About Me
My name is Lisa Warden. I am an elementary French teacher within the Toronto Catholic District School Board. I am also a Master Candidate for the Professional Master of Education program with Queens University. Over the past several months, I embarked on a journey to educate myself on Indigenous culture and history as well as how to incorporate decolonizing pedagogy in my teaching practices.
In the spring of 2021, I decided to take an ABQ course in order to gain an understanding of Indigenous culture and people. While this course was a great introduction to learning about First Nation, Métis and Inuit people and their history, it left me asking more questions than answering the previous ones I had going into the course. Over the summer, I found myself watching many CBC documentaries as well as countless hours googling in order to answer these questions. With the news on the bodies found across our country at residential school sites, I started to feel overwhelmed with my limited knowledge.
For myself, learning about Indigenous peoples and culture is very important to me as Indigenous peoples were the first people to inhabit on Canada’s land, therefore, both Indigenous people and their culture plays a significant role in Canadian history. Growing up, I feel the education I received on Indigenous culture and history was very limited. I learned about the different tribes and their lifestyles briefly each school year in elementary school and in grade six, we had the opportunity to go to an Iroquois reserve to learn about the lives of their tribe. However, I never had the opportunity to talked about the history or the tragedies of the Indigenous people in Canada. In grade eleven world religions, we learned once again about the beliefs or the Indigenous people. However, we didn’t talk about how there are so many different tribes and the connections between each one, if there are any.
My goal is to give my students a different opportunity than what I had. Even though I am not a homeroom teacher, I still feel that it is my job to teach students in an equitable way about there history as well as indigenous culture in Canada. This is why, over the next few weeks, I would like to dedicate this blog to learning about how to incorporate decolonizing pedagogy into my teaching practices. As I am currently a French educator, one area I would like to focus on is learning on how to incorporate decolonizing pedagogy within an elementary French class. As my future goal is to eventually transfer to the secondary panel, I would also like to explore how to incorporate decolonizing pedagogy within the teaching subjects I am currently qualified to teach in the secondary panel (French, Law, as well as Health and Physical Education).
Each week, as a post to blog posts, I would like to share with you all my new findings. This may be an article which stuck out to me, a new decolonizing pedagogy method that I have researched, thoughts about discussions which have come up in my teaching practices or any thoughts related to the material presented to me within my PME courses. I am looking forward to embarking on this journey to better my teaching practices as an educator.
In the spring of 2021, I decided to take an ABQ course in order to gain an understanding of Indigenous culture and people. While this course was a great introduction to learning about First Nation, Métis and Inuit people and their history, it left me asking more questions than answering the previous ones I had going into the course. Over the summer, I found myself watching many CBC documentaries as well as countless hours googling in order to answer these questions. With the news on the bodies found across our country at residential school sites, I started to feel overwhelmed with my limited knowledge.
For myself, learning about Indigenous peoples and culture is very important to me as Indigenous peoples were the first people to inhabit on Canada’s land, therefore, both Indigenous people and their culture plays a significant role in Canadian history. Growing up, I feel the education I received on Indigenous culture and history was very limited. I learned about the different tribes and their lifestyles briefly each school year in elementary school and in grade six, we had the opportunity to go to an Iroquois reserve to learn about the lives of their tribe. However, I never had the opportunity to talked about the history or the tragedies of the Indigenous people in Canada. In grade eleven world religions, we learned once again about the beliefs or the Indigenous people. However, we didn’t talk about how there are so many different tribes and the connections between each one, if there are any.
My goal is to give my students a different opportunity than what I had. Even though I am not a homeroom teacher, I still feel that it is my job to teach students in an equitable way about there history as well as indigenous culture in Canada. This is why, over the next few weeks, I would like to dedicate this blog to learning about how to incorporate decolonizing pedagogy into my teaching practices. As I am currently a French educator, one area I would like to focus on is learning on how to incorporate decolonizing pedagogy within an elementary French class. As my future goal is to eventually transfer to the secondary panel, I would also like to explore how to incorporate decolonizing pedagogy within the teaching subjects I am currently qualified to teach in the secondary panel (French, Law, as well as Health and Physical Education).
Each week, as a post to blog posts, I would like to share with you all my new findings. This may be an article which stuck out to me, a new decolonizing pedagogy method that I have researched, thoughts about discussions which have come up in my teaching practices or any thoughts related to the material presented to me within my PME courses. I am looking forward to embarking on this journey to better my teaching practices as an educator.
Hi Lisa - I am looking forward to learning along with you and your blog! This is such an important topic and I also feel it is my duty to bring Indigenous teachings into my classroom. I am actively learning (and un-learning) about Indigenous culture. All the best!
ReplyDeleteExcellent Start to the blog!Looking forward to the development of the ideas and conversations.
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