The decolonization of education and recentering Indigenous knowledges and worldviews is necessary to ensure the success of every student.
Why I think this value is important
This value is important to me because the entire 200-year history of the "Western Eurocentric" models of learning have sought to reinforce the superiority of one way of knowing, one way of learning (a way that was and still is racist, sexist, classist, and ablest). This system ensures the success and social progress of the privileged few and reinforces and maintains the social inequalities that serve to oppress everyone else. This can be not be more strongly stated than when it comes to Canada's history of educating First Nations, Metis, and Inuit students a well as in how we have (and do) educate non-Indigenous students about Canada's colonial (and precolonial) history.
It has only been within the last couple of decades that we (educators, administrators, etc.) have seriously considered the truth these historical and pedagogical injustices and the impact they have on the present-day lived experiences of our students. Furthermore, it has only been within the last couple of years (2022/2023) that we have come to the realization and understanding that these knowledges and ways of knowing and learning cannot simply be optional/elective or left to the periphery of units of study that still privilege Western Eurocentric knowledge and history. It was in response to this necessity that the BC Ministry of Education revised the graduation requirements for BC students to include at least one Indigenous-Focused course at the Grade 10-12 level (a change that I whole-heartedly support).
How this has informed my teaching practice
In addition to decolonizing the content of my courses, I have committed to decolonizing my approaches in how I teach (including assessment, classroom management, and establishing maintaining positive relationships with my students) through the consistent and purposeful use of Indigenous-informed tools and frameworks such as the First Peoples Principles of Learning and the Circle of Courage.
For me and my teaching practice, this is not just simply "best practice" (as if we always knew that this was the right way to approach teaching and learning) but also my acknowledgement that these ways of understanding learning were Indigenous first and built upon a foundation of thousands of years (really, TENS of thousands of years in many cases) of practice and refinement (that we tried to destroy--unsuccessfully--through ill-informed and intentionally racist policies like the Indian Act, Indian Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and the current overrepresentation of Indigenous children in government care and Indigenous adults in provincial and federal prisons).
Decolonizing the content of my classes and how I teach ensures the success of all of my students in their personal and professional futures where this knowledge will be necessary, and where answers of "I didn't know" or "That was a long time ago" will be no longer tolerated.
To learn more about how I decolonize my teaching practice, feel free to refer to: Learning Through Decolonization.
This value is important to me because the entire 200-year history of the "Western Eurocentric" models of learning have sought to reinforce the superiority of one way of knowing, one way of learning (a way that was and still is racist, sexist, classist, and ablest). This system ensures the success and social progress of the privileged few and reinforces and maintains the social inequalities that serve to oppress everyone else. This can be not be more strongly stated than when it comes to Canada's history of educating First Nations, Metis, and Inuit students a well as in how we have (and do) educate non-Indigenous students about Canada's colonial (and precolonial) history.
It has only been within the last couple of decades that we (educators, administrators, etc.) have seriously considered the truth these historical and pedagogical injustices and the impact they have on the present-day lived experiences of our students. Furthermore, it has only been within the last couple of years (2022/2023) that we have come to the realization and understanding that these knowledges and ways of knowing and learning cannot simply be optional/elective or left to the periphery of units of study that still privilege Western Eurocentric knowledge and history. It was in response to this necessity that the BC Ministry of Education revised the graduation requirements for BC students to include at least one Indigenous-Focused course at the Grade 10-12 level (a change that I whole-heartedly support).
How this has informed my teaching practice
In addition to decolonizing the content of my courses, I have committed to decolonizing my approaches in how I teach (including assessment, classroom management, and establishing maintaining positive relationships with my students) through the consistent and purposeful use of Indigenous-informed tools and frameworks such as the First Peoples Principles of Learning and the Circle of Courage.
For me and my teaching practice, this is not just simply "best practice" (as if we always knew that this was the right way to approach teaching and learning) but also my acknowledgement that these ways of understanding learning were Indigenous first and built upon a foundation of thousands of years (really, TENS of thousands of years in many cases) of practice and refinement (that we tried to destroy--unsuccessfully--through ill-informed and intentionally racist policies like the Indian Act, Indian Residential Schools, the Sixties Scoop, and the current overrepresentation of Indigenous children in government care and Indigenous adults in provincial and federal prisons).
Decolonizing the content of my classes and how I teach ensures the success of all of my students in their personal and professional futures where this knowledge will be necessary, and where answers of "I didn't know" or "That was a long time ago" will be no longer tolerated.
To learn more about how I decolonize my teaching practice, feel free to refer to: Learning Through Decolonization.
The highest purpose of education is to inspire inquiry, critical-thinking, and the creation of new ideas.
Why I think this value is important
This value is important to me because I know the world that my students will need to navigate when they leave my classroom. Frankly, they are navigating it before they even walk into my classroom. All of my students have access to the internet and many of my students will have all the answers to every question they could ever think of in the pocket of their pants.
As a teacher, I feel that I am not a gatekeeper of knowledge. All the information I can give my students they can easily find on the internet without leaving the comfort of their beds. My responsibility is to teach thinking and to help my students develop the skills that they need to discern fact from fiction and bias. I want my students to be able to identify the meanings and "truths" that are being presented to them and decide for themselves whether or not they actually buy what is being sold.
Finally, I want my students to develop their own sense of agency as "meaning makers." I want them to find value in their voices, expression, and ideas. I believe that a prime example of a failed democracy is when you have a electorate full of people who decide not to vote because they either have not taken the time to actually examine and formulate an opinion about the issues on which the politicians are campaigning, or they have decided that their voice means nothing in the greater scheme of things and that they cannot change anything.
This is what I hope to remedy through the use of creative expression in my teaching practice.
How this has informed my teaching practice
If we allow them to, students will place a very high value on their creative work (possibly even more so than their "academic work") because it is their personal expression and it demands that they put a little piece of themselves into their work (to an extent that isn't as profound in academic work). For this reason, I actually try to create a sense of balance between the creative work that I have my students do and the academic work that my students do; this way, my students understand that their personal expression is just as important as their ability to paraphrase the arguments that we have been covering in class.
When I do give my students academic work, I try to ask them to access higher levels of thinking and find the deeper meanings in the texts that we are studying; often, this means that there is more than one "right answer" (in fact, there may be many) which means that they will need to access their own personal understanding of the meaning of the text and then support it with evidence. Being able to formulate an opinion about complex questions and big ideas is one of the skills that I want to facilitate in my students.
To learn about my use of creative work in my teaching practice, feel free to refer to: Learning Through Creating.
This value is important to me because I know the world that my students will need to navigate when they leave my classroom. Frankly, they are navigating it before they even walk into my classroom. All of my students have access to the internet and many of my students will have all the answers to every question they could ever think of in the pocket of their pants.
As a teacher, I feel that I am not a gatekeeper of knowledge. All the information I can give my students they can easily find on the internet without leaving the comfort of their beds. My responsibility is to teach thinking and to help my students develop the skills that they need to discern fact from fiction and bias. I want my students to be able to identify the meanings and "truths" that are being presented to them and decide for themselves whether or not they actually buy what is being sold.
Finally, I want my students to develop their own sense of agency as "meaning makers." I want them to find value in their voices, expression, and ideas. I believe that a prime example of a failed democracy is when you have a electorate full of people who decide not to vote because they either have not taken the time to actually examine and formulate an opinion about the issues on which the politicians are campaigning, or they have decided that their voice means nothing in the greater scheme of things and that they cannot change anything.
This is what I hope to remedy through the use of creative expression in my teaching practice.
How this has informed my teaching practice
If we allow them to, students will place a very high value on their creative work (possibly even more so than their "academic work") because it is their personal expression and it demands that they put a little piece of themselves into their work (to an extent that isn't as profound in academic work). For this reason, I actually try to create a sense of balance between the creative work that I have my students do and the academic work that my students do; this way, my students understand that their personal expression is just as important as their ability to paraphrase the arguments that we have been covering in class.
When I do give my students academic work, I try to ask them to access higher levels of thinking and find the deeper meanings in the texts that we are studying; often, this means that there is more than one "right answer" (in fact, there may be many) which means that they will need to access their own personal understanding of the meaning of the text and then support it with evidence. Being able to formulate an opinion about complex questions and big ideas is one of the skills that I want to facilitate in my students.
To learn about my use of creative work in my teaching practice, feel free to refer to: Learning Through Creating.
Learning is multifaceted and transmedial.
Why I think this value is important
My students live in a multimodal society. In addition to printed text, they also have televisions, computers, hand-held devices, and all sorts of visual and auditory stimuli that are all competing for their attention. This is often for the purpose of either trying to sell them something (in the monetary sense) or to "sell them something" in terms of a statement about life, society, and what they should accept as "the norm." While this issue strongly connects to the idea of thinking critically (which I touched upon in my previous point), I also think that in order for that to happen, specific instruction needs to take place so that students are not only literate in the traditional sense (being able to read and write) but also in the 21st Century sense (being able to engage with multiple media platforms in a critical way).
Aside from thinking critically about information presented in different media, taking a multimodal approach can serve to benefit instruction in general. To facilitate deeper thought about complex ideas, I have found it to be useful to present these ideas in different media from many different perspectives. Providing variety in the classroom also provides entry-points for creating meaning.
How this has informed my teaching practice
In my teaching practice, I have tried to include a variety of media and texts to engage students in conversations about the big ideas that we are exploring in the literature that we study. This has primarily included the use of musical and visual content. Additionally, I try to give the students opportunities to express their understanding using different media and modes of representation; this has usually resulted in visual and musical expression, but has also included kinesthetic as well. I have found that this has not only provided students with multiple entry-points for creating meaning, but has also allowed them to build connections between the artifacts that they create and the different media that we study with the texts that we are discussing in class.
To learn more about how I have use multiple media platforms to inform my teaching practice and assessment please check out: Learning Across Media.
My students live in a multimodal society. In addition to printed text, they also have televisions, computers, hand-held devices, and all sorts of visual and auditory stimuli that are all competing for their attention. This is often for the purpose of either trying to sell them something (in the monetary sense) or to "sell them something" in terms of a statement about life, society, and what they should accept as "the norm." While this issue strongly connects to the idea of thinking critically (which I touched upon in my previous point), I also think that in order for that to happen, specific instruction needs to take place so that students are not only literate in the traditional sense (being able to read and write) but also in the 21st Century sense (being able to engage with multiple media platforms in a critical way).
Aside from thinking critically about information presented in different media, taking a multimodal approach can serve to benefit instruction in general. To facilitate deeper thought about complex ideas, I have found it to be useful to present these ideas in different media from many different perspectives. Providing variety in the classroom also provides entry-points for creating meaning.
How this has informed my teaching practice
In my teaching practice, I have tried to include a variety of media and texts to engage students in conversations about the big ideas that we are exploring in the literature that we study. This has primarily included the use of musical and visual content. Additionally, I try to give the students opportunities to express their understanding using different media and modes of representation; this has usually resulted in visual and musical expression, but has also included kinesthetic as well. I have found that this has not only provided students with multiple entry-points for creating meaning, but has also allowed them to build connections between the artifacts that they create and the different media that we study with the texts that we are discussing in class.
To learn more about how I have use multiple media platforms to inform my teaching practice and assessment please check out: Learning Across Media.
Teachers must provide opportunities for the their students to make connections between what they are learning (text-to-text), their lives and experiences (text-to-life) and the world around them (text-to-world).
Why I think this value is important
This principle is primarily based on how I learn and find meaning in the world. I am constantly connecting new ideas with already existing ones; if my previously-held ideas don't match up with the old ones, then serious discernment takes place until all is right and some sort of equilibrium has been reestablished in my brain. As you have probably observed in my About Me page, I have had a variety of learning experiences in my lifetime in a variety of different environments and disciplines. Because I am so readily able to access that knowledge and those experiences, it becomes easier for me to provide a framework that I can then apply to new ideas.
For this reason, I consider "connection-building" to be an important literacy skill that I like to develop in my students. When they are presented with new material, any chance I can give them to "skip a step" when it comes to facilitating meaning and understanding is a chance that I want to give them.
How this has informed my teaching practice
Connection-building in my classroom has come in the form of "text-to-text," "text-to-self," and "text-to-world" connections. I find that creating connections between texts that we have studied makes the texts more relevant to the students because it allows the texts to represent larger ideas (rather than isolated incidences without context or meaning outside of themselves). Text-to-self connections come in the form of asking the students to address what they already know or opinions they already have about a given topic; this is a form of "accessing prior knowledge" that puts texts and concepts into a context and framework that the student already possesses. Finally, text-to-world connection in my classroom usually came in the form of social justice themes because these are themes that can be use to clearly connect what we are learning and reading to their impacts on society, our values, and how we treat each other and the world around us.
You will probably find more than one "connection-building" example on this site, but I have also provided a specific example in: Learning By Making Connections.
This principle is primarily based on how I learn and find meaning in the world. I am constantly connecting new ideas with already existing ones; if my previously-held ideas don't match up with the old ones, then serious discernment takes place until all is right and some sort of equilibrium has been reestablished in my brain. As you have probably observed in my About Me page, I have had a variety of learning experiences in my lifetime in a variety of different environments and disciplines. Because I am so readily able to access that knowledge and those experiences, it becomes easier for me to provide a framework that I can then apply to new ideas.
For this reason, I consider "connection-building" to be an important literacy skill that I like to develop in my students. When they are presented with new material, any chance I can give them to "skip a step" when it comes to facilitating meaning and understanding is a chance that I want to give them.
How this has informed my teaching practice
Connection-building in my classroom has come in the form of "text-to-text," "text-to-self," and "text-to-world" connections. I find that creating connections between texts that we have studied makes the texts more relevant to the students because it allows the texts to represent larger ideas (rather than isolated incidences without context or meaning outside of themselves). Text-to-self connections come in the form of asking the students to address what they already know or opinions they already have about a given topic; this is a form of "accessing prior knowledge" that puts texts and concepts into a context and framework that the student already possesses. Finally, text-to-world connection in my classroom usually came in the form of social justice themes because these are themes that can be use to clearly connect what we are learning and reading to their impacts on society, our values, and how we treat each other and the world around us.
You will probably find more than one "connection-building" example on this site, but I have also provided a specific example in: Learning By Making Connections.
Teaching practice must be informed by the social and emotional well-being and growth of the students.
Why I think this value is important
"In the future, everything that can be routinized, codified, and dissected will eventually be done by machines. Social and emotional intelligence is what humans are uniquely good at--at least for the next decade or two."
This is an interesting quotation that a friend of mine shared on Facebook a while back. It is from The Nature of the Future, by Marina Gorbis. This really speaks to why I feel that social and emotional learning are important skills for our students to learn. So much human and "face-to-face" interaction has been replaced by computers and machines; we can no longer assume that our students will intuitively learn important social skills on their own as we might have when we were their age. All the knowledge in the world will not help our students if they cannot comfortably work with others in a socially-acceptable way. If they cannot work with their co-workers, colleagues, or customers, they will simply be fired.
How this has informed my teaching practice
I develope the social-emotional competencies of my students primarily through meaningful group work. In these assignments, I made a point to make sure that there was a balance between the autonomy of the group member (meaning that each member has a job that they are responsible for) as well as accountability to the group (a group mark that informs the final mark of all group members. I emphasize that the process is just as important as the final product; if your group created a masterpiece but squabbled with each other the whole time and needed to throw it together at the last minute, you will not be getting a good mark on this assignment.
For examples on how I used cooperative learning in my teaching practice, please refer to: Learning in Community: Cooperative Learning.
"In the future, everything that can be routinized, codified, and dissected will eventually be done by machines. Social and emotional intelligence is what humans are uniquely good at--at least for the next decade or two."
This is an interesting quotation that a friend of mine shared on Facebook a while back. It is from The Nature of the Future, by Marina Gorbis. This really speaks to why I feel that social and emotional learning are important skills for our students to learn. So much human and "face-to-face" interaction has been replaced by computers and machines; we can no longer assume that our students will intuitively learn important social skills on their own as we might have when we were their age. All the knowledge in the world will not help our students if they cannot comfortably work with others in a socially-acceptable way. If they cannot work with their co-workers, colleagues, or customers, they will simply be fired.
How this has informed my teaching practice
I develope the social-emotional competencies of my students primarily through meaningful group work. In these assignments, I made a point to make sure that there was a balance between the autonomy of the group member (meaning that each member has a job that they are responsible for) as well as accountability to the group (a group mark that informs the final mark of all group members. I emphasize that the process is just as important as the final product; if your group created a masterpiece but squabbled with each other the whole time and needed to throw it together at the last minute, you will not be getting a good mark on this assignment.
For examples on how I used cooperative learning in my teaching practice, please refer to: Learning in Community: Cooperative Learning.
The development of character and moral reasoning must be integrated into teaching practice.
Why I think this value is important
Social justice is something that I have always been passionate about. As a teacher, I think it is important to teach my students how to view the literature that we study in class (as well as what the read/view outside of class) through a social justice lens and recognize how race, gender identify/expression, sexual orientation, race, class, the whole gambit of "social signifiers" are represented and addressed. This is especially important when it comes to exploring popular media because any time commercialism and mass production is involved, every time that someone makes a work of art that is intended for popular consumption, they are making a statement about "normalcy" that is intended to reach the largest number of people (who will then hopefully buy what they are selling). I want my students to really think deeply when it comes to these questions and decide if they are really going to "buy" these ideals that are being sold to them. I also believe that discussing these issues in the classroom empowers the students to take action and to discover their identities as agents of social change.
How this has informed my teaching practice
I manage to find a "social justice angle" with each of my classes.. In varying degrees, this process involved exploring what they already knew and connecting that with what they were being presented with in the text that we were studying. Finally, the students were able to respond (either creatively or academically) and articulate how/if their understanding changed.
I have posted an example of such an assignment in Learning in Community: Social Justice.
Social justice is something that I have always been passionate about. As a teacher, I think it is important to teach my students how to view the literature that we study in class (as well as what the read/view outside of class) through a social justice lens and recognize how race, gender identify/expression, sexual orientation, race, class, the whole gambit of "social signifiers" are represented and addressed. This is especially important when it comes to exploring popular media because any time commercialism and mass production is involved, every time that someone makes a work of art that is intended for popular consumption, they are making a statement about "normalcy" that is intended to reach the largest number of people (who will then hopefully buy what they are selling). I want my students to really think deeply when it comes to these questions and decide if they are really going to "buy" these ideals that are being sold to them. I also believe that discussing these issues in the classroom empowers the students to take action and to discover their identities as agents of social change.
How this has informed my teaching practice
I manage to find a "social justice angle" with each of my classes.. In varying degrees, this process involved exploring what they already knew and connecting that with what they were being presented with in the text that we were studying. Finally, the students were able to respond (either creatively or academically) and articulate how/if their understanding changed.
I have posted an example of such an assignment in Learning in Community: Social Justice.