As per course,
Start by posting your current vision of education. When creating and reflecting on your vision, be sure to be critically self-reflective (Whose culture, beliefs, norms center your vision? Is it inclusive and responsive to diverse communities? In what ways does it vision equity? Etc.). Visions need to be effectively communicated whether provincially, board level or school level.
Next, design an Initial Staff Meeting exercise or presentation to build a collaborative vision together with staff and community. Include an overview of how you will align with board and provincial priorities, communicate, and actualize this vision to the students, parents, wider community, senior administration, trustees, etc. Please also reflect and comment on the advantages and opportunities in the use of technology to communicate with students, parents/guardians, staff, community, and other education stakeholders.
You may use video, audio, ppt, prezi, or whatever mode you feel with best engage and communicate with the candidates in this course.
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As per discussion,
Vision as a school staff (leader and teacher),
In my classroom I am an educator, a guide, a steward, an advocate and a listener for my students, my community, my student athletes, my colleagues, the parents of my students my Catholic faith and Mother Earth. As an administrator, I am all these things not because I have to be, but because that is what it takes to be a leader of the caliber I want to be. I model learning by being, my students, staff and community members will see my many metaphorical hats and it is in those moments that I hope I would have made a positive enough impression that they to may be successful in their goals as they learn by being themselves wherever they go regardless of their race, ethnicity, sex, gender or religious beliefs.
People need me to be relative (Culturally Relevant and Responsive), in my community I will relate, empathize and show compassion for the members of my community (professional, faith, and greater school), as we journey together from the end of one season to the beginning of that same one. Learning to relate requires all of us in the school community as lifelong learners to bring experiences, and learning goals to develop content that we not only can relate to, but that can relate to us as we are more than the Nation of Canada or the Province of Ontario, we are a group of people sharing the gift of learning through the land and community. (Singh)
My students, staff and general school community will see what I do and they will be clear on what I expect them to do in my class, our inquiries and projects in class are based on a “do” and that do is expected to be something that can be shared with not just our immediate class community but hopefully the greater school community. It is as a community that when we learn to do, we learn best. The motivation of our community members will intrinsically motivate our students.
Since 2020, life has greatly changed, educators and leaders need to be more conscious now than ever in regards to students’ socio-economic status, social emotional state and learning effective processes. Learning from the land is traditionally how the indigenous peoples whose land I practice on were learning. It is my goal to bring that practice and application of learning from the land to emphasize growing success’ achievement chart criteria in a way that holds meaningful experience and measurement for students participating in my course/subject area.
See outline below
Presentation Outline: Courageous Conversations
bell hooks-Introduction
Insert land acknowledgment. Emphasis on the appreciation for the study towards furthering us as guests and family in the indigenous ways of not only within the scope of the land, but among fellow visitors as well to promote a healthy meeting point.
'To practice teaching in Southern Ontario (specifically Niagara Region), I recognize that I may be teaching on treaty land as per the “Two Row Wampum 1613” and Treaty 381 (1781). It is generosity of the Anishnaabe (Ontario.ca, 2018), Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, and Mississauga of The Credit Nation (Niagararegion.ca, 2022) that would be to thank for allowing me to practice my profession as an educator on this land. In the name of the shared teachings, blessings and goals as a community, I declare that my classroom and professional learning uphold four basic principles modeled from the Medicine Wheel Framework adapted into UNESCO’s Pillars of Education (2016), Learning to be, Learning to know, Learning to do and Learning to relate. As an educator of Ontario I will put forward my best practice of the Growing Success Document to reflect the needs, conversations and observations of students best and most recent work as this model is an equitable model that not only allows for culturally responsive classroom experiences but reflects the First Nations principles of Learning in three general ways, A holistic approach to measuring learning that occurs, the understanding that there are more domains and sources for knowledge than in a book or on a website and that learning is a lifelong journey in which one continually moves forward in with each lived experience (2009). '
The principal should have a protocol or SAFE space protocol (in particular), prepared for a meeting such as "Courageous Conversations".
"In this particular reading, we are observing (not necessarily the cultures discussed here), but the idea of dominance and oppression as they relate to ways of knowing. The reading is from an author known as bell hooks, who extends beyond the simple discussion of ways of knowing and opens discussions of culture’s impacts on ways of knowing."
bell hooks, is an an author who speaks out against sexism and racism (oppression in general). The readings of bell hooks are often very informal, but very toned and sometimes very radical in regards to the position it holds on “change”. In the Americas, there are decades of oppression that had ultimately originated upon the colonization of the Americas by Europe. The oppression that arose from colonization damaged and destroyed the traditions/development of knowledge of black culture, Asian culture, women’s voice, Indigenous culture and likely much more. Some of this is changing, some has changed but much of it is still yet unrealized. Each year whether there is a discovered inequity or previous atrocity, there is ever changing theory with regards to how such a vast and multicultural land can be “for all”.
This first one, provides context of bell hooks and where she stands on the cultural constructs of society in North American culture.
Jennie-Laure Sully, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUpY8PZlgV8
This next clip provides insights into the impacts of media on society from the point of view of bell hooks
ChallengingMedia, 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQUuHFKP-9s
Ways of Knowing-During
have staff members breakout into departments and read the following excerpt from an adaptation on bell hooks' ideas through new application,
'Ways of knowing of interest to the Theory and activism of Critical Social Justice specifically include those that they deem to have been unjustly excluded or marginalized. These include tradition, superstition, storytelling, and emotion. They are considered to have been excluded by white, Western men who established their own (typically Eurocentric, white, and/or masculinist) ways of knowing—like science, reason, logic, and empiricism (see also, master’s tools). Because white, Western men had the power to do so, they have unfairly privileged these approaches and imposed them upon other cultures (see also, colonialism). They did so failing to realize that they’re also just cultural products, while rationalizing them as more valid, more correct, and methodologically stronger than others (see also, meritocracy, positivism, objectivity, white science, white empiricism, reality, and internalized dominance). People (in the West and who have adopted methods from the West – see also, colonialism) are believed to have been socialized by the dominant forces of society (not rigor or utility) to accept that these “cultural products” are in fact superior to others, according to Theory. In some sense, this understanding arises from cultural relativism, but it also has roots in both postmodern Theory and other critical theories. These, respectively, see knowledges wholly as cultural products (see also, Foucauldian, episteme, power-knowledge, racial knowledge, truth, realities, and reality) and intrinsically caught up in issues of justice and injustice (see also, epistemic injustice, epistemic oppression, and epistemic violence).
Critical Social Justice wants to reverse this state of affairs and forward these “other” (marginalized and excluded) ways of knowing. The usual claim from advocates of Critical Social Justice is that knowledge as we generally conceive of it is merely a cultural product of powerful white, Western men, who then systematically exclude other ways of knowing outside of their own cultural tradition. The demand is to make room for and advance these “other ways of knowing” either by expanding the available set of “shared epistemic resources” (e.g., by engaging in cultural sensitivity, cultural humility, racial humility, cultural relativism, cultural responsiveness, and shutting up and listening), in order to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, or by “decolonizing” the existing knowledge system, its canon, its literature, and its canon (see also, research justice). That is, the claim in Critical Social Justice is that a sort of knowledge equity is necessary to remake the system (see also, revolution), and the way to do this is to include and advance “other ways of knowing” that have been excluded from white, Western, male thought.'
In groups, take from this the idea of what is "knowledge, myth, and opinion."
Ontario Ministry Curriuclum document Snapshots (Curriculum Expectations discussion)
Can your department scope and acknolwedge areas of "colonization" that remain within the ways that we as teachers understand the subject matter, or from which the ministry documents still hold closely within it?
If not, the department would be asked to look at their student population (principal will need to prepare these in advance, yes it would take time to organize), and ask, of the populations included, how many of them recognize what they learn/how they learn it as something that they can appreciate as a part of their identity?
In some cases, there may be departments that are "decolonized', if so, they would be asked to share how they came to this point, as well as if they think there is any further application of decolonization that (however superflous it may seem/feel to some staff), could be attained?
The principal needs to note again, this is a courageous conversation and putting oneself on the spot is the point of it, in some cases, the princpial may feel better about stepping out into the light about the topic first.
Measuring Achievement-Consolidation
Adverbs in rubrics? What is good?
Source List:
Jennie-Laure Sully, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUpY8PZlgV8
ChallengingMedia, 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQUuHFKP-9s
Canadian Council on Learning. The State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach to Measuring Success. Ottawa, Ontario (2009).
Lalonde, S. Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia. (2016).
Provincial First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Professional Learning Project. Calgary, AB:
Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia.
Ministry of Indigenous Affairs. Map of Ontario’s Indigenous Treaties and Reserves. Ontario.ca 2018
N.K. Singh. Culturally Appropriate Education Theoretical and Practical Implications.
Niagararegion.ca Indigenous Engagement. 2022
https://www.niagararegion.ca/health/equity/indigenous-engagement.aspx
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