TQS #5 - Applying Foundational Knowledge about First Nations, Métis and Inuit

For the first couple of weeks, I was struggling on how to include FNMI knowledge

and activities into my classroom. Because I was doing a short story unit, I figured that it

would be fairly easy to find a FNMI story to include for one of the elements that I was

teaching. And yet, when I was searching for FNMI short stories that included the

elements that I was teaching, I found it incredibly difficult. For starters, finding short

stories that were either about FNMI people or by FNMI authors was exceedingly more

difficult than I expected. It took me a while to find any stories at all, and the ones that I

did find were stories by amateur writers. Even after finding a couple of stories, the ones

that I did find, did not fit what I needed them to. The stories were either very vague or

there was so much background information that I knew that I would need to provide an

entire class to teach about the culture. While I would have liked to do that, unfortunately,

I did not have enough time. Finally, after a few days of searching, I found a FNMI short

story that would work, titled . I was going to give the short story to the students as a

reading comprehension quiz, however, with the way that the week fell, the students

were not prepared to take the quiz. It came down to choosing the student’s learning

over their results. While I would have liked to do the reading comprehension, making

sure that the students were actually learning the elements of a short story and felt

comfortable with creating their own was a higher priority to me. Thus, the students did

not get to read the FNMI story.

I was then put in the position where I wasn’t sure how to include FNMI into this

lesson now. We had finished the reading portion and the students were now entering

the portion where they were writing their own short stories. The students had full
creative leeway for their stories, they got to write what they wanted. However, I got an

idea while talking with Rachel. Because the Grade 6s had to take their PATs at the end

of the school year, and writing a short story in response to a picture prompt was one of

the requirements during the English written portion, I decided that the students were

going to do two practice PATs. There was my opportunity. I started looking for FNMI

picture prompts that the students would be able to create a short story for. Eventually,

Rachel helped me find one in a picture book about Residential Schools, titled Secret

Path by Gord Downie and illustrated by Jeff Lemire. Thus, one of the short stories to a

picture prompt that the students wrote in my class was in response to a picture about

Residential schools.

While it is not quite how I wanted to include FNMI culture into my classroom, as I

wanted to go more in depth about the culture and different traditions, at least this way I

can get my foot in the door. Now that I have started introducing FNMI culture into my

classroom during the Short Story Unit, now I can continue teaching more about FNMI

during the Research Unit where students are learning more about different countries,

races, and cultures. I know that this is just a start and I will continue to include FNMI into

my classroom as much as I possibly can.