Rain, Shine, Learn

• 
• THE WHAT – describe the situation or scenario. What’s happening?
• THE SO WHAT – how does this experience demonstrate the professional standard?
• NOW WHAT – what did you learn and where to next?

Standard 1: Educators value the success of all students
Educators care for students and act in their best interests

In my classroom there were students at all levels.  Some of the students were very far ahead and got bored waiting for others to catch up.  In my practicum I learned to give the high level student homework for the weekend and to work with the EA to figure out how to help the students who needed extra help.  I learned about how to do math work on the overhead and help lower level students so they could follow along with me when they did their worsksheets.   I learned that I need to give the EA lots of direction and let them teach the class sometimes so I can work with a smaller group of students at a time.  I learned to use every adult I have in the room to my advantage in order to spread out instruction across all of the students in differentiated ways.

Standard 9:
Educators respect and value the history of First Nations, Inuit and Métis in Canada and the impact of the past on the present and the future. Educators contribute towards truth, reconciliation and healing. Educators foster a deeper understanding of ways of knowing and being, histories, and cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Métis

I had to teach about local traditional medicine in my science class.  I evaluated students on  a curricular competency related to Indigenous knowledge in science.  In order to respect the Gitxsan community, I had to invite a local medicine person in to the classroom to teach about these medicines, since I may not have the authority to teach this sacred material to my class as a white woman.  I learned a lot about how to approach teaching sacred topics from a culture which is not my own.  My CT was upset at the speaker for using the word “God” quite a bit in his speech.  I learned that next time I could raise my hand and ask, “When you say God, do you mean the Creator?”.  She was worried that kids might think he meant a Christian God and I learned not to assume the kids knew what the speaker was referring to.  Next time I definitely would invite a speaker in again if I have the chance and will do my best to use the Indigenous resource center for all Indigenous learning.

I came back from the last practicum with a sense that I am moving forward in my learning and ability to become a teacher.  I worked at MGA in Hazelton with grade 6-7 students.  There were many absences because of COVID unfortunately, but luckily I made it with the students that did attend.  We had a lot of fun together.  We played soccer in gym as well as some theatre games.  In science I did a unit on the respiratory system.  In ELA I did a unit on the book Wonder.  In math I taught about number lines and decimals.  In art class I did a lesson on Jean Michel Basquiat as well as a puppet lesson.  I felt like I could have gone on much longer if the practicum had lasted longer.

There were a few high lights of the experience.  I brought in a guest speaker named Ross McRae and signed up to get him a mentor’s honorarium.  I brought in some animal organs and body parts.  I gathered a fetal pig from the high school science department.  In English I experimented with theatrical conventions in the classroom like teacher in role and tableau vivant.

I learned a lot about the students, their personalities and strengths.  There were several very artistic students who excelled whenever we did visual activities.  There were a few IEP students who struggled with reading, but were always excited about reading aloud to the class.  I had a student who was a dancer is the K’san dance troupe, and he turned out to excel at theatre and puppetry activities.

In general the students seemed to struggle with journal writing and it was difficult to get most of them to write more than a few sentences.  I did find, however, that when I offered an open-ended entry and told them they would get a ticket to gym if they wrote a full page, that almost all of the, succeeded.  I still wonder whether tickets to gym are a good way to motivate students, or whether the reward system skews the learning intention for them.

What:

I learned that the BC curriculum is pushing the Reconciliation agenda, but as teachers we need to push it further.  The education system in BC is inherently tied to the abuse of Indigenous peoples.  As teachers we have to think about the content we are teaching and make sure it is relevant and approachable for all students, but especially young Indigenous learners.  We must make certain that we are teaching a representative, multi-cultural history.

Why Does this Matter?:

This matters because in the past, schools have strongly represented a white history and have gaps where Indigenous history and culture ties in.  We should be teaching a living history that represents the real story of this land.  It matters because Indigenous culture is tied to this land, and if we teach from a European perspective, we are not touching our feet down on to this land.  We need to decolonize the classroom and take our students literally onto the land, giving them access to medicinal plant knowledge, art that speaks with nature, and music that sings to the world outside the classroom window.

Now What?:

I aim to decolonize the classroom in my future practice and in all of my practicums.  I tried to do this in my first practicum on Haida Gwaii and enjoyed the feeling of actively trying to decolonize dated mindsets of what teaching should look like.  I used talking circles in many of my lessons, and found that this method really grounded the students and made them focused in the moment.  We went outside often and did a long lesson about the meaning of the word “sacred”.  These are steps I have taken to decolonize, but I have a long way to go, and am excited to move decolonization further in my teaching.

My greatest influence to become a teacher was two teachers I had in high school.  My English teacher for grade 11-12 was Ms. Martin.  She taught me about concepts that would inspire me for the rest of my life.  Existentialism inspired me at that time quite deeply, and she taught this unit with a classic movie: “Harold and Maude.”  She reminisced about the beat poets speaking poetry aloud at City Lights books deeep into the night.  She inspired me to share Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” with the class.  I also remember teaching by using music to teach the lesson, using records by the Talking Heads and Pink Floyd.  Her teaching blended arts and humanities in a way that I aspire to do.

Mr. Vepraskas was my choir teacher in high school.  He took me under his wing, like a father.  He helped me out on a personal level when I was going through a difficult period in my life.  I will be forever grateful for his support and artistic inspiration.

My metaphor for teaching is a salt grinder.  The teacher is like a grinder, grinding the salt of the Earth from her students.  She brings their potential to life and inspires them to act.