Teaching Where You Are: Weaving Indigenous and Slow Principles and Pedagogies

Synopsis:

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.

Reviews
"Shannon Leddy and Lorrie Miller weave a beautiful metaphorical tapestry of Slow and Indigenous ways of knowing and being that simultaneously honours each framework’s distinct features and identifies complementary principles, teachings, and pedagogies to create exciting new educational possibilities. In this era of truth and reconciliation, holistic pedagogies are needed to offer hope, love, care, and deep ways of feeling, being, knowing, and doing, which this book offers, and so much more." — Jo-ann Archibald, Professor Emeritus of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia

"Teaching Where You Are is a must-read for educators and preservice teachers who are dedicated to responsibly providing for Indigenous ways and perspectives in their professional practice. With recognition of the discomfort educators might feel approaching Indigeneity in their work, Leddy and Miller acknowledge and help us, as settlers, to activate the process of unpacking and unlearning colonizing perspectives. This book offers a pathway of knowledge for teachers to develop the self and nurture authentic, human approaches to walking alongside Indigenous wisdom and cross-cultural understanding in their classrooms.” — Sheryl Smith-Gilman, Associate Dean of Academics, Faculty of Education, McGill University

Educator Information
Table of Contents

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)

References
Index

Additional Information
192 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | 15 colour illustrations and 2 b&w figures | Paperback