Month: July 2024

Humanizing Education

Aoki’s concept of school being like a factory reminds me of a documentary we watched last semester called, “Most Likely to Succeed”.  The film suggested the foundation of the school curriculum – created during the Industrial Revolution – is outdated. They spoke of the importance of “soft skills” to prepare students for success in the work force and in life.  Skills like collaboration, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and resiliency.  

Aoki humanizes teaching and the education system, stepping away from the “robotization of teaching” (3).  He also places emphasis on the responsibility of a teacher, as the student comes “clothed in a bond of parental trust” (9).  I became a mother four years ago.  Aoki has made me realize how much this enormity of responsibility and love in my life has become woven into my life as an educator.  When I dig into the source of this, my compassion for students is greater because I would want that for my son.

The tool Aoki has given me is self reflection and value on “human” moments.  Thinking back to years of teaching, I have moments of pride seeing students improve their requisite skills and knowledge base.  However, the moments that emerge most vividly for me are the moments where students have thanked me for “being there for them” and “believing in them.” The social and emotional support that we provide students allows us a window to connect with them.  My mom is also an educator and she once said, “if you can’t connect with students, you can’t teach them.”  I agree in providing empathy and understanding, and the shift to school being about skill development and building strengths rather than evaluating based on test scores.

Nitobe’s passion for bridging Japan and the West, and bringing people together, is a profoundly deep and rich outlook for us as educators to consider.  Teachers make bridges everyday, from helping young ones to understand how to share, to facilitating awareness around perspectives and their own biases as they grow.  According to the bushido and Nitobe’s writing, the code means to embody the traits of courage, rectitude, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honour, loyalty, and self-control.  Aoki has put value in building skills that will actually make students happy, well-adjusted, good people. Bridges connect people and also eliminate separation.  It’s our responsibility to ensure students have knowledge about the history of our nation so that we can move forward, together.

Reference List:
Pinar, W. F., & Irwin, R. L. (1996). Imaginaries of “East and West”: Slippery curricular signifiers in education. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum in a new key (1st ed., pp. 7). Routledge.

“Roots”

As I review “where I am” in my teaching focus, a story emerges from my recent past.  Teaching in a small rural town of Lumby for two years, I came away with an interesting experience with one of my male colleagues.  He pulled me aside one day and said, “you know, Deanna.  I think you’re a great teacher.  But you teach too much about Indigenous ways.”  He went on to tell me about how he worked hard for everything he had and wasn’t handed anything in life.  I was left wondering if he will ever see his privilege as a white, male, growing up in an affluent area.  It did not change my course of teaching, in fact, it strengthened my pursuit.

As I read Aoki’s and Thom’s chapters, my own privilege has just dawned on me.  Actually, it kind of struck me as I read your words, “In deep ways these peoples and their (hi)stories touch and impress upon my own [(Japanese)(Chinese)(Canadian)] being and becoming.” (Thom, 2024, p. 4)  Suddenly I recognize that I know my roots, that I know my family history, that I feel embedded in them.  I am privileged to have had this experience to shape me into the person I am today. I don’t question my roots.  They are me.  The Japanese-Canadians had to fight to know themselves, to become.

As Thom describes this familiarity in these stories we hear, I recognize similarities between the Canadian government’s treatment of Indigenous peoples and Japanese-Canadians.  They not only stripped the Japanese of their homes and their belongings, but they stripped them of their identity as Canadian’s.  The government fingerprinted them, imprisoned them and treated them as criminals.  Through these stories, comes the repetition of loss, identity-struggles, voids, irreparable damage to a people and a culture.  Hearing the way the Cumberland people are committed to telling their stories makes me recognize there is room for another word here: Courage.  Courage of the people who are reliving their trauma to share their family history, and speaking the truth.  

The courage of the Japenese-Canadians in Cumberland is profound to me.  One of the Acts of Reconciliation for our Indigenous people of Canada is to not forget their past, and to speak the names of the survivors of Residential Schools.  In Cumberland, the act of creating a museum, sharing photos, names, family trees, stories and history with the future generations, is an act of courage and healing.  The people who suffered are not forgotten when we say their names.

I had a moment of epiphany when Douglas Aoki was walking through the trees they planted to commemorate the loss of a community in Cumberland.  He said, “You still have that living tree there.  To have that literally living connection with all sorts of people, that was extraordinary for me.” (STORYHIVE, 2019)  He even picks an apple from one of the trees and holds it, like it were gold.  

The trees are living.  Their stories are living.  

Reference List:

STORYHIVE (Director). (2019, July 15). Hayashi Studio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSTkdp9M18s

Thom. (2023). Understanding curriculum amidst doing curriculum research.

Apple Orchards & Experiential Learning

I am a tree.  

Rooted; leaves open to the world; constantly growing.

I was raised in a home with busy parents.  Their hustle to provide often left me alone, but I was gifted with grandparents who lived behind us, and I spent my afternoons with their patience and guidance.  My Papa was kind and warm.  The memory that lives in my heart as brightly as the days we walked, is our afternoon walks in Kidston Orchard.  

The orchard was about twenty steps from our backyard.  Acres of beautiful land overlooking Kalamalka Lake, housed rows of pear and apple trees.  This place was a quiet gift for us to share our day as my Papa and I walked the land.  We had an agreement with the owner of the orchard – we could pick up the apples that had fallen from the trees onto the ground and eat those.  My Papa showed me the value of staying true to your word and honouring people’s wishes, of enjoying and appreciating the land that surrounds us, and that an apple is just as good, even with a few bruises.

In University, I participated in a specialization in Indigenous studies.  It was during this time that I learned about the clash of teaching ideologies with of western with Indigenous views. Indigenous people have historically learned best through experiential learning, by doing and participating in activities that shape their knowledge along the way.  In this program,  I once again was brought back to learning from an elder, as our cohort carved wooden paddles together.  Through this, I noticed I could step away from the usual “when is this due?”  I could relax and enjoy the learning, again, at a walking pace. It wasn’t about a race to the finish or a test at the end; the process was the learning. 

As an Indigenous First People’s English teacher, I use stories of our lands in the Okanagan to give students a strong sense of place.  We learn of the history of the Okanagan Indigenous peoples and the journey that has brought us to today.  I also ask my students to share their stories, through their words or written language.  Through this, I hope to give them the gift of a stronger identity.  Life’s decisions are much easier if we have a strong sense of who we are.  As Pinar describes, “Indeed, currere emphasizes the everyday experience of the individual and one’s capacity to learn from that experience” (2019, p. 2).  

As a teacher, I hope to embark the passion I have for experiential learning into my lessons, to guide my students on their own path of learning and discovery; helping them find their voice in the classroom.  I teach not through just the analysis of the words we read, but through the exploration of the deeper meaning and the connection to oneself.  I aim to give my students the gift of understanding themselves.  

I hope to water the smallest seeds of curiosity to grow.

Reference List:

Pinar, W.F. (2019).  Currere.

Before starting Emerging Trends and Topics in Curriculum Studies, I was preparing for my school year teaching English First Peoples.  As a part of this preparation, I was re-reading one of my favourite authors, Richard Wagamese.  The novel, Indian Horse, tells the story of a boy ripped from his family and put into Residential School.  He describes the school as, “St. Germ’s scraped away at us, leaving holes in our beings.  I could never understand how the god they proclaimed was watching over us could turn his head and ignore such cruelty and suffering” (Wagamese, 2012, p. 52).  Wagemese describes a sense of loss of identity, and the confusion with mistreatment, cruelty and racism.  

As I make my way through the assigned readings and videos, I can feel the same sense of loss that Wagamese describes, in the stories of the Japanese Canadians.  The same themes of loss of identity, and confusion through the mistreatment of Indigenous and Japanese peoples in our Canadian history.

Aoki describes his experiences with this identity-confusion through a difficulty understanding what it means to be Japanese-Canadian.  When he proclaims he is Canadian and identifies as such, he is confused by the officer’s response.  He does not see himself or his history represented as he goes through school, “That school experience of leaving my ethnic colleagues behind in Grade One was my first “learning” experience of social division by ethnicity—an example of a hidden curriculum at work” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 8).  He is not provided clarity around his history and culture.  

Reflecting on this as a teacher, it reminds me that it is our responsibility to help students form a sense of identity in school.  To help them identify their roots, and to hear stories of others to help them gain perspective.

I was twenty-two years old when I first learned about residential schools and Indigenous history in Canada.  Today, I’m thirty-eight years old and just learning about the level of cultural atrocity that occurred for Japanese Canadians in our history.  I did not know that we had the same level of segregation in our history that the African American’s faced in America.  As Aoki obtains a teaching job in Calgary and remembers the segregation issue he faced, “Here, I faced an unanticipated problem—a teacher problem for a Japanese Canadian, that of “where to live?” Calgary’s bylaws forbade residence of any Japanese Canadian within the confines of Calgary city proper” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 8).  Again, to compare, the Indigenous peoples of Canada also faced segregation to Reserves, where they too, were given curfews.  My comparison is not meant to negate either struggle, rather to encapsulate my understanding of these experiences.

These quotes left a strong impact on me, and I have to rewrite them to share the message of the author:

“A British Columbia-born Japanese Canadian in Japan? In Japan I felt that as a Japanese Canadian, I was both Japanese and non-Japanese. I felt I was both insider and outsider, “in” yet not fully in, “out” yet not fully out” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 3).

“And as a Japanese Canadian, I occasionally felt my humanness crushed or disturbed.”(Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 3).

After a horrible experience of racism, Aoki reflects, “I don’t remember anything of the happenings at the teachers’ convention but I do have a strong indelible memory of that ten-second episode at the Marquis” (Pinar & Irwin, 2004, p. 10).

This moment reminds me of the article “Currere” by Pinar we just read, that students need experiences in learning, and connection, not just material that they will forget.  One of my favourite teaching quotes is, “students may not remember what you taught them, but they will remember how you made them feel.”  He vividly remembers the way he was spoken to, how he was treated, and how he was singled out.  He doesn’t remember his classes that day.  This would be a traumatizing experience for someone searching for answers of his culture and to find himself.

Although difficult to read, I loved this piece of writing.  It was poetic and expressed sadness, loss, discovery, and some clarity in the end with his journey towards self-discovery and defining himself as a Japanese Canadian.  I love the ending, as he creates this clarity in his life through his teaching and educating.  He participates with others, “in its very construction” of his lived experiences to come closer to who he feels he is.   Using the metaphors created by a book “Bushido: The Soul of Japan”, he creates possibilities for himself using the relationship between the sakura and the rose.    First, he could see himself in an “either-or” way, making a choice to define himself as one or the other.  He feels this would “cripple” him.  Second, he offers a simultaneous existence, a melting-pot of the two flowers, or his two identities.  He also disregards this approach and views it as, “a metaphor borrowed from another world.”  Lastly, he creates this idea of the two existing as they are, in view, simultaneously, though holding their uniqueness.

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After watching “Japanese Internment WW2,”  “Hastings Park: Mary Kitagawa” and “A Degree of Justice, Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942”, I’m reflecting that I taught about Japanese internment camps this year in my grade 8 socials class but hadn’t considered it for my English classes next year until watching these documentaries and listening to the stories they told.  That’s a huge oversight, this is part of our history.

I’m left with these final sentiments:

What does it mean to be Canadian?  Do I see my privilege?  Do I really see it?  It inspires me to continue to impart wisdom of cultural history for my students to see different perspectives and have empathy, understanding, and clarity.

The reparations of $20,000 each reminds me of the money given to Indigenous Canadians after their entire culture was demolished.  Why do we think money serves a purpose here?  

And I’m left with one final question: Are there acts of reconciliation for the Japanese Internment Camps?

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Reference List:

Legion Magazine (Director). (2016, December 7). Japanese Canadian Internment | Narrated by David Suzuki. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8TQTuMqM9g

       Pinar, W. F., & Irwin, R. L. (2004). Reflections of a Japanese Canadian teacher experiencing         ethnicity 1 (1979). In W. F. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), *Curriculum in a new key* (1st ed., pp. 16). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410611390