Today I am grateful for my opportunity to engage in School District 57’s Professional Development seminar: Indigenous Day of Learning. Whenever I am a participant in Professional Development, especially when it comes to Traditional Indigenous ways of learning, teaching, and knowing my feelings are a mixed-up combination of motivation to do better (for my students and my community), guilt over my own white privilege and my safe upbringing, and being overwhelmed due to the sheer amount of Reconciliation that still needs to take place. I always end the seminar with the thought of: Will it ever be enough?
Will there ever be a day where systemic racism does not keep our minority members of society from there full potential? Will there ever be enough Professional Development days that educators all around BC or Canada or even the world can teach there students in a way and in an environment where their strategies recognize and incorporate different cultural ways of teaching and learning, a culmination of all the best techniques? The answer is, sadly, most likely not. At least not that I will live to see.
So, I spent most of my time while Ashley Callingbull was speaking feeling sad, sad for her past negative experiences and sad for our students and young members of society that face the same repercussions of generational trauma still to this day.
That all being said, our prompt for the day of “Make a commitment of action” has helped eased my feelings of despair because it is a reminder that I am capable of making change as a teacher. And, even though that change may be small, many small changes can eventually become systematic changes affecting the communities far beyond my own.
My commitment to action is to not let my sadness surrounding the generational trauma caused by the colonization of our Indigenous neighbours deflate my own ability to stay aware, active, and engaged in being an inclusive educator. Sadness will not get in the way of my ability to continue learning about what I can do better within my classroom, school, and community. Instead of the sadness acting as a block or deterrent, it will be my motivator to do better, learn more, and to use my privilege to enact systematic change.