Educators respect and value the history of First Nations, Inuit and Metis in Canada and the impact of the past on present and the future. Educators contribute towards truth, reconciliation and healing. Educators foster a deeper understanding of ways of knowing and being, histories, and cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Metis.
I was fortunate enough to have an Aboriginal Support Worker in our school building during my 491 practicum. I reached out to her to see if we could do something unique in the classroom once a a week where we can collaborate and where I could support her during this time period once week to improve our a class community. After some thought, we concluded to introduce a Restorative Practice Circle every Friday afternoons to discuss aspects of making our class community to promote more inclusive and respectful for all students. Students would clear the desks off to the side and only have their chairs remaining to form a circle where each individual could voice their thoughts, opinion or concerns regarding many topics in related to improving the classroom community, while possessing the talking stick, as others listened. The talking stick would be passed to the right side of the circle to indicate that one is speaking from their side of the heart. This healing circle created important discussions that surrounding the dynamics of the classroom and more importantly allowed all students to express their perspectives. This is important for those students that are more reserved or shy to voice their opinion on many discussion points. The Restorative Practice Circles allowed a discussion to improve our classroom environment while paying respect to the First Nation’s principles of learning and acknowledging how this culture would resolve their problems or issues. It is important for us to learn such practices to respect the people who first called this land home. We as educators can and should implement such sacred and holistic learning circles in the classroom to respect aboriginal practices in restoring the community, or in this case our classroom. I would often draw on the conversations through the week in order to help students work through difficulties and problems by reminding them of what had been discussed during our circle time on Friday afternoons. The circles really were a success with identifying the classroom issues that exist and also allow students to deal with this issue by incorporating Aboriginal ideology and pedagogy to resolve and restore the matter at hand.