During the Indigenous Day of Learning, I was able to watch the opening remarks, the keynote speaker Ashley Callingbull, and elected to watch Keynote session A on living sustainably during a time of climate change with Nikki Sanchez. All speakers were excellent, but I will choose here to focus on Keynote speaker Ashley Callingbull. Ashley’s talk was about her story from being a young child to the present and the trials and obstacles she had to overcome in her life to not just succeed but survive. One of the First Peoples’ Principles of Learning (FPPLs) is that learning is embedded in memory, history, and story. I think that Ashley’s story was a strong representation of this FPPL because it provided a connection to her message on a far more personal level—one that appears to naturally induce an empathetic response to the listeners. Often, we as a society are told or shown facts, statistics, and provocative headlines in attempts to bring attention to a cause, but this often results in an ideological division amongst people because the context is unspecific, and we often have preconceived biases. Ashley’s story told a message that we the audience could connect to and therefore the impact was meaningful because it was relatable on a human, rather than an ideological, level. I think the more we treat and view one another as human beings who each have stories and experiences, rather than as ideas, the father we will move forward together.
Month: September 2021
I have completed a list of personal goals based on the nine BCTC education standards for the upcoming final practicum; however, it wasn’t until I reread my list of goals that I recognized how not a single one was discrete—they are interconnected. Reading my goals clarified an idea that educational systems function in an organismic fashion. Currently, I am considered a student teacher (or teacher candidate) and as such, there is an implication that I am there to both learn and demonstrate competence under professional guidance and assessment. But there’s more—the students I am to teach are not “practice students,” they are really people who deserve a real education, and thus, my actions exceed myself. And how about what I know, what I understand, and what I can do? My experiences, personality and knowledge are somewhat unique by the path through life I have taken up to this point. So, I also bring something new—and hopefully valuable—to ALL who I interact with, regardless of how big or small the impact. The interactions I experience lead must lead to some degree of influence and that influence may spread implicitly or explicating, transforming through communities as it goes with a memetic characteristic. What pressure! But also comfort because it is not about me, nor anyone else—it must be about us all: students, parents, family, teachers, school community staff, local community, land, country, world, people, and the past, present, and future.