The nine First People’s Principles of Learning (FPPL) were important for myself to embed in my practice, as they provide a holistic and inclusive view of learning and education as well as pay homage to the original peoples and cultures that inhabited this place before we did. In all of my lessons I believe I successfully applied these principles, as they often have more to do with viewpoint and attitude of the teacher and students than any specific content or instruction. As such we fostered attitudes of continual learning and self-improvement, connectedness, empathy and respect as well as inclusivity in our classroom. As we journeyed through our lessons I often chose one of these principles to explicitly state and focus on for the course of a lesson.
One example of this was during a physical education lesson on eagles. The students were learning a traditional Git’xsan nation eagle dance. I made sure the students understood that this was a privilege to learn this dance as it was sacred to that community, as well as acknowledging that I was not a part of that community and could only teach them this dance with the permission of one of my Git’xsan friends, from whom I had learned the dance. The students understood the importance of this, but were still able to have fun, and frequently asked to do the eagle dance over the course of our unit.