Learning and Teaching Together by Michele TD Tanaka, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Across Canada, new curriculum initiatives require teachers to introduce students to Aboriginal content. In response, many teachers unfamiliar with Aboriginal approaches to learning and teaching are seeking ways to respectfully weave this material into their lessons. At the same time, many teachers are also grappling with how to foster inclusive classrooms in an increasingly multicultural society. Far more than a how-to book, Learning and Teaching Together introduces teachers of all levels to an indigenist approach to education. Tanaka recounts how pre-service teachers enrolled in a crosscultural course in British Columbia immersed themselves in indigenous ways of learning and teaching by working alongside indigenous wisdom keepers. Together, they transformed cedar bark, buckskin, and wool into a mural that tells stories about the land upon which the course took place. In the process, they discovered new ways of learning that support not only intellectual but also tactile, emotional, and spiritual forms of knowledge. The teachers-in-training then carried their new-found knowledge into their practicums, where they faced challenges and opportunities as they worked to apply the indigenist values they had learned within a system structured around Western values, beliefs, and attitudes. By telling the story of how one group of non-indigenous teachers learned to privilege indigenous ways of knowing, Tanaka opens a path for teachers to nurture indigenist crosscultural understanding in their classrooms. | Learning and Teaching Together by Michele TD Tanaka, Paperback | Indigo Chapters