My Truth and Reconciliation Philosophy
The truth is my experience in school prior to university provided me with little knowledge of truth and reconciliation. I was unaware of what this meant and how it related to me and my future career as a teacher. I knew very little about the indigenous culture and the background of indigenous people. This is the problem. I must provide my students with knowledge so they have a greater understanding than I did about our indigenous roots. I believe it is my responsibility to inform students about what happened in residential schools and allow them the opportunity for knowledge about the subject area. It is my responsibility to share indigenous culture with my students. One quote that stands out to me regarding this subject is “people love to say that knowledge is power. But the truth is knowledge is only potential power. You and I both know it is useless if you don’t act on it” (Robbins, 2014, Page 10). This stands out to me because I have learned so much in University throughout my educational journey. It would be useless to not share this knowledge with my students. However, it is also important for my students to have the power of knowledge.
Therefore, there are several things I would do to implement truth and reconciliation in my classroom to get the conversations going.
I believe in creating relationships with indigenous people around our communities.
A vital part of truth and reconciliation is relationships. I will bring in elders and knowledge keepers who can share stories in ways that I cannot. I will allow them the opportunity to create relationships with indigenous people by having guests.
I believe in giving my students experiences to learn the knowledge.
I will also give them the opportunity to attend events like the Treaty 4 land gathering so they can gain more knowledge about the topic, while also creating relationships. This goes along with working together to create a goal within my classroom. This means that I will include families and communities when building relationships. It is important to not only give my students knowledge but allow them to have experiences outside of our classroom to extend their knowledge.
I believe that knowledge is powerful
My poor knowledge prior to University created certain biases. It was not powerful. Giving students the opportunity for knowledge on the subject area is most important to me. If I had greater knowledge growing up, I would have done things differently in terms of my relationships with indigenous people and the land. However, I was not given the opportunity to learn anything about indigenous culture and I do not want to rob my students of that. It is important they have the knowledge so they can create steps towards truth and reconciliation.