I was very happy to be able to start off my teacher eduction with this article by Daniels because so many of the points talked about in this article were factors in my education growing up. I grew up in the Northwest end of Etobicoke better known as Rexdale, some people may have heard of Rexdale on the news we are the home of the infamous Rob Ford. Growing up there was a lot of violence in the community it has died down some but there are still incidents. In the last 2 years One student was stabbed to death in school and two students were shot to death outside of their schools. While I agree with Daniels that the violence people think about is primarily fiction created by consuming too much american media there is also still a very real problem. Daniels writes, “The predominant strategies for working in such school districts seldom emerge from the perspective of possibility where future orientations and cultures that are transformational in nature are viewed as sites of strength. Rather, the texts that are purportedly written to enhance educational opportunities remain embedded in the idea of “fixing” the students and the overall communities that are bounded within the geographical and ideological space labelled urban." I agree that these students don't need to be fixed and neither do the communities but the overall perception of the schools in the communities and whether students can safely enjoy their education is the bigger issue the schools are facing. My highschool experience was somewhat the norm in my community where I completed grade 9 and 10 in an urban school and transferred to a suburban school to complete gr 11 and 12. The reason so many students from urban neighbourhoods transfer or begin school in the suburban areas is the reputations that the schools have developed over the years that are not accurate for the most part. Parents and students wanted to have a “better” and “safer” education which the did not believe they could receive in the urban schools even if it meant travelling nearly an hour on the bus to get to school when there are 5 urban high schools in the community with 2 of them being at risk of being shut down. The preconceived notions that Daniels spoke didn't only affect the teachers and teacher candidates they also trickled down to the community where they believed the best educations could only be obtained in the suburbs. The question I have is what can be done to help change this perception of urban schools, and how high up do those changes need to go? The article by Chambers was more difficult for me to follow because the stories she was telling did not relate to any of my experiences growing up. When she got to the end of her article I started asking question. Such as why didn't I learn a lot of these things while I was in school? I knew that the vast majority of canadians were immigrants but didn't learn how we came into possession of this land until after I had graduated from high school. Then that sparked why didn't we learn as much about the aboriginal people who were here before we got here and why was there history deemed not as important as the history our ancestors brought with them? I remember learning about why Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the new world and as students we were lead to believe this was start of Canadian history even though there are so many more layers we didn't get to learn that can be argued is as important as the European and African history that we are taught. It also makes me wonder why other countries history is more important than our own? I never learned why Nunavut was formed just that it was. There was never any talk of the problems the creation of a new province brought with it such as the people in Holman that had to decide what side of the border they wanted to belong to but we learned of the problem colonization had on Africa and the problems the borders caused. My hope is that we can continue to expand Native American studies in schools and not just in schools like Rideau but all across the country because I think is important to know the full history of our country for us to be the progressive inclusive nation we strive to be we can not have an important part of our nation under-represented in our education system.
The question I have is can there be student led learning? As educators I know we will have a limited amount of time to get through the content we want but is it possible for the students to directs us down different paths that they are interested in rather than following a script. I know growing up I would been more interested in learning the full history of Canada rather than focusing so much on Europe.
1 Comment
Claire
9/16/2015 06:02:07 pm
Brandon, I had the same thought as you. I was never taught much about First Nations history in school and was left to discover it on my own and probably wouldn't have even discovered it had Canadian history not been one of my prerequisites for the B.Ed program. When people ask me "what type of history do you want to teach?" and I say "Canadian", I get a lot of laughs and jokes (especially from Europeans) saying "Canada doesn't have any history." People genuinely believe that Canadian history started in 1867. We both know that isn't true. We do have to integrate more First Nations history and acknowledge it in schools and you are right, we can't hope to be a progressive nation when one nation still remains under-represented and often times marginalized.
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