On September 21st, 2022, my Education 394 class got to engage in a powerful and eye-opening experience called The Blanket Exercise. And no this isn’t an activity where you just get to sit around on blankets and have a picnic, it is a raw and emotional experience that everyone should get to be a part of in their life.

(1) blanket exercise – Bing images

This exercise demonstrated the benefits of experiential learning. This is a term that most people, aside from the education career, have not come across. To put it in layman’s terms; experiential learning is learning by doing. It is the process of learning from experience. Instead of studying the effects of colonization and listening to a boring lecture, The Blanket Exercise allows students to experience the effects of colonialism in a powerful way. Kairos Canada gives a great explanation to the purpose of this exercise.

“The goal is to build understanding about our shared history as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada by walking through pre-contact, treaty making, colonization, and resistance.”

Kairos Canada.org

As a non-Indigenous person who did not grow up learning about Indigenous struggles until my high school years, I never fully understood the impact of colonialism on Indigenous communities. This exercise fully immersed me in the impact it had. I felt very emotional through it all. It opened by eyes on the trauma that was caused and impacted me as a learner and as an educator.

photo creds: UNBC School of Education Twitter

Knowing that this exercise can be adapted for all ages creates a comfort in me because it means that I can incorporate it into my future classroom. This is definitely something that I am excited about taking advantage of and it has opened my mind up to multiple other activities that I can use to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and experience in the lessons that I will be teaching.

References

  • “Blanket Exercise Workshop.” KAIROS Canada, www.kairoscanada.org/what-we-do/indigenous-rights/blanket-exercise.
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