It all started with a call from Northern Ontario in 2022, says Dr. Heather Birch, Tyndale University’s Director of the Bachelor of Education Program. A 2014 Tyndale BEd grad had just been hired to teach in the five Indigenous communities that make up the Shibogama First Nation Council, Heather says, “and one of the first things she did was reach out and invite Tyndale people to visit the community.”
After a year of Zoom discussions and building relationships with members of the Shibogama First Nations Education Authority, Heather and her colleague Blair Pike, Associate Director of the BEd program, travelled to the Wunnumin Lake First Nation. They brought five teacher candidates (TCs) with them for a three-week practicum placement to fulfil part of the requirements to earn their BEd degree – and to see if it would be a way to support the First Nations in recruiting teachers to the North.
Over the three weeks, Blair says he and Heather were “really prayerfully hoping that one of those five would feel the calling on their lives to remain teaching in that community.”
As it turned out, two of the five TCs landed a job in the North. But everyone, including Heather and Blair, came back with a different perspective on life and teaching in the North that was unexpected.
“They visit almost every course that our TCs take, and they speak to the TCs about that content from an Indigenous perspective, and then they give opportunities for the TCs to interact with that content, reflect on it and learn.”
— Dr. Heather Birch
“The practicum experience for our TCs in the North was a very different practicum experience than they experienced in the GTA,” says Blair. “There was this overwhelming sense of compassion and care and empathy within the community that just seemed to be a natural part of the relational nature of community in the North. ... The school was not organized on the bells or a timetable that was rigid. In fact, quite the opposite. What happened in terms of teaching and learning in the school community was sort of a natural byproduct of the focus on being in relationship and community. And that’s something that the TCs certainly felt they could be bringing back to schools in the GTA.”
The bonds that were created between the Tyndale contingent and the Shibogama educational leaders were evident at the TC’s convocation ceremony on Tyndale’s campus this May, when three people from the Wunnumin Lake community, including the assistant director of education, the chair of the board and the principal of the school, all made a point of flying to Toronto for the celebration.
Tyndale’s BEd Program “is really blessed to have two Indigenous community leaders, Shari Russell and Adrian Jacobs from NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community,” Heather says. “They visit almost every course that our TCs take, and they speak to the TCs about that content from an Indigenous perspective, and then they give opportunities for the TCs to interact with that content, reflect on it and learn.”
As for the application form for the northern placement practicum, it has been created collaboratively by Tyndale and the Shibogama First Nations Education Authority, so the university knows what the community is seeking in a TC.
Heather notes that, geographically, there are closer Indigenous communities to Tyndale than Wunnumin Lake. “However, because God presented us with this relationship and this community, this is where we began relationship,” she says. “And now we can see that the need in the remote North is different and unique. It’s not easy to get to these communities from Toronto. This requires significant investment of time and resources to get people there. But we believe it’s worth it.
“And it’s a call that we have on us,” she continues, “not just because of the TRC [Truth and Reconciliation Commission], but because of who we are as Christians, as followers of Christ who really believe our God is a God of reconciliation. ... And most of all, we want to learn, grow and serve, and continue to be in a posture of service to the community of Wunnumin Lake.”
This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative.
This project is funded in part by CEWIL Canada’s iHUB. The $20,000 grant from CEWIL Canada will help send a second northern practicum cohort to Wunnumin Lake this fall.
