I just had the honour and privilege of a lifetime filling in for Karen McIvor, (who was on deferred salary leave this past school year) and was able to pick up her position in Campus Regina Public’s miskâsowin askîhk Land-based program situated here on Treaty 4 Land.

What an unforgettable 2024/2025 school year it was, being able to work alongside my co-teacher, T. Maxie-Poitras, our program’s knowledge carrier, Gary Gott, as well as artists like Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway and the Buffalo People Arts Institute who we collaborated with through as Sask Arts grant to prepare and paint a mural on a the underside of a buffalo hide to adorn the wall’s of CRP’s new culture room. Stay tuned for another video or videos that highlight this project specifically in the days to come.

With the Land as first teacher, these videos I’m sharing with you today highlight and celebrate the remarkable students who chose to enroll in the program and the high levels of engagement and enrichment that this program was able to offer these students.

For those who are interested, here is a mindmap of the program that I created back in March using a Canva template to hand-out and recruit students for next year as part of our annual Grade 10 tours of Campus Regina Public. The classes I taught, were Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wildlife and Habitat Studies, and Phys. Ed.

Anyways… this past semester’s photo and video highlights were captured on my phone and are shown in chronological order and set to a song I wrote back in 2011 after attending an Outdoor Leadership Training program with Rediscovery.org that eventually led to all the amazing opportunities I’ve had working in Land-based education ever since. First with Learning the Land from 2014-2020, as well as a Spring-Summer-Fall stint working on Vancouver Island as an Outdoor Education Instructor at Stratchona Park Lodge back in 2018, and how it all came full circle when given the opportunity to spend this 2024/2025 school year in miskâsowin askîhk. With all the experiences, I decided to rewrite the final verse to bring the song up-to-date with where I’ve currently come to along my career path.

Semester 1’s photo and video highlights were also captured on my iphone over the semester and shown in chronological order. This video is also set to a rough recording of song I wrote and recorded back during the pandemic as I reflected on the story of the importance of seeking answers to the 4 questions of our identities shared by the late, great Mazina Giizhik (Sen. Murray Sinclair): “Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? Why am I here?” He also shared during his release of the 94 Calls to Action proposed by the Truth & Reconciliation Commsion, that teachers have a sacred responsibility to help students explore answer to these questions, and I’ve carried that with me ever since.

I shared each of these videos with each group of students on the final afternoons of both semesters, but I am only now sharing them publicly. I’d also like to share and showcase some of the students’ creative projects that they completed during their time in the program in an upcoming post, but I’ll need to reach out and gather their permissions first and ask for their perspectives on being offered opportunities to take on such projects in our time together.

This fall I’ll be moving upstairs to CRP’s Victoria Campus, for the foreseeable future, where I’ll be teaching in an Integrated Services Program (ISP2) for youth navigating complex challenges. While every full-time teaching position comes with its own unique set of challenges and opportunities. I just hope I can take everything I’ve learned along the way and continue to apply and put it into practice for the betterment of the students I’ll get to work in the months and years ahead..

Now that the school year is done, I’ll be turning my attention to raising my daughter, who will be turning two in October, and reconnecting with family and friends far and wide, and tapping into my creative hobbies again. Still hoping I can figure out how to slow time down and make each moment worth its own time.

Until next time!