Yesterday I had the pleasure and privilege of attending district 91’s professional development day with a focus on indigenizing education with keynote speakers Monique-Gray Smith and Dr. Dustin Louie. Listening to Monique share her stories about how her books came to be and the struggles she fought through to be where she is was truly inspiring, and her focus on making indigenous perspectives known through story is beautiful. Of all she said though there was one point in particular that stood out for me. She said that we, as educators, have the ability and duty to speak to a child’s future. In her culture, by telling those younger than ourselves the vision we see for them opens a pathway of possibility for them to explore in the future. As educators, we must remember the influence we have on our students, the paths of possibilities we can open up for them if we believe in their potential and talents. To me, this responsibility is one that I will carry in my heart with the utmost honour, and I hope to speak to the heart of my students about their endless possibilities.

Dustin Louie was equally as inspiring, as he sought to show us how indigenizing education was not only essential, but really accessible as well. He pointed out some of the western views so firmly entrenched in the education system of today that we don’t even think to question whether they may be harmful. The most poignant of these is perhaps our view on how learning progresses. In the west we often view learning as a straight line, in which upon learning one thing we can push forward and build upon that knowledge to reach new places. Sounds pretty standard and logical, right? Well, when presented with in indigenous view that knowledge must be revisited, in a cyclical cycle rather than a linear one, it looks almost naive to have held the western view. In our world of constant change, the knowledge we have is constantly being challenged and changed in the ever-shifting landscape around us. To keep ourselves in check, we must often revisit the knowledge that we think we have to ensure it is still correct and to further ingrain it in ourselves if it still holds true. This is how knowledge was passed down through generations of indigenous people of Canada, through the cyclical cycle of storytelling. When we teach our students something we must be prepared to let them revisit this knowledge, so that they may gain deeper understanding of the subject, and to challenge its veracity. In doing this we create a life-long learner who is always prepared to challenge their own beliefs to further their understanding.

Lastly, I also wanted to touch on the amazing session of Leona Prince that I attended. She sought to show us how part of indigenizing education is by making sure we include experiential learning in our classroom, no matter the subject. By connecting coding with the indigenous tradition of beading we were able to spell out names or messages on a bracelet or necklace. We were involved, using our hands, and learning new technology through traditional practice, it was truly incredible! One more thing that she said that really stuck with me was her own understanding of oral traditions using a computer metaphor. She said that the ancestors are like the cloud, we may not know how it works, but all our historical knowledge is stored there and we can access it if we know how, our own brain is like a hard drive, where we can store a limited amount of information, but we can download new information from the cloud by listening to our elders or being in tune with the world around us, and one day we will upload our information to the cloud when we become the ancestors. Lastly, other people are also hard drives full of information they’ve gathered, and we can file share our information with each other by sharing stories with each other. It was a mind-blowing revelation of a new way of looking at things!

Overall the conference was a complete success and it was well worth attending, I look forward to bringing these learnings into my future classrooms to share with students of my own!