{"id":30911,"date":"2022-03-03T19:57:23","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T00:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30911"},"modified":"2022-03-03T20:04:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T01:04:33","slug":"indigenous-literature-to-be-part-of-grade-11-curriculum-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/indigenous-literature-to-be-part-of-grade-11-curriculum-next-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous literature to be part of Grade 11 curriculum next year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Grade 11 students at York Region\u2019s public schools will have the opportunity to discover First Nations, Inuit and Metis voices next year as Indigenous literature finds a permanent \u2013 and required \u2013 place on the curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting in the 2023-2024 school year, all students in the YRDSB will be required to take Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Voices as their Grade 11 English credit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding Contemporary First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Voices is not a new course for the YRDSB, but the 23-24 school year will be the first time the course will be required for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe course is designed to expand students\u2019 understandings of Indigenous peoples, culture and contemporary realities,\u201d says the Board. \u201cLearning about history, perspectives and cultures of Indigenous peoples will help students better understand Canada\u2019s past, present and potential for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heather Sears, Coordinating Superintendent of Education, says this change is both \u201cimportant\u201d and \u201cexciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStudents will continue to gain the important skills taught through Grade 11 English while learning more about Indigenous perspectives, about Canada, the importance of Truth and Reconciliation, and the relevance of treaty relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Andrew McConnell, Coordinator of First Nations, Metis and Inuit Education: \u201cThe course is a natural extension of the Grade 10 history course. By using contemporary works, students will have a chance to see the diversity of experience and ideas that modern Indigenous people bring to communities today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coinciding with the announcement, Grade 11 students from Newmarket\u2019s Sir William Mulock Secondary School said the course gives them a better view of Canada and everyone\u2019s place within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are a lot of Indigenous heroes who have tried to\u2026give the actual facts about their culture instead of having people get false information about their culture,\u201d said Gbemiro, speaking alongside fellow student Evan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first step to change is awareness,\u201d said Evan. \u201cIdeas spring from knowing and those ideas could potentially be something that could help people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Deanna, the course helped raise awareness of issues that are very contemporary for the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think this course was really beneficial because it opened my eyes to the issues that are happening in Canada with Indigenous people,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew about Residential Schools but, for example, the boil water advisory, I had never heard about that before and that is such a real, current issue in Canada I think we need to talk about more and I am glad we did talk about it in this class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adopting the program board-wide in 2023-2024 rather than 2022-2023 is, says McConnell, in order to give teachers time to familiarize themselves with the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really want to allow the opportunity for teachers to feel fully prepared as they take on this course,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is not a brand-new course, it has existed in the curriculum since 2000, but for us as a Board to be doing this across all of our high schools we know that we need to allow for time for teachers to get comfortable with the content, with the authors, and to really get a solid understanding of how it fits into the Grade 11 English curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The course] is an opportunity for this generation to really step into knowing who Indigenous people are right now. It\u2019s an opportunity for Indigenous folks in this generation to feel pride in knowing they are being represented for who they actually are as opposed to who they have historically been portrayed as.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grade 11 students at York Region\u2019s public schools will have the opportunity to discover First Nations, Inuit and Metis voices next year as Indigenous literature finds a permanent \u2013 and required \u2013 place on the curriculum. Starting in the 2023-2024 school year, all students in the YRDSB will be required to take Understanding Contemporary First […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-82z","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 14:20:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}