What are we really looking at for First Nations education?

I really think our biggest challenge is in turning around all of the casual racism that is prevalent in our current culture in Saskatchewan.

There is a reason that things are why they are in a sense of macro-thinking towards what has happened since the colonization.  Generational trauma being the most notable.  So it is important for us to really get a good grip of what took place to cause it, and to educate our students and the people around us about it.

A good starting point is the Guns, Germs, and Steel book by Jared Diamond:

It really explains what the Europeans had to their advantage when the colonization took place, and it gets a little science-y at times but it’s an eye-opener.

I think another thing that could really help is to delve into world history in the 1500-1800 period.  There’s colonization, pirates, privateers, inbred kings and queens, the slave trade, and much much more in that period, and it’s really shaped things on a global scale that our current circumstances are still 100% connected to.

As an example, look into the incredible transfer of wealth from the Mayan, Inka, and Aztek to the Spanish and how it launched the whole idea of pirates.  Why do some European countries have such abundant, incredible artwork from this time period?

Yeah it’s a lot of research/reading to do, but one brick at a time.

You can’t just show up and expect your class to hold hands and sing songs about how every culture is important, and then racism is solved altogether.  You have to really learn this stuff to educate them about it.  The older generations missed their shot at learning about a fair and balanced history perspective with First Nations peoples, so there is a lot of casual racism from our and the students’ role models that we are going to need to overcome.

Jam Session (PIANO PT6)

Matt, Nick and I got together as we’re all learning new instruments and decided to try playing an easy song – see if you can recognize it!

Just a couple things before the videos:

The first video was shot with my computer and the lighting moves around weirdly throughout it, so… yeah, mind that please.  Our apologies.

If you don’t want to watch the weird lighting one, we taped another one too.

We need a band name, and song requests.  Or we could always just continue to master the song we’re working on.

ENJOY (we used Photobooth to film these and iMovie to upload them and insert titles, both on Macbooks)

PT1

PT2

Light Photography with Cynthia

So I have a good friend that decided to try light photography as the new skill to develop for this class, and she posts some pretty cool pictures through it.

I like to draw so I really wanted to try it out too so we got a big meeting room at one of the hotels I used to work at, and all that I went in thinking was that I’d draw cute birds flying in the air and maybe some feathers – but light photography is tougher than it looks!

If you’ve ever tried drawing on a piece of paper with your eyes closed, you’ll know how difficult it can be to place things, but when you add in flashlights that sometimes acted up, limited time frames for the pics, and moving around in the room and trying to keep a picture on a consistent plane, it was a lot.

Luckily Cynthia mastered all the technological aspects and we had some time to try some things out.  I told her that as soon as we left I’d have a ton of ideas that I wished we would’ve tried, and sure enough I’d like another crack at it!

I was thinking of more detailed pics where the light drawings were the feature, but you can really layer a lot in if you consider the pictures and poses by themselves, then you supplement them with the light stuff.  Next time.

All in all though, a really cool experience and a lot of fun, thanks to Cynthia!

MUSIC

On…. Thursday?  I watched that Moneyball movie and really enjoyed it.  It was just a solid front-to-back movie with a lot of great stuff in it, and the most notable aspect going away was how perfectly the song at the end felt.

The only other time that a song has captured the feel of a movie perfectly at the ending (that I can remember) is in The Wrestler.  The way that the screen goes, and the song starts was the right closure of the story to me.

Besides ending songs, a lot of times movies will have great soundtracks that cover each mood of the story perfectly.  Vanilla Sky had a notable and amazing soundtrack, and Judd Apatow always seems to have great soundtracks that align very well with the script.

I’m just a big believer in music and love it when artistic mediums can align and work together.

As incoming teachers, we’ll have opportunities to layer music into our classrooms.  A lot of research has been done into what kinds of effects that music can have on us.

Music:  It ended Moneyball and the Wrestler perfectly for me.  It’s helped me connect to so many moments in stories.  My iPod can capture my mood throughout the day, and the song I wake to as my alarm can affect my mindset for the day.

Music could be considered the evolution of poetry in our modern society.  I believe that it is incredibly important for us to consider adding in a layer of it into our future learning environments.

I’ll post The Temptation of Adam by Josh Ritter because the lyrics are just so clever.

Piano PT5

Wait for the greatness

ENROUTE

Dave Letterman on Twitter 2009

Dave in 2009.  I think Dave is the best late night talk show to watch, and got the opportunity to watch a show live a couple years ago.

Dave is on twitter now, they got him eventually, but I appreciate his style.

Get out everyday a bunch

Yeah computers are important and this and that, and what this class is all about and etcetera and etcetera.

But enjoy some time outside will you please?

Regina Open Door Society

So I guess I’m the day 1 person to come up with a post on the experience of volunteering through the Arts Cares program:

We showed up downtown in a modest looking office building and walked into a nice classroom for adults.  We were working with refugees that were familiar with very little english.

The classroom has an excellent teacher that seems very patient to help the process, and the immigrant students all are eager to learn more through the program.  They’re excited to be there.  The ages of the people in the classroom range from their mid 20’s to 60’s-ish.

And the way this connects for me is this: we spent the afternoon reflecting on our first day experiences, and the most notable one I had today was the long winding grey hallway in one of the Regina Open Doors Society buildings (we toured the three operations downtown).

For classroom content it seems like it rotates mainly around the simple processes that we go through as Canadians, that are alien to the other cultures of the world.  Such as income tax or what ATM’s do.  When I spoke to the people in the classroom I tried to keep my words basic, but found that as soon as I was making sentences that patches were being missed in comprehension, while polite smiles remained.

These are the immigrant adults that come over, and the majority of the class has been in Canada for a couple years.  In education, we work with younger EAL students.  It was an eye-opening experience working with refugee adults.

They’re basically walking through grey hallways all the time, and only small bits of the things that they see make sense.  We toured around with them and stopped at postings for work training programs, and talked about the different aspects of all the buildings, and I spoke to them in sentences that probably didn’t make any sense at all.

So everything that they experience seems to be very grey and cloudy and confusing, yet they retain an amazing toughness, patience, and enthusiasm to learn to fit into their new place.

I guess that what I’m saying is that the main thing that I’m going to take from today is the patience for the grey hallways.  When things get confusing I get frustrated and try to force answers.  And here these refugees are confused about pretty much everything, they’re completely humbled by a total culture change, and yet they can inspire with their uncanny patience.

Just waiting for things to come along and connect, and keeping positive that the grey hallways will make way past the fog, to brighter things.

One lady couldn't point out where she was from on the map

Boys of Baraka

Between coaching bantam football and watching this movie years ago, I decided to start the process of becoming a teacher.

This movie inspired me as they take 20 boys from Baltimore that are “at risk” and send them all the way over to Baraka for a different education experience.  Not everything goes perfect but it makes you think about who the kids can be in the classroom.

They were selected as they all were frequently in trouble, yet showed flourishes of talent in school.  I can somewhat relate.

The entire movie is uploaded on youtube and you can watch it for free.  It is also interesting in the sense that some of the concepts behind this project can somewhat relate to the concept of residential schools.  Only it is definitely an extremely difference case altogether.

Has anybody else watched this movie?

Piano Pt3.5

I made this video right after I mastered London Bridges and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  I’ve since progressed into starting into the “more complicated notes” in a song book.

Check the greatness, don’t get jealous: