Curriculum as Public Policy

My school was in a small town in Saskatchewan, everyone knew everyone in my school, and my school was one where there was a lot of privilege. In my school we often never saw the really horrible things that can happen in the world, it has shown me in the last couple of years since I have mature a little more how naive my way of seeing the world was and sometimes still is. My school gave me an overly positive world view, I never saw the bad, and was taught to ignore. As a student in these classes, I also developed a basis against students who did not understand or pick things up quickly, I think I learned this from the way my teachers acted towards them and they were also treated so differently. As I chose to become a teacher to help get rid of the biases and to help students at all levels of learning, people should not be judged solely on how they understand things in a classroom. In my school, there were lots of single stories, and in my school the “good students” truth always mattered more than over students.

Curriculum and Treaty Education

After reading the article written by Ben Levin, I have realized how many people play into the creating of a curriculum document, there where so many different organizations that played different roles and had different influences. Curriculum and Treaty Education are both closely related to Saskatchewan, and they have a powerful influence in our province. It is the responsiblity of teachers so properly teach treaty ed and it is the curriculum job to give structure and give a place for teachers to teach this content to students. It is also important that we must not teach culture and for us as future teachers are also teach in a respectable way for all students. It is also very important for us to know the students we are teaching to and there culture background and what is important to them, there history.

Treaty Education

Treaty education is meant to help with reconciliation and decolonization in Canada, we want to provide the perspective of Indigenous peoples. Claire Kreuger refers to it a “settlers ed” when you are teaching a majority of non-indigenous students and in her video she defines it as “Learning the benefits and responsibilities that come with sharing this land, and it is about honoring the long history of this place.” She provided an outline to strive for within a classroom setting beyond the curriculum provided by the government, she also adds that no one will be a perfect treaty education teacher. Both Claire and Dwayne Donald mention that this is not just something that will happen overnight it is going to take time. Dwayne mentioned in his video that is is important to bring together the past, present and future to educate and fully understand, we have to look back to understand where we are heading. They also must learn about the relationships, and for each student to learn about their identity with in those relationships.

For me personally, I had only learned that we are all treaty people in the past two years, as a came to university and left my small town. It was never included in any of my early education, I remember the first time I had ever heard some recognize, the treaty land we were on at the U of R orientation, and I remember thinking to myself why would thing do that? As the year went on I have learned that we are all treaty people, we all live on the land represented in treaties. We also need to understand that there are two sides to treaties, and they do not just pertain to the Indigenous peoples, it applies to all canadians living on land provided to us through treaties. I still do not have a full understanding of what it all means to be a treaty person, but it is important to provide an understanding to students.

Learning From a Place

This week we were given an article by Jean-Paul Restoule, called “Learning from Place: A Return to Traditional Mushkegowuk Ways of Knowing,” is about showing the ways that cree students connect to the land and there culture. This child are going on a 10 day river trip with adults and elders, and as they travel up the river they will learn about there people connection to the land and how important it is to them. This story show us examples of decolonization and reinhabitation, and it is allowing them to have a chance to reconnect with the lands. This trip helps to bring back things that were lost in the process of colonization, like the connection with land, the value of their knowledge, and the connection between generations. Both the children and the elders learned from each the different perspectives they have, and how they can be a lined. “The river trip helped members of the community share linguistic, cultural, historical, and geographical knowledge” (page 81).

In the future I hope to be bring these ideas of decolonization and reinhabitation in to the classroom by have an educational environment, these subjects are really important to be taught in schools, but it is often taught in the same ways with no real change to the system. New ways of teaching such as recognizing treaty lands and that we are all treaty people, having speakers come into classrooms so students can see the real effects. It all depends on the community you are teaching in, on how you bring these new ways of learning, and how you can have students understand the actions, and how they can change it, decolonization is not something that will happen overnight, it is going to take many more years, and we have a long road ahead of us.

Being a Good Student

Being a ‘good’ student means to be able to learn the information that your teacher has laid for you, it means you can listen, sit quietly in class, ask meaningful questions, participate in conversation, and being able to take tests. A good student would be getting good grades, understanding what is laid out in front of them, and they should be moving through and understanding the material at the same speed of other students. This is all  what we assume to be ‘common sense’ from your culture, society and schooling background. Students that act out in class or do not learn at the same speed as other no longer fit this description, they are not considered to be a good student. 

This definition of a ‘good student’ is most for middle or upper class, white students, the ones that have been raised with these values. Common sense is determined by the leading cultural group, which means if you are not from that group you most likely are to face more challenges when it comes to schooling. This also disadvantages students with learning or physical disabilities, because it is made for the majority, and those not included in it do not always receive the same quality of education. It is impossible to see the negative effects of this because common sense is set up by the majority, and it works out for the majority, but there are always those left out.