July 22nd, 2019

Today was a great first experience to Ed Camps. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to engage in discussions around Indigenous Education.

Meeting and collaborating with colleagues with similar interests or areas of expertise made for meaningful conversation and a great opportunity to think more about what our Med projects may look like, as well as make connections for future conversations.

People were able to share some of their resources and people to follow on Twitter.

I am particularly interested in looking at how we can implement indigenous education across curricular subjects in our everyday practice. As I shared with the group, I feel like the school district that I work in (SD52) is rich with indigenous culture and the appropriate supports to ensure that we are able to see this idea fully realized, yet despite the wealth of knowledge, indigenous experts and access to incredible resources this is not the current reality.

In looking at this area, I am curious about the following questions to explore:

What are the perceived barriers?

What is the general culture of the institution? I would be really curious to see what our school staff would perceive as the obvious barriers to using indigenous education in their everyday practice.

As Christine Younghusband pointed out that changes are difficult and often met with contention as we often don’t understand the “why” in what we are doing. She also talked about the concept of reconciliation which stayed with me. This idea that we cannot fully achieve reconciliation as well as a level of empathy and understanding if we are not yet in a place of acknowledging the truth.

I look forward to exploring this topic further.