September 12, 2019

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school boys and sour prentices,

Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

-from 'The Sun Rising' by John Donne

I created this webspace on my phone for the first part. I added in some photos from my trip from Japan but I don't know how to change it so that it's different from each section. I forgot to create a section for ED 300 and got a bit too carried away with the formatting and creating my artist brand rather than get to the educator part of my brand. I wonder if that's something that I can put with my dispositions. Supposedly, I'm supposed to put a summarised version of the dispositions, but I have a lot of these covered and spent probably just as much time expanding on each those as I have for making the website.

I found that I miss writing in a blog. If time allows it (there's never enough time it seems) I might record of my journey here. If anything, we have a timestamp of what I'm up to on a mid-September day.

September 25, 2019

'It's kinda funny innit? This whole business of living. But what choice do we have when some fool of a being plunks us Indians in the middle of this here earth, and deals us the hand that we got. But... I figure you gotta make the most of it. You certainly did. And I'm sure as hell gonna give it my best shot.'

- from 'Rez Sisters' by Thomson Highway

Okay, stick with me for a minute. So, I stated at the beginning of one of my classes that I have a job at Bdote and that I'll be late probably everyday; I said I was totally fine with the consequences. I still got an alert from Multicultural Services of the concern of being late affecting my grade. They told me I could be 5 minutes early every day to fix it. If only it were that easy! I am working with Student Accessibility Services for my exceptionalities and I have a therapist set up, but I'm afraid neither can help my circumstances in this case. I wanted to go and cry to both. It was disheartening, but I gotta fight.

For the sake of my kids, my students, I'm willing to take that hit in my grade if it means that I'll succeed later. My success in this class is solely for them; I want to be a licensed teacher for their benefit. I can show them that doing your best under the circumstances you're given (I have to pay for the courses out of my own pocket, drive an hour and half to the best teaching school I can afford on my own, and not being able to afford to reduce my hours so I can keep going to school) then I've done my job as an indigenous educator. More than that, as a role model. I'm not perfect, but who is really?

As a working class native kid from the Rez, who makes his bread from pure happenstance of birth (and he's gluten intolerant anyway.) We can't always afford to be on class on time or we'll lose our job, we can't always 'wait until the next class' because we've already paid for the books, class, and gas, we can't always be the contemporary student because we aren't.

Education still favours the privileged and that's how it's always been. To change that narrative and show education is accessible for everyone; that is what drives me to teach. This is what makes me want to keep on my path to be an educator.

I sit in the campus lab late nights when I can because I can't afford a new computer. I lose sleep to make everything work out. Working hard now means that I will have it easier later. Rare nights like today, when my 15 year old laptop can buzz to life to run Google Docs, in the dim of my rented room, it hits me.

I feel vindicated. I feel accomplished. I feel that these late nights are worth it.

I think I got this! ^_^!!