Blog #6

The article suggests that a “critical pedagogy of place” aims to:

(a) identify, recover, and create material spaces and places that teach us how to live well in our total environments (reinhabitation); and (b) identify and change ways of thinking that injure and exploit other people and places (decolonization) (p.74)

1. List some of the ways that you see reinhabitation and decolonization happening throughout the narrative.
2. How might you adapt these ideas towards considering place in your own subject areas and teaching?

 

1). One way that I happen to notice reinhabitation and decolonization in this story is through language and its traditional ways of knowing.  Language connects us all. It is one thing that is so important to everyone but is rarely recognized or discussed. For Indigenous people, Language is seen as something so important. It is their way of passing along knowledge in the form of storytelling passing it on generation to generation. We have to keep teaching this way to some extent and if we do not that would be an example of decolonization. Learners need to understand there are different types and ways of learning. Sometimes it isn’t always going to be paper to pen or testing. It may be expressing your opinion out loud to a class, or going outside and having a talking circle. These are all ways of learning, but just in different forms with different outcomes.

2). When I first started reading this article the first thing I thought of was high school back home in Balcarres. Throughout my high school career, we had a class that was called ” Living off the land”. This was a class where students could get there English, Science, Social Studies, and Math by going out and learning how to do this with the land. When we first started this program I was a little sceptical as were a lot of people. How could a student possibly learn Math, and English while riding around in a canoe? These were my first thoughts, but that soon changed. One thing looking back now that I notice is the students that were in this class. When this program first started I can say about 90% of students in it were Indigenous. This makes perfect sense to me now. Looking back on Indigenous knowledge land was and is very important to them. The land is the creator of everything. After the first year, there were only good outcomes and things said about this program. The children learnt math by building igloos and measuring the size of it. The students learnt all about the nature unit by actually being outside, in the canoes or going on hikes being able to physically see these things. After the first year, I noticed a change the numbers changed there were more white students in the class. weird right? It almost seemed like these families didn’t believe their children would be learning the “proper” criteria because they weren’t in the classroom.

Europen ideas of knowledge have been the sole focus in educating and in the curriculum that when another way of teaching is brought in it is almost guaranteed to have a backlash. As I become a future teacher I know I will be using different places to do my teaching. Children love to move around and explore, so if they are doing something they enjoy or even something different they will put more focus into what they are learning. I think that is safe to say about everyone. Give someone a new environment or make it a bit more enjoyable and you will have greater outcomes.