You did just do that. Where to begin? The first sentence of a blog entry is always terrible.

This morning, I think I had the most useful class in my entire education faculty existence. It was a guest lecture about Multiculturalism in the classroom, and it really made me reassess and realize that yes, I am not screwing up enormously by staying in my faculty. I really do want to teach. I'm always having doubts, because the kind of teacher that the U of A faculty is trying to pop out of the cookie cutter is nothing like me, and I always feel sort of displaced by my own goals and ambitions. Only occasionally will I find people that feel the same way about what they're going to do (or not do, similarly) in the classroom. Or what they're going to be like as a teacher. This guest lecturer was one of them. He is a social teacher with about 10 years of experience, and completely enlightened us on his own innovative ways to foster a healthy multiculture embracing attitude in the classroom (as well as diversities of all aspects). And he was so passionate about what he did, and so capable of being himself in front of us and his own classroom, that he really made an awesome impression on me. And some of his assignments or discussion provoking activities are totally some I could rip off for English too. Funnily enough though, I started thinking today that I would love to be able to teach Social Studies too at one point if I could.

Realistically, this bodes well for me, because a teacher could just as easily be hired on to teach another completely different subject other than their minor or major. Anyways, one of the things that he did like once or twice a week, was to let the kids write out a rant or a little editorial. Punctuation and editting is something I could work in there in favor to the English curriculum (ha ha, or I could get them to edit my blog--don't say it. No more English teacher burns please...), but anyways, the kids get to read them in front of the class, no matter how contreversial, and they get to have time to discuss them as a class.

Lots of interesting things to think about today other than that though. Something I've been thinking about more lately is the Western ideal of individualism, and how this attitude has become so prevalent in our society and our classrooms. The thing that piqued it is the rememberance of really shy kids being forced to be able to present. You're always taught that you must have your own unique individual voice. It may not even have to be unique, but "one should be always established as an individual". If you look at Eastern European culture though, for example, it isn't like that so much--it's the collective voice, the communal voice, that people are accustomed to. In short, I realized today that pushing the kids that are shy, is not necessarily a good thing. Similarly, (although this seems obvious) there are a lot more intricacies to the actual "diversity" of students, once you look closer.

The other life affirming thing that this guy made me realize, or rather, put the groundwork down for me to follow the example of, was the open door policy, and the bond that a teacher should, or can have with their students. Mr. C. basically said that your job goes beyond just teaching. As a teacher, you are on of the most significant adults to that student at that time, other than their parents. They see you more than their parents even. This guy follows the progress of every one of his students incredibly closely, and basically summed up the genius by saying "if you show your students that you know your stuff, and that you actually care about their well being, you won't have any problems." It seems so simple, but I know a lot of people in my faculty that are going to have big problems with this.

Additionally, I hounded the poor guy after class specifically about native students, and what kind of problems he ran up against, if any, from other students in the class as far as the deep-seeded racism that runs against native peoples in the country. He told me essentially, that the more you integrate about a person's background and culture, the more knowlege you can bring in to battle ignorance, the better. I'm still skeptical of this, because when you think about it...we embrace the asian, the phillipino, the japanese, the Jupitorians (you get my drift) in our "mosaic-land of Canada" but for some reason, native people seem to be "the exception to the rule of our awesome open mindedness--because we're SO much more open minded than everyone else." I mean, admittedly, we try, but in the land of the educative curriculum, native studies (in public schools) falls flat on its face for the most part. The Iroquois' 'original range' was in Lower Quebec. They made canoes and slept in wig-wams. The end. There is no tie there, and never was, from contemporary to the past. It's this big ugly thing that we're still not talking about as much as we should be. Even today in Dose. Big alarms over a white girl killed in Ottawa. Would the stink have occurred with the people reacting so badly and so "it's not safe anymore" if it had been a native girl instead of a white one? I'm interested to know. Furthermore, they had little recaps of the Pickton victims, and the Edmonton victims, with a few pictures. Of the white ones. Nevermind that the majority of the victims, or at least half, in each of those situations, were aboriginal.

Mr. C also told me a great Creation story that is often overlooked about how the white man was actually viewed as "the long lost brothers" of the natives, "lost" via the land bridge (think Aleutians), which is why a lot of native first contact mythology reads as the aboriginal populace welcoming the white man with open arms. It wasn't until we reacted offensively and tried to wipe them out that things turned ugly. And I quoted him as saying, "yeah, we kind of owe them one." I'm still churning this around in my head though, I haven't quite decided what to make of that particular aspect of the conversation.

On the other hand though, I also talked to my Discipline Dominatrix Extraordinaire (Nina) further about the teaching in northern (predominantly native) schools, and about some of my goals and worries (cultural sensitivity and stuff)and she was absolutely incredulous but really impressed at what I wanted to do. She told me that "it would be hard as hell, but you definately seem like you're going to be one of the ones that do incredible at it, and I wish you luck." We talked about it for quite a while longer, and I'm getting the feeling that she's going to work more on the topic of really isolated rural schools into the curriculum for me. Awesome.

One thing that has been weighing on my mind though, is something that a guy in my counselling class last year brought up. He'd been working at summer camps and summer schools at a reserve up north, and it really put a toll on him because he started to wonder if it was "wrong" that he (a white boy) wanted to teach in all native schools, like it was inappropriate to do so. So I'm wondering about that a little, but at the same time, I can't overlook the fact that I just want to teach and make a difference as much as I can, anywhere. The situation that I witnessed in my own schools was reason enough to even want to do that. None of the native kids I went to school with graduated. None of them were informed of the secondary opportunities (via financial aid and stuff) that they were entitled to. None of them were encouraged, and a lot of them were pushed through, because teachers couldn't "deal" with what they were bringing into the classroom. I always watched it happen, and it always bothered me so much, and yet, I couldn't make enough sense of it to know what to do about it at the time either.

Lastly, I am excited about teaching. Could you tell? I'm excited in the aspects that teaching in a small community offers me uniquely. Involving the community, starting things up (projects, whatever), changing a life, and...you know, teaching stuff.

End rant 1.

My brother got married on Saturday... I ended up flying down to Kelowna on Friday afternoon, and coming back on Sunday afternoon, though I was delayed on the way back because of a breach in security at the Vancouver airport. In between that time though, I had a lot of fun. I met all the new family members (his bride's parents and whatnot) and I also met the new "niece." She's definitely a rotteweiler, but she's adorable, in a "Sid Vicious" sort of way [1]. And she's gonna be huge, and pretty aggressive I think. Her mom was 130 lbs, and her dad was something like 180 lbs, which is fucking nuts. Funnily enough, I found that I was sort of indifferent to her though, and more happy to hang oot with Gage. Because he actually was happy to see me.

The actual wedding ceremony took place on the cliff in front of their house, with orchards to the rear, and facing out over the lake. The cliffs themselves are dizzyingly high, and the overall effect of two people getting married there was quite beautiful. The JP was really cool too. I haven't ever really seen a good civvy service before, but this woman tailored the whole thing specifically for my brother and his fiancee. Before and after the whole thing, there were also tremendous amounts of good luscious food too. And wine. Narramata being wine country...we had all sorts of primo stuff to try, it was awesome. I have to say too, that after a week of rain and assorted cold dampness in Edmonton, the 23 odd degrees celcius on Saturday didn't hurt things either. So yeah, I have a sister-in-law, it's quite exciting. She's quite a good friend too, which is nice. My mom made her wedding gown also, which turned out awesome. I'm going to have to get her to make mine maybe if I get married, because she did a really good job of it.

Well....this has been sufficiently long and boring. Done and done.

[1] Her real name is Sydney  ¶ 8:22 PM