriginal Education Legislation This Call to Action is asking the Canadian federal government to…
Read More
31Jul 2020 by Kathryn No Comments

Reconciliation in Education Continued

Education, Reconciliation, Uncategorized
TRC Calls to Action for Education In an earlier post, we discussed why Reconciliation is necessary in education. To read more about that, click here. In this post I will discuss how the TRC Calls to Action were created. Further posts will explain and examine each of the seven individual Calls to Action for Education, explaining what each call to action is looking for, the progress made, and what can be done to fulfill them. How were they created? In June 2009, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created, with Justice Murray Sinclair, Marie Wilson, and Chief Wilton Littlechild appointed as the commissioners. They spent five years investigating and collecting statements from Residential School survivors as well as families, and communities affected by Residential Schools. Nearly seven-thousand statements were collected,…
Read More
27Jul 2020 by Kathryn No Comments

Reconciliation in Education

Education, Reconciliation, Uncategorized
I chose to take a deeper look into this section because of my connection to it. As a teacher, I have the ability, more than most, to create positive change inside of schools. I can educate our future leaders about the horrors Indigenous peoples have been faced with and the complicated relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples. I can also make an effort to actively include Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing in my lessons and activities. Before we take a deeper look into what needs to be done, it is important to understand why it needs to be done. Why Reconciliation is Necessary in Education: As many (but not enough) know, Canada's history with Indigenous peoples has consisted mainly of attempts to assimilate them into white-European culture. One of…
Read More
10Dec 2019 by Kathryn 1 Comment

ECS 210 Summary of Learning

Uncategorized
The end of the semester has quickly approached, and with that comes final projects and reflections upon learning. I have comprised a video presentation describing my learning journey in this class and the key concepts I will take away. Below, you will find a transcript of what I say in the video and a link to the video. Thanks for a great semester ECS 210! When I started my learning journey in this class, I was under the impression that curriculum was simply a set of documents with rigid outlines to follow to meet the set outcomes and indicators. How hard could it be to understand?  I was so off!What I didn’t understand is that there are many different ways of interpreting curriculum documents and teaching incorporates much more than just…
Read More
04Nov 2019 by Kathryn No Comments

What is Math?

Uncategorized
Growing up, I did not see how my education was not entirely inclusive. As someone with white privilege from a privileged background, I didn’t always notice when my classmates weren’t represented in the curriculum or if some of the course material was discriminatory, since it didn’t seem to affect me. I now know I was wrong, and I work not only to notice oppression (and to work against it), but to bring awareness to other people about this discrimination. One thing I did notice, especially in high school, was that math was really designed to be done in English and when translated to another language, there were always some difficulties. My high school offered a French immersion program, and my friends who opted for that program had to take math…
Read More
28Oct 2019 by Kathryn 2 Comments

I have White Privilege, how do I address that in the classroom?

Uncategorized
I had a very privileged upbringing, I grew up in a white, middle class household with two parents who both had reasonably-paying jobs. All of my teachers were white, most of the novels I read where written by white people (normally males), the storylines we discussed almost always featured a white, middle-class female like myself, and there was not much diversity in what I learned. There were not many opportunities to discuss other perspectives or to explore the concepts of racism or oppression; we often discussed the “classics” such as plays by Shakespeare, and when we discussed the meanings of these plays in class, there was always a “more right” answer that the teacher was looking for.  I did not notice many of these things until I was finished high…
Read More
07Oct 2019 by Kathryn 3 Comments

What Role do Teachers have in Decolonization?

Uncategorized
This week’s article, “Learning from Place: A Return to Traditional Mushkegowuk Ways of Knowing” by Jean-Paul Restoule, Sheila Gruner, & Edmund Metatawabin, highlighted the importance of place-based learning (and re-inhabitation) in the process of decolonization. The project that this article discusses involved connecting different generations of a community to learn about the history of their land through the land; it fostered conversations between youth and Elders in the community that passed on traditional knowledge about: the history of the land; how to live off of the land and rivers; and the original names associated with that land (as well as Cree concepts associated with the land). Through this process, not only were the relationships between community members strengthened, but the relationship between the community and the land was also strengthened. …
Read More
30Sep 2019 by Kathryn 5 Comments

Good vs. Bad: Is there such thing as a ‘bad’ student?

ECS 210, Uncategorized
A ‘good’ student according to the commonsense is a student who comes to school ready to learn, open to learning, follows instructions well, is still and not restless, and is quiet. A ‘good’ student is willing to learn and listens to what the teacher tells them is right. Students who grew up with the same values used in their school are privileged by this, as they do not have to conform their values to fit in with the social norm.  There is a significance placed on certain kinds of societal values and behaviors that disadvantages students who do not fit in to this ‘norm’ and who have different values and beliefs. ‘Commonsense’ ideas expect students to leave schools with more knowledge than they entered and to have their previous knowledge…
Read More