My pedagogical commitments stand against the harms and violences of extractive and oppressive systems of colonialism, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism and I work to dismantle them.

My pedagogical commitments stand for imagining and co-creating relational, collective, collaborative, critical, and caring classroom and educational spaces.

I ground my pedagogical commitments in the four foundations of How Does Learning Happen? by working at bringing about educational experiences that value and work towards our collective well-being, belonging, engagement and expression.

While the profession of Early Childhood Care and Education has been legitimized by claiming that our practice is supported by theory, I actively challenge students to consider how their paradigm or worldview shapes how they take up theory in their practice, whether critically or unquestioningly.

This is an urgent question for ECEC if we are going to be able to respond ethically to the conditions of our times.

Pedagogical Commitments

Land Acknowledgement

I live and work in the place called Tkaronto in the Mohawk language which means "where there are trees standing in the water and where the fish weirs are". Its current colonial name is Toronto. Today, Tkaronto is covered under Treaty #13 and the Williams Treaties. It is the traditional territory of many First Peoples, the Anishnaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. The current treaty holders are the Michi Saagig Anishabeg Nation, the Mississaugas of the Credit River.

This territory is also part of ‘the Dish with One Spoon’ wampum, a pre-contact Treaty made between the Three Fires Confederacy – the Ojibwe, the Odawa and the Potawatomi and Haudenosaunee confederacy – the six nations - Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora. These nations entered into an agreement to protect the land and responsibly care for its resources in harmony together.

As settlers, newcomers, refugees, and Indigenous peoples, those who came here involuntarily, particularly those brought to these lands as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, we have all been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship, and respect. We are also mindful of broken treaties that persist across Turtle Island today, where Land acknowledgements are given in place of Land itself, and recognize our responsibilities as Treaty people and as educators, to engage in a meaningful, continuous process of truth and reconciliation with all our relations. By being on this land, we are all responsible for upholding its treaties as long as “the sun shines, the grass grows, and rivers flow.”

Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Now more than ever I am committed to upholding, valuing, and protecting the rights and identities of all students, colleagues, and community members.

As a white, cis-gender, able-bodied settler, it is my ethical and political responsibility to work at dismantling the structures of colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity and ableism in education and to co-create liberatory conditions in classrooms with students to think critically about the systems and structures in which we live and work and to imagine and bring about pedagogies for more just and livable worlds.

(Bezaire & Johnston, 2022; Pacini-Ketchabaw et al., 2015).