teacher training – Pursuing Questions

Micro-Teaching Session – Revisited

What went well and what didn’t go well?

I ended up changing quite a bit of my lesson based on the feedback I got and the personal reflecting I did afterwards. I think I made a good choice to really focus on one small element of the content and to provide more space for the learners to self-reflect. That in turn felt more aligned with Indigenous pedagogy, because the learners were able to draw upon their own knowledge sources to contribute to the lesson. I got feedback that my choice not to use slides ended up being effective in creating some human connection and reflection over zoom, rather than just a one-way channel of information exchange.

I was unsure how it would feel for the learners to move between zoom and the Jamboard that I used. I tried to direct the learners to specific parts of the Jamboard when necessary, and my feedback told me that that was quite useful. While this was nice to hear, I realized that my commitment to not using slides does not necessary mean that I achieve the outcome I desired. I tried to created a less hierarchical learning environment or a more relational space without slides – but it only felt like that happened the second time (I got much better feedback the second time I implemented the same strategies, which tells me that being an effective educator really is a unique blend of so many characteristics and strategies). By not using slides, it meant that students were leaving the zoom space to look at and access the Jamboard. This strategy could have easily perpetuated the same dynamics that I was trying to avoid and that I felt were not aligned with Indigenous pedagogy as I currently know it. Therefore, I acknowledge that a challenge of trying to learn about, foster, and implement Indigenous pedagogical strategies is that it can actually be much more personal than other pedagogical philosophies or strategies. It was my own humanity, it seems, that sparked some reflection and connection for the learners. This makes me wonder about how else I can try to foster connection, relationships, and belonging in my learning spaces.

With this knowledge, I must also acknowledge that this is an on-going learning journey that I am on. How I have chosen to initially attempt to implement these strategies may be wildly different in 3 years. In the future, I plan continue to create and consult my list of pedagogical strategies that I’ve been making as part of my goals – not to hoard knowledge, but so that I can draw upon a bank of a variety of strategies depending on what the learning outcome is for a particular lesson. Since seeing my talk without slides was helpful for sparking reflection, how might I chose to introduce a different topic with a different outcome? And how might that topic and/or strategy align or contrast with what I’ve learned about Indigenous pedagogy?

What have you learned about your teaching or you as an instructor through this process that is different from your first delivery?

What a gift it is to have space to try something twice, after receiving feedback. It was so valuable to be able to hear my peers’ feedback and to make adjustments to meet their needs. Without their feedback I would have had to guess what worked and what didn’t. The most valuable realization I’ve had about myself, is that I want to have “space” in my teaching style for learners to reflect, engage, and “linger in generative space”. It doesn’t feel right for me to always be talking, telling, and convincing. Sometimes I want learners to convince each other. Sometimes I want someone to think differently after a provocation or invitation. I want learners to be able to have space to wonder, ponder in reverence, and to have affective experiences, not just cognitive ones. These insights are not necessarily new to me, because I have been trained to think this was as an ECE, but finding ways to translate that into higher education is what I have learned in this course.

Unfortunately, it seems that there aren’t many organic opportunities for feedback to occur within my grad school training. But since I’ve recognized the value of seeing if my intentions translated to impact, what I can do is to intentionally create or engage in those feedback opportunities. In the future, this means continuing to seek feedback on my teaching, through having an observer, through presenting to peers, through using feedback tools like Qualtrics surveys, and through ongoing professional development in the area of SoTL (not just my content areas).

What did you change or improve upon based on the feedback you received from your first delivery?

After much thought, I decided not to include the feedback related to rethinking my lack of slides. But what I did instead is add information to the Jamboard so that learners could follow along visually if they wanted that. I was really concerned with wanting the learners to have visual access to the information after I got feedback about my lesson not feeling structured, and wanted to find a way to resolve my competing interests in way that still felt aligned with the Indigenous pedagogical strategies I was using. This felt like a good way to compromise and include some of both methods (and it was brought to my attention that in person this would be different because I could just give a hand-out). I chose to copy and paste some key information into the chat on Zoom, such as the learning outcomes and the quotation I used as my bridge in.

I noticed that last time I didn’t feel like there was enough thinking and reflective space for the learners so I took out 2 sections of my content, and instead focused on the what epistemology is, rather than different epistemological orientations. I was quite rushed last time and didn’t feel like I left learners with a clear message or idea. Whereas this time, the simplicity brought with it a focus that all learners could engage with.

I chose to take out my pre and post assessment for the sake of time and simplicity, and opted to use the Zoom reaction feature for some feedback about student’s knowledge. I got some helpful feedback that doing that in a large class might be problematic due to anonymity, number of reactions, and not being able to compare the results. I really appreciated this, and it got me thinking about the value of engaging with the same group of learners and peers so that in our space answering my question in a non-anonymous way didn’t feel intimidating. What I mean by this is I wonder if having small break out rooms with the same people each week could allow learners to create a small community of practice for themselves, and a safe space to be themselves, grapple with content, and learn authentically. It’s funny how feedback about a Zoom reaction ended up making me reflect on the larger learning environment and sense of belonging.

For my future work, I am really pondering how and where I can find “space” in my lessons to allow for active self-reflection, engagement, and the creation of some sense of community. I really have valued that classes I have been a part of that offer a space that I feel I can contribute to and that moves at a pace that lets me grapple with things that are just beyond my current knowledge. I’m quite happy with how my second less went, and I would love if I could re-create that effect in other spaces that I enter as an educator. I have started to think about what I would need in order to recreate the success I felt, and part of it includes knowledge of my learners (which I may or may not have). As Dale said, sometimes we make pedagogical and universal design decisions based on the learners once we have a relationship with them. I’m thinking about where and when I can create that rapport and culture. But I’m also thinking about how I will have to seek feedback from my students within a single lesson, unit, or semester, in order to make these appropriate adjustments. Since it’s unlikely that I give the same lesson twice to a group of learners, I am trying to think about how else I can receive feedback for times when I give a second lesson on different content or with a new group of learners.

What would you have done differently if you had another chance to deliver it again

I would make my active learning task even more simple. I so badly wanted to push learners to think beyond the traditional academic frameworks of knowledge, but I’ve realized that I may have to let some of that go (or make it more explicit as part of my learning outcomes). Because with this being part of the hidden curriculum, it made that last activity is bit muddy. As part of my future practice, I want to be fairly clear on what I want learners to learn and why, and I don’t want there to be additional information or a hidden agenda. I might have to continue to reflect upon my own values and how I can suspend them in order in places where appropriate. I don’t really believe I can be a fully objective educator, but I believe I can work form a pragmatic place such that I can support learners in their own journeys rather than convince them to follow mine. In that regard, this is a challenge that I am still grappling with, especially on a topic like Indigenous pedagogy because it is a topic that can be “mastered” by a white person, not something learned in a set amount of time, and there definitely is not a mapped out curriculum in order to become competent in this area. It is a messy and ongoing journey of un-learning and re-learning, and a journey that perhaps is not for everyone.

Addtionally, I wish I had asked for feedback about what it meant for me as a white cis-woman to be delivering a lesson using Indigenous pedagogy. I would like to know if it felt extractive. That felt like an icky thing for me to be doing and something I need to continue to reflect upon and seek support on in my future as a culturally-responsive, relationship-based educator.

Goal Progression Reflection

Here, I will be reflecting on my progression towards achieving the goals I set for myself this semester. For context, my goals are included here:

Goal 1: By the end of this semester, I will be able to facilitate a 20-minute interaction lesson with students through zoom. To achieve this, I will implement activities in my micro-teaching session, including menti, jamboard or kahoot, which ask the learners to contribute collaboratively to answering questions or reflect upon the information that is being discussed. If I can implement these tools, receive student engagement through their use of these tools, and if I am able to respond to my peers’ answers, I will feel I have achieved this goal.

Goal 2: By the end of this semester, I will be able to implement one teaching strategy for online seminars that is culturally responsive to Indigenous students’ needs and that is aligned with Indigenous pedagogical practices. To do this, I will review four to five peer-reviewed articles on Indigenous pedagogy and teaching approaches and create short summaries (much like the ones in the SOTL snapshots) for my own learning and reflection. I may decide to post them on my blog. While I would like to gauge this goal by getting feedback from an Indigenous student, I also feel that asking such a thing may be inappropriate at this time. If this is not possible, instead, when I create my teaching philosophy statement, I will integrate my new knowledge about an Indigenous pedagogical approach into my statement. I will feel successful in this goal if by the end of the semester I can describe, in detail, one teaching strategy that I can use virtually that is rooted in Indigenous pedagogy and that is appropriate for me, a white settler, to implement in a University class setting.

Goal 3: By the end of the semester, I will be able to create assignment instructions that are rooted in inclusion and equity, such that the grading criteria is as universally accessible as possible to students from diverse cultural backgrounds, lived experiences, disabilities, and identities. I hope to learn more about universally accessible learning strategies through this course (such as the “late bank” article from SoTL snapshot). My aim is to take what I learn in moments like these and keep a list of ways that these can be incorporated into an assignment I make.

Have you met your learning goals checkpoints or already reached some goals? If you have not, how much have you deviated from them?

Regarding my first goal, this is something that cannot be fully achieved within the parameters of this course, since our micro-teaching session is 10 minutes. However, I have already met part of this goal, since I facilitated my mircro-teaching session using menti and a jamboard. I felt really proud of my self for using these tools in these capacities and it went well. In my role as a TA I gave 2 80 minute lectures last week using jamboard, menti, and googledocs, and I had very high student engagement. I even asked for feedback on my lessons via Qualtrics and got really positive feedback around how clear my instructing was. This let me know that my use of these tools in practice might be going quite well. Something I noticed during my microteaching session, however, that is a challenge in terms of me reaching this goal completely, is that I did not have high engagement on the jamboard. This is likely due to what I reflected on last week (too much content for a 10 minute lesson). To address this, I am making some changes to that portion of my activity, so that it is much more manageable for the 10 minute lesson. I don’t believe I’ve deviated from the goal in any other way yet.

Regarding my second goal, I have read 3 articles about Indigenous pedagogy and while I did not reflect on them directly here, I integrated several strategies into my micro-teaching session and cited the authors in my previous post. While I still have a long way to go in terms of how to implement Indigenous pedagogy without further stealing Indigenous wisdom, I am quite pleased that I was able to attempt this and that I stuck to my commitment to doing so. While I cannot meet the second half of my goal through this course since we are not creating teaching philosophy statements, I have signed up to attend the teaching dossier cafes with OTL and I hope that through those workshops that I can begin to create my teaching philosophy statement. Additionally, and for context, I created a teaching philosophy statement last year as part of my training as an educator, so I am hoping to work with that one since it already includes many of the elements of SoTL (e.g., active learning and fostering inclusive learning environments). Learning about Indigenous pedagogy has really challenged me as an educator, academic, and white person, and I am hoping that this is something I continue to learn about. I have begun to make some future plans to continue my learning journey about Indigenous pedagogy through helping to create the Catalyst Truth and Reconciliation Program curriculum on Courselink by engaging with many resources related to decolonizing academia and understanding Indigenous pedagogy in practice. Additionally, I am hoping to engage in SoTL work related to Indigenous pedagogy with a fellow masters student. In this way, this goal has expanded beyond a one-semester item to achieve, and evolved into a broader axiological commitment. The only way I have deviated from this goal, is that I have noticed a need to read articles, books, poems, and hear spoken word about Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing, culture, truth, and reconciliation by Indigenous authors – beyond SoTL articles about Indigenous pedagogy. This means reading broader texts about concepts I have to understand in order to effectively implement the Indigenous pedagogical strategies I have learned.

Regarding my third goal, I am pleased to see that I am much more familiar with UDL and UID a this time, but I feel that I have not progressed towards this goal as much as I would have liked. I feel that the closest I have come to this goal is assessing the pre-created syllabus. I have started a list of strategies that I hear about within this course (which is great), but a challenge of this, I have realized, is that I am missing the chance to actually practice these in reality. I don’t believe there is actually an opportunity for me to create an assessment within this class, and in order for me to fully feel like I have met this goal, I would like to actually try creating a few assessments in reality. In the future I should make sure that there are in fact ways for me to meet my goals within the context in which they were created. Finally, I have deviated from feeling committed to this goal, and I think this is because I have realized that in addition to UDL and IUD, relational pedagogy also plays a role in my decision-making processes related to how accessible and relevant my lessons and assessments are as an instructor. This was something Dale mentioned in a class, and something that has stuck with me ever since.

What have you learned are your greatest strengths, so far?

I have learned a lot about my strengths and areas for improvement within this course. Most obviously, I have realized that I have become a fairly brave student. Whether that is due to my age (30), number of years in higher ed (8), other life experience (living with a mental illness as a privileged white woman), or the learning I’ve done lately (related to power, privilege, and experiences of equity-seeking groups), I have began to speak up about difficult topics, hopefully in a fairly inclusive way. One challenge I have noticed in doing this, however, is that perhaps not everyone is feeling as brave as I am. Some folks may feel called-out when I don’t intend that to be the impact of these conversations, or engagement in particular topics may feel burdensome to the marginalized students in the class. One of my ideas about my future plans as a student, is to consider who has the capacity and power to be a brave student, who space safes are for, and who is excluded in these spaces or conversations and to what extent? As a fairly young, white, “mad”, queer, cis-woman inclusion of myself does not inherently mean inclusion of a non-binary peer, a BIPOC guest speaker, or an instructor who is older than me. Therefore, I plan to continue thinking about and reflecting on when, where, and why I will use my bravery in these learning environments. I would also like for my peers and instructor to continue to give me feedback on their perspective when I speak up about something or if I am sharing my opinion too frequently.

What are your biggest areas for improvement?

One thing I have struggled with in this course is fully understanding the expectations. Since this course is pass/fail and I have some of the knowledge of pedagogical best practices, I have felt a little bit like perhaps I didn’t need to read everything fully in order to grasp it. That has turned out to not be the case. I have so much more to learn about SoTL and to be successful in this course I need to ensure I still prioritize reading the materials. In particular, understanding how topics I’ve learned about previously (e.g., active learning or Bloom’s taxonomy) can be used in new contexts such as online learning or syllabi, and this proves I can’t assume I know how to do these things without fully reading the new materials and engaging in the activities. For the remainder of the course I plan to have a more open mind/growth mindset so that I can receive this new information with grace.

Do you feel that anything hindered you from reaching your checkpoints or goals? Had anything helped you?

A few things have helped and hindered me in my progression towards my goals. While I have mentioned a few things, I would like to add that my own motivation has been a driving factor in working towards my second goal outside of class. I have pretty clear and deep commitments to understanding Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing, decolonizing my own life, and fostering allyship in various avenues of my life. This larger vision and purpose has really resulted in my prioritization of my second goal, and has also presented additional opportunities within my life from which I can learn, practice, and build my skillset related to Indigenous pedagogy.

Something that has hindered me in this goal is my lack of connections with Indigenous pedagogistas, or knowledge-holders, from whom I can be mentored. Dale mentioned in a class that I connect with people on campus to continue to learn in the ways that I want to for this goals.

Additionally, something that is hindering my completion of all of my goals is poor planning when I made the goal. Several of my goals cannot be completed within the parameters of this class. Whether that was optimism on my part when creating goals, or not fully understanding the opportunities within the class, I now cannot fully meet the goals I set out.

What would you do differently if you were to write your learning goals again? Are there learning goals would you like to add? Any you would like to remove?

As mentioned above, some of the specific elements of my goals cannot be achieved within this class, so next time I write goals I would ensure that there are opportunities for me to meet them (e.g., a chance to create an assessment during this class) within the parameters present.

Additionally, my goals include several elements, so in the future I might want to include less detail in my goals so that they can be achieved in a slightly boarder way (e.g., focus my final goal on one UDL strategy). A challenge for me in doing that, means that I have to read all the course materials ahead of time, ask more clarifying questions, ask for feedback, and maybe even do some research before hand so that my goal is not so complex. Additionally, I may consider adjusting my goals slightly to include the knowledge I have now. For example, here is how I might re-write my third goal with my knowledge of UDL and UID now:

NEW Goal 3: By the end of the semester, I will be able to create assignment instructions that I believe is equitable, accessible, and fosters belonging in students. To do this, I will use a strategy that are rooted in Universal Design for Learning from SoTL. For example, I will try creating assignment instructions that include the option for student choice in how they present their assignment, in order to support the engagement and expression elements of UDL. I will also start a list to keep track of strategies like this that I might like to use, including how to use these strategies in practice and what assessment practices I may need to adopt in order have my assessments match these expectations.

I wouldn’t add goals at this time, since I feel like these goals are still relevant to me. Hopefully, in the future I can expand on these goals and continue my learning journey in SoTL beyond this course.

A White Woman Pondering Power and Privilege in Classrooms

The discussion that occurred during our class about power in the classroom is still resonating within me – not because we found solutions, but because we got into some questions and wonderings. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about power and privilege within SoTL, especially when it comes to grading things like spelling and grammar/use of the English language, microaggressions in feedback, and how we may need to reimagine many of the principles that are defined in SoTL in order to decolonize and deconstruct the ableist, racist, and classist structures that are upheld by academic institutions.

In a course I took last semester I wrote a spoken word poem about research as reconciliation (as I currently understand it), and how I saw connections to music through this idea of deep listening (with the whole body/mind), an on-going two-way conversation, and dance of accountability in call-and-response style. I concluded the poem with some current axiological commitments, epistemological justice ideas, relational ontological orientations, ideas about seeking equity and inclusion in various learning environments, and this notion that I must “know” responsibly. This idea that I have responsibility, is extended within all my relations (including the more-than-human ones), and inherent to me because I hold many privileges and power as a TA, RA, white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, white, woman who has lived in Guelph all her life. I often think of privilege in terms of (lack of) lived experiences and, in some ways, gifts. Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses two aspects of receiving gifts: one is that I am now in reciprocal debt, and two “with gifts comes responsibility”. Likewise, “with great power comes great responsibility”. My point here is that I feel I have stepped into, and feel grounded by, my responsibilities within academia.

Reflection 3 – Micro-Teaching Session

As I move into my reflection on my micro-teaching session, I bring in many of the concepts I have been pondering about power and privilege in classrooms. My micro-teaching session was about epistemology and I was using Indigenous pedagogical strategies. In my preparation for facilitating this sessions, I read three articles and a book chapter related to Indigenous pedagogy and Indigenization within academia. I decided that I was not going to do a lecture for my 10 min session. I wasn’t going to teach about Indigenous content or use slides either. I did this because even though the use of slides and visuals are typically part of SoTL best practice, they did not align with Indigenous pedagogy as I am currently understanding about it. For my own learning, I wanted to err on the side of practicing these skills, rather than practicing my use of slides and visuals.

I ended up seeing a lot of overlap in the strategies I was reading about, and realized that I could implement several pedagogical strategies at once to break down the hierarchy that typically exists in teacher-student classroom dynamics. Therefore, I intentionally used 7 strategies (a lot, I see now) in my micro-teaching session. I put a lot of care into facilitating a lesson that was decolonized as much as possible, because this is what I had learned about in the articles I read, and because this felt like the step I really wanted to practice in terms of my skill set. The 7 strategies I used included:

Employing non-hierarchical teaching structure, as in no “us” and “them” culture between teacher and students (Papp, 2020). I did this by not presenting slides and instead having a more casual conversation. I also encouraged students to change their location (e.g., sit on a couch and turn off the camera) in order to mimic the environment described in Papp’s article.
Using a culturally responsive and affirming activity (Papp, 2020). I did this by encouraging students to include their own personal truths and what is individually meaningful. I included a medicine wheel as a prompt to think beyond academic forms of knowledge in order to think about embodied knowledge.
Employing relational pedagogy: building community, collaboration, trust, value and respect for each other’s ideas (Papp, 2020). I did this a little bit by including self-reflection and group activities rooted in the student’s personal knowledge. I tried to model being an accomplice for students’ success, rather than an evaluator.
Employing experiential learning (Papp, 2020). I tried to demonstrate this through the activities being connected to students own knowledge. It is difficult to facilitate experiential learning virtually in 10 minutes, but my aim was for this to be an internal experience of reconceptualizing knowledge.
Peer mentoring (Ragoonaden & Meuller, 2017). While I didn’t explicitly have students mentor each other, I encouraged students who answered that they knew about epistemology to take on a leadership role within the activity that we are going to do. The activity was collaborative and allowed for learning to happen between students via the jamboard. I also included an “up-vote” feature to build some feelings of connections between students.
Including (centring) Indigenous worldviews (Papp, 2020). This lesson is less about transferring any type of specific knowledge and instead encourages students to use self-reflection and embodied knowledge to generate their own insights, and then categorize their current knowledge by three broad categories of epistemology. I prompted students to think of how the medicine wheel might reflect the three broad types of epistemology, without directly teaching Indigenous content.
Allowing students to self-pace the main learning task (Papp, 2020). I did this by allowing students to continue to work on the jamboard at their own pace after the class.
Including Indigenous knowledges throughout the lesson at a variety of levels, not just in the content (as per Pidgeon’s (2016) lit review). I did this by not teaching directly about Indigenous worldviews, but by imploring my strategies in a variety of ways and by empowering students to think beyond Eurocentric ideals of knowledge.

Clearly, I thought deeply about how to implement Indigenous pedagogy in practice from the articles I read. I also need to acknowledge that much of my understanding thus far comes from the conversations I have had with faculty and peers around decolonization, Indigenization, and reconciliation. Having been taught by Kim Anderson for a few guest lectures helped me challenge my own understanding of Indigenizing curriculum. Additionally, my mentorship by Andrea Breen was truly transformative for me in terms of understanding my own positionality and impacts of my privilege. There is no “how-to” guide for decolonizing academia, despite the above list that I provided. Like I said, I am a white woman, and for me to attempt to facilitate a lesson plan based on Indigenous pedagogy that I simply read about rather than getting mentored on by an Indigenous individual can be considered problematic.

All this to say that I knew I had a lot packed into my micro teaching session, which was intentional given the responsibility I felt for doing this task justice. And yet, when I facilitated my session, it felt like it fell flat.

What went well

I am very proud to say that I felt like I took a risk in trying to decolonize my own pedagogical practice. It was a valuable learning moment for me. I very clearly used BOPPS model (I did a pre and post assessment with menti), I used many active learning strategies (a jam board for a group activity), and I said my learning outcomes at the start of my lesson.

What did not go well

The concept of time is not something that is necessarily translated directly in Indigenous cultures, as I currently understand them. Having a 10 minute teaching session in and of itself goes against many cultural practices and beliefs of the peoples of Turtle Island (I think). Instead, learning unfolds overtime, and is something we are in relation with. Therefore the initial set up of the activity went against my understanding of how I could implement Indigenous pedagogy respectfully.

Beyond that, my initial reaction to facilitating my lesson was that it was way too full. I spoke quickly, despite being fairly calm, and I didn’t have enough time to allow my learners to try the last activity. I realized that without any visual information learners couldn’t refer back to some of the things I was saying.

I had mentioned in my session that I didn’t include slides on purpose, but I didn’t say why I did this, because it was tied to creating a non-hierarchical learning environment which was one of my strategies for using Indigenous pedagogy. I thought that this would be obvious to my learners, and that it would be silly to explain my teaching strategy when I was going to demonstrate it any way. But through feedback, I learned something different: it was suggested that I could have explained why I was not using slides. This was a useful perspective to consider and something I still contemplating for my next session. I likely just need to find a concise way to say what I said above, although I feel uncertain about making a link between a lack of slides and Indigenous pedagogy because I am not an expert on this concept, and many Indigenous instructors likely use slides. This tension is something I am working through as a white person, particularly in ensuring that I am not co-opting Indigenous oral traditions but that I am also growing my own capacity to teach outside of the traditional academic structure. Perhaps for the scope of this assignment, I need to just use slides. I’ll have to see how I feel after thinking about it some more.

Challenge: While I completely understand and agree with this feedback, I don’t understand how I could also create the time to explain my teaching strategies to create that transparency for learners in a 10 min teaching session. I could have easily spent 10 minutes explaining Indigenous pedagogy, and it felt like knowing some of the basic concepts of Indigenous pedagogy would be a prerequisite for me to have meaningful feedback from my peers. To do this topic justice, I think it would help to have a brief time ahead of the lesson where I can explain my intentions and why Indigenous pedagogy often doesn’t align with typical pedagogical approaches in University. I suppose my question is: who is my target audience and what relationship do we already have to one another when I do this micro teaching session?

Another piece of feedback I got was that I could include a written version of my learning objectives for learners to refer back to and for visual organization purposes. I hadn’t considered that what I was doing was inaccessible to students and not helpful for their learning. This is a piece of feedback I am going to use in my next session, but I am not going to do it via slides. I am either going to type it in the chat or put it in the jamboard link. Doing so just does not align currently with my understanding of Indigenous pedagogy and goes against my values for doing this concept justice, as I have mentioned.

Challenge: The irony to all this is that in all my effort to decolonize a lesson plan, I was kind of told … not to do that. I had quite an emotional reaction to this and nearly had to turn off my camera to hide tears that were forming. I wasn’t upset that I got constructive feedback – I crave that, and I attempt to welcome it with grace. I was upset that I felt resistance to my attempt to implement Indigenous pedagogy…in a session DESIGNED to facilitate Indigenous pedagogy. I thought “if I can’t feel supported in decolonizing a 10 min lesson that is ABOUT imploring Indigenous pedagogy, why are we including it in this class and how would be actually decolonize this institution?” I felt really disappointed and discouraged in that moment. This strong initial reaction led me to linger on the feedback I got and to deconstruct the feedback and my reaction.

What I learned about being an educator and myself

After having a strong reaction to getting feedback about my teaching session I realized I had some deconstructing to do. I had initially attributed all of this feedback to just be about Indigenous pedagogy, instead of attributing it to my own pedagogical skills. I starting asking myself: how much of the ownership to facilitate a session using Indigenous pedagogical strategies is on me? How much is on the learners and my peers and instructor in this course? I realized that I have some responsibility to take here. I can implement the ideas I discussed above, but I also also accept that I am not going to be an expert at using Indigenous pedagogical skills the first time I do so. To expect myself to be good at it is actually a very colonizing idea – that I can just take Indigenous concepts and benefit from them. So I’ve realized that I need to continue to build these skills, and perhaps it goes beyond the scope of this course to find a mentor to help me with this. That being said, I also would ask that if I am expected to demonstrate my skills in this area that my peers and instructor are able to understand this area of SoTL and think deeply about what it means to decolonize a lesson plan.

Future Implications: Since I realized that I need to consider that the challenges that occurred could be co-owned by myself, my peers, and the instructor, I have come back to this idea of the importance of reflective practice and getting effective feedback. If I am not clear in my teaching strategy, regardless of how decolonized it may be, then I’m not being a good instructor. I would like to seek out a mentor or webinar or other learning space where I can practice some of the skills I mentioned and get feedback on them from people who are skilled in the area of Indigenous pedagogy.

Which feedback I will implement

At the time of writing this I am still reflecting on all of the feedback I got. I likely will implement the things I have mentioned above, in the ways I have mentioned them. Additionally, I asked my group about my topic choice (epistemology) I was given some feedback that perhaps it was a heavy topic. I was given feedback that I could include more Indigenous examples in the examples section that I had for the three types of epistemological orientations. Initially, I thought this was a great idea and a huge oversight on my part. But upon reflection, I realized that this is akin to simple injecting Indigenous content into my lesson. So I have decided I will include only 1/4 written examples in each section that is rooted in Indigenous Ways of Knowing, but I will verbally explain the active learning task using a land-based example. I think that in doing so this will make a more explicit connection between my topic of epistemology, Indigenous Ways of Knowing, and these 7 Indigenous pedagogical strategies I listed above.

While I wasn’t given direct feedback on the use of my 7 strategies explicitly, I am thinking I will need to just focus on one or two in order for my peers to give me feedback on those strategies specifically. I think it perhaps wasn’t obvious to my peers and instructor that I had tried to decolonize the entire lesson plan, and in many ways perhaps that was not the point of this task. While implementing the 7 strategies was helpful and meaningful for my own learning, I am thinking about focusing on, say, just not using slides, and getting feedback on how that felt as learners. There are additional features that may help with processing auditory information from an accessibility perspective, such as the transcript feature in zoom. Finding creative ways to still provide a lesson that is aligned with Indigenous pedagogy tricky, and it is a task that may require some flexible thinking from the learners. I may simply have to state that.

Additional Reflections

Giving Feedback

I wanted to reflect on some additional challenges I noticed while giving feedback to peers. If my peers had used the BOPPS model, it was easy to give feedback on those features. If they didn’t, but then wanted feedback on the BOPPS model, I hope it prompted some self-reflection for my peers. It felt like perhaps not the most productive use of our time otherwise. Additionally, I noticed that one of my peers did not implement a specific learning strategy but instead taught about it. I think some further clarification may need to be made, despite us as students asking many times about what the micro-teaching session was designed to accomplish.

Some feedback comments I heard from one student came across as concerning to me. These comments included that the one of our classmates should “smile more” when presenting and that their session was good for not being a native English language speaker. Neither of these feedback comments were asked for by the peer that had just facilitated their micro-teaching session. These comments were affirmed by the instructor which I found further concerning. In the moment, I understood that maybe prior conversations had elicited these comments in ways that I was not aware of, but I found them very startling, inappropriate, and condescending. I know that not everyone has the same knowledge about comments that are considered to be microaggressions, but I nontheless had a strong emotional reaction to this. I was happy to see some pushback on the second comment from another peer who spoke English as a second language. My thoughts were along the lines of “if we can’t give each other feedback that doesn’t include microaggressions related English speaking abilities, what does it mean that we are perpetuating as instructors? What views do we hold of students who may not speak English fluently or who do not smile?”. There are ways to give feedback on each other’s facial expressions or energy without directly telling an individual that they should smile more. I wish I had spoken up in the moment to challenge these comments and in the future I plan to address them in a gentle way. Additionally, it would be great to discuss microaggressions ahead of giving feedback to one another in order to consider how to address this is in the future.

Future implications: These kinds of mistakes can happen to anyone. Even though I identified concerning comments, I myself am not immune from saying a microaggressive comment to a peer or student within any of my roles. While there are many webinars and learning opportunities related to anti-racism and EDI, I am wondering about learning how to respond as an educator when we make these mistakes or when we are given feedback that something we did may have been inappropriate. How can we get that feedback from peers? I’d rather be told by somebody I trust that what I’ve said is problematic than to hurt a group of students. How can we create learning environments that hold space for calling each other into having these tough conversations? I would rather be part of a brave learning environment that had the capacity to stretch in order to address these concepts than focus on mastering content. And yet, as a white cis-gendered, able-bodied person, I shouldn’t be the one to fully decide this. I have heard from my Black friends that being in school right now as the only Black student in a class is exhausting. There are many conversations where white people are reflecting on their privilege and the Black student is simply called in for their perspective. We may need learning spaces where white learners don’t need to burden Black students with their reflections without reinventing segregation. Therefore, I am just wondering about seeking out and/or creating on going learning opportunities and spaces for educators to engage in reflective practice that relates to deconstructing how they handled situations. This things obviously informally exist in that I can ask peers or friends for their perspective, but this feedback is not necessarily informed by SoTL. I plan to continue to think about this situation and how I might support myself and my peers in learning from our mistakes, where appropriate.

Syllabus and Lesson Plan Reflections

Reflection 2: Evaluating a Syllabus

What I learned from the evaluation of the syllabus

The syllabus evaluation exercise prompted me to think about communicating expectations and to students. I chose this course outline because I know that it includes scaffolding assignments and trains students on designing program plans for young children. The course is called Program Design for Children and is a second year course with in the Child Studies program here at Guelph, in FRHD. There is a lot of cross over with this content and lesson planning for adults. But the interesting thing that I noticed is that these scaffolded assignments which include summative feedback are not well described to students who read the syllabus. A student likely just sees the 3 assignments with different grades attached, but there isn’t a clear description that these assignments all build on each other (in reality I know they do, since I’ve taken the course and TA the course and spoken at length with the department about this). Further, only one assignment is thoroughly explained, and no grading breakdown was provided within this document. A light-bulb moment for me and inference I made from this is that by these standards, a course outline must stand on its own without needing to make these connections for students through verbal instructions. I wonder whether University instructors are aware that this is best practice in SoTL. Syllabi are often explained in the first week of class with a break down of major assignments, so I wonder how many instructors rely on this clarification process to discuss the nuances of the syllabus with the learners.

Additionally, while I really liked the learning outcomes, realizing that they did not cover the full range of Fink’s dimensions was interesting. I initially thought that this was an oversight for the course, and that the instructor should consider adding some higher-level skills from the list. Since I know the placement of this course within the larger program curricula, I was able to realize, though, that this might actually not be what the course needs. This course is the first of three courses that scaffold students learning wile they get trained as educators. There are good reasons that some of the higher-level skills are not included here, because students are learning the basic applied skills for observing behaviour, analyzing behaviour from a developmental perspective, and beginning to understand how they might scaffold children’s development using their interests and current abilities. Upon even further reflection, however, I realized that this course also does include some of those higher-level skills such as application (by applying developmental knowledge so that a program plan is developmentally appropriate), and integration (by connecting observations to developmental theory and next-steps in the program plans as an educator), and additional skills such as: collaborating to create a group project, responding to children’s developmental needs, identifying developmental skills from observations, and creating a plan (the students literally create 3 versions of a program plan). These skills are demonstrated by students in a very applied way that we do not typically consider within academia, but they are skills present in these assignments (which I only know from taking and TA’ing the course). After looking back on the learning objectives for this reflection, I see that they do in fact include some of these examples I mentioned, so perhaps I didn’t realize at the time that these covered more of Fink’s dimensions than I originally documented. Regardless I believe the learning outcomes could be adjusted slightly to reflect how students are in fact engaging in the continuum of Fink’s dimensions, even if in different ways that was is typical for academic undergraduate training.

Challenges: One main challenge for choosing a syllabus that I have familiarity with is that I could have been a bit biased in my analysis, such that I was rating it harsher than one of my peers might. In the future it would be interesting for me to do this again with a syllabus that I am not familiar with, to see if I would have interpreted it differently.

Future Implications: I have seen Blooms taxonomy used when developing programs with young children so I know that it is possible to take Fink’s dimensions and align then with the a course’s goals for students. I think that we need to learn about Fink’s dimensions in a way that allows us as future instructors to be flexible with how we apply these verbs in order to fit the expectations of the course. Additionally, I liked learning that sometimes courses intentionally don’t include all dimensions if they are part of a larger scaffolded experience for students. I am wondering if there is away to clearly communicate that to students within the syllabi so that students understand the connections that the learning outcomes have for their future and past courses within a particular program.

Focus of the syllabus

The syllabus is mostly content-focused, and I was “let down” by this because of the irony of a course for educators not including learning-focused elements. Although the learning outcomes provide clear descriptions of some of the learning, there is not a description about what students will learn each week or through each assignment or assessment. Like we discussed in class, having a learning-focused syllabi coveys a warm and welcoming tone, non-hierarchical, student-centred approach to the structure of the class. I feel like it is a hugely missed opportunity to not include at least a few sentences about what students will have the opportunity to learn about each week. This could easily be modified by adding in sentences to the schedule under the content covered each week. Additionally, including more about what learning the students are engaging in within the descriptions in each of the assessments would be an easy way to add in additional information.

Challenge: As noted from the article we read about learning-focused syllabi, there was not a resounding appreciation for the learning-focused syllabi from the individuals in the study. One of the things participants talked about was the syllabus being confusing and long. I also worry about this when learning-centred syllabi. From an accessibility stand point, a long and wordy document may be less helpful in ensuring students can have success in the course, even if it does create a welcoming tone to the document. I hope in the future that I can consider including elements of learning and a warm tone without making the document inaccessible to my students.

Reflection 3: Reflecting on my design of, and feedback from, my lesson plan

Difficult parts of creating a lesson plan

I had a lot of difficulty understanding what we could make the lesson plan about. I ended up not being able to get a lot of feedback on my lesson plan because my partner and I were figuring out what to teach about versus what strategies we could use during the feedback session. I found the most challenging part filling in all the components of the BOPPS model into a 10 minute activity. This was an excellent learning opportunity for me because I tend to plan really long guest lectures so I have a lot to learn in predicting how long each part of the lesson plan will take.

Since I am running a “work shop” on emergent curriculum as a TA in a few weeks, I initially wanted to plan my lesson around this topic as some practice ahead of time. But once I realized I had to use an Indigenous pedagogical strategy, this topic no longer felt aligned with the strategy that I wanted to demonstrate or practice. I brought this up during my feedback session with my peer and they agreed. In response to this realization, I changed my topic to be about epistemology, or Ways of Knowing, since this can clearly be taught using Indigenous pedagogical strategies, at least as I know them to be. Again, fitting this topic and my strategy into 10 minutes was a challenge! But I just did my best to remember that the point of this is for me to practice this skill.

Most difficult part about receiving feedback

My peer gave me honest and helpful feedback. I am fortunate in that my undergrad training really opened me up to receiving feedback with grace, and I welcomed her insight. The main challenge was that she wasn’t as knowledgable about Indigenous pedagogy as I had hoped, so it might have been helpful to discuss it with my group member who is doing the same topic as I am. I tried to explain what I could, but Indigenous pedagogy can go against the things that have allowed us to be successful in academia (as grad students) so it’s not something that can just be explained simply in a 20 minute period. To understand the topic it needs to be revisited again and again, like many things in Indigenous culture, as I currently understand it. So, this was part of the feedback process that felt clunky for me, and not particularly helpful on this strategy.

Admittedly, it was hard to hear that my lesson plan wasn’t as clear as I thought it would be since I have some experience writing lesson plans. I helped me realized that there is still so much for me to learn about creating program plans, and I will never be fully competent in understanding every learner’s perspective. In this way, continuing to learn and get feedback on my lesson plans and teaching strategies is essential for my ongoing professional development. Even when feeling saturating in knowledge in the area of how learning happens, there will always be more for me to learn, and additional perspectives to consider.

Effective Feedback as an Educator

I don’t like thinking of myself as a teacher or having a teaching practice per se. I don’t “teach” as my main responsibility, even as an early childhood educator. I co-learn. I walk with children and students as they learn. My practice is to be a responsive and caring adult (not an expert). I am trained to respond to the needs and curiosities of my learners, by observing and analyzing their skills and interests and extending these abilities through meaningful and engaging activities. In this regard, reflective practice is essential to being a responsive educator who can grow with students. By extension, receiving feedback is a crucial piece of expanding our self-awareness, understanding our impacts on learners, and continuing to adjust our practice over time. There will never be a time where an educator can stop learning about being an effective educator, especially because every group of students is unique. And feedback from others is necessary because we aren’t usually able to fully see past our own biases or to interpret our ideas from the students perspective. I hope I am able to continue to engage in professional development that allows me to have direct feedback on my skills in action (not just learning about concepts without applying them and seeing how it works out).

Additionally, I have realized that practicing something without getting feedback is not always sufficient to ensure that the necessary growth can take place. Practicing without feedback would be like practicing playing music without ever listening to yourself on a recording or getting people to tell you their reactions. It’s a different experience to get direct feedback on your ideas or performance than the act of practicing those ideas or performance. I think that there really isn’t a replacement for getting feedback from others on our pedagogical decisions.

Feedback I am Using

My peer mentioned keeping my active learning activity very simple because I had a lot packed in. I realized that I agreed, and that it might be too much to complete in 10 mins. I realized that I could use this feedback AND implement an additional strategy from the articles I read on Indigenous pedagogy. I could allow students to self-pace their completion of this activity beyond the scope of the lesson plan, which is reflective of how students self-paced their completion of courses in the study I read for my SoTL snapshot (Papp, 2020). I decided to use this feedback in a unique way, and I would not have had this realization without a peer mentioning it in a way that prompted me to think differently about it.

My peer also liked that I included a jamboard and menti link, so I am going to keep both.

Feedback I am not using

My peer mentioned that my topic choice of epistemology was a big topic to discuss in 10 minutes. We chatted a bit about it and I agreed. I probably should change the topic. However, I decided that I wanted to try it anyway because a different topic was not coming to mind that would allow me to utilize an Indigenous pedagogical strategy. From my reading, it is not enough to simple inject Indigenous content into courses in order to decolonize academia, so I felt strongly about avoiding doing that. Instead, I wanted to teach about an academic topic by using documented Indigenous pedagogical strategies like I had learned about. I felt that this was a great extension on the learning I have been doing about Indigenizing the curriculum over the past year or so, and would be a good challenge for myself. I have other opportunities to teach simpler topics so this felt like a risk that I wanted to try for my own learning and growth. We will see how it works out.

Future implications

For the scope of this course, it proved challenging to finish my lesson plan on the topic of epistemology and I had to significantly cut down the content in order to included all the strategies and BOPPS items that I wanted to. I am wondering what is more important for my learning: to demonstrate I can implement BOPPPS in a 10 min lesson plan or to try to decolonize my own pedagogical practice at a deeper level. I can’t seem to do both and meet the expectations of this assignment. I am craving more practicing with implementing Indigenous pedagogy and I am trying to find a way that I can continue to learn about this topic outside of this course.

University Teaching: Theory and Practice – Reflection

The next few blog posts may be a bit different from my past posts about the ECEC sector. I am currently enrolled in an MSc program at the University of Guelph and I am taking a course called University Teaching: Theory and Practice. As both an academic and an educator, I will be documenting some of my learning and development here.

What I Wish to Accomplish This Course

As a Registered Early Childhood Educator (RECE), I have been reimagining my image of “learners”, how learning happens, what inclusive learning environments look/feel/sound like, how best to document learning, and my role as a co-learner/”educator” for the past few years. The ways in which I think about learners has stretched (shattered, even,) my ideas and definitions of what successful learners look like. I already know that my aim as a current and future educator is to be relationship-based, responsive, and student-centered while I foster engaging and inclusive learning environments. In early learning settings I have gained confidence in facilitating active learning activities, but due to the play-based emergent curriculum in early childhood education and care, there will be some differences between my skillset for learning with young children and learning with adults. So, what does active learning look like at the University level and how can I facilitate it? My first idea for what I hope to accomplish in this course is to be able to translate what I have learned about early learning pedagogy into adult learning strategies. Thus, my first SMART goal is:

By the end of this semester, I will be able to facilitate a 20-minute interaction lesson with students through zoom. To achieve this, I will implement activities in my micro-teaching session, including menti, jamboard or kahoot, which ask the learners to contribute collaboratively to answering questions or reflect upon the information that is being discussed. If I can implement these tools, receive student engagement through their use of these tools, and if I am able to respond to my peers’ answers, I will feel I have achieved this goal.

Additionally, through previous reflections I have identified that I would like my teaching approaches to be rooted in decolonization and equity. This stems from reflecting on “all my relations,” including that with land, and how this intersects with being an educator. Indigenous pedagogy is area in which I have a lot to learn and I can now recognize my contribution to the harm perpetuated by the institutions I participate in. As such, I also hope that in this course I can learn about how to implement Indigenous pedagogical approaches, and how to do so appropriately and with an ethic of care. Thus, my second SMART goal is:

By the end of this semester, I will be able to implement one teaching strategy for online seminars that is culturally responsive to Indigenous students’ needs and that is aligned with Indigenous pedagogical practices. To do this, I will review four to five peer-reviewed articles on Indigenous pedagogy and teaching approaches and create short summaries (much like the ones in the SOTL snapshots) for my own learning and reflection. I may decide to post them on my blog. While I would like to gauge this goal by getting feedback from an Indigenous student, I also feel that asking such a thing may be inappropriate at this time. If this is not possible, instead, when I create my teaching philosophy statement, I will integrate my new knowledge about an Indigenous pedagogical approach into my statement. I will feel successful in this goal if by the end of the semester I can describe, in detail, one teaching strategy that I can use virtually that is rooted in Indigenous pedagogy and that is appropriate for me, a white settler, to implement in a University class setting.

Similarly, I have personal experience, as a student, with student topic choice, late banks, student presentation choice (hence I am currently using a blog that I created in my undergraduate courses since that was an option for some of my previous assignments). As someone who lives with multiple mental illnesses this flexibility and responsiveness allowed me to thrive in my degree program – yet I know first-hand how many students struggle with the elite culture within academia. As someone with a sister who lives with Down Syndrome, I am constantly thinking about how I have learned to repeat instructions multiple ways and to give scaffolded guidance and reminders where appropriate (something that often does not happen with assignments at the undergraduate level). Additionally, as someone who has many peers with families, the benefits of reasonably flexible assignment deadlines are something that is of interest to me. Therefore, I would like to gain confidence in creating some new “norms” in academia that are more equitable, anti-bias, anti-racist, inclusive, and flexible. One area I see myself doing this is through assignments. Thus, my final SMART goal is:

By the end of the semester, I will be able to create assignment instructions that are rooted in inclusion and equity, such that the grading criteria is as universally accessible as possible to students from diverse cultural backgrounds, lived experiences, disabilities, and identities. I hope to learn more about universally accessible learning strategies through this course (such as the “late back” article from SOTL snapshot). My aim is to take what I learn in moments like these and keep a list of ways that these can be incorporated into an assignment I make. In order for an assignment to be accessible, so far, my list of universally accessible criteria is as follows:

repeat the instructions several times in several ways,
offer some structure but indicate where there is flexibility and student choice,
allow students to choose the topic,
offer formative feedback from either peers or a TA,
offer a multi-step scaffolded assignment.
regarding the grading criteria: I do not want students to be graded on spelling or writing style on the first draft, but I still want there to be feedback provided. The final draft will be graded loosely for spelling and grammar in order to not penalize English language learners, folks who express themselves in a nuanced dialect, or individuals with learning disabilities.
offering non-academic avenues of creating the assignment, if they wish (such as a blog, reflection, poetry, or podcast) and if appropriate. I will not have a “hard” deadline that takes marks off for lateness after the initial deadline.

I will measure my success of this goal by creating a mock assignment (about anything I want, the content isn’t important to me right now). I will feel that I have met this goal if I can write the course assignment, as well as a plan for discussing and reviewing the assignment over the semester, that implements the aforementioned components. I hope to get feedback on this assignment from either an instructor, TA, or peer in this course.

Importance of Articulating Learning Goals

Personally, I felt the value in writing out those learning goals because I was able to find meaning in this learning journey and it gives me something to look forward to. During that process I felt attachment to my learning outcomes and felt a sense of responsibility for my learning build. I recognize that in creating my own goals I was able to establish some skills that I may be able to “market’ in the future, and the practice of articulating the goals now provided a clear sense of how to get from where I currently am to where I want to be. Finally, sharing these goals with instructors gave me some sense of “going public” with my learning journey, my intentions, and my interests. Making these things clear to my instructors will help them to be responsive to my interests, but also helped me to feel committed my goals since I shared them with others.

Strategies and Checkpoints for Progress Towards Goals

In previous courses and in my research work I have created a table or excel file to keep track of items on my to-do list. While achieving these goals may not be a linear process, I believe still documenting steps towards my progress will help me understand, tangibly, where I am at in terms of my journey to “achieving” my goal. I will have to break down my goals into much smaller steps to create items that I can “check” off in my table. I have some ideas about how I can do this, but I also realize that I might have to be flexible in terms of what is attainable over the course of this semester since some of my goals require me to do additional work outside the course. What will be easiest for me is to reflect on my progress weekly, but then have three main check points during the semester where I ask myself “What is working? What is not working? What is unclear?”. Finally, I hope to use this blog to track my progress and reflect upon these learning goals throughout the semester. I will likely end up writing a post outside of the class reflections about one of these goals, because written reflection is a powerful processing tool in my toolkit. If I am to be truly successful in achieving these goals and implementing them in the future as an educator, these will be things that I have to think deeply about and integrate into my Ways of Being as an educator. Essentially, I want to “think” with these goals 6 months from now, not just vaguely recall them once I am a sessional instructor. Finally, I plan to discuss what I learned from these goals with the instructors I currently work with as a TA because they are both responsive to learning how to be better educators (they are both RECEs and Ontario Certified Teachers). So discussing what I learn with them to see if they are willing to implement any of these strategies will be another way that I can integrate these goals into my thinking and Ways of Being.

Instructor and Peer Support

What I need most from instructors and peers is to be able to “linger in generative space”. My learning process is very embodied, and I am typically a very engaged student, so I tend to like to talk things out – but sometimes can dominate the class conversation with my specific interests (i.e., in this case, information about my goals). That being said, I think that I thrive when given this choice, independence, and space to grapple with new concepts like the ones presented in my goals. For me, this looks like having discussions where my peers and I can make connections and even, at times, respectfully debating new concepts. More specifically, opportunities to discuss what I am learning about my goals during the 3-hr seminars will support and validate my feelings of being invested in my goals. I already sense that I may struggle to sit back and listen, because I feel passionate about the practice of pedagogy and I truly want to learn from this course. It will be helpful for me to be given cues from my peers or instructor about when I maybe should stop talking and let others “grapple”. In previous courses where I have been passionate about the topic I have responded well when instructors have directed me towards specific additional readings or resources that are aligned with whatever I may personally be “grappling” with (in this case it will likely be concerns about how, when, and why I can implement Indigenous pedagogical approaches as a settler). In essence, casual conversations with my peers where I can make connections about my goals to other concepts in the course will be helpful, and I ask that both instructors and peers are willing to indulge and support each other as we try this. Additionally, if I am to feel like I have achieved my goals, I will require the opportunities to implement my first goal into my micro teaching session, to write my philosophy statement where I can include what I have learned about an Indigenous pedagogical strategy (and, hopefully, be given feedback about it from the grader), and to create and discuss a mock assignment (I won’t ask for direct feedback on it from a grading perspective but perhaps it is something I can chat with Christie about in her office hours). While not all of these tasks may fall within the course parameters, I would like the opportunity to still try to do them, and to be given some feedback where appropriate, because these are the things that feel most meaningful to me, and I am opening to downsizing my goals if it I realize they are not attainable during this semester.

Personal Philosophy Statement

As an aspiring ECE, and a student planning on pursuing graduate work in the helping profession that is related to child development, I put a lot of thought into creating a personal philosophy statement regarding working with families. Although this particular statement is heavily related to educating, I believe it applies to working with young children across various capacities. I am sharing it here to indicate to my audience a transparent presentation of my values.

Personal Philosophy Statement

My personal philosophy for working with children and families considers the notion that all individuals are competent, curious, capable, and curious life-long learners who are entitled to access to life-long and developmentally appropriate learning opportunities within the context of, and in collaboration with, their community and family (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014). I employ a relationships-based approach while working with children and families and believe that we can all learn from and grow with each other best through our relationships. Further, I highly consider the neurocognitive processes and right-brain to right-brain synchronicity when building these relationships. My personal approach to teaching focuses on the social-emotional readiness for learning and facilitating emergent and responsive key experiences that consider familial and cultural contexts to help children actively engage in their learning in meaningful ways (HighScope inspired). Thus, I believe good teaching employs a wide variety of observational, facilitative, and assessment strategies in order to offer unique opportunities to each specific group of learners to allow them to explore their interests independently.

More specifically, I believe that high-quality teaching practices requires an ebb and flow between: minimal direct instruction (Montessori-inspired); scaffolding for extending learning (constructivist approach); behaviour guidance in collaboration with the learners (HighScope inspired); preparation of the environment to not only act as the “third teacher” (Reggio Emilia inspired) but also to help offer a calm learning environment (Shanker, 2016); monitoring and modifying for facilitating belonging, engagement, wellbeing, and expression (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014); facilitating active engagement with, and investigation of, the learning materials (constructivist approaches); assessing and considering stages of development in program planning (Piaget’s stages and Best Start Panel on Early Learning, 2014); and hands-off supervision during times of exploration, experimentation, and opportunities for logical consequences to unfold (Montessori approach).

Moreover, I execute the Self Reg steps when children are upset (Shanker, 2016) in order to relieve their stress and prepare them for learning. This approach works well, but sometimes requires collaboration others to truly uncover and resolve conflicts. I use the HighScope conflict resolution approach wherever possible (The Active Learner, 2018), which is extremely effective in revolving immediate conflict, but requires substantiable follow-up for resolving on-going tension between individuals. However, both of these incidents and interventions would cause me to reflect on the environmental influences, including the influence of routines and expectations, on the learning space and consider whether there are changes I could make to further facilitate safe, nurturing, supportive, engaging, and developmentally appropriate learning opportunities. Additionally, when considering various developmental and interests of the children in my care, I incorporate physical objects as well as books and pictures that are responsive to (and that sometimes combine) these factors. This process is very trial-and-error based and often requires in-the-moment modifications to ensure appropriate engagement. We may remain on these topics until the children indicate they are satisfied and no longer curious about the topic.

Emergent interests and abilities, play, and inquiry are at the heart of my pedagogical practice and made possible through program plans that are developed based on observation, documentation, and reflections. A circular, rather than linear, view could be used when considering my approach (Stacey, 2009). Further, although ideal programming is child-centered and open-ended, my teaching practice also includes my personal strengths and natural talents, so that I can capitalize on my shared interests with the children, am a present and active co-learner, and form authentic relationships. More specifically, nature-based play, music, expression through movement are some of modes I prefer to use while teaching.