Inclusive Teaching Through Imagination

1. Inclusive Teaching Through Imagination Pathways of Teacher Development

2. A canoeful of stances

3. Who are these characters? • Represent diversity of teachers' personalities, dispositions, commitments, and readiness to change (“stances”) • No one stance sums up any particular teacher — all real teachers participate in two or more of these, and shift between them frequently • The stances can be used to characterize ourselves, as teacher educators, as accurately as they can teachers

4. Conflicted carers 1:Bear “…sits in the bow of the boat, broad back deflecting any unfamiliar, novel or interesting sensation, eyes firmly and forever fixed on the past, tries to believe that things are still as they were.” — Bill Reid

5. “I would love to be more creative, but I find that I am very busy teaching the basics. We might read about the jaguar, jaguarundi and Indian tiger, but we are often focusing on comprehension, vocabulary development, and finding the main ideas. I feel that if I make time for the creative part, which has to be taught and mediated, it needs time and there just is not enough time in a day, week, month or term. I feel some stress to cover the curriculum and also incorporate the creative side.” QUALITIES teaches as he/she was taught, with emphasis on factual knowledge and skills (“the basics”) imaginative education and cultural inclusion are add-ons, to be attempted once “regular” outcomes are met The Bear as teacher…

6. Conflicted carers 2:Bear Mother “…looking over his [Bear’s] shoulder into the future, concerned more with her children than with her legend. After all, she has wandered in from another myth, the one about Good Bear and Bad Bear and how they changed, so she has to keep a sharp eye on them.” — Bill Reid

7. “I feel that these students need much more than imaginative education. There are so many factors that affect success (life experiences, mediation at home, positive self-concept, socio-economic status)… It is very evident in our classrooms that most kids are two to four years behind. Kids cannot engage if they don’t know basic vocabulary and are delayed in their thinking functions or ability to make connections and form concepts. I am starting to feel that imaginative education is needed in affluent communities like Oak Bay and West Van. Those kids have had mediation all their lives and they are the ones who can make moral and transcendent connections. Many students are struggling with survival (Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). They have little time to self-actualize.” QUALITIES empathetic, caring strong focus on child behaviour, aware of challenges children face at home may believe “the kids aren't ready” for imaginative education Bear Mother as teacher…

8. Conflicted carers 3:Beaver “…doughtily paddling away, hardworking if not very imaginative, the compulsory Canadian content, big teeth and scaly tail, perfectly designed for cutting down trees and damming rivers.” — Bill Reid

9. “When I think about imaginative education and teaching something like simple machines, I picture myself having this big RubberMaid bin full of all my things that I need to teach that and … the booklet that goes along with that… something similar to that. I know it’s going to be hard, because it’s going to be… different for everybody but… if they have any units that they use on a yearly basis… that have worked four or five times.” QUALITIES likes routine and order in the classroom tends to see things in binary terms, e.g. “Am I doing it right?” desires ready-made strategies to minimize experimentation and failure The Beaver as teacher…

10. Heroic loners 1:Dogfish Woman “More magical than the Mouse Woman, as mysterious as the deep ocean waters which support the sleek, sinuous fish from whom she derives her power, Dogfish Woman stands aloof from the rest, the enormous concentration of her thoughts smouldering smoke dreams behind her inward-looking eyes.” — Bill Reid

11. “[LUCID] is a good reminder to always stop and think, ‘Okay, I want the kids to stop and get this concept. How can I engage them?’ It’s helped me to stop and think about what I’m doing...It’s made me more aware of the opportunities I can offer kids to grow. It’s increased my awareness.” “[Imaginative education] is coming up with ideas off the top of your head and just going with it. This is because that is what I do: once I think of something I really need to move into it or else I just lose it. I don’t become involved with it if I don’t start on the spur of the moment. That is the way I usually work anyway.” QUALITIES intense self-possession isolation from other teachers pride in one's own practice tendency to use only those ideas that fit within existing style Dogfish Woman as teacher…

12. Heroic loners 2:Eagle “… a proud, imperial, somewhat pompous bird…” — Bill Reid

13. “In some ways, we are still tied by tests… There comes a time when… push comes to shove and you have to have the output in some way.” “[I would have had a successful year if] every student in the class would have completed the objectives… in a way they were excited to complete them.” “[An indicator of success would be] that the grade twelves all passed the provincials and graduated. They’re struggling so hard with [subject matter] now, but I don’t think that’s an expectation. If this [imaginative education] is some sort of key to unlock their understanding, that would be good. The next biggest indicator would be their enjoying what they are doing.” QUALITIES able to grapple with theoretical concepts of imagination and culture committed to control, structure, academic achievement imaginative education and cultural inclusion are means, not ends The Eagle as teacher…

14. Heroic loners 3:Wolf “… a completely imaginary creature, perhaps existing over there on the mainland, but never seen on Haida Gwaii. Nevertheless, he was an important figure in the crest hierarchy. Troublesome, volatile, fiercely playful, he can usually be found with his sharp fangs embedded in someone’s anatomy.” — Bill Reid

15. “We started out forming the classroom into a village that contained… a pit house. Through the process of creating a village together as a class and doing everything very collaboratively into creating the actual structures in our room, taking the desks out… really basically putting ourselves into the role of what we were studying… Other than that we did studies of… activities that occurred in the village, the hunting, incorporating the different songs and berry picking, learning about the berries, what they were used for… We did animal studies as well to tie into what we were doing… We incorporated the salmon practices of the First Nations people in that area and we also participated in actually preserving salmon, canning it and everything… We had people coming in to do presentations on salmon and fish camps… That was pretty much three months.” QUALITIES comfortable with experimentation and uncertainty playful quality fosters student engagement involvement in the moment may obscure longer-term purpose The Wolf as teacher…

16. Knowledge weavers 1:Raven “…there is no doubt what he looks like in this myth-image: exactly the same as he does in his multiple existences as the familiar carrion bird of the northern latitude of the earth. Of course he is the steersman. So although the boat appears to be heading in a purposeful direction, it can arrive anywhere the Raven’s whim dictates.” — Bill Reid

17. QUALITIES pursues imaginative possibilities, wherever they may lead has strong sense of overall purpose, coupled with a sense of irony asks difficult questions about the journey and the passengers “I am very shocked at how well they dealt with that type of learning… [The other teacher] said, ‘So what did you do for units?’ and I laughed at her, ‘Do you really want to know?’ I tried to explain what I did and she just looked at me, like I am absolutely insane… The participation in what we did and the after-feeling that you were absolutely teaching something to these kids that they were going to remember, that was very beneficial for me. …It was a phenomenal year. The learning for me and the kids was absolutely unbelievable. It is something I would definitely promote.” The Raven as teacher…

18. “One of the frustrations...is we have this group of children this year. It’s going to be a completely new group next year. If we are doing any kind of assessment, there is not really any continuity. If you actually want to follow kids that started [with imaginative education] to progressively see where they are when they get to grade nine, how would you do that? [Part of the frustration is not knowing the effectiveness] in a larger framework.” “So culture aside, that’s [low income housing as a result of nearby prisons] a whole new culture in itself. Right? Being poor. How do you go about being poor in this world when your parents are putting needles into their arms and they are basically passed out when you get home? That is a reality for so many kids. Mom’s a prostitute or dad’s got a grow-op in the basement. We see a lot of that….lower than low income….How do these kids survive all of that? It’s their culture. So absolutely, if you are not aware of that, I don’t know how you can be doing any service to the kids.” …and as critic

19. Knowledge weavers 2:Frog “…sits partially in and partially out of the boat and above the gunwales; the ever-present intermediary between two of the worlds of the Haidas, the land [and] the sea.” — Bill Reid

20. “My classroom became a very strong community and that is something that is…a big focus for me: that we need to build strong communities in the classroom and take that outside the school…. You need to be aware of their [First Nations people’s] traditions…you need to begin to appreciate, to get outside of your classroom, [get] into the culture, be in the community. We need to not only show your face but get to know the faces of the other people, making connections that hopefully you can bring in to a place like your classroom…. not only you have to be open-minded, but you have to be hungry in a sense… so that when it is within a classroom you don’t speak about it as an authority, you can almost speak about it as a student and allow the children slowly to become their own authority…. We become almost equals in that they know a little bit, I know a little bit but together we can explore or find out more together.” QUALITIES intermediary between classroom and community, culture and education, self and community participates and reflects, belongs and doesn't belong classroom becomes a meeting place of realities The Frog as teacher…

21. Knowledge weavers 3:Mouse Woman “… ruled by the… obsession to stay concealed in the night shadows and lightless caves and other pockets of darkness, in which she spends her immortality, the Mouse Woman lost her place among the other characters of her own myth, an important part of the Bear Mother story…” — Bill Reid

22. “I had one boy this year whose skills were really, really low. … He would sit there and call himself dumb and say, ‘I don’t want to read.’ So we started doing different things with him to read, like playing games, doing puzzles, just doing a whole bunch of things and he really started to enjoy it and we included him in everything. … I would sit with him and say, ‘Well we’re doing story writing. This is what we need do the story on. What are your ideas?’ And we would do webbings and we would do character development, we would do all of that before we would get him to start writing it. His writing was very poor but by the end he was wanting to write stories and do things on the computer. … His mom was just amazed by the end of the year.” QUALITIES humility and unobtrusiveness quiet change — a commitment to the long haul that finds expression in multiple small details and in the building of relationship with individual students Mouse Woman as teacher…

23. “So there is certainly no lack of activity in our little boat…” • Conflicted Carers: Bear, Bear Mother, Beaver • Heroic Loners: Dogfish Woman, Eagle, Wolf • Knowledge Weavers: Raven, Frog, Mouse Woman

24. “…but is there any purpose?” “Is the tall figure who may or may not be the Spirit of Haida Gwaii leading us, for we are all in the same boat, to a sheltered beach beyond the rim of the world as he seems to be, or is he lost in a dream of his own dreamings? The boat moves on, forever anchored in the same place.” — Bill Reid

25. Unexpected complexity We have learned that: • Raven is not the only possible Philosophic/Ironic ideal to strive for — both Frog and Mouse Woman hold real attraction for teachers; • The Romantic stances (Dogfish Woman, Eagle, Wolf) are powerful and not easily transformed; • The Mythic stances (Bear, Bear Mother, Beaver) exert a continuing pull on all of us; • Sometimes the Ancient Reluctant Conscript is right.

26. The Ancient Reluctant Conscript “… our professional survivor… present if seldom noticed in all the turbulent histories of [humans] on earth. When our latter day kings and captains have joined their forebears, he will still be carrying on, stoically obeying orders and performing the tasks allotted to him. But only up to a point. It is also he who finally says, ‘Enough!’ And after the rulers have disappeared into the morass of their own excesses, it is he who builds on the rubble and once more gets the whole thing going.”— Bill Reid

27. Pathways of teacher development New questions: • What circumstances or conditions foster the development of particular stances? • How do the different stances influence the ways in which teachers take up ideas of imagination and inclusion? • How do the stances of a teacher educator affect the process of teacher development? • .What should LUCID be doing to foster teacher development in the next two years?