Educators engage in professional learning.
It is very appropriate for me to make a blog post on November 26th for this topic after attending a seminar this morning during our professional development day. The seminar my coaching teacher and I attended was Can They Hear Us Now by Sonya Rock. As a Gitxsan First Nations member, I was looking forward to hearing Sonya speak and tell us her residential school survival story. I have had the privilege of working alongside Sonya at Nusdeh Yoh elementary school during my second practicum. She is an incredibly kind woman, and powerful speaker. Her story was deeply touching and emotional. I was happy to see many educators in attendance. It is so important for us to sit and listen to residential school survivors and hear their stories. By doing so, we are better able to serve and support Indigenous students in our classrooms. We can better understand what they may be feeling and the impacts of intergenerational trauma.
I was very happy to have started my practicum during the week of truth and reconciliation in our school district. I prepared many meaningful lessons for my students to build their understanding of what happened not that long ago. My students asked some difficult questions that I did my best to answer as truthfully as I could. I appreciated their respect and understanding during these lessons. It is so important to raise this awareness at a young age to work towards healing and reconciliation. One of the reflection questions Sonya asked was how we as educators plan to take the information learned today and assert it into our practice. She wanted to know what our next steps would be. Many educators spoke up and expressed their ideas as well as their appreciation for sharing her story. It was encouraging to hear the voices of others.
It is so important to engage in professional learning because you get to hear from so many other colleagues who are experiencing similar things. Having multiple people discuss and share emotions and challenges together make them less daunting and isolated. There is a whole community of support available to educators, and no one understands it better than being in the same profession.