Teaching Where You Are offers a guide for non-Indigenous educators to work in good ways with Indigenous students and provides resources across curricular areas to support all students. In this book, two seasoned educators, one Indigenous and one settler, bring to bear their years of experience teaching in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary contexts to explore the ways in which Indigenous and Slow approaches to teaching and learning mirror and complement one another.
Using the holistic framework of the Medicine Wheel, Shannon Leddy and Lorrie Miller illustrate the ways in which interdisciplinary thinking, a focus on experiential learning, and the thoughtful application of the 4Rs – Respect, Relevance, Reciprocity, and Responsibility – can bring us back to the principle of teaching people, not subjects. Bringing forth the ways in which colonialism and cognitive imperialism have shaped Canadian curriculum and consciousness, the book offers avenues for the development of decolonial literacy to support the work of Indigenizing education. In considering the importance of engaging in decolonizing and Indigenizing approaches to education through Slow and Indigenous pedagogies using the lens of place-based and land-based education, Teaching Where You Are presents a text useful for teachers and educators grappling with the ongoing impacts of colonialism and the soul-work of how to decolonize and rehumanize education in meaningful ways.
List of Illustrations Abbreviations Foreword: Weaving and Reweaving Indigenous Education in New Ways through the Timelessness of Transformative Thought, Teaching, and Learning xvii Herman Michell Preface Acknowledgements
1. Tawâw Bringing Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogies into the Class Indigenous Ways and Reconciliation The Medicine Wheel Framework, Our Loom Warp and Weft: Connecting Slow to Indigenous Ways
2. Building Decolonial Literacy for Indigenous Education Historically Rooted Thought: We Are All Colonized People It Is Not about the Lesson Plans Ontologies Identity Place Relationship Weaving Sourcing and Preparing Materials
3. Slow Ways and Indigenous Ways Disconnecting from the Clock and Caring Deeply Experiential Land Conscious/Place Conscious Deeply Relational Internal Connection Spinning
4. East – Spiritual – Respect August on the Salish Sea: Tucked into a Bay Dyeing the Yarn before the Weave
5. South – Emotional – Relevance Why Emotion Matters Decolonizing Is a Slow and Careful Business Taking Trauma into Account Developing Effective Practices Circle Pedagogy Winding the Wool
6. West – Physical – Reciprocity The Unseen The Visible, Physical, Material World In the Classroom Pedagogy that Nurtures Relational Place-Conscious Pedagogy Setting up the Loom
7. North – Intellectual – Responsibility What Counts as Knowledge? How Much Knowledge Counts? It Really Isn’t about the Lesson Plans Adding an Indigenous Lens Developing Effective Practices Kendomang Zhagodenamonon Lodge Button Blankets and Starblankets Tiny Orange Sweater Project Summing Up Weaving and Finishing
8. Pimoteh (Walking)
Shannon Leddy is an associate professor of Art Education at the University of British Columbia.
Lorrie Miller is a sessional lecturer in the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia.