See a few samples of previous course work I completed during my Bachelor of Arts degree.
Soci-2010-AutobiographyReflection
This is a paper I wrote for a second-year Sociology course I took while doing my Bachelor of Arts degree. This course, while not directly related to education, represents an important part of my story of becoming a teacher. In this assignment, I was asked to critically reflect on how I experienced ‘race’ as a social construct. This was important for me because as a member of the dominant cultural group in Canada, ‘race’ was never an idea that I had given much thought to. This course was the first time in my life when I became aware of systemic racism and how institutions like education perpetuate it in ways that often go unnoticed by the white majority.
Engl-4260-Critical-Reflection-on-PlaceReflection
This is an essay I wrote for a fourth-year English course I took during my Bachelor of Arts degree. This assignment challenged me to critically reflect on my sense of a place that is significant to me. I chose to explore my sense of Kamloops. While this course is not related directly to teaching and learning, it was an important moment in my own educational journey because it challenged me to think about how I understand and relate to this land that I live on and how my sense of this place came to be. Understanding my positionality in relation to these unceded and ancestral lands of Tk’emlups te Secwepemc will, I believe, make me a more compassionate and critically reflexive educator.
Engl-4470-Self-Location-AssignmentReflection
This is an assignment that I completed for a fourth-year English course I took during my Bachelor of Arts degree. In this course, I was taught by an Indigenous educator about the significance of land acknowledgments. I believe it is important especially for non-Indigenous educators in Canada who are teaching on Indigenous land to understand that land acknowledgements must be more than simply stating that the current event is occurring on Indigenous land. The purpose of a land acknowledgement is to establish your connection to the land. While often well-intentioned, without recognizing and acknowledging one’s position in relation to the land, land acknowledgements represent little more than a formality or virtue signaling. This was the first time I fully grasped the potential significance of making a land acknowledgement.