Learning to be Learners Reflections from teacher learners

Katie Young, Global Studies Department Head, HTS & Donita Duplisea, Academic Director, HTS

a teacher was and how to encourage our students to learn. Often, we imagined that teaching was a process of culminating expertise the more you taught, the more you understood and were able to share with your students as experts in your field. The more knowledge that we acquired and could impart to our students, the greater impact we could make on their achievement. In this sense, teaching (and learning) was a one-way transmission from teacher to student that was perfected over the course of years in the profession. Could they give the ‘right’ answer on a test? Did students know the exact dates of the Battle of Vimy Ridge? Could they memorize and rewrite Macbeth’s final soliloquy (Shakespeare 5.5.19-30) on a final exam?

In 2019, those ideas fundamentally shifted when we were presented with an opportunity to start a course without a template and without walls or barriers both literally and figuratively. Our dream began with the idea of an interdisciplinary course in English and Social Justice, underpinned by a learner-centred and equitable approach. We embarked on a journey of decentring the teacher and creating a decolonized classroom¹ in which we all became learners. Our course no longer belonged to us it was fluid to reflect the flow and urgency of social issues. Our course belonged to all our learners and we became facilitators, which sometimes required us, as teachers, to get out of their way. In doing so, our role shifted, allowing the students to explore and learn in a safe environment, while we learned alongside them and grew with them. In this dialectic relationship, one might expect that our students would be the most transformed, yet that is the furthest from the truth.

The main project of the course was to execute a social justice action plan that students created in an area about which they were passionate and in which they discerned an identifiable need. We expected that our learners would be enthusiastic about the content, knowing that it was in their field of interest. In truth, their work in the course redefined what we imagined was possible for a learner to achieve. Their projects were far-reaching and inspiring, and exemplified the highest