From Boredom to Bannock
After teaching a boring lesson for her first observation, Katelyn explores new ways of making FNMI content engaging for students.
Georgia
University Consultant
Katelyn
Grade 2
North Heimlich School
Major : Math Ed
UC : Georgia
WEEK 1
Katelyn squirmed in her seat while her UC, Georgia, calmly waited.
After a few moments, Katelyn admitted, “Well, I don’t know how to do that. That’s going to be a lot of extra work.”
“Yeah, it is a lot of work,” Georgia agreed. “But this is time that you start making those choices and investing the time. It can be a gift to your teacher that you’re offering something to the program.”
Katelyn nodded abstractly. Apparently, her lesson had been uninspired, unengaging and boring.
“I don’t expect you to make changes right away,” Georgia said. “But I do not want to see another lesson on reading from a book and answering questions. I need you to be bringing in multiple modes of representation.”
WEEK 2
The next observation was better, Georgia told her, but Katelyn still wasn’t where she wanted her to be.
“I think I could be more creative with the lessons if it was my area of specialization,” Katelyn admitted. “For my math lessons, I’m getting better at making the activities more varied, but it is so hard with this social studies unit.”
“Why do you think that is?” Georgia asked.
“I just want to be as respectful as possible,” Katelyn said. “Some of the stuff [the Inuit] do, we hear about and little kids are going to thinks that’s hilarious. But you have to maintain respectful ideas. So I felt the most comfortable when we just worked out of the textbook. It was a lot of comparing the Inuit to the Acadians to the Ukrainians. We talked about immigration to Saskatoon, planting fields and crops. It’s a lot of comparing. I don’t feel comfortable teaching that without the textbook as the main activity. I just don’t know enough, and I don’t want to get it wrong.”
“Well part of being a teacher is learning the material well enough to teach it. That doesn’t mean you need to be an expert, but you do need to know it,” Georgia said. “But you’re also not the only teacher who has ever taught this. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. There are resources out there. You just need to find them – and that means looking beyond the textbook.”
WEEK 3
Katelyn signed out a box of traditional Inuit tools from the Curriculum Lab and brought them to school for the students to touch and feel. It was a lesson that Georgia wasn’t there to supervise, but they discussed it later in the week.
“I feel like I didn’t do enough with it,” Katelyn said. “I mean the students loved it and still bring it up, but it’s not like I had an assignment or an activity with it. We just played around with the tools and talked about what they used to do.”
“Was it not valuable then?” Georgia asked.
Katelyn frowned. “No, it was. I just...I think I could’ve done more.”
WEEK 4
As they wrapped up the social studies unit, Katelyn initiated Culture Celebration Days. She threw a big party for each of the cultures: Inuit, Acadians, and Ukrainians. For Inuit Day, she made bannock for the students to try.
“It’s not a traditional food!” she told the students. “I always assumed that it was, but I learned this week that it was made because [of] the rations they were given when they were put on the reserves!”
Later, she recounted the experience to Georgia. “So I brought that up in a way where it didn’t scare the little guys, but they also came aware that at one point, people came and put all the First Nations on reserves and gave them a bad deal. Same thing with the Acadians. The British came and pushed them out…It went really well. The kids loved it and the bannock was amazing.”
“See!” Georgia said. “The kids will remember for a long time because it wasn’t boring.”
WEEK 5
“I’ve had an idea,” Georgia said. “Seeing what you did with your Inuit Celebration Day and a school theatre project my other student got involved in, I was thinking that it would be a shame for other student teachers not to hear about what you guys have experienced.”
“Is that something we’ll chat about on Culmination Day?” Katelyn asked.
“Probably,” Georgia said. “But I’ve chatted with two other UCs with students in the area, and we’re going to take you all out for dinner. You’ll have a chance to chat about how your practicums are wrapping up, but we’ll really focus on how integrating FNMI perspectives has been going. It’s a challenge to find resources and come up with connections, and I think this could help all of us.”