Equity Circle 1
This workshop was important in terms of learning about residential schools but also that all teacher play a role in truth and reconciliation and as teachers we need to educate ourselves on what truth means because we can move to reconciliation. We need to teach our students that as well. Without understanding the truth, we can’t effectively and appropriately tackle reconciliation and our students need to be aware of that. This workshop made me even more aware of the learning that I still need to do in order to feel comfortable teaching truth and reconciliation. I still feel slightly uncomfortable teaching it and integrating it into my teaching, but I think after this workshop I was encouraged to educate myself so that I could feel more comfortable.
Equity Circle 2
This workshop was also a very important piece of my learning from my first year of the education program. One of our professors Christie was able to get another Equity circle meeting set up with Roxanne, and we were even able to hear from Auntie Trish. This Equity circle meeting was different from the last, and it was even more encouraging and valuable. Auntie Trish shared stories from her childhood and how the residential schools affected her and her family. She talked a lot about the impacts it had on her mother, as well as her future in taking her grandchildren to school. It was a great reminder that somethings take longer to heal than others and as teachers to Indigenous students and other students, we need to be mindful of what parents and guardians are feeling before we invite them into our classroom. It was also a great workshop for discussion how to get parents engaged and involved in their child’s learning. The importance of parents in a child’s learning is very impactful and it needs to be done well, and as teachers its out job to involve parents with what is happening in the classroom as much as we can. I took a lot away from this workshop and it left me with a lot of thoughts on how I can be a better teacher and how parents can be a bigger part of the classroom.
Nan Stevens Presentation
We had the opportunity this year to listen to Dr. Nan Stevens present on her research on inclusive education and it was a great opportunity for us to learn about what is happening in schools and how we can help all learned. It was also a good reminder that school is not just for learning, there are far more socialization pieces to learning at a school building. Nan spoke a lot about goals and the individual goals of every child. She research consists of case studies and that is an excellent way to learn and teach about inclusive education because every student has their own needs and goal and they can’t be put in categories. This presentation hit home for me because I have a couple sibling with disabilities who have specialized education plans and they have similar stories to the ones Nan was speaking about. I learned a lot in this presentation about how we need to be aware and get to know every single student and we need to have plans in place and ideas of how to make every single student successful in their own way.