An Author Visit to An Awesome Class

Today I made my first author visit to a school in my community, and it was absolutely amazing. For those of you who don’t know, I live in Six Nations of the Grand River, a First Nation community on Turtle Island (what is also referred to as North America). My community is one of the largest First Nation communities in Canada, and like all First Nation communities—it has a systemically underfunded education system and is recovering from the assimilation policies of the federal government. There’s all kinds of nuance and complexity in just this paragraph alone, but suffice it to say that I grew up in Six Nations and have since built my family home here, and my love for my community and the schools in my community runs deep. (I also work at an Indigenous post-secondary education institute located at Six Nations). 

The school I visited today is one that places high value on the transmission of language and culture, having programs in both Cayuga language immersion and English. I was grateful to be invited to the school, and more than a little overwhelmed by the response of the students to the book they had read as a class, The School That Ate Children. The students were welcoming, energetic, curious, and engaged. Some of them were kind enough to share their stories with me, which were so creative and really made apparent the vibrant, natural capacity for storytelling that kids have. 

Since I’ve started sharing my books, I’ve received some of the most amazing messages from readers in my community, and I’m never quite sure how to talk about them. It means more than I can say that younger readers get excited about my books and the characters in my books, and that it makes them want to write their own stories. And one of my favourite stories ever is of a teacher reading my story The Fortune Teller’s Daughter and reviewing it on her radio show and giving it ten scones (a comparison I think may only be fully appreciated if one is from my or another Haudenosaunee community, but for the purposes of this post is a kind of fried biscuit that is super popular and delicious). And three weeks ago, I received a lovely gift of story pictures, student cover renderings, and summaries from a teacher who was the first to read one of my books to her class last year (and has since read it again with her class this year)—which was amazing and so, so kind. I'm not great at promoting my work—I tend to keep a ridiculously low profile, but this—this I want to share and talk about. This beautiful work that these students did, letters, and pictures, and stories of their own. It is too awesome to not share. 

The students decorated the door like the cover of the book!

The students and their teacher made cut-outs of their favourite characters!

A picture of me posing in front of the awesome door!

For so many reasons—these messages of support and enjoyment mean the world to me. I will never stop being grateful that my books are finding readers who enjoy them, and I am especially happy that some of those readers are from my home community. This, more than anything, makes me want to keep writing, to write with even greater care, and fun, and imagination, and love.

On that note, gwahs oweh nya:weh to all of you who have read my books and shared your enjoyment of them with me. It brings me more joy and happiness that I can possibly convey. Until next time, happy creating!

S.

P.S. One of my favourite moments was this little exchange:

A student saying. "I think I'm going to cry."

Student sitting across from them: "Again?"

Me: "Did you cry?"

First Student nodding: "I teared up at the end. It was so beautiful!" 

The happy book cry. One of the best of all possible cries :). 

Roots of Empathy

It has been quite some time since I made an education post and I have two coming up that I want to share. The first is something that I am very excited for – my daughter Ione and I are participating in the Roots of Empathy program! Today is our first day. The school that is hosting us is called J.C. Hill school. It is the school where both of my older siblings went and it is the school where my brother-in-law teaches.

For those of you who don’t know how Roots of Empathy works, there is a great website here that provides more information.

Why are we doing this, you might ask? The biggest reason is that I love my daughter very much and babies have such strong spirits and wisdom to share with us. She loves people and I can already tell that she is excited to participate. But another reason is that I love our schools and our communities. I care about what happens to the kids in our schools and I know that some of the kids in our schools suffer from bullying. Yes, kids in our own communities are suffering from bullying and I don’t think that’s okay. Sometimes though, (and people might get mad at me for saying this) – kids don’t have an awesome support system at home. Maybe their parents are hurting, or have been bullied or bully themselves. Maybe their parents or guardians are working really hard and don’t have time to teach their kids how to treat each other, or maybe parents don’t even realize that there’s a problem. Or -  maybe their home situations are awesome but they are still having these experiences. There could be a myriad of reasons. I won't pretend that I know why things are the way they are. I definitely don’t. But even though I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, I also don’t want to pretend that this isn’t an issue.

I suppose my point is – no matter what the situation is, kids sometimes need help understanding how to have healthy, safe relationships and to treat one another with respect and kindness. This program allows kids to have a conversation about empathy and to reflect on how to have empathy for one another. I think that’s an important quality that I want my baby and other kids in our community to know. Empathy and time. It’s something we need as much (and more really) than anything else. Certainly more than designer clothes, iPads, iPods, iPhones, ATVs, or manicures and definitely as much as we need food, water and shelter.

I am also really excited to participate in the program because I know our schools have their challenges. I’m not talking about EQAO test scores here either – I mean basic, ‘this is how we treat and support one another as a community’ kinds of challenges. And because the settler colonial narrative is still saturating every element of our existence, it can be a harsh world out there for Ogwehoweh people. Dismantling that narrative is going to take sometime. But it can be done. We can transform that negative energy. We can be good to one another. I believe that. And I want to help make it happen.

In this program, the baby is the teacher. I’ve already learned so much from Ione and I look forward to learning even more from the class that we will be working with. I hope that it will help me better understand what our young people care about and hope for. I will try to keep updates as to how things go. Until then!

UPDATE:

Ione had a fantastic time in her first day of teaching! The kids in the class were awesome and the other teachers were really positive and inviting. They sang her a welcome song, weighed her and measured her. They talked about how she was developing (she liked to look outside, she could roll over, she could follow movements, she liked colours, she could grab onto things and put her bubbie, a.k.a. pacifier, in her mouth and take it back out again). Her daddy and I took a picture with the entire class. All in all, we are grateful and happy that we get to participate in this awesome program! Looking forward to our next visit :)

S.

August.

The last month went by in a blur. A giant university sized blur. This is because we took our baby on her first road trip to Western University where I attended the summer session of my master’s program.

I have to admit that the week before we went, I really didn’t want to go and was seriously lamenting the fact that the course wasn’t available online (as some sessions had been in the fall and winter terms). I was loving the life the baby and I had up until that point: cuddling all day, reading books, writing in journals, cooing at one another. But I’m very glad we went.

London was our little family’s first travel adventure. We stayed in a repurposed hospice that was one of the stranger hotels I’ve ever been in, but it had incredibly fast internet (the joy of fast internet when you live in the bush) and I managed to watch the entire first season of Witches of East End – which I loved.

And as always, I learned a lot from my incredible classmates who all lead such full and busy lives. They are a colourful group of educators: teachers, parents, aunties, artists, writers, actors and community members. They care. They help. They wear multiple hats. They’re going to do even more amazing things than they already are from this time we’re all taking to reflect on the work we’re doing. I have a ton of education thoughts brewing, but I’ll save them for an education post.

All in all, we’re happy to be home. Travelling with a baby was tricky for us newbie parents. As my boyfriend said, “I feel like London chewed us up and spit us out.”

Writing With A Newborn

I thought my writing life was going to undergo drastic changes after the baby joined us but actually, I’ve found that it isn’t that much different than it was before she came. I think that’s because I’ve always worked full time and if I wanted to write, I had to make the time to do it. And believe me, I have to make time to do it. Writing feels good and it makes me happy.

I did however take a break from writing (and blogging) while I was in school because it was just too difficult to try and write anything but assignments during that time, but now that the baby and I are settled back at home again, I’m trying to have more of a routine.

I have super modest writing goals (500 words a day) and most mornings, I manage to surpass that. I’m currently working on a story with a teenager protagonist – something I’ve never done before. It makes me think I should reread some Christopher Pike. I always thought he had really great teenagers in his stories.

I’m still not sure where this story is going – I started it with only a name (Cora), but I think that's okay. Stories always seem to take on a life of their own when you write every day without fail, or at least, that’s how it seems to work for me. I’ve heard this time and time again from other, more experienced writers and it’s true.

Routine is Queen.

A stack of editing awaits me. I plan to spend the rest of August editing and editing and editing. (Another reason for the modest word count goal – I want to finish the other projects I have lying around on my tabletops).

This includes a story concept I’ve been working on for 5 years. Over the course of that time I’ve changed just about everything about it countless times: format, perspective, characters names. More than once, I thought about letting it go but I just...can’t. I want to share it. It may not be perfect - but maybe it doesn’t have to be? Maybe the story’s path is different than what I’ve been trying to make it be.

In any event, my goal for this story is to make some artistic choices about how to present it and then set that story free in the world before the year is out. It would be amazing if I could do it for my birthday in September, but I’m just not sure I can manage that – or can I? There’s only one way to find out, I suppose!

Until next time, happy writing everyone!

S

Land and Lab

My mind is still very much on math and science this week.  I started off the day worked up a bit about water issues, which always happens when I’m reading Maude Barlow’s books about the global water crisis that looms over all people, Indigenous and non-indigenous. I want us all to have a healthy future despite these challenges but I realize that we are not often empowered by our schools or education systems to tackle these issues in fun and dynamic ways.

A friend of mine who knows far more about environmental issues that I do made a post today on Facebook that I wholeheartedly agree with – they said,  “Six Nay provides a lot of opportunities for education and trades.  Nothing much for environmental or sciences which includes drinking water, sewage treatment, waste management, ground water, soil erosion, flood management, and natural resources management. We need educational chemistry/biology labs... And class rooms like Polytech has lol.”

This pretty much sums up my thinking about the issue.  When I left the Chiefs of Ontario, there were a few key issues on my mind: water security, climate change and food sovereignty.  I had seen that top down approaches didn’t work well for communities and that a lot of communities were lacking the kind of meaningful data that would help them make good long range environmental decisions that are consistent with our Treaty rights and responsibilities.   Think Global - Act Local is still the approach that makes the most sense to me - at least right now.

On that note, there are some questions that I have about our practices here at Six Nations and some of those came up in my class today:

1)      What happens with our recycling?  Where does it go?

2)      What is the incinerator and how or does this fit within a proactive local climate change strategy?

3)   What is happening underneath the dump?  How are we protecting the groundwater that exists underneath Six Nations?

4)   Have we conducted and gathered our own data on these subjects that would empower us to adjust our practices where we needed to?

My sense of this (which I’ll confirm as I learn more about it) is that we have not conducted vigorous research around these questions.  Not yet, anyways.  And I understand that there are a ton of pressing issues that make it difficult to focus on the broader, big picture environmental issues.  But they do still need to be looked at.

I think this creates some exciting opportunities for us to develop engaging maths and sciences programs at all levels that will help us tackle these issues, many of which will grow in complexity over the next 15-20 years.  How wonderful would it be to have a sustainability program that addresses some of these issues in practical ways but also teaches students how to conduct tests, do research, gather data and propose solutions to local environmental challenges that are also rooted in our teachings?

I just finished reading a research study that looked at why Indigenous students are under-represented in the maths and sciences at the post secondary level.  In this study the researcher explains how most research concerning Indigenous academic success in the Western education system as compared to non-Indigenous students is conducted by Western non-indigenous evaluators and is largely quantitative.

The researcher, a lady named Michelle Hogue (who also wrote this article) wanted to qualitatively understand the experiences of the members from the local Blackfoot community and to engage in the process of ‘action research’ by putting into action some of their recommendations for enabling Indigenous student success in post-secondary science programs.

The findings were very interesting but one which stood out to me and echoes the sentiments of the Facebook post above, is how Hogue explained that the students were the most engaged and the most successful in science and chemistry when they actually got to work in the laboratory, have hands on experiences and interact with the concepts that they were tackling.  The second really successful strategy was utilizing storytelling to introduce and reinforce concepts. (Hogue also wrote her Masters thesis on making a story out of the periodic table - very cool).

I know a few teachers and I'm sure there are more who have found unique ways to teach our cosmology and to explain how scientific concepts fit into our understanding of the world.  It’d be awesome to be able to do more to help support these teachers and students.  Certainly, being able to have laboratories would be a big boost to experiential learning, and even though there are key funding issues here (most First Nation schools can’t get their libraries funded, let alone a lab) – in the long run, I hope it somehow becomes a priority so that students can have these kinds of learning experiences, out on the land and in labs.

Til next time!

S

Let's do the math!

This past weekend I started a Math Club.  So far there are only two people in it and we’re doing high school Algebra and Trigonometry because we want to take this Open Course Ware Calculus course for free online at MIT.  This is because I’m really interested in the math, physics and computer sciences but also because I’m trying to find ways to improve my skills in these areas so I can take a more informed look at challenges our schools are facing around math assessment and in particular, standardized assessment.  I’m speaking here of course, of the EQAO assessments.

Most of you may be aware of what EQAO is so I won’t explain it in detail, but essentially, it’s a standardized test administered in grades 3, 6, 9 and 10 and the purpose of it is to gauge how well students have learned the Ontario curriculum in reading, writing and mathematics.  As an Ontario wide assessment mechanism, it impacts teaching and learning communities in various ways.

Many educators, myself included, have questions about EQAO and its validity.  I think it's important to challenge some of the assumptions made about EQAO in newspaper articles like this one which included the following quote from an educator: “A child who doesn’t know their [math] facts will never see a pattern, make a prediction or an estimate. They’re really held back as problem-solvers,”   Now I'm picking on the point this person's trying to make, I admit, and it's because I feel this is precisely the kind of thinking that underpins the drive towards even more standardized education or an emphasis on math for instance, as opposed to any other discipline in which a person might learn problem solving skills.  I think these kinds of approaches can be alienating to our spirits.   Do not mistake me – I’m not saying that assessment is not important or that math and reading aren’t important, and obviously - I love writing.  I completely understand and agree that it is important to assess because doing so can help improve the learning experience or inform the instructional strategies that are being used to connect with students.

What I am not convinced of is that EQAO is the right instrument to assess our kids or that it should be given the kind of attention in the school (and by proxy the classroom) that it sometimes is – especially for Indigenous students whether they are on reserve or not.  Which means I have questions about the extent that it should guide the existing and future efforts of our schools here at Six Nations, or quite frankly, anywhere else.

In looking at assessment however, the other factor that emerges is the issue of curriculum.  When I say curriculum, the image that pops into my head immediately is the image of the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum which is what I believe that majority of teachers on Six Nations are required to teach.  I would love to have an in-depth discussion with teachers about the curriculum because I know that some of them have already found the way to do exactly what I’m trying to talk about below.  My own impressions are this.

When I took the Native Teacher Education Program in 2003, I fully admit that I loved the curriculum.  I loved it because it was a planned and organized guide designed to help the students and I explore different subjects through the year together.  I understood that this was what I was expected to teach and that there were all kinds of strategies that I was learning that would help me to do so.

When I fell out of love with the Ontario curriculum, was when I realized it did not tell the true history about who the Original Peoples of Turtle Island are.  It did not share or value Indigenous worldviews in several important ways, but here is one of them.   Hodinohso:ni people believed that everything is connected, a theme that comes across beautifully in the Creation story.  A woman falls from the sky and the animals of the world conspire to help her promote and grow life on this planet.  Without all of these efforts, life would not occur.  And in recognition of this great collaboration, as Indigenous Peoples, we recognize that all things have a spirit.

The Ontario curriculum does not address this particular Indigenous worldview or how that worldview influenced our people to grow and innovate over the generations, which is so unfortunate, really.  Our teachers need to be empowered to teach our students about this and how cool it is.  And for those that are, it’d be great to see how they’re doing it or what further resources they wish they had to connect it to other disciplines like science and math that I hear a lot of parents say they want for their kids so they can get jobs.  I even hear kids themselves say they wish there was more science (and gym and art  - usually never math actually!).   And despite what the likes of Tom Flanagan suggest, Indigenous Peoples are sophisticated thinkers.  Believing that things are interconnected and being able to live in sustainable ways with the environment around us for thousands of years is sophisticated. Our ancestors had a way of viewing the world - a view they passed on to us, that’s become central to advanced sciences and theoretical physics.

Some people are worried about what the EQAO scores say and what it means we need to do as schools and a community, and so am I – but only to a degree.  Even as an adult learner, I realize it is difficult to prioritize all of the different areas that I feel are important to honouring my responsibilities as an Ogwehoweh person and also meet other responsibilities (financial, for example) or to learn math.  I want what I learn, including math, to be connected to my life and complimentary to the knowledge that elders share.  I sometimes sense a similar frustration coming out of the classrooms – particularly the language classrooms where the amount of resources available for science and math teaching is even more limited and English can feel very dominant.   There are just so many priorities and it’s difficult to fit them all in a day.   So what does this mean for our schools - can there only be one priority?  Is there one that we could agree upon that will guide us to meeting the other learning goals that are important to us? Is it having high scores on the EQAO or something else?  Or maybe the question isn’t that simple.  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Nya:weh for reading!

S