Cross-Curricular Reflexive Writing 1 (Block1)

            What is the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion? This ques­tion was posed to me dur­ing my first week of class­es at UNBC’s region­al Bach­e­lors of Edu­ca­tion pro­gram.  To answer this ques­tion, one must con­sid­er the edu­ca­tion­al phi­los­o­phy and teach­ing goals of the edu­ca­tor.  Until recent­ly, I have been teach­ing Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage (ESL) in Japan, so my pri­ma­ry teach­ing goals were to help my stu­dents improve their Eng­lish lit­er­a­cy and to moti­vate them for self-study beyond my class­room.  Improv­ing their lit­er­a­cy was a chal­lenge because the avail­able teach­ing time I had for my stu­dents was quite lim­it­ed thanks to their extra-cur­ric­u­lar class­es being held only once a week.  To help moti­vate my stu­dents to self-learn, I did my utmost to cre­ate an open and inclu­sive class­room using cir­cle shar­ing and friend­ly greet­ings and I pro­vid­ed them with mean­ing­ful praise for their efforts along their learn­ing path. 

            I was tak­en aback when I first learned of the edu­ca­tion­al goals of Canada’s his­tor­i­cal school sys­tems, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to their present forms.  While there are shared edu­ca­tion­al goals such as teach­ing numer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy, the main edu­ca­tion­al agen­da of his­tor­i­cal Canada’s school sys­tem was vast­ly dif­fer­ent and had dire con­se­quences for minori­ties.  I was shocked to see how ingrained it was to assim­i­late all cul­tur­al peo­ples in Cana­da, to con­vert to Chris­t­ian Eng­lish cul­ture.  In Lord Durham’s Report of 1839, he referred to Low­er Canada’s fran­coph­o­ne Catholic cit­i­zens as “habi­tants” and imply­ing that they held a low­er class of cit­i­zen­ship. More­over, with the intro­duc­tion of mass school­ing in 1850s, came sys­temic attempts to assim­i­late any such minori­ties resid­ing out­side of Que­bec (Karen, 2019).  I dis­cov­ered more injus­tices in Canada’s edu­ca­tion­al his­to­ry, such as the seg­re­gat­ed schools for Black, Chi­nese and Japan­ese Cana­di­ans. I was appalled to learn that the last of our nation’s Black seg­re­gat­ed schools only closed in 1983, in Guys­bor­ough, Nova Sco­tia (Karen, 2019).

            How­ev­er, for me, the most trag­ic group of peo­ple tar­get­ed for assim­i­la­tion were the Indige­nous Peo­ples of Cana­da, who were infa­mous­ly forced into board­ing Chris­t­ian res­i­den­tial schools.  The goal of cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al assim­i­la­tion for First Nations peo­ples was Cana­di­an edu­ca­tion­al pol­i­cy that start­ed in 1870s and end­ed only recent­ly, when the last Indi­an res­i­den­tial school closed in 1996 (Union of Ontario Indi­ans, 2013, p. 2).  Giv­en the dark under­tones of Canada’s past edu­ca­tion­al agen­da, I was relieved to see how Canada’s cur­rent edu­ca­tion­al pri­or­i­ties have shift­ed. The B.C. cur­ricu­lum now embraces the First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ples of Learn­ing (FPPL), in addi­tion to the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards of B.C. Edu­ca­tors, when prepar­ing teacher can­di­dates like myself.  It is thanks to learn­ing about the FPPL that I have become more aware of the cul­tures and shared learn­ing prin­ci­ples of the First Nations. I hope as we adopt these learn­ing prin­ci­ples in the class­room that we can come clos­er to achiev­ing Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion for the Indige­nous peo­ples in Cana­da. Soci­etal shifts in opin­ion and pol­i­cy often take time, but such change can only begin when we have the courage to have an open and respect­ful dis­cus­sion. I find such dis­course typ­i­cal­ly starts in the class­room or in aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles and in media such as TED talks. 

            As an edu­ca­tor, I hope to mod­el and encour­age my stu­dents to become pos­i­tive agents of social change in the future.  I am not sure if I sup­port the social recon­struc­tion­ism per­spec­tive, as I want my stu­dents to decide for them­selves how and if they wish to change soci­ety. To help them achieve their goals, I would like to learn teach­ing method­olo­gies to devel­op their the crit­i­cal-think­ing skills and instill a sense of empa­thy.  Inspired by the FPPL, I real­ize that if I want my stu­dents to be skilled at soci­etal change, I must strive to give my stu­dents a more holis­tic, reflec­tive and expe­ri­en­tial form of learn­ing in the class­room. It is impor­tant for peo­ple to be sol­id their own iden­ti­ty and still respect and val­ues rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ships.  To do this, going for­ward I must begin to shift away from rely­ing on only tra­di­tion­al teach­ing method­olo­gies and class­room man­age­ment tech­niques, and begin to rethink as to how should I teach, con­sid­er what my teach­ing goals are, and reflect on what my per­son­al edu­ca­tion­al phi­los­o­phy is.

             I have always tried to be flex­i­ble and prac­ti­cal in my style of teach­ing, but I have nev­er real­ly reflect­ed on such ques­tions of edu­ca­tion­al phi­los­o­phy until now.  I am begin­ning to see a broad­er pic­ture about class­room edu­ca­tion, and this has chal­lenged me to reflect on which onto­log­i­cal frame­work and teach­ing phi­los­o­phy suits me.  In terms of onto­log­i­cal per­spec­tives, I find myself grav­i­tat­ing towards prag­ma­tism, where expe­ri­enc­ing and observ­ing the ever-chang­ing world helps me process and under­stand it bet­ter.  When teach­ing ESL, I often start with a tra­di­tion­al essen­tial­ism root­ed instruc­tion­al meth­ods like mem­o­riza­tion, or sen­tence sub­sti­tu­tion drills as it helps to save time.  How­ev­er, once my stu­dents have mas­tered using the new sen­tence struc­tures, I try to have them use it in a prac­ti­cal man­ner. By per­son­al­iz­ing the new­ly taught tar­get lan­guage, I find that it is more mean­ing­ful and mem­o­rable to them. 

        For class­room man­age­ment, I con­stant­ly use pos­i­tive rein­force­ment and this is crit­i­cal for stu­dent moti­va­tion. By mod­el­ing kind­ness and patience, my stu­dents feel at ease and can express them­selves freely with­out feel­ing ashamed about mak­ing “mis­takes” in the class­room.  I like to think that there are no mis­takes, only learn­ing moments. There is a tac­it shared under­stand­ing in my class­room to always show respect to one anoth­er.  Although I did not real­ize it at the time, anoth­er way in which I help to cre­ate an inclu­sive learn­ing envi­ron­ment is by intu­itive­ly imple­ment­ing the First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ple of Learn­ing which states, “that some knowl­edge is sacred and shared only with per­mis­sion and/or in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions” (First Nations Edu­ca­tion Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, n.d).  In line with this prin­ci­ple, respect­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of my high school stu­dents, allowed them to speak their mind, know­ing that what they said was kept con­fi­den­tial and allowed for a deep­er, truth­ful and respect­ful dis­course between us.

            As I progress in my course­work and begin to see a broad­er pic­ture regard­ing edu­ca­tion, I real­ize that to fol­low the First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ples of Learn­ing, I must also gain a bet­ter cul­tur­al under­stand­ing of my stu­dents and the local com­mu­ni­ty of where I am to teach.  This will be imper­a­tive if I am to build rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ships and fos­ter a con­nect­ed­ness with my stu­dents.  I must also be mind­ful to fol­low the edu­ca­tion­al stan­dards set forth by the B.C. Teach­ers Coun­cil, espe­cial­ly the fourth stan­dard that states, “Edu­ca­tors val­ue the involve­ment and sup­port of par­ents, guardians, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties in schools” (Gov­ern­ment of British Colum­bia, n.d.).  I look for­ward to my obser­va­tion­al practicum so that I can see first­hand, how these prin­ci­ples and stan­dards are applied in prac­tice.  I am sure that they will help guide me to become a bet­ter teacher. 

                                                            Ref­er­ences.

First Nations Edu­ca­tion Steer­ing Com­mit­tee. (n.d). First Peo­ples Prin­ci­ples of Learning.

            FNESC. Retrieved from https://fnesc.app.box.com/s/vk9ovfe78fxo3qji3sw9r12ru562cyt4
Gov­ern­ment of British Colum­bia. (n.d.). Stan­dards for B.C. Edu­ca­tors. Retrieved from
            https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teacher-    

            regulation/standards-for-educators/edu_standards.pdf
Rob­son, K. L. (2019). Soci­ol­o­gy of Edu­ca­tion in Cana­da. Press­books. Retrieved from
            https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/robsonsoced/.

Union of Ontario Indi­ans. (2013). An Overview of the Indi­an Res­i­den­tial School Sys­tem.

Cre­ative Impres­sions. Retrieved from https://www.anishinabek.ca/wp-content/uploads/
            2016/07/An-Overview-of-the-IRS-System-Booklet.pdf