“I want to shape the next generation” This is a term I have used many times throughout my educational journey to becoming a future educator. When people would ask me why I want to become a teacher, I would respond with that statement as my answer. After reading Charlene Bearhead’s statement, “those responsible for education are learning beside those they are responsible to educate.” I realize it is not my job to be shaping my students, and it is my job to guide them, learn with them, and support them. Residential Schools were sourly based on shaping the child into Europeans by assimilation and disrupting and taking their ways of knowing their identity.
“The residential school experience is one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in our collective history.” -Justice Murray Sinclair, TRC Chairman, the residential schools, were shaped by Western perspectives of education. The government and the churches believed that taking away their ways will shape the next generation into living European ways. Module 8 shares a video of a woman expressing her pain from the loss of her family’s native language, how her grandfather does not want them to learn the language as he is afraid it would be dangerous.
When it came to Indigenous perspectives of education, Beatrice Foxx mentions in module one (bonus videos); most indigenous perspectives were based on teachings of languages, the passing of stories, how to live on the land, traditions, and ceremonies all taught by their families. This way of education disrupts Western perspectives of education, because Westernized education is standardized tests, and one way of thinking.
As a future educator, I plan to help my students to discover who they, I want to be able to guide them the right way to resources or whatever they need. I want my students to be able to share their culture and background with pride. I want my students to feel they are accepted and that I care about who they are and their stories. I also want them to know that even though I am teaching them, that I am learning as well and would be very interested in knowing all my student’s traditions and backgrounds.
Mackenzie Lautamus E-portfolio 