Life-Writing as Transformative Praxis

My name is Brenna Lovely, and I am a White-settler Canadian female, born and raised in Chilliwack, B.C. I spent twenty-six years living, working, and attending school on the traditional, ancestral land of the StĂł:lĹŤ Coast Salish peoples. During my education journey in Chilliwack, my only experience learning anything to do with Indigenous culture was going to the First Nations Support Room and making dreamcatchers in grade one. This is the only example of any Indigenous teaching I can remember, even though a significant population of First Nations students attended the school and it was on traditional StĂł:lĹŤ territory.

My parents both grew up poor. They both had the mindset that if you worked hard and got an education, you would be successful. Thus, the importance of education was preached to me from an early age. My parents were very invested in my education from the very start. Before I attended kindergarten, my mom would spend every night after dinner teaching me how to read. I was reading chapter books by the time I entered kindergarten. It was important to her that I wouldn’t struggle, so she made sure I had a head start before entering the public education system. Because of my early ability to read, kindergarten was very easy (and boring) for me. In addition to teaching me how to read, she also taught me how to do addition and subtraction. We would practice doing flashcards together every night. Her dedication to helping me practice almost every day gave me a solid foundation, which made school much easier for me than it was for many of the other students who were learning many of these concepts for the first time.

Because of my privilege, all school was to me was a stepping stone. I grew up in an upper-middle-class family. We had a beautiful home in a quiet suburban neighbourhood. I had two loving parents who had good-paying jobs. We had healthy home-cooked meals every night and were in many extracurricular activities. When it came to school, I thought that I just had to show up, do the work to the best of my ability, and hang out with my friends. As I got older, I was utterly wrapped up in myself because every need of mine was met, so all I had to focus on were the things I wanted to do. I had the luxury to do that.

There was a lot of pressure on me to get straight A’s. I found I studied just to complete a test rather than absorb the material into a genuine understanding of the topic. I believed that we were at school only to learn the basics – English, math, social studies, and science. When I reflect on my public education experience, it consisted of standardized tests, letter grades, and pressure to be an “athlete.” I do value the education that I received, although I wish it could have been more dynamic. It was so heavily focused on academics. I wish it had been more holistic, experiential, and relational. I wish I had learned more practical life skills and interpersonal skills. That wasn’t my experience, but it can be for my students.

I moved from Chilliwack to Terrace in January 2020 and began working as an Education Assistant in School District 82. What I thought I knew about education and my lens were expanded entirely when I started working up North. It has been an eye-opening experience based on what school was to me as someone who lived a life of immense privilege. I saw that education is no longer about making perfect grades or being some star athlete. It is about getting kids into the building where they are safe, feeding them (sometimes breakfast and lunch), cleaning their clothes if needed and dealing with an overwhelming amount of social-emotional learning. It is about meeting kids where they are, figuring out what they need first, in order to even begin starting to learn about math, literacy or new skills. I have had a paradigm shift in what I thought education looked like, what being an educator is, and the expectations of students. I realize that school isn’t about getting perfect grades – it’s about genuine learning.

Working in this place, I can see that if I worked in such a setting and expected the things from my students that were expected of me during my schooling, that both they and I would be in for a lot of unmet expectations and disappointment. I want my students to achieve their greatest potential academically. Still, I have come to see that my experience is unrealistic for many people and an unhealthy way of viewing school and education. Instead, I see the value of beginning with a foundation of holistic learning, based on the First People’s Principles of Learning. Teaching students first and foremost to be good people, to treat others with respect, and to be leaders who do the right thing even when no one else is around. With such a foundation put in place, learning in other areas can then occur in a more realistic, targeted, and meaningful way than the “learning for the sake of learning” approach that I took with my education. I would rather graduate a class of “good people” who try their best but struggle academically than a group who can ace every test and treat those around them with disrespect. Teach them to be good people, work as hard as possible on literacy and numeracy. If the popsicle-stick replica of a Hudson Bay Company Fort never gets made because the class spends time learning about how to be a decent person, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

During my entire educational experience, I felt as though I needed to fit in a box. If I made good grades, was a good girl, and participated in some sport, I was doing things “right.” There was no room to explore my own identity and decide who I was and what was important to me. Of course, I was a child and therefore didn’t have a ton of independence, but I had no encouragement to find out what was unique about myself and what made me special. The First Peoples Principles of Learning state that “learning requires exploration of one’s identity” and “it involves patience and time” (n,d). I wish I had been aware of this as a child and think is crucial for our future students. Encouraging them to think about what sets them apart, what they love about themselves that may be different from others and showing them that their uniqueness is valued.

References
FNESC. (n.d). First Peoples Principles of Learning. [Poster]
Retrieved from http://www.fnesc.ca/first-peoples-principles-of-learning/