That’s the Thing About Field Trips

Going on field trips is just about every kid’s favorite thing to do at school.  A chance to get out of the classroom and have some real fun!  I don’t know if I have ever heard a student complain about heading out on a field trip.  While field trips should be fun, they should still be purposeful.  The students should walk away from a field trip with more knowledge than they had walking in.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is always they way things turn out.

Taken from http://www.RoyalSaskMuseum.ca

Last week the middle years cohort had a chance to take a field trip of our very own.  I must admit, this late in the semester when all assignments are assigned and due, I didn’t see the purpose in taking a field trip.  Aside from this blog post here the trip really had no bearing on me.  I thought I for sure had more important things to do for two hours, but away I went anyway.  Although I have lived in Regina for 6 years I had never been to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.  I think that students who have never been to the place you are taking them are always going to be more engaged.  When there are only so many things to go see in and around Regina, I think that a lot of students end up going to the same places in multiple grade levels and will take away less and less each time.  However, as it was my first time I was interested to see what they were presenting.

We arrived and met in the lobby where we were given a handout that is available to all student attendants from grade 4-8 who are visiting the First Nations Exhibit.  We started through the exhibit on the hunt for the answers to the questions.  A group of us got about half way through the whole thing when we realized that we hadn’t even seen anything in the first half except what some of the placards said to answer the questions.  We decided to put away our papers and just actually view the displays.  As it turns out, this was the point of the activity.  Giving students such a rigid task almost ensures that they will only observe what is being directly asked on the handout.  This is what the majority of the class did, including myself for the first half.  When we met as a class at the end of the exhibit we talked a bit about what happened and how that handout is maybe not the most helpful learning tool.  Then we got a new handout, one that didn’t ask for such specific answers, and took another walk through the entire exhibit.

Taken from http://www.RoyalSaskMuseum.ca

On the second time we just really looked at the whole thing.  Took in all the detail, the language, and the story being told.  I was astonished by the detail in each display.  The four hunting seasons was my absolute favorite and I found new details every time I looked at it.  Another really interesting piece was the quilt made by students at a residential school.  At first I was kind of impressed by the skill, but then I thought about it a little deeper.  The images depicted were strange and must have been strange to those who were being told to make them.  While there are a few tipis and other First Nations depictions, a lot of the images were of foreign objects like elephants and there were quite a few depictions of European men with pointing fingers.  A student project could be developed from that artifact alone.

Taken from http://www.RoyalSaskMuseum.ca

At the end of our second time through the museum we had a discussion about what we noticed.  A lot of it was negative.  The language mostly talks in past tense, as if the First Nations people no longer exist.  The meeting of First Nations with the European people is made out to be only a positive thing in the lives of the First Nations people, residential schools are not even mentioned (the blanket is described as being a quilt made by the students at a school on a reservation) and the outbreak of smallpox is described as something that just happened to the First Nations peoples.  The Treaties get a simple mural on the wall and again discuss only the positive things that were to have happened.  I agree with all those statements and think there are definitely things that could be done to improve the exhibit.  The placards are all outdated and there are

I do not however think that the exhibit can only be described as negative.  Most museums focus on past events, and there is always going to be a level of interpretation, but I still think that this exhibit on the First Nations people is better than not having an exhibit at all.  If I were to take my students here I would make sure to discuss critical thinking beforehand.  I would definitely not use the handout that is supplied by the Royal Saskatchewan Museum’s website.  I think the question that I would pose to my students before is simply “What did you notice about the museum that you think was done well or that could be improved upon?”  I do not think that you could or should try to take students into this museum exhibit, or any field trip, without some kind of background knowledge about the topic.  Field trips should be a place where students can build on their existing knowledge while they are having fun and seeing something new.

Am I a Public Intellectual?

What does it mean to be a public intellectual?  Well if an intellectual is someone who engages in critical study, thought, and reflection about society, then I am definitely one of those.  I feel strongly about certain social issues and when in the company of my colleagues or peers I am happy to have lively debates about the topics I feel strongly about.

While I have strong opinions about many things, I think that as a teacher I could get in to some trouble if I tried to become a social activist. This doesn’t mean I will not encourage my students to gather all the information about something they are passionate about and to make a move towards the change they want to see.  I hope that I can present students with information in a way that promotes respect, peace, and the use of knowledge over blind opinion and scare tactics as we so often see.  If, for example, we look at the #idlenomore movement, a lot of people have no real clue what it is about. On the news and in the media it was made out to be this big scary thing and the movement itself was never discussed.  The media focused on what the members of the group were doing (blockades, hunger strikes, rallies) instead.  It was not presented to the average person in a way that the movement itself intended.

I intend to be a tool for the social change that my students want to see.  I know that it will be my duty to ensure that students are aware of the issues that society and community face but I do not think it would be fair for me to tell them what kind of action is necessary.  I want to teach them the options and allow them to respond on their own in a beneficial way.  I don’t know if that makes me a public intellectual or not.  I think that the injustices we see are incredibly important, and I think that change is more likely to happen now than in the past few decades.  People – myself included – are tired of not being heard or considered when decisions are being made that effect them.

The younger generation is one in particular that is itching for change.  I think the recent election demonstrates this need. Young people were excited to participate and ensure that their voices were heard. A lot of this participation occurred through the use of social media. Social media has made it a lot easier for people to get their messages out, to discuss what is important to them, and to come together.  There is however a drawback to the social media monster. While it gives people a voice, the voice presented can have a very loud, uninformed, or ignorant message. I think one of the most important jobs of a teacher is teaching students what credible information is and how to distinguish it from non-credible information.

Teachers are often bound to this standard of teaching that makes being an activist (maybe especially in an impressionable middle years classroom) dangerous.  There is pushback from all angles; administration, policy, even parents don’t want students exposed to certain things in a way that is different than their own way.  A house who does not believe in the woman’s right to govern her own body may look kindly at a teacher who talks openly about pro-abortion.  A homophobic family may not appreciate discussion of equal rights for LGBTQ families.  But as Chris Hedges says in his Vice interview, “If everybody in power doesn’t dislike you are are probably not doing your job.” Maybe there is a need to push the boundaries to an appropriate extent in the classroom.  I want to make it my job to show that you are allowed your own opinion, separate from those of your family and friends.  I want to make sure that students use information to build their stance and not just the opinion of someone who made their mind up without first seeing the information.

So, am I a public intellectual? I am an intellectual and I will be working in a public sphere sharing social information, so sure.  Call me a public intellectual. I don’t think labelling me as one will have an impact on the way I plan to teach.

Jen Chyz

Have Your Curriculum and Citizenship Too

I think that Westheimer paints a very negative portrait of teaching engaged citizens.  He goes on for 10 chapters stating how the current atmosphere only focuses on Math, Literature, and standardized testing.  In the very last paragraph of the book he eludes to the “pockets of success” that are doing it right, according to him.  I am not disagreeing that the focus on numeracy and literacy is skewed higher than the other subjects, but I do not believe that citizenship is being ignored completely even in those areas.  I do not necessarily agree that the we are in need of a curriculum reform in Saskatchewan, but I do think that there are some teachers out there who need reform. Almost the entire curriculum was redone in 2009 and reading through the outcomes and indicators of all subjects, not just Social Studies, have incorporated socially responsible aspects.  

The Curriculum was literally designed to make engaged citizens

I think it has to be up to the teacher to incorporate engaged citizenship into their lessons.  The curriculum gives us the option, for example in English Language Arts Outcome CR6.1 we are asked to teach students to view, read, listen to, comprehend, and respond to a variety of texts that address identity, social responsibility, and efficacy.  I think it would be a perfect spot to talk about citizenship.  Social Studies is an obvious place to incorporate teaching engaged citizenship.  Examining the impact of human habitation on the natural environment (DR7.2), investigating the influence of resources  upon economic conditions on peoples (RW7.2), and investigating the structures and processes of democratic government in Canada (PA7.2) are outcomes in which you could talk about being green and the impact of carbon footprints, poverty cycles, and being politically active respectively.  These all come from one grade level.  The curriculum is there to teach engaged citizens, but it is up to the teacher to make the decision to teach it.  

Personally, I appreciate Westheimer’s trio of the Personally Responsible/Participatory/Social-Justice Oriented Citizen.  However, the way he depicts it seems like a person can only be one of the three and that one is better than the other that is better than the last one.  I disagree with this interpretation.  I think that a person can be any combination of the three and that our world would not function without some of all of them.  If we only had a bunch of Social-Justice Oriented citizens, we would have a ton of people researching why people are homeless or hungry, but no one organizing the food drives or making donations.  In my class I would like to think that I would promote all three.  I think we need to teach students to think critically about the issues our world is facing.  Whether it be climate change, poverty, the missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada, or taking advantage of the right we have to vote for our leaders, students should think about the why, how, and what now.  I do not think that students necessarily need to be taught directly about Westheimer’s Trio, but they should know that there are different options for the way to respond to the world.  For example, in one of the examples mentioned above (DR7.2) when students are taught about the impact of humans habitation on the environment, they should be given the options for responding to it.  Students should know that they can make a difference by reducing their carbon footprint by carpooling or walking/biking to school, by organizing rallies to promote the issue to other people, or by designing a new affordable way for cars to run.  Each option is important, and each is easily worked into the curriculum if you make the effort.

 

Jen

A Good Person ≠ A Good Citizen

 

The statement  by Ken Osborne in Political Education and Citizenship: Teaching for Civic Engagement, “Schools have largely succeeded in educating children to be good people but have been much less successful in turning them into good citizens”, makes me a little mad.  Not because I disagree with him, but because I agree.  I feel like I am a good person.  I am kind, friendly, concerned about social issues, I respect other people’s rights, and I certainly feel like I obey the law, but am I in turn a good citizen?  In a time like now, when we are in the midst of an election, I wish that I knew more.  Osborne says that it is a lack of interest that keeps young voters away from the polls, but I disagree.  I want to be informed and engaged in the public affairs of my country, but I feel like I was not properly prepared to do so.  Our country’s different party platforms are often difficult to decipher to someone who has little knowledge in politics.

I do not think I can ever recall a moment in my own educational history that politics were mentioned besides a broad statement about them or about democracy.  I understand that teachers were probably asked not to push their own political agendas onto students (unless they were coming directly from the school itself) but I think that there are ways to introduce students to it in objective ways.  The rhetoric around citizenship education does a good job of explaining what it is trying to do, but it just isn’t happening in reality.

To be a good citizen, one must still be all of the things that make up a good person, but that is not all.  We need to work on the dimension “that embraces an informed and principled engagement in and with the public affairs of one’s society”.  We need to create do-ers.  People who are involved in the political process, whether that be through informed voting or being involved in political activity.

In my middle years classroom I hope to help shape my students into both good people and good citizens.  Since I personally feel uninformed and a little incapable of breaking down party platforms I could start there with students.  This can be done in a way that still allows students to make their own decisions.  We could start by seeing the history of Canada’s political parties; where they came from, what they have done in the past.  To ensure that there is no bias, we would do this based on factual evidence and not the opinions of others.  During an election, as a class we could look at each of the parties’ platform statements and break down what it is they say they want to do.  Just because my students would not be old enough to vote, does not mean they should not begin to shape their own opinions and beliefs about what they find important.  I would also like to look at how the current ad campaigns and often focus on the negatives of opposing parties, how that does nothing to further their own message, and how that can be harmful in creating informed citizens.

That is just one example of how creating good citizens can start in the classroom, Ken Osborne gives five more broad ways to do this: giving students a liberal education, having prominent goals of the political dimension of citizenship, educating teachers as well as students, engagement with real world politics, and lastly portray humans as actively and without knowing the consequences, shaping the past, present, and with students, the future.  These could easily become outcomes in a curriculum, and if not that, we should still find a way for them to be incorporated into the lessons of all students.

 

– Jen

Residential Schools and the Consequences that Remained Hidden for so Long

All 887 artifacts that make up the Witness Blanket have stories to tell.  There are two artifacts that really resonate with the feelings I have about how the Residential School System treated the Aboriginal people.  The first are the comparison photos of Thomas Moore and the other is a posterboard story of the Kamloops Indian Residential School about runaways and suicide.

Thomas Moore of Regina Industrial School taken from the Witness Blanket App for iTunes

 

Poster board story of the Kamloops Indian Residential School taken from the Witness Blanket App for iTunes

Thomas Moore attended the Regina Indian Industrial School, but that is not the reason I chose it (Where are the Children, n.d.).  The side by side photo is a stark visual representation of what Residential Schools did to an entire people.  On one side you have a young Aboriginal boy in traditional dress with fur, beading, embroidery, and long braids tied in leather.  On the other you see a Euro-Canadian cutout of what a civilized boy should look like.  He is in plain military style dress, short cropped hair, and carries himself in a way that, to me, depicts the European ideals of masculinity, nonchalance, civility, and safety.

When you dig deeper, you can see that is it possible that these two photos were staged to show the viewer what the impact of Residential Schools wanted people to see .  The “before” picture is carefully set up to depict a certain image: the photo has a gun placed in Moore’s hand.  This placement is likely to show how “dangerous” and “savage” the Aboriginal people were.  This dangerous and savageness would be (and was) gone after being enrolled in the Residential Schools, as depicted in the very staged second photo.  What you cannot see in the in the photo is that the changes were not just skin and cloth deep.  Everything was stripped from these children.  Names were changed, cultural traditions were ripped away and replaced with foreign Euro-Canadian ideals.  While new biblical names were given to the “students” they were often simply referred to by the number they were assigned when they arrived (Quan, 2015).  Imagine being completely stripped of everything in your life and then being addressed simply by a random number you were given when you walked in the door.  

Not only were Aboriginal children seen as not human but rather savages that were just a number, but if a child forgot their number they would be severely punished.  If you spoke your native language or participated in any traditional activity you would be punished. If you lived with the threat of punishment for doing all the things that used to be fine and normal, you might think about ways to leave such a situation.

This is what leads me to the connection with my second artifact.  Conditions in Residential Schools were often so terrible that if a death was not caused by a fire due to unsafe housing, disease, or malnourishment, they were caused by exposure when running away or suicide (Kennedy, 2013). As if the complete cultural genocide happening at Residential Schools was not enough.  Punishment was so severe that the Aboriginal children would try to run away to avoid it (Kennedy, 2013).  In an effort to stop children from running away they would be locked in their rooms with no escape route should a fire start (Kennedy, 2013).  Many children died this way.  Some of those that did manage to get away would die miles from the school, frozen in the dead of winter or starved to death.  Children would take their own lives in the school because there was no other way to escape.  Parents and family of the deceased or vanished were never told about it.  Not only were families not told about the death after the child had been ripped from their home, stripped of everything familiar, and then locked up to become a “civilized” person, but children were often put in unmarked graves never to be identified again.  

So little respect was shown to the Aboriginal people and their traditions, that we will have to work to make it up to them for a long time to come.  For over 100 years the rights of Aboriginal people were not only ignored, but absolutely destroyed.  By thinking that Aboriginal people were savage and dangerous because they were different, thousands lost their lives and thousands more have to live with the damage is caused.  

I connected with both those pieces because of the story behind them.  Residential Schools were promoted to be these great things that would change people from “savages” to “civil”.  A lot of people believed that what they were doing was the right thing and I am sure they were not all so bad.  People were convinced that this was the best means to a necessary end.  The second piece shows just how wrong they were in thinking that.  So much damage has been caused by Residential Schools to the lives of the Aboriginal people. The damage did not end when the schools closed; it has left huge impacts on the following generations as well.  It is hard to imagine what the world would be like if Residential Schools never existed, but I think that the impact would have been great for both Aboriginal people as well as the Euro-Canadian population.

 

Works Cited

Kennedy, M. (2013, January 3). At least 4,000 aboriginal children died in residential schools, commission finds. Retrieved September 23, 2015.

Quan, D. (2015, June 2). ‘Assault’ on residential school students’ identities began the moment they stepped inside. Retrieved September 23, 2015.

Where Are The Children. (n.d.). The Promise of a Good Education for Aboriginal Children. Retrieved September 23, 2015.

Hipwood Digital (2015). Witness Blanket (1.0) [Mobile application software]. Retrieved from iTunes App Store

Democracy… What does that even mean?

To begin the discussion around if schools are democratic places for students and teachers we must first start with what democracy means.  Different people and different groups ascribe their own meaning to the term.  To me, democracy in schools mean policies and practices that challenge learners, that deal with community issues, while celebrating learning through inquiry and discussion, and cultivating personal and social responsibility.  Not a small task.

There are areas of schooling that definitely do not fit with my definition of democracy.  Students are being taught one way.  A way that says there is one right answer and the rest are wrong.  Multiple choice testing is one example of this.  There is no room for inquiry or discussion.  The right answer is the one that is taught to you.  While some teachers are better than others in allowing open discussion and dissension than others, the subject matter itself is not up for discussion.

School is not much more democratic for teachers, although they do have more creative freedom.  Teachers are given a guide to follow and are allowed to come up with what they will do for each lesson.  There are strategies and frameworks in place, but it is up to the teacher how, when, or if they will employ such strategies.  However, this freedom of creativity does not mean democracy.  Teachers have a curriculum developed to create well rounded citizens, but school still push a focus on two subjects: English and Math.  Subjects like Physical Education, Arts Education, and Social Studies get time cut for the “more important” subjects.

Alan Sears’ article In Search of Good Citizens discusses teaching citizenship (or attempting to) and what that means.  According to the article, 75% of teachers think that the goal of education is to prepare children for life and citizenship.  As the lengthy article goes on to describe, the problem is what do we mean by citizenship, what are the best ways to educate students about it, and is it even working.  As it turns out, the rhetoric is there, but below the surface there is a huge deficit.  The talk and the curriculum around building a social being sound good, but it is just not happening.  Teaching citizenship does not necessarily lend itself to a democratic school.

In the end, while I think we have made leaps and bounds towards becoming more democratic in school – with a larger focus on social activism, discussion, and inquiry – we are not there yet.

 

– Jen