I was very interested to look at the content for this week. With what has been going on with the Residential Schools across Canada, it is extremely important to learn about Indigenous education. As a future educator, I am looking forward to learning more about incorporating Indigenous education into the classroom. Listening to the video and the interview with Mr. Baker, I learned a lot about this, as well as about using your PLN and social media in a professional sense (Baker, 2019; Baker 2021). We need to rewrite Canada’s history, and show students what the future could look like, making educators the ones who will make changes to our education system (Baker, 2019). A big part of this is making sure that the three essential pathways work together. These are students who absorb all the information and want to know what really happened in our history, the educators and other staff members in schools who also need to learn about the Indigenous perspectives, and the third pathway is the community including parents who also need to learn the truth about Canada’s history. Something that Mr. Baker said in the introduction video that really stuck with me was that we must listen, watch, and show respect. It is important that we listen to the voices of our Indigenous learners and incorporate this as part of the school education. Listening to stories is such a powerful way for us all to learn because we are hearing true, personal stories from Indigenous community members themselves about what they have gone through in the past. Next is watch, and we need to watch members of the Indigenous community and how they learn. Their way of learning can also be a very powerful tool, because they learn a lot from stories of their ancestors, from nature, and they can be very spiritual. Last is showing respect. We must respect that we were not the original inhabitants of the land we live on, the Indigenous peoples were, and that they have their own way of life and their own view of the world, which we must respect. I really like when teachers do a land acknowledgement at the beginning of a class, so we know whose land we are learning on. The land of acknowledgement is also something that I would like to take with me into my future classrooms and continue doing with my students. I believe but it is very important for all learners to know that we are lucky to be living and learning on the land we are, because it was not originally ours.
A PLN can play a big part in communication for both individuals and communities (Baker, 2021). They provide support systems, which can also be your professional learning community. Having a healthy community is very important when using social media professionally. This group of people is there to support you, as well as help grow your professional platform. Growing a network like this will work best when we are contributing positively to our community. This will allow individuals to have healthy and respectful conversations with each other. PLN’s can be beneficial for Indigenous learners because they can help bring and share understanding through personal stories and family stories. Using social media as a professional resource provides an excellent platform for members of Indigenous communities to use their voice to share information, especially about truth and reconciliation. This type of use allows real and true stories to be told, which may be new information for many people, so it would help them grow by learning about what is really happening. This is very important because majority of media platforms only show what they want to tell, and what they think people want to hear. Social media also helps control communications between people, as well as keeps people updated and informed about a wide variety of subject areas, whether it be events, places, or even people. This can be very beneficial for communities because it allows the truth to be posted and shared among members of personal or professional online learning networks. This also goes beyond just sharing information within a community, because it can also reach beyond, spreading further outside of the original community. Not long ago, after the terrible events occurred at the Residential schools, I saw a post shared by someone I follow online that was originally posted by a member of an Indigenous community. I then saw it multiple more times throughout the days to follow. This shows how information can spread through different communities, to help people learn and hear these important stories.
Baker, Brad. “BCPVPA leading student success: Part one – Indigenous education.” YouTube, uploaded by BC Principals’ & Vice-Principals’ Association, 8 October 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeuvuRGJt3w
Baker, Brad. “Brad Baker EDCI 338.” YouTube, uploaded by MILLER, 10 June 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5z8iHxW2n4
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