When looking at the medicine wheel and the descriptions of each of the differing quadrants, I really can see the relevance to the education setting. The north quadrant representing balance/respect, the east representing wholeness, the west representing inter-connectedness and the south representing inter-relationship. To me each of these 4 concepts are 4 of the main pillars when it comes to education. Even in an e-learning environment! I would almost say that this is more important to keep in mind when it comes to an e-learning environment.
When I can't see my students because their cameras are turned off, or they are not in the same physical environment with each other it becomes very hard to build and develop working relationships with each other, let alone a social relationship...especially for those students who are coming to us in grade 9 and likely don't know all of the other students in the class and have not had to opportunity to meet their new teachers in person before the beginning of the school year. It is through this medicine wheel model that we can ensure we are creating a welcoming and inviting classroom that ensures our students build relationships with each other, as well as learning to discover growth within themselves as we work through the curriculum content.
I can include these concepts into the class by ensuring that there are reflective portions to their assignments, that they are completing group work and having side break out group conversations with each other, by bringing the students into the learning and having them do some of the discovery rather then having me lecture at them through the computer for hours on end...this would get boring no matter how engaging the content is! But also making sure that there is emotional connections to the material that we are covering. When in an environment that is harder to connect with the students, one of the best ways to connect is to bring an emotional connection to the content. Even in classes like science and math where the material can be harder to do that with, if we can find a way to bring their emotions into the lessons they are likely to respond better and increase their engagement levels vs, just saying that the synchronous parts are mandatory for your grade.
I think that even bringing FNMI content into the classes, we need to ensure that we are being appropriate in the constructs that we are discussing with our students. I have spent time in and around the Six Nations reservation as a lacrosse player, so for myself I am comfortable discussing FNMI content because I know I have resources that I can go to if need be and that I can bring into my class if it is a really sensitive subject that I will not honour properly. However for many teachers, both new and experienced, Indigenous teachings are an uncomfortable subject to teach because of a fear of lack of knowledge or that they don't want to bring cultural biases into the classroom so they will either skip over it, or include a surface level of content and move on quickly. Therefore, in my opinion, the best way to avoid these fears and to become comfortable is to take that just do it attitude. Find those local connections and bring presenters into the classroom. If guests are not allowed in still, we can always video conference. During placement we were not allowed guest presenters due to COVID policies, so my friend joined us in class via MS Teams and we were able to deliver the same lesson as we did in a face to face class.
I believe that this connects the same way to culturally responsive teaching associated with teaching digital literacy to our students as it does to FNMI teachings because we are failing our students if we only teach them the surface level of concepts. One way that this would work is if we were to discuss the surface level of a concept with our students and then as an activity portion of the lesson then have them work to discover the deeper level of culture/information on their own...otherwise we are failing our students right from the beginning. As educators we are not meant to know all of the facts, that is what these resources are for, but it is our responsibility to ensure that we are teaching our students how to properly access the full extent of the material so that they can become proper contributing citizens of society.
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