This month, my school district is hosting 2 focus days to put colleagues into dialogue with a focus on STEAM learning, educational tech, and/or the First People’s Principle’s of Learning. It also happens to be the very first focus day in which I will be a presenter rather than a passive consumer.
The keynote for this session was hosted by Dr. Tsnomot Brad Baker, a member of the Squamish nation, who is the Superintendent of Indigenous Education for the Ministry of Education and the Superintendent of Appeals. With the focus of Indigenous education, the major point he wanted to convey was to respect each other’s place in their journey of un-learning and re-learning of our collective history in terms of how we are connected to the Indigenous communities that have lived on these lands since time in memoriam. With this idea in mind, Dr. Baker made it very clear that equity for the Indigenous is and has been different for all. He brought in the example of how for a while, Indigenous education was only delivered to identified students, and the non-identified students were lucky to get a mention of Indigenous culture or history. In our system today, especially with the integration of the first people’s principle’s of learning and our province’s commitment to making that knowledge available to all, there have been strides to true equity.
Throughout the keynote, Dr. Baker posed 4 anchoring questions:
- Do you know who you are? How vulnerable are you being with students? Do you know your collective history? – students can tell when you are not being genuine with them
- With the understanding of who we are, how do we change?
- What is our role in udnerstanding?
- What should we know and what should we do?
One major hesitation Dr. Baker said that he often came across were teachers were afraid to teach Indigenous education in their classes because they were not of the culture and didn’t have a lot of resources. To this he pondered, why is this an accepted excuse for inaction when many non-Jewish teachers willingly and passionately teach about the Holocaust? Both are often different cultures and worldviews of the teachers who deliver the content, but one worldview is valued as more acceptable to take on. He encouraged all of us to take on a different worldview, and see where the learning takes our students. We have the resources that educate us on literature, songs, art, ceremony, and traditions, it’s our responsibility to use them. Dr. Baker left us with the encouraging words that our Indigenous Education program was more than what he received growing up, more than what his children learned in their school years, and his grandchildren have been receiving the education more in line with what we should all strive for. Our actions will impact the next 7 generations, and it is not too late to make a difference. The difference we make must be apparent on the inside, just as much as it is on the outside.
Dr. Baker gave me a lot to think about, especially when it comes to how I blend Indigenous education into my courses. I find that I do not get to explicitly teach to Indigenous education in the ways that classroom teachers do, but I do try to find tech resources that can make space for representation, such as the Pacific NW Coast Experience in Minecraft. When I think about how I teach, I do recognize that I use some of the first people’s principles of learning, like “learning takes patience and time,” “recognizing the consequences of one’s actions,” and “is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational”. I don’t often explicitly label it for myself or my students, but maybe that’s my first step to embracing a different worldview lies. I should make my teaching methods more visible for my students, so they see that the first people’s principles of learning isn’t just a poster all the teachers put on their wall, but a call to action we are all trying to embody. As I have been engrossing myself in more of the makerspace side of my computer science curriculum, such as 3D printing and laser cutting, there is nothing stopping me from teaching my students how to use these tools with an Indigenous application to them, such as printing Indigenous math manipulatives. There is a serious need for these shapes to assist in our school’s math curriculum, so why not task the students to create some to contribute to the whole school’s shared understanding? I’d like to connect with my school district’s tech team, and the Indigenous education department to see if there are any resources they recommend, or point me in the direction of where I can be better educated on these shapes. There aren’t as many tech-related resources, so it is my responsibility to fill that gap as best I can.
Last year, I brought the Pacific NW Coast Experience in Minecraft to two of my classes to great success. When I heard that version 2.0 was in development, I was so excited to attend the workshop. Gavin Hanna is one of the support teachers on the School District 43 STEAM team, and Rob Cowie is the School District 43 Indigenous Resource Teacher. I have heard them speak before in the years past and they were the teachers who launched version 1.0 of this activity this past school year. I was curious to see what the new improvements to the world would be. As someone who is still on their learning journey to understand more about the local Indigenous people pre and post contact, I wasn’t sure what else could be added that was not only historically accurate, but also within the limitations of the game.
The Pacific NW Coast Experience was built in collaboration with School District 43, the local Kwikwetlem community, Logics Academy, and Microsoft Minecraft Education. It has learners placed in a pre-contact Indigenous village in which they must help the community with daily life, such as stripping bark, smoking salmon, harvesting, and gardening. With each villager interaction, there are build challenges attached in which students take the learning at the village to build a neighbouring community in line with the traditions and customs they learn. Observing my students go through the phases of exploring, listening, contributing, and building gave my students the language and understanding to create a world that is conscientious of the local Indigenous practices and values. The learning was entirely in their hands and I heard students encourage each other to all make their mark. Even the students who had a low level of Minecraft understanding left the learning activity with a greater understanding of how to navigate through the game, as well as the intended learning objectives.
In this new version, it is more of an expansion of version 1.0 rather than a new experience. It built upon the harvest and building tasks that the elders presented by adding a few more activities. Instead of 3 harvest tasks, they included 5 – cedar plan gathering, gillnetting, camas planting, grease trail trading for jade, and repairing clam walls. The building challenges go from 3 to 6 which include – cedar, salmon, planting, pit house building, ocean conservation, and house building. Although this version is not ready to launch in classrooms just yet, I am very excited to bring this learning activity back into my classroom.
My next steps are to revisit the revised educator guide for the exact ways in which the activities have changed and revamp the learning package that I have that accompanies the Minecraft experience, so my students have an anchoring document to help guide them through the learning. I am not sure. as of now, when version 2.0 will be officially released as it still needs a bit of fine tuning and approval from the Kwikwetlem. When all of the last minute amendments are made, I want to be ready to launch the world with my students.
For my second session of the day, I wanted to further my deep dive into the first people’s principle’s of learning with relation to the makerspace side of my curriculum. The presentation was hosted by the School District 43 Principal of Technology, Dave Sands, and the District Principle of Indigenous Education, Stephanie Maki. They encouraged us to think about how the engineering design process is a never-ending and often interconnected loop of trial, error, and improvement that is similar to the interconnectedness of the principle’s of learning. STEAM supports the well being of the self, family, community, land, spirits, and ancestors. We dove into each principle in the First People’s Principle’s of Learning and how STEAM is all around us and often takes the form of a unique lens: Science, Technology/Engineering/Arts, and Math. Depending on which angle you look at a STEAM problem, you can focus on a few exploration topics (i.e. design, materials, and impact for the Technology/Engineering/Art lens). From those topics, you can laser focus into the reflection and application of the learning.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the workshop immediately after I left because I was having a difficult time looking at the lenses and seeing concrete examples of what they could look like in action. Now that I’ve had a day to think about what I learned, I wondered what makerspace could look like if I assigned small groups to look at the same problem but through one of the different lenses, when I brought the group together, what questions, ideas, wonderings, and solutions would my students have? Again, i would need to make my intention of using the principles clear and apparent to students.
I haven’t had many opportunities to run makerspace in the recent years, but as I plan for the upcoming year, I see potential to bring it back with the assistance of my colleagues with a team teaching dynamic. Many of my colleagues have taught the makerspace model with STEAM challenges in the past, but I am not sure if they have ever used the STEAM lenses Dave and Stephanie have presented to us today. I have seen these graphics in the pasts, but I was not sure how to properly use them until this week.
For the final session of the day, I assisted Nicole Cruz, a member of the School District 43’s STEAM team, in presenting the applications of SeeSaw to our colleagues. This was the very first time in my teaching career in which I shared what I knew on a grander professional scale. I was extremely nervous, but my goal was to ease the worries of teachers who were hesitant to adopt SeeSaaw into their practice.
Nicole spoke and supported teachers on how to log in, create classes, add students, and access the resource library. The resource library is a one-stop shop in which teachers can find lessons that can be easily assigned to SeeSaw for your students to complete. They are editable, like a Canva document, but with even more accessibility options, such as recording a video over the document, marking up the document, and adding a voice-over.
My portion of the presentation was to discuss how teachers use SeeSaw in different ways in terms of their comfort levels. Some us it as a photo sharing app similar to how many teachers used Freshgrade in the past, but other use it as an extension of their classroom culture. As the prep teacher, i am in a unique position in which I can show how different classes of different age ranges use the platform, and ways in which non-enrolling teachers and other important teachers in a classroom can get involved in SeeSaw. i showed off 2 examples of how primary and intermediate students use SeeSaw to reflect on their core competencies with photos, videos, writings, and drawings depending on the needs of the child. We explored how students can tag one another in posts to link their feeds together, so both families can see the same post. There were a few ways that I showed what parent communication looked like in whole class, partial class, and one-on-one settings on the app as well. At the end of the session, we gave the teachers time to tinker and play on their own with guided assistance if needed.
Overall, I think the workshop went well and it was a great warm up for a repeat of the presentation in a few weeks, when we reunite for our union-based professional development day. Presenting in front of my peers was something I never thought I would do. I was very comfortable consuming and learning from others, so having the support of Nicole by my side was really helpful for getting over my nervousness and I am hoping that any teacher who attended our session will reach out to one of us for any additional support.
This was a very helpful and inspiring professional development day that had me challenging my own practice, getting excited for things coming down the line in the near future, and helping others with trying something new. I have many next steps that I’d like to take in terms of my practice, and a few improvements I could make to elevate my presentation. When I think about my final masters project, it is also a professional development series in which I help teachers new to 3D printing and support their needs. In a way, these workshops on SeeSaw that I am presenting on are my professional training sessions to improve my colleague presenter skills for the big 3D printing workshop I look to bring to my colleagues in the near future.
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