I am grateful to have gained valuable new insights from this course that built upon my current professional experiences. A practice I will be carrying forward in my professional context are the findings and reflections of Ladson-Billings (2014). I appreciate how culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy educational approaches can be directly implemented into my curriculum and teaching practices. These are changes that we hope all school members will observe but if not, there are still opportunities for us to include them in our own classroom spaces. I hope to carry forward some of the strategies for newcomer youth that we discussed, and learn and grow through my teaching experiences. Next year, I would like to partner with my mentor teacher who is responsible for organizing our mental wellness community events and be a part of that planning process.
I suppose some next steps for myself would be to have a classroom to actually apply all of this to. Quite frankly, I am at a strange point in my career where I am waiting for a teacher to retire so I can officially apply to their position permanently. I have been covering their LTO off and on for two years, and occasional teaching regularly at that school. While it is not impossible to bring these course learnings forward in occasional teaching, it is harder to create those connections when you are not seeing a group of students regularly. At the time when I am writing this post, I have been informed that the teacher will be retiring, and I am waiting for next steps from my administrators. As this is a school I have put all my time and energy into since my B.Ed years at Queen’s, I would sincerely love the opportunity to join the team permanently and continue to create a positive difference within the school community using the new learnings from this course and my PME experiences.
References
Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74-84.
Toronto, June 2023
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