Department:
West Kootenay Rural Teacher Education Program
Project lead:
Dr. Leyton Schnellert
Project members:
Heather Shippit, Denise Flick, Megan Read, Jesse Halton, Bonny-Lynn Donovan
Reflection:
What led you to your project/inspired your work?
Building trust between Indigenous communities and educators in the rural West Kootenays is particularly fraught as Canada’s federal government declared the Sinixt extinct in 1956. This has created a complex dynamic with the neighboring Okanagan and Ktunaxa Nations laying claim to Sinixt Territory, yet Sinixt live in the region, but many only recently publicly acknowledge their heritage due to significant cultural safety issues. Thanks, in part, to the efforts of a Sinixt hunter from Washington State purposely getting arrested in an attempt to reassert Sinixt claims on their traditional territory, the Sinixt are finding ways to challenge unjustified (and untrue) imposed erasure.
In the Fall of 2019, WKTEP Academic Advisor (Schnellert) and Elementary and Secondary Coordinators (Maguire and Shippit) met with WKTEP EDUC 440: Aboriginal Education Instructors (Flick and Read) to explore how we can move forward in welcoming Indigenous ways of knowing in WKTEP, both localizing and deepening what we do in EDUC 440, but across the program as well. We determined that developing an online platform can support our WKTEP mentor teachers, faculty associates, and instructors in understanding the potential of welcoming local Indigenous ways of knowing and being, related protocols, reciprocity, and build a province-wide accessible resource for rural educators.
What values and principles guided the development of your project?
According to Battiste (2013), Indigenous Peoples in Canada and throughout the world are experiencing tensions that emerge from being educated in a Eurocentric education system that dismisses their traditional knowledge systems. Indigenous scholars point out that education for Indigenous students must be “viewed in the context of systemic barriers and inequalities inherent in the current education system that marginalize Indigenous knowledge systems and result in significant challenges to the educational success of Indigenous children and youth” (Hare & Davidson, 2019, p. 204). Therefore, reconciliation and educational and system transformation need to work in tandem if we are to disrupt hierarchical practices and structures that enact a hidden curriculum of privilege and racism. We enter this project with humility and recognizing that building relationships and trust will be central to this work in our region, as UBC does not have a formal relationship with any of the local Nations.
At WKTEP, our teacher candidates learn to teach in rural and remote areas all over British Columbia, including the West Kootenays. We are guided by the First People’s Principle of Learning that states: “When making connections with the local First Nations community, teachers (or students) may find it helpful to investigate how pedagogy is articulated and practised within that community.” We are curious as to how we can communicate these dynamic concepts to advisors and mentors, in order to best support teacher candidates and still honor that: “This investigation is likely to happen incrementally over time, as the pedagogical approach articulated and practised within the local communities will not necessarily be set out in an easy-to-summarize form. Ultimately, one important conclusion for students to draw is that pedagogy in First Nations societies is both dynamic and culturally specific (i.e., grounded in a distinctive language and way of looking at the world).”
What have you learned so far?
We had to step back as a team to set shared goals for our work:
1) Document how we are currently addressing Indigenous ways of knowing and being within WKTEP for our Faculty Advisor/Mentor Shell
- b) Deepen and integrate these practices and opportunities throughout WKTEP coursework
- c) Take steps to build relationships with our local nations/partners
We have learned that so much of what we are trying to document and share is living learning and that it is hard find the right format to share such dynamic and location-specific practises. Utilizing technology, we are creating a “shell” for Faculty Advisors, Mentor Teachers, and Teacher Candidates to access that models how to approach this learning, regardless of what region you are in. The shell will consist of documentary interviews on how the program approaches this in the local region, questions for consideration, examples of lesson plans from current teacher candidates, and resources.
We are also learning more about the complexity of language houses and history of local nations in Nelson, where our campus is located. We are learning the importance of engaging in closer/formal relationship between UBC/WKTEP and the local Nations. We are understanding more about sacred knowledge as we try to find ways to document and share knowledge and protocols appropriately. We are learning that there is an appetite from our advisors to know more about how teachers are embedding Indigenous ways of knowing and being into their practice.
Where do you plan to go? What impact/influence have you or do you see your project making?
- Solidify a formal relationship between UBC in Nelson and the local Nations.
- Engage more local Nations in our program
- Travel across the border to visit the Interior Salish Language school
- Integrate Indigenous ways of knowing and being throughout all course work
- Offer WKTEP instructors in professional development
- Sharing out WKTEP’s approach, examples and learning from EDUC 440 and other courses with rural FA/SAs across the province.
- Support WKTEP mentors/advisors in guiding and deepening Indigenous ways as part of teaching practice