How are we Black Bears?

Chief Skemxist (Black Bear), teaches us that learning involves generational roles and responsibilities. Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story, which can be modelled through the relationship between a mentor teacher and teacher intern. Year 3 was the first year that we felt ready to accept teacher interns to be our best Black Bear selves. As a collaborative team we were able to provide a “perspective of wise reflection” through the lens of a mentor. Three teacher interns became part of the family for the entirety of Term 1. Not only were we mentoring while designing lessons and provocations, we were involving interns in this process and moulding them to do the same in their practice. We asked one of our three interns the following questions: What were your first impressions of the learning community?

“My first impressions were that I really liked the aspect of team teaching when you have multiple perspectives, even though it’s difficult to balance all those things at once. It was fun to see the kids that were used to the community because they were very self-sufficient, self starters and the flow between the teacher’s strengths were really cool.”

How did it make you feel when you were asked to work with 2 other interns and 3 teacher mentors?

“Terrified at first. Haha. Honestly though, when I was told I was excited because I knew that being in community would be a great professional experience to see what was possible and where it was going was cutting edge then, but seems normal to me now. I felt like we [interns] weren’t competing, but I would have to also step up and take on new responsibilities to highlight my own strengths. It was nice having other teacher interns to work with and share the expectations of the internship as a team, rather than being alone and on your own - it was like a huge think tank, the seven of us, and I miss that.”

How has your experience working with a collaborative teaching model changed the way you teach now?

“It’s changed the way I want to teach because I now seek out that collaborative aspect and seek out other teachers and what they are doing. I feel like I’m more relaxed because in a standard classroom, what appears to be chaos to some teachers often isn’t and it changes behaviour and what you expect of students that are realistic.”

Teaching is a profession in which Elders (teacher mentors) transfer knowledge through to younger generations, and this became evident to us through reflection of the Four Food Chiefs in our practice.