A vision of reconciliation through a poetics of difficult learning

As Indigenous scholars teaching a mandatory Indigenous education class, we call on creative approaches to investigate and articulate the realm of “difficult learning” we encounter in our work (Simon, 2000). Our study of this course, and its impact on future educators, investigates which pedagogical approaches foster students’ engagement as the course challenges prior understandings. In sharing our outcomes as aesthetic renderings, we explore the interplay of Indigenous ways of being and knowing with anti-racist pedagogies (Santoro, Kamler, & Reid, 2001; St. Denis, 2007). In this session, participants will explore the significance of creativity in teaching and learning in responding to calls to action from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We invite attendees to take part in poetic responses of their own to experience the efficacy and resonance of poetic thought in shaping and representing understandings. We are inspired by the possibilities that creative approaches offer as we—with our students—learn and decolonize, as we struggle and dream our way into different understandings of Canada. References Santoro, N., Kamler, B., & Reid, J. (2001). Teachers talking difference: Teacher education and the poetics of anti-racism. Teaching Education, 12 (2), 191-212. doi:10.1080/10476210124956 Simon, R. (2000). The touch of the past: The pedagogical significance of a transactional sphere of public memory. In (ed.) Peter Trifonas, Revolutionary pedagogies: Cultural politics, instituting education, and the theory of discourse (pp. 61-80). New York: Routledge. St. Denis, V. (2007). Aboriginal education and anti-racist education: Building alliances across cultural and racial identity. Canadian Journal of Education 30 (4), 1068-1092.