September 25th

The Indigenous Day of Learning Pro-D Day was amazing. I really enjoyed the first keynote speaker, Dr. Dustin Louie, and his piece on presenting yourself as a learner alongside your students. I thought that was such great advice and something that I plan on doing during my next two practicums. Not only does it humanize teachers, it gets students excited because instead of “being taught” something by the teacher – almost like a one-way street of knowledge – they get to learn about it together. His speech really made me think about how I can be an ally for Indigenous Education.

One of the workshops I attended was “Oral Stories Through Puppetry” with Dora Himmlespach. During the workshop, Dora spoke about how she uses puppets to teach social emotion learning. Her main points were to always acknowledge where a story is from and to not be afraid to change some elements of the story to make it relevant to the audience. After her talk she put on a puppet show for us about the “Me Monster”. It was about a wolf who didn’t realize how his selfish behaviour was effecting others and making them not want to be friends with him. It was quite cute. My four year old watched it with me and she loved it. The big learning I took away from this workshop was that puppets can help students engage more in the learning. It is fun and interactive. It is definitely something I would like to try the next time I am in a primary classroom.