Presentation by: Audrey Sargent, Amy Perreault
Session: C | Time: 10:05AM – 10:45AM | Location: Room 200
In our teaching practice, we bring our own attitudes and strengths to the classroom environment. While working within systems that are negotiating ways to improve the classroom climate for Indigenous students and those learning about Indigenous histories, perspectives and contemporary realities such as the impacts of residential schools, we would like to explore ways to do this that can have a lasting impact for learners. This session will explore ways that practitioners are creating professional learning environments that enable them to reflect on who they are and where they are coming from and how this has informed their best practices.
As educators we are encouraged to start teaching Indigenous education whether we know a little or a lot. Currently the focus has turned to residential schools, while this is important, it can’t become the sole focus that overshadows the culture itself. Indigenous education and culture is much more.
This session will explore ideas that can facilitate deep learning through explorations of positionality, place and the geographical, social and historical contexts all embedded within classroom learning and teaching. As part of this roundtable discussion we will explore the following questions:
How do we move beyond bringing awareness about residential schools so that students are inspired to learn more of the complex culture, and Indigenous ways of knowing without diminishing the importance of residential school?
What shifts in attitudes are required to undertake this process in a critical and thoughtful way and how might this best be supported?
Abstract: 584