Introduction to Me!

My name is Alexis Silvera and I have been lucky enough to spend my life learning and building relationships in a variety of beautiful places across many First Nations lands - from growing up on the Musqueam peoples land, then going to university on the unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples on Vancouver Island before moving to Northern BC to  start my teaching career on Wetʼsuwetʼen First Nation's land. Four years ago we moved back to and settling on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically living and working on unceded T’Sou-ke land. I am grateful for the ability to live, care for, and create a family (I have a wonderful partner and a cat named Luna) in such a special place.  In my spare time I enjoy crafting, crochet, and going to visit my grandparents in the shíshálh Nation (Sunshine Coast) whenever I possibly can. 

My first year of teaching was in high school and I am incredibly grateful for the staff and students that I met there and the kindness that was shown to me as a new teacher during COVID. This taught me so many invaluable lessons by being able to work with older students, but also showed me that my passion came from working with younger students especially around books and literature. The last four years I have taught grade 3/4  as a shared classroom in the afternoons while having rotating job titles each year in the morning. From Learning Support, to PHE prep coverage, to Teacher Librarian, and now back to Learning Assistance. In those years, the most passion I have felt was when I was surrounded by books and the love of collaboration that comes with sharing stories with students and because of this I have started my journey to become a teacher librarian. This year holds a year of TTOC'ing for me as I work on furthering my own learning and I am very excited and privileged to be able to do so. 

The main goal I have for this course is to use the learning I do in this course to begin to figure out how to authentically include Indigenous learning and stories into a school library and to do so with the appropriate terminology and respect. A second goal I have is to read more about Canada's past and go deeper into the pieces of history that make me uncomfortable to ensure that I am doing the work to understand the truth. A final goal I have is to understand what it truly looks like to teach with reconciliation at the forefront of my practice - to reflect on the ways that I try to incorporate indigenous knowledge and evaluate if I am truly being authentic and always providing meaningfully engaging learning about our history. I am really looking forward to sharing this learning journey with you all.