Professional Growth

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Professional Growth 2023

Iyinisiwin Story Institute Incorporated - Gail 

Indigenous Motherhood Class

The Goal of the Language Course is to awaken the Indigenous spirit of storytelling.  It is imperative to allow our child caregivers as well as myself to learn of the teachings utilized in the ancestral child rearing.  This program immersed all learners in intergenerational learning and cultural revitalization.  In this course we learned about story usage to move knowledge from generation to generation.

As a learner I get to:

Why is this valuable to me?

Identity is built from the stories we are told as children.  If you work with or raise nehiyaw children and youth in their own stories, they will grow into their identity as nehiyawak. 

Becoming an Anti-Racist Educator  - Darrel 


December 8-9, 2022 

We began the journey of becoming anti-racist educators by examining “The Change Curve," on the emotional journey. 

We explored the six layers of racism: 

Sociohistorical Racism, the way we're socialized to make meaning of race. 

Ideological Racism, the result of socio-historical racism is ideological racism, informing world views and belief systems. 

Individual Racism, the result of ideological racism informing interpersonal interactions. 

Institutional Racism, the implications of ideological racism operating in an institution, like a school, division, board, or university. 

Cultural Racism, messaging about white superiority through sources that control the means of perception. 

Structural Racism, the network of unjust distribution of access and opportunity built into all systems and structures in society. From here we then examined the three zones that we travel through on the journey to becoming anti-racist. The Fear zone where we deny and avoid there may be a problem. The learning zone where we recognize racism as a present and current problem and the growth zone where we identify how we may unknowingly benefit from racism to speaking out when we see racism in action. 

We looked at Deficit and Grit Ideologies and how they are used to inform the lenses through which we view students and families. Deficit Ideologies take a deficit perspective that focuses on people's weaknesses rather than their strengths. Grit Ideologies, meanwhile attributes disparities to shortages of resilience and grit within Indigenous communities and communities of colour, so solutions focus on strengthening their grit or resilience.



Canoe Wilderness Camping Skills - Oladiran Akanni

Being an outdoorsy person who enjoys the great outdoors, I felt the need to take the canoe wilderness camping skills & lake canoe intermediate tandem instructor workshop when the opportunity came. 

The workshop was a great opportunity for participants to meet other teachers within the division, learn about series of canoeing maneuver, strokes, skills and their purposes, wilderness navigation, and most importantly, safety while in the wilderness and on the water.

This experience provided me with all what I need to know and how to safely take student at my school out when the time comes.

VIRISTAR’s Risk Management online course for Outdoor Education - Derek Konga

This March I took part in VIRISTAR’s Risk Management online course for Outdoor Education.  This course was suggested and endorsed by the Outdoor Council of Canada.  We had 12 students from all over the world, in various settings from Universities, Nature Therapy Schools and Private contractors participate in weekly discussions and projects.  We developed an understanding of the domains, instruments and protocols around managing risk and what is acceptable for our clients.  The course will help me in teaching outdoor concepts and leading excursions while keeping students within manageable risk.  Thank you NATA for this opportunity.  For more information on this course visit viristar.com