The First Stories

In my classrooms growing up the only stories I can remember were Canadian stories. I don't remember vividly what they were about but I remember going to the library one time to look at picture books and most of the books were of places in Saskatchewan or in Canada. Any of the other stories that I saw in my library were stories about First Nations people, which was somewhat taught in school. I remember talking about First Nations people's in grade 4 and 5, but that was the only time in Elementary school where I remember talking about First Nations people's. In high school, it was mandatory to take history 10, 20, and 30, which I didn't mind at all because I had a great teacher and I enjoyed history. I remember discussing things in History like Residential Schools and Treaties. The only books, like I mentioned, were stories about First Nations peoples. We read a story in grade 7 called Spirit Bear, which was told in a First Nations perspective. I respected other cultures and I enjoyed learning about the history behind the cultures. Whereas, there were some students in my class who questioned why we learnt what we did in History because they felt it was "irrelevant."

I feel like I do have some biases because I feel I didn't learn as much as I could have while in school, until I got to University and took Indigenous Studies 100 which was about First Nations peoples and their history. Learning what I did in indigenous 100 made me feel like I didn't learn much in History. Because of what I learnt in Indigenous 100 I want to set a positive example for my students to be open to learning about other cultures and accept that History has shaped Canada and has shaped our world as a whole and it is important that they know that and learn about it. I also want my students to be aware that they may have diverse students in their classroom and I want them to be accepting of that. And by accepting that they have diverse classmates, they need to also accept that they may have different cultural beliefs than the rest of their classmates.