Making Higher Education Family Friendly
Written by Kaitlyn Corlett
This National Indigenous Peoples Day and throughout National Indigenous History Month, I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means to me. While days of recognition are significant and obviously important, as an ally to communities, I often ask myself ‘What next?’. Not for the communities themselves, but rather for myself. What’s next for me in active allyship – and what can I do in my life, circle of influence or with folx I engage with?
By J. Sparks – Redefining Traditional Project Team Member
As both a graduate student and a parent of school aged children, the beginning of summer marks the end of the school year for my whole family. It’s a time when we all assess the academic year completed and make plans for the school year to come.
This year, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, my university shifted all of it’s classes online. My children also became engaged in online public schooling. After a year like no other, assessing what we have done and where we will go academically – as a family – has been a challenge. Out of necessity, we have all adapted to online learning and established new ways of connecting with our schools, communities, extended family and friends.
For over a year now, my family has lived, worked and learned all together from home. We have made virtual learning work for ourselves and for our children.
It has been an adjustment. It has not been easy. We have survived. We have succeeded.
Our land acknowledgements series highlights important stories and teachings from each of the Redefining Traditional team members – Heather, Shamim and Kaitlyn. Through these posts, we aim for our community to think about how land acknowledgments are immensely important, and to ensure we engage in teachings about specific cultures beyond a day or month of recognition. We also highlight important questions to support our community so that an acknowledgement moves beyond a ‘script’ and towards an ongoing conversation.
Our final post in this series is by Shamim Ahmed! Our previous two posts are from:
By Heather Watts
At the start of the 2020-2021 school year, I made the decision to send my son to school in-person. I can remember some of my parent friends asking, “Aren’t you worried about his health?”. Of course. I am also trusting in the processes set forward by his small, community school to keep everyone safe; a process informed by local physicians and scientists.
By Heather Watts
When I graduated from Columbia University with a Master of Arts degree, I held the belief that teachers with similar educational backgrounds as I, serving the same student population as I, would hold the same beliefs about the importance of teaching diverse world-views in this country, and teaching about the history that is often erased to maintain a Euro-Western perspective.