Category: ECS 210

• How has your upbringing/schooling shaped how you “read the world?” What biases and lenses do you bring to the classroom? How might we unlearn / work against these biases?

This is kind of a hard question since most of a person’s “biases” are unknown to themselves. I’m sure I have many “biases” that I live my life with every day and am completely unaware of.
My time in elementary and high school was very multicultural and was surprisingly inclusive to other sexual orientations. I feel because of my experiences in school I became more accepting and understanding of other people’s culture and sexuality.

other than that I often see the world around me as a very white-dominated environment where company greed will often squash and oppress people around them. I personally see corporations as “the bad guy” this is likely due to the views I have gained from school when reading about poverty, sexual assault white supremacy, and cover-up stories related to companies and businessmen. I know that my thoughts on this are very extreme and have recently been trying to be more understanding and openminded when dealing with large corporations but still have this view on them.

Like many people, I don’t like reading information about things I do not agree with. So for me as an educator, I’m sure I will read many papers from students and teach topics that I will not agree with politically. I will have to learn to contain my personal opinion so the students are able to develop their own.

• What examples of citizenship education do you remember from your K-12 schooling? What types of citizenship (e.g. which of the three types mentioned in the article) were the focus? Explore what this approach to the curriculum made (im)possible in regards to citizenship.

I remember doing lots of different activities during my time in school that would be considered citizenship education. Throughout elementary school, we did different types of charities as well as community activities to spread awareness. We took part in terry fox day where we were taught about cancer, what it is and how it affects people’s lives, so we as a school went for an hour-long walk to raises awareness and also raise money to donate for cancer treatment. I would consider this to be the Personally responsible citizen, the students didn’t do any of the planning but did donate some money and also help raise awareness, the teachers, on the other hand, was Participatory Citizen. they were teaching us (the students) about the issue and did all the setup for the event to happen.

We also took part in Earthday, during this time I remember my teacher telling us all about the environment and the key role it plays for humans and animals to live, and what we can do to keep it a clean and healthy place again this is the same type of citizenship happening here.

I don’t recall there being any examples of The Justice Oriented Citizen being present during my school experience. the only thing that I could argue is that through the education that they gave us some students may have felt inspired to tackle main issues head-on. but we were never explicitly instructed or encouraged to find these issues. Maybe it’s too large of an issue for a standard lesson plan to be built around? for example its a bit challenging for a teacher to build a lesson about tackling how we as a society use so much unnecessary waste, packaging and plastic that it’s damaging ecosystems around the world, and its giant manufacturing companies that are ignoring the facts of there actions to maintain profits.

I could not access the student’s email it said I didn’t have permission, so I will instead answer the prompts

• What is the purpose of teaching Treaty Ed (specifically) or First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (FNMI) Content and Perspectives (generally) where there are few or no First Nations, Metis, Inuit peoples?

I feel there are two major reasons to have treaty education be taught even if there aren’t many people of that culture. the first reason is to eliminate some of the misconceptions and stereotypes that first nations people have, such as getting everything free, not having to pay taxes etc. while some of these things are truly many people don’t understand the full extent in which they apply. And some people don’t even know why the treaties were created in the first place, so having a better knowledge of our shared history will only benefit us as a people in the future. secondly, even if there is a small amount of the people living in the society they still have the right to learn about their history, benefits and even trauma that the treaties have given. A first nation’s person who is educated on what happened to their ancestors and how they can live with the treaties will not only be a benefit for themselves but for all, a more happy and educated society will benefit any community.

What does it mean for your understanding of the curriculum that “We are all treaty people”?

When I was growing up learning about treaties and how the land we are on was taken by miscommunication and lies that the Canadian government strategized to take the land diplomatically, I did not care at the time since it wasn’t affecting me. but then I realized how it affected my friends. many of them told me about having to go to the reserve on a regular basis or else they would lose their property on that land, or if they wanted to buy a major purchase they needed to get shipped to the reserve land or they won’t get tax-exempt. these things again never affected me. now it affects me more, if I were to have a child with my partner they would not have Indian status since my partner is a 6(2) “Indian” my child would not get dental coverage, education, tax exemption, right to hunt, etc so the saying “we are all treaty people could not be truer. Even if you feel like it doesn’t affect you now, it might one day.
The treaty was made between the first nations people, and the newcomers. today these treaties are still between the first nations people and those “newcomers” have become the government and the people who live here. So the treaties affect everyone; we are all treaty people.

Part 1)

What I understood from the reading is that changing and creating the curriculum is a complex task. It has a mix of educated people and uneducated people to create the curriculum, they often look at how to teach life skills to help the next generation take over running the country. A large portion of the decision making comes from political leaders and those who have the most power. With their power, they have the influence to quickly change the curriculum. in ways that they feel fitting, this often leads to personal bias which leads to uneducated decisions being made. There is also the influence of communities, sometimes they form groups to express their thoughts and concerns to the government or simply having communication with schools that their children are enrolled.
I never really thought that the community had a say in how education is done but it does make sense and is reasonable for a government to listen to community feedback.

the only big concern is the implementation of uneducated opinion, this is a slippery slope to not having sex education, less lgbtq2+ representation etc. I feel we need to get our personal opinions and bias out of the picture but it will happen no matter what.

Part 2)

I personally feel like the implementation of treaty education is doing very well currently in Canada. So far every class that I have had in the university of Regina has talked about the history of the first nations people or acknowledged the land that they are on. aside from that growing up my elementary school and high school often bring in elders, had environment walks, did projects such as beading and setting up Teepees. Ironically I am displaying my own personal bias saying that the treaty education is being done well, even though it was luckily done well for me, but it may not be good in other schools across the country. I know that from my First nations friends in highschool felt they were being portrayed in a harsh light, constantly making them sound like a weak and defeated people who are still trying to get back on their feet. he felt the way that it was being taught was almost causing more harm than good since it was giving people notions of their culture based on history and not what is happening now.

• List some of the ways that you see rehabilitation and decolonization happening throughout the narrative.

The main idea that I took away was the importance of community engagement having guest speakers and elders come in to talk and share information about indigenous history and culture can be a nice change of pace for the students while giving them a new perspective of the culture
they also talked about a river trip, which sounded like a very nice and interactive way to teach the students as they state ” Learning from land and place beyond institutional walls is a return to traditional Mushkegowuk modes of teaching and learning.”
going on the trip helps students build a strong understanding of the environment, spirituality, and build teamwork skills with everyone else who partook in the trip. I feel that any kind of action that goes against the norm in favour of indigenous ways of knowing helps with the decolonization process. I have always felt that decolonization will really show when we affect the student’s minds, show them the errors of the Canadian government and how those errors have affected the first nations people for generations. If we develop our students to have a better knowledge of history and how trauma can be felt through generations than hopefully, we can start to erase some of the racist ideas and foundations that we have built upon to start letting more ways of knowing into the school and out communities

• How might you adapt these ideas towards considering the place in your own subject areas and teaching?

I personally enjoy being in nature, and as a student, I loved it when my class would go outside. so for me anytime there is an opportunity to teach a lesson in a way to get student outside I feel is a good thing to do. creating lessons that have teamwork and outdoor activities give the students time outdoors which many kids nowadays do not get. some lessons I remember doing was research on clouds for science. in a group of three, we studied the different types of clouds and what they mean for predicting the weather. and to this day I remember that Nimbostratus and Cumulonimbus are clouds that release rain. outdoor activities I feel are very memorable. It can be difficult to find ways to have subjects involve nature so that is when its good to simply take group walks as a class to a nearby park or even have a subject be worked on outside. (practivce math problems in groups on the playground

• What does it mean to be a good student according to ” the common sense?”

When I think of what a “good” classroom looks like, images of children in their desks, in order with hands being raised to ask questions. I feel like this is how the vast majority of people will think about a classroom. students should be well behaved, polite, raise hands when asking a question, and even more importantly does not cause “waves”

By waves, I mean anything that would disrupt the river of knowledge and information that the teacher is giving to the students. These kinds of waves can be simple like being noisy during class, distracting other students, or not doing assignments. but the major kind of “wave” would be questioning the curriculum, asking “why is this important” or even questioning outdated subjects.

This is how common sense has shaped how we think a classroom should look. however every classroom will look different, every student will have their own needs and every teacher will teach differently than each other.

I decided on doing the hidden curriculum I found it very interesting when we talked about it in the lecture and wanted to explore more about it. I’m going to explore some of the different ways it can occur. the pros and cons of having a hidden curriculum and I will explore what we should do if we find a hidden curriculum and what should an educator do when they find it. There are lots of articles talking about hidden curriculum but they seem to be about the medical field. this makes sense since it could be potentially dangerous some of the hidden curricula that they could learn in med-school. it may be a bit of a challenge to find peer-reviewed articles but I’m sure I will find something that I will like.

Apart from that, I look forward to writing this it should be filled with interesting material

Respond to the following- Curriculum development from a traditionalist perspective is widely used across schools in Canada and other countries (a) The ways in which you may have experienced the Tyler rationale in your own schooling; (b) What are the major limitations of the Tyler rationale/what does it make impossible; and (c) What are some potential benefits/what is made possible.

When I think about how the “tyler Rationale” was designed, it was made in the idea of a cookie cuter conveyer belt-like system that if done perfectly, and all the directions were followed, the community would be granted one fine addition to the workforce. I personally have experienced this schooling practice and I feel almost every person who attended grade school in Saskatchewan would have experienced the “Tyler Rationale” at some kind of level. The idea of being taught things only for the reason of “needing” it to be taught, being evaluated on our ability to hold that knowledge to pass and THEN maybe retaining that knowledge for future use, is how many students see the education system and I hope that we see a change very soon. As stated in the reading “The major weakness and, indeed, strength of the process model is that it rests upon the quality of teachers.” And I agree with this. The better the teacher we have, the more we all will benefit. Having educators that think outside of the curriculum and focusing on other abilities such as problem-solving, communication skills, manners, etc. will lead us down a better path as educators. But there will always be downsides, an educator’s political stance will shape the way they think of what is “good/right.” Also, what they few as important subjects very well could be the standard “Math, English, History” I’m not saying thinking this way is bad, but if we want to see a change its important for our educators to be more educated on all matters. And if we manage to have a broader understanding of what’s “important” then all our students will be able to grow and learn in different ways that are best suited for them.

• How does Kumashiro define ‘commonsense?’ Why is it so important to pay attention to the ‘commonsense?

“Commonsense limits what is considered to be consistent with the purpose of schooling. Alternative perspectives, including perspectives that challenge common sense, are already dismissed as irrelevant, inconsequential, or inappropriate. after all common sense does not tell us that this is what schools could be doing; it tells us that this and only this is what schools should be doing.”

It is important to know that what we (as a person/community) understand as common sense is subjective. everything that we know as commonsense was taught to us through repetition since birth as well as the knowledge that has been passed down through generations. So to apply this to the classroom, what some students know as common sense won’t be the same for others especially when it comes to the social rule of the school. as a teacher its important to understand this to help every student succeed.