Professional development retreat: reconciliation
On November 14 and 15 our faculty and staff will be heading up to Lillooet for a reconciliation retreat with Darrell Bob of the St’at’imc Nation. This work has been developed in cooperation with Sussan Yáñez, a parent at our school and Quest student in the cultural facilitation program. An important part of the work will be to look at our unseen biases and how old societal hurts continue to be perpetuated today unless we are open to examining our history, behaviours, and attitudes.
By going directly to the land and learning from elders, and observing traditional indigenous protocol for these practices, this retreat sees us stepping away from colonizing habits of asking elders come to us and to fit into our system and ways. The land, too, is the most profound of teachers, and we hope to come into an even stronger relationship with it as educators and explore how a sense of place is a vital part of education. The workshop will see us learning through story and ceremony, not shying away from the more difficult topics, to build a new understanding of our role as educators working on unceded Indigenous lands.
After the retreat, we will continue the work through faculty study, ongoing work with the students, and sharing our learnings with the parents and the community.
We thank Squamish Savings, who has contributed $2500 to help make this work possible!
–Gabriel