“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ~ William Butler Yeats
This means that students are not a bucket that can be filled with subject and matter. Educating students requires more than just throwing information and knowledge at them hoping it fills their heads with what they need to learn in order to be successful. Educating students requires striking a match to find what the light is that casts out darkness within students; their passions, interests, ideas, opinions. If students are engaged and active in what they are learning about then they are more likely to fully comprehend and digest what is being taught in the classroom. How this would be implemented in a classroom would be by learning about students’ experiences and backgrounds, then next would be finding ways to incorporate it into the curriculum and subjects being taught. This would spark students interests and give them incentive to what to learn more about the topic that is being instructed, therefore lighting a fire within every student.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action calls upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal peoples, and educators to: improve education attainment levels and success rates, develop culturally appropriate curricula, and make age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada. Three resources that could be used to ensure these recommendations are being put in place are My Name is Seepeetza, by Shirley Sterling for ages (9-12), www.fnesc.ca/irsr/, and “The Stranger” music video by Gord Downie. The first source is a book that can be introduced to grades 4 to 7. It educates students on the impacts of residential school and what they were like through the eyes of a child named Seepeetza who was taken away from her home and attended the Kamloops Residential school. The second source is a website that is full of resources such as lesson plans, books, videos etc… There is a lot of information that can be pulled from the website and implemented in unit and lesson plans to educate students on residential schools and how they impacted Indigenous Peoples. The third source is a music video of a song by Gord Downie. It tells the heartbreaking story of Chanie Wenjack’s residential school experience and death as he escapes and attempts to walk home to his family. Students can really empathize through listening to and watching the video of a child, just like them, trying desperately to return home.
References
Downie, Gord. (Oct 13, 2016). The Stranger [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za2VzjkwtFc.
“Gov. Brown Uses State of the State Speech to Push Education Reforms” by Adolfo Guzman-
Lopez, www.scpr.org. January 24, 2013.
Indian Residential Schools and Reconciliation Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.fnesc.ca/irsr/.
Sterling, Shirley. (1992). My Name is Seepeetza. Groundwood Books.