In teaching to meet call to action no. 62 I plan to use the following resource from the First Nations Education Steering Committee: Indian Residential Schools & Reconciliation: Teacher Resource Guide, Social Studies 5 (2015). This is a resource that can be used to help appropriately teach young students about residential schools. This particular resource is an e-book for grade 5 teachers and students. It incorporates stories, primary resources, and information that can help plan an informative visit to a residential school and other experiences. These aspects of this guide will help me teach students how to understand the residential school experience and, more importantly, the system’s deeply seated residual effects.
Quality resources that can be used to develop culturally appropriate curricula are the Adventure of Small Number stories. These are resources published by Simon Fraser University for the purpose of indigenizing math content through the use of the Aboriginal peoples’ storytelling tradition. Moreover, the stories are available in English and several Aboriginal peoples’ languages, thus creating opportunities for more students to utilize them. I would use these stories with all students at levels from grade 4 and below. Doing so is a simple way to increase exposure to indigenized content and First Peoples’ language for non-indigenous learners while also promoting mathematics among aborigianl learners (Simon Fraser University, n.d.).
The third resource I will use is another that will be helpful in teaching about the residential school system; it is a book by Phyllis Webstad and Brock Nicol called The Orange Shirt Story (2018). This is a powerful story about a young girl’s experiences at a residential school and the difficulties she faced after being seperated from her family and home. This book features great illustrations and story telling which I will use with my students to build empathy and compassion among them. When considering what age level it can be used at, The Orange Shirt Story would be best suited for teaching intermediate students about residential schools.