Season 2, Episode 4: Reversing Roles for Learner Engagement—Students Assess Their Teachers

For more information, visit teachingstrides.ca

You can follow Dr. Olsen on Twitter @KennaOlsen

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Meg Wilcox: (00:00)

I'm Meg Wilcox and this is Teaching Strides, MRU faculty daring greatly. In this episode, how Twitter can better help students understand medieval literature. 

What do popular culture and old English literature have in common? Well, an MRU classroom. Dr Kenna Olsen is a professor in the department of English Languages and Culture. She teaches Old and Middle English Literature, but that doesn't just mean reading the texts. Dr. Olsen brings popular TV shows and social media into the classroom to keep students engaged and that's what we'll be talking about today. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Kenna Olsen: (00:37)

It's amazing to be here, thank you. What a nice introduction!

Meg Wilcox: (00:40)

So your students have often commented on how enthusiastic you are in the classroom. Do you have a tactic or a reason behind your enthusiasm or is it just there? 

Kenna Olsen: (00:52)

It's just there, it's just there. I can even just think of yesterday I was teaching literature in the age of Chaucer and on the docket was the Friar's tale. And I just get a lot of energy. I think just feeding off of the students, you know, when I can illuminate it for them, something that's in the text that maybe they didn't know was there or weren't quite comfortable with those things. 

And then just to have that conversation, I don't know, it's so energizing that to me it's just so wonderful when you can say, yes, these are how the pieces fit together. And by the end of a class...it takes me hours to come down after class teaching. So I think it's just my interest in the material and when I can see that the students are generating that same kind of interest, it's just, it's so, it's so wonderful and it just, you know, sparks this energy. So how can you not be enthusiastic about it? 

Meg Wilcox: (01:42)

Well, and you mentioned your enthusiasm for the topic itself and then the students are really into it. Do you think that's rubbing off of you or do you think that it's a chicken and egg thing? 

Kenna Olsen: (01:52)

It's kind of hard to tell. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where the origin is for that. And maybe you've noticed my egg that there seems to be like a lot of medieval tropes in popular culture. And so I think students come with sometimes like an expectation or an anticipation of what a class might be like. And I really like to turn those expectations upside down and we do a lot of that. And that I think has some, you know, fulfilling conversations. 

Meg Wilcox: (02:16)

And I want to get to some of those examples that you're using in a minute. But first I wanted to just ask you a bit about the culture of the department that you work in. How would you describe the overall teaching culture there? 

Kenna Olsen: (02:27)

Well, all of my colleagues are incredible teachers. The thing about English literature as a discipline is we're so varied, right? So I have colleagues who are studying Canadian literature. I have colleagues who study theory. I have colleagues who do film, but I think what brings us all together is that we are all really interested in rhetoric and how rhetoric can inspire, how it can create, how it can destroy, how it can illuminate truth, how it can hide. 

And so we all have our different ways of approaching those things. So we are, we all have a lot of autonomy in our classrooms. But we feel, I think all of us, that there is an essence about textual media and research that is crucial that we sort of want to communicate to students. So we all are sort of individual, I would say in our select disciplines. But there's a lot of coming together and thinking about like how can we shape things for students and what do we want them to agree to look like? And why would, why would students, you know, why would they take this class? And just like a lot of conversation that is really student focused. And I love that about my department. 

Meg Wilcox: (03:42)

And so in the collaborations, in the conversations you have with your colleagues, but also the autonomy you have in designing your classes, what would you say has become your focus or your goal when you're creating that class or that experience for students? 

Kenna Olsen: (03:56)

I don't know, actually. I think what started to happen for me, a few years ago was that I realized that the more I brought in my own natural curiosity about the subject I'm studying. So really bringing in my own research into the classroom, sometimes in very gentle ways. And just the more I could do that, the more the students could see how studying a text that is, say, 800 years old, maybe is still, you know, within their interests or has relevance today, kind of thing. So I think what I'm trying to do constantly is just model for themmy curiosity about what drives me to keep pursuing my questions and my research. 

And then I can see that, you know, that starts to generate some sort of interesting and powerful thought processes for students. So it's like, here's the other thing, it's just a heck of a lot of fun, right? It's just a heck of a lot of fun to show students. Like, here's a text written on, you know, animal skin, 800 years old. You're holding it in your hand. Like how does that make you feel? Right? Like that's just fun. And so I think it's great to just see the smiles and to sometimes see the furrowed brows, you know, because thinking is this work and it's necessary work. And that's, I think what I'm wanting my students to take away, right? It's that our gaze can go many places, but if we have a if we have a focus, a question, a leading question, you know the dialogue is worthwhile. Does that make sense? 

Meg Wilcox: (05:26)

And I guess my other thought is, as you mentioned, is the idea of creating relevance for the students. Right? And we're in a world where many of the students who arrive care more about what's on their phones, stuff that's old is not super interesting. So, I guess I'm curious about some of the ways that you create that relevance part of it as you said, is turning expectations on their head when they come into class. But what are some other ways that you engage to help make the content more relevant for students? 

Kenna Olsen: (05:51)

Yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes we hear that don't we? That students are less engaged, more screen driven, and it's true, you walk into a classroom at the beginning of class then, you know, 15 years ago when I started teaching, I think it was 15 years ago, something like that. Don't tell anybody. You know, you'd walk into a classroom and the students would be talking to each other, right? Sometimes about the class and maybe some anxiety about an assignment or something or they were talking about TV show or what have you. 

But now, generally when I walk into a classroom at the beginning, and I'm sure you've experienced this, it's very silent and students are on their devices. And that used to worry me a little bit. And this idea that students are less engaged because they are more internal and looking at their phones. I'm not sure that that's the root of all the anxiety that we see in students. I think students are anxious because of things that should be alarming, like climate change and mental health and, you know, how do I communicate and feel like I'm and, you know, a citizen who contributes to society but also is getting what I need? And those are really good, deep socially driven questions. Well, guess what? They had those same questions in the 14th century and the texts that were circulating articulate those questions. 

You know, we have the rise of the middle class and medieval England in the 14th century. We've got some, you know, really unjust tax and labor laws. People feel like they have no agency, no autonomy. And so when we start discussing those things for students, this conversation was happening. I mean, there are texts that are written that have to do with, how does one sustain the environment? And how to be environmentally friendly. 

There's a text called winner and waster and I mean, you'd think that winner is the one coming out, but there's actually a surprise ending. But the students are so I think bolstered by the fact that idea of being a citizen that feels that they are contributing and that their voices are heard, isn't necessarily a 21st century issue. Right? These issues were circulating, here's how people dealt with them, here's how people found solutions. And I think that that's really amazing to see that sort of bolstering attitude and to see the links, you know, 600 years back I think is really neat for students. Right? 

Meg Wilcox: (08:26)

Well, especially because it's something they're not expecting when they sign up for a medieval literature course. 

Kenna Olsen: (08:31)

That's right. I mean, to be fair, I still nerd out and make them, you know, like recite old English or recite middle English and usually they take up the challenge and you know, they sound amazing. And there we are in course reading like some crazy middle English texts together. And that's a lot of fun too. 

Meg Wilcox: (08:48)

So you've mentioned how part of connecting your content with students is about finding similar themes that they still face in their everyday. You've also talked about using technology to immerse them in and understand the space that this would've been created. But you also work with social media and get the students engaged with pop culture and using social media. So tell me a bit about how you do that. 

Kenna Olsen: (09:08)

So social media is something that's much more profound and like an everyday event for many of our students. And I think that that does perhaps contribute to a certain kind of anxiety. Medievalists have always been on the, surprising for some people, but the cutting edge of technology, right. We were really the first to forge into digital humanities. And because it's all about making texts accessible, right? And digital humanities was great for that. 

So there we are on Twitter, having conversations with each other, talking about our research, talking about our issues on this hashtag medieval Twitter. And I thought, I'm going to get my students to start checking this out. And what do you know then for some assignments, they reach out via Twitter and they get the most upstanding, famous colleague who works say, on Marjorie Kemp, tweeting back at them saying, 'I love your assignment here. You know, here's what I would ask you.' And then they're getting, you know, the benefit of not just me as a professor but then somebody else who is, you know, so interested in what they're doing and they feel so inspired, right? To get that sort of communication back from yet another expert. 

And then two, we're creating a community outside of the classroom, which is wonderful because I mean, as you know, as a teacher, it's right at that moment, sometimes when you hit like the heavy, wonderful energizing stuff and your time for classes up and the conversation has to come to an end. So for class I create or get the students to decide on, I shouldn't say I create, use a hashtag that brings us together and they'll just tweet to the hashtag like, 'Hey, I'm thinking about the politicization of medieval isms and Game of Thrones.' And someone else will tweet. And that conversation that we've started in class continues and it's wonderful. 

So that's one way that I'm using Twitter and I will never go back. I will always use Twitter. In and without the classroom. I've been told by students, you know, honor students that have been here for five years, that it's the first time they felt like such a concrete essence of community. And you know, so that's kind of what we're thinking about in those classes, it's a lot. 

Meg Wilcox: (11:18)

But that's what makes it good. 

Kenna Olsen: (11:19)

Yeah, well maybe that's what makes it good. Yeah. And it's a lot of fun too. 

Meg Wilcox: (11:21)

Thank you so much for joining me. 

Kenna Olsen: (11:22)

Oh, well thank you for having me. 

Meg Wilcox: (11:25)

That was Dr. Kenna Olsen, a professor at MRUs, department of English Languages and Culture. You can find her on Twitter @KennaOlsen. Teaching Strides is produced by Hadeel Abdel-Nabi and me, Meg Wilcox, in conjunction with the Academic Development Center at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. 

We're proud to broadcast from the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe, Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3). We look forward to sharing the stories and experiences of the many people who live, learn and teach in the treaty seven region. You can find us wherever you podcast and at teachingstrides.ca.

For more information, visit teachingstrides.ca

You can follow Dr. Rahilly on Twitter @TimRahilly

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Meg Wilcox: I'm Meg Wilcox and this is Teaching Strides—MRU faculty daring greatly. In this episode, what exactly is good teaching and how can we support it?

It's Dr. Tim Rahilly's first year at school—here at Mount Royal at least. But our new president and vice chancellor has worked across the country from his days studying in Montreal at McGill and Concordia to teaching in Manitoba and BC. He started in administration at Simon Fraser University in 2003 but that doesn't necessarily mean he's given up on teaching. That's what we'll be talking about today. Thank you so much for joining me, Tim.

Dr. Tim Rahilly: I'm happy to be here.

MW: So first off to you, how would you define good teaching?

TR: Wow.

MW: I'm just getting to the big stuff.

TR: Yeah, nothing's been written about that! I guess in two ways. One, I guess we know that good teaching is that which engages our learners. But I think there's always been a tension between the art and science of, of teaching, especially I think in the postsecondary world. So I think for me I know it's good teaching when I feel that strong sense of engagement and I can see that gleam in students' eyes. And so I think that when done well and we continually challenge each other—students and faculty alike. It's learning for all involved.

MW: And when it comes to good teaching at MRU, where do you see it? How do you define it? How do you seek it out?

TR: Well, I think for me, I came to Mount Royal University because of its reputation as an undergraduate intensive university and being student-centered. And I have been so impressed with the faculty members and contractors that I have spoken with, in terms of their commitment to teaching. I have not had the opportunity since being here to visit Mount Royal classrooms—to witness this.

Although the other day I did have the opportunity to, I guess have a little bit of teaching in the Riddell Library and Learning Center. I watched one of our colleagues kind of give a little mini intervention there for a visiting minister. And it was fantastic and I could see the passion in her eyes. So I think one of the challenges for me is going to be to be able to connect in that manner. And I don't know that every faculty member is going to necessarily want to invite the president into their classroom.

MW: Yeah. Let me get a bit more classes under my belt and then I can invite you. But I guess you're already sort of hinting at that idea by being an administrator. You support teaching. You obviously have been a teacher, you've done that work, but now you're, you're sort of looking at the business and on other end of teaching, but not getting a chance to necessarily engage with it yourself. So what are some of the challenges that come with that in your role and things that you were sort of trying to address?

TR: Well, I think maybe one of the first challenges for me is that I didn't come up the ranks at Mount Royal university. So I have to draw on my experience from other institutions. Obviously, other institutions do have classes and they do have professors and they do good work. I think for me one of the challenges in representing Mount Royal is to be able to have real experiences to draw on. So that will be something I'll have to work on.

I think part of that is for me to make it very evident to all involved in this is that universities are places of collegial governance and, with respect to the good and honest hard work that faculty do, I see myself as their peer. I don't see myself set apart and they tell that story of good instruction and, and I'll have to learn from them and piggyback on their stories at MRU.

MW: What are some of the, you mentioned just the, the culture of MRU as you've come in. What would you say are some elements that are defining it that are something that you're, you're engaging with maybe for the first time or in a different way?

TR: Some elements of the culture related to teaching and learning?

MW: Yeah.

TR: I think for me, one of the things that stood out for me was a commitment to the scholarship of teaching and learning. I did have the opportunity to go to some workshops on that earlier, in my time. It is very refreshing to be able to chat with those faculty members who are engaged in that scholarship. My doctoral degree was very much related to that.

MW: Some of your research and published work has been around diversity within that, within like the importance of it I guess in teaching and learning. How do you sort of define that? I mean, it's so easy to say something like diversity is good, but for you, what does it mean to see diversity in education and what are its tangible values?

TR: So I guess I would define diversity in its broadest terms. I think that MRU is, not to sound too much like a president and to go completely on brand, but you belong here. The brand actually speaks to me. Because I think that when we talk about diversity, for me that speaks to people of different experiences. It speaks to learning styles. It speaks to age, it speaks to gender, it speaks to origin. Certainly the work we're trying to do on reconciliation.

So, you know, there's certainly a lot of dialogue about the challenges of whether or not you have to adapt or it's universal design or how you approach teaching and learning with such a diverse body of learners. So, you know, my work and my interest have really focused on internationalization and first-generation students. I think those groups actually have a fair bit in common.

I think that for domestic students who don't have parents who have been to postsecondary, it is a cultural shift for them to come into the postsecondary. Similarly, I think for new Canadians or people who are coming here on study visa, I think it's a huge eye-opener for them. And there's, you know, good research from back in the 60s that talks about student-institutional match. I think that students perceive that and in order to have them stay engaged and to retain them in the school that there has to be that match.

I think inside the classroom we need to approach our teaching by understanding that there is a diversity of learning styles. And that we do have students who have disabilities. Now that's not necessarily, you know, the big banner that we put outside the front gates, you know, “give us your poor, your huddled masses and we will educate them.” But I think that in fact, all of us, when we are presented with this diversity of students in our classroom, you know, we have an obligation, an ethical obligation to do our very best to teach what's before us and to help them succeed.

MW: From your experience, I know it's Simon Fraser, you were working specifically in the areas of student and international. Are there any, I guess, moments that have stuck out for you either there in, in your work of I'm seeing that sort of diversity in action or being able to see, teach good teaching that was able to bring in groups that may have been left behind otherwise?

TR: Well, I think in terms of salient memories, probably, I would point to some of my colleagues who felt challenged by educating international students, understanding that perhaps they need to change their practice in some ways to accommodate those students. And to see their evolvement, how they over time, began to embrace this and saw how that teaching made them a better teacher across the board. So certainly when you do that kind of work there's a good deal of faculty development that has to happen.

I think that means you yourself have to learn a little bit. There are some issues of cultural competency that I think you have to learn whether you're in the classroom or you're an administrator or you're supporting students. So for me that kind of work, I think, has certainly been very meaningful. And then I guess my mind jumps to particular cases.

You know, students who encountered some adversity. I mean I have lots of those cases, whether those are international students or domestic students. But I think that when you’re working with a student who has had life experiences that are so different than your own. I also did some work with faculty members who were displaced from Syria, and these are academics. And you know, I remember being invited to a dinner and sitting across from some academics who are telling me about their siblings or their parents who were killed as a result of conflict. And just kind of how my own mind just kind of reeled to think about how one presses on and you're so dedicated to your discipline and your profession that it's such a part of your identity that you, you carry on. So yeah, those kinds of stories I think are very meaningful to me.

MW: One of the elements that comes with diversity within a university is, that if we look at the roots of universities and maybe some of the governance or policies or the way it's come through, they've come within a very specific context that doesn't always, I would say play well with diversity or bringing in diverse groups. I'm thinking, in a previous episode

I interviewed Patti and Spirit and they do a lot of work in indigenous work and they say that sometimes they're finding challenges in university policies, just trying to get everything to line up, both covering the university side and covering what they need to do in their responsibilities and their research. And I guess I'm curious to hear your thoughts on where are some ways that the university could improve or where are some areas that it needs to work on to really help encourage diversity?

TR: I think that one of the tensions that we often have in universities is our ability to be adaptable. We're not known for it. I think we are known for being reasonably resilient, but that's a bit different than adapting to the needs of those people who, who come to our institutions. I think we see that over the years, we see some generational differences and universities and colleges have half a chance at making those kinds of adaptions because we have a longer runway, more time to do that. I think when it comes to the individual needs or group needs, I think we are a little bit more challenged.

MW: One of the other elements in terms of bringing more people into a university is looking at access to education and access to the university. What do you think are some key things that the university needs to be considering? Maybe challenges that right now we're looking to overcome to improve access for students?

TR: Well, I think I have my political answer first as a new Albertan and then a president of a university, I think the first thing I would say about access is having enough seats. And so we know that in Calgary that we do have a deficit in seats. So in order to consider that more broadly, I think we need to look at that capacity issue. Then I think my own mind turns to people and their own conceptions about who they are and what their skills are and what's for them.

I think there's a very strong agenda right now for jobs, trades and I will never speak against jobs and trades. Obviously, those are very important things, but they're not for everyone. And I think some of the concerns that I have had for a number of years has to do with some of our potential students who don't see themselves as having a future in postsecondary education. Research shows us that they, those students and their parents in particular, overestimate the costs and underestimate the benefits of a postsecondary education. And so why we often have the dialogue about student loans and finances.

And we hear a lot from students who are in the universities about the challenges they have, the long hours they work. And I'm not unsympathetic. I lived that life myself. I think there is a broader dialogue about those people who don't see themselves and who would never consider coming to a university. And, and I think that's something that as a society we need to think about.

MW: In your experience, what encourages access? I mean obviously having seats is a good place to start, I'm thinking of if we're reaching out to new communities or have you seen anything that's worked well?

TR: I think that some programs, I don't know that they're necessarily well-researched, but anecdotally, you know, if people are bringing their kids to summer camps on university campuses or. So they see their parents pursuing postsecondary education going back to school re-skilling you know, these are things that I think can be motivational and can help. I think that, you know, in the, in the good old world of education and in psychology and public policy we know issues around maternal education have a huge impact on the education of young people.

And that's a bit of a challenge for us in the postsecondary world in terms of the return on investment. I think there's a strong argument to be made that, you know, putting money into kindergarten classrooms has a huge impact, sometimes dollar for dollar. You know, people don't perceive as having the same impact at the postsecondary level.

That being said I do think that obviously the transformational power of a postsecondary education changing the way people think and approach the world. It changes them and I think it can have such a positive impact on our society.

MW: And so now, I mean, I'm not saying that you don't have your hands full, you know, full time being the president and a vice chancellor, but do you think you might consider going back to the classroom while you're here at MRU?

TR: So that's an interesting question. There's quite a debate. And I've been reading about that recently in the chronicle of higher education between presidents who thinks it's essential for you to be in the classroom, and for those presidents who say, “Hey, look, you have a full-time job. Other people can do that, like make room for others.” I don't know where I fall on that scale. I have been for the last almost eight, nine years, exclusively been teaching at the graduate level. So not that much time has passed since I've been in the classroom, but I already miss it. I am going to have to find ways to get into the classroom somehow.

Hopefully I can at least do a guest lecture here and there. And I'd actually be happy to take a course if I could work that in. I'd love to take your podcast and of course, for example, or I recently was learning about some medieval literature the other day from one of our colleagues. And I thought that's fascinating. I've never been exposed to that. I guess I'm still a learner at heart. Maybe I'll be able to work my way into doing some work or be on some graduate student committees or something to keep an oar in that water.

MW: Wonderful. Thank you so much for chatting with me.

TR: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

MW: That was Dr. Tim Rahilly, President and Vice Chancellor at Mount Royal University. You can follow him on Twitter @TimRahilly. Teaching Strides is produced by Hadeel Abdel-Nabi and me, Meg Wilcox, in conjunction with the Academic Development Center at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta.

We're proud to broadcast from the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe, Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3) We look forward to sharing the stories and experiences of the many people who live, learn and teach in the treaty seven region. You can find us wherever you podcast at teachingstrides.ca.

For more information, visit teachingstrides.ca

To learn more about Otahpiaaki, check out their website.

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Meg Wilcox: I'm Meg Wilcox and this is Teaching Strides—MRU faculty daring greatly. In this episode: how fashion can fuel resistance reconciliation and entrepreneurship.

The word “Otapiaaki” is a Blackfoot term for the moment the vamp and moccasin are sewn together, and it's this togetherness that the project hopes to promote. When Spirit River Striped Wolf and Patti Derbeyshire first got started with the project, it was in a Mount Royal classroom. But today we'll talk about how Otapiaaki fashionweek has expanded beyond a club at the Bissett School of Business and is now a space for talented Indigenous creators to show off their work and what reconciliation really means.

MW: Patti, Spirit, thank you so much for joining me.

Patti Derbyshire: Great to be here.

Spirit River Striped Wolf: Yeah, thanks for having us.

MW: So Otahpiaaki is coming up very shortly, for someone who maybe has never heard of it before, how would you describe the program?

PD: So Otahpiaaki began as a classroom project and really quickly became a social innovation movement. Most folks know us for Indigenous beauty, fashion and design week, which happens every fall. 

So, this year we go November 5th through 9th. And during that week, we invite Indigenous designers and creatives to Mokinstis. And we put up a series of workshops and they can, be on everything from traditional beading and embroidery through to, we're doing digital sash making this, this year with John Corvette. And then our showcases—so this year on Friday night, um, our fashion showcases and we put up our first four designers and that'll be with the Calgary Philharmonic orchestra and Jeremy Dutcher. 

And so it's so exciting for us because this is the year of Indigenous language. So to be co-presenting with Jeremy Dutcher who essentially revived his language and he is a celebrated Polaris-winning and Juno-winning musician around that language project. And so what we've done is curate the designers with that project. 

And then on Saturday night we've got a dozen more designers from treaty seven, treaty eight, treaty six. We've got a couple of special guests coming in from nations the U.S., and that's down at our new central library. So we're looking at about 500 people that night. And if you think of a runway in or New York or France or anything like that Otapiaaki puts on that kind of showcase and these designers come with that caliber of work.

MW: So you mentioned that this started as a classroom project obviously what you've described is much bigger. What was the original classroom project?

PD: Well, Justin Lewis, who is you know, kind of a long-time friend to this project runs a label called Section 35, so he's based in Vancouver, but he came from [unknown] so kind of mid province here, Cree community. 

And he came in and did a social innovation presentation. And it's actually become a piece of research that I've gone deep on now, but I'll talk a bit more about that later. 

But Justin really, really inspired this group of students, by helping them understand that Indigenous design and fashion and producing street wear, which is what he does, is so important to indigenous youth at this point in time, that they can see themselves in their own clothing. They can see themselves in their own language and that design elements really reflect who they are.

And this era that we're in right now around truth and reconciliation. So fashion in the context of Section 35 is about seeking truth and literally about young people wearing those truths.

MW: And so Spirit, when did you come in on this project?

SR: Yeah so I came in kind of as the project was starting, Patti came to me and talked to me about trying to figure out a name for the project. There are some words that I kind of knew, some words instead of thinking about, I know there are some terms in regards to like, you know, designing clothes and things like that. And I was just kind of, you know, skimming through the Blackfoot dictionary. 

And I found this word called Otahpiaaki. And so we talked about how that's analogous to reconciliation and coming together and connection. And so I, as a student in policy studies who is already working with Patti on another project called "Elder in the Making," where creating an academic lesson plans for kindergarten to grade 12. And that was kind of wrapping up. And then this new idea of Otahpiaaki kind of came in and I had a huge interest in it because in my degree in policy studies is a big part of it is economics and political science and legal studies. 

So for me it was really important to look at economic growth within Indigenous communities. How can this project best impact the Indigenous community? So I did a little bit of research in terms of how trauma can be a barrier to entrepreneurship. 

I've worked in my community and outside of my community since I was in middle school and I've worked on a range of projects with Indigenous people. So I already had an idea of kind of the barriers to these kinds of projects and the barrier for supporting Indigenous workers and families. So I was really excited to be able to kind of work deeper on these issues, which is what I've wanted to do with my degree since the very beginning anyways. 

So it was just a fun way of engaging economics and entrepreneurship and trauma, which I think are two things that aren't really connected as much in my degree and in economics to begin with.

MW: And so for you, it wasn't necessarily a fashion interest that's happened to be the topic where you could explore all of these issues. Is there anything as you've been doing your research that's really surprised you or stuck with you?

SR: Yeah, I think there's so many things. Like it's been about three years and I kind of looked at it like a puzzle. Like I felt like I knew some of these pieces and was trying to put them together. Some of the amazing things that really surprised me and made me really think about my own life is trust and connection. And a lot of, you know, political scientists have come out with these terms of how we have to connect trust to economic development. 

And for me, it was really important to look further into the barriers of entrepreneurship for Indigenous people. And it really, it really kind of became clear to me that trust and connection were one of the biggest casualties during the assimilation process of Indigenous people. And that is one of the largest barriers for growth in Indigenous communities. One thing that I learned on this project was that ethno-cultural minority groups thrive and support themselves in a predominantly white society through entrepreneurship. That entrepreneurship is actually a coping mechanism to exclusion from the labor market. And so for me, it was looking at these other minority groups and Indigenous folks and seeing what the difference was here where ethno-cultural minority groups contribute billions of dollars to the economy. 

And for Indigenous people, what we know is that there's billions of dollars that just aren't being pumped into the economy. And when document we look at is how there's $27 billion that is potential GDP from Indigenous workers. And so for me, I knew growing up what those barriers were from my own lived experience, but it was also using my degree to kind of translate that. And to write something in an academic kind of context that would help explain how trust and trauma certain things like intergenerational trauma and how that affects it. And for me, one of the other biggest surprises was disciplinary styles. So for me, I always hear things about like how intergenerational trauma, you know, it's the cause. 

Then for me, I think that I really prefer to look at facts and statistics and I think that's why I went into my degree to begin with. So for me it was like "hey, that's a little bit whimsical." When we looked at economics, we look at models, we look at, you know, numbers and we looked at equations. How can we account for that? Right? For me it was looking at how, we have to look at how humans talk to ourselves when we're creating something. And one of the most vulnerable things that a human could do is create something and showcase it to the world, which is what we're asking our designers to do, right? That's what being an entrepreneur is. And to be a resilient entrepreneur is to be able to have a resilient self. And so for me, it was looking at how a lot of Indigenous people that the intergenerational effects has been, how we talk to ourselves. That in Indigenous communities it was always how your behavior affects the community. But through residential school, school and the Sixties Scoop, a new narrative has really come into our families, which is, you know, "you're not good enough." Who do you think you are? You know, disciplinary styles. Like "you're a bad girl," or "you're a bad boy." And how that has really transformed the narrative that Indigenous people have for themselves and how they view themselves. 

You know, one story I always bring about is that when I was coming to university, some of my peers in high school, they'd say, "Spirit, you can go to university, I can't." And so there's this way of thinking on the reserve, which I think is really the root to a lot of issues in Indigenous communities such as addictions and violence and so forth. Because it's a painful feeling to always be questioning your worth constantly. And humans will find ways to cope with that type of pain. So that's, you know, it's such a deep situation. It's such a deep idea. But for me it was so important when it comes to entrepreneurship and supporting entrepreneurs and kind of diving deeper into how we talk to ourselves and how can we become a resilient entrepreneurs

MW: And looking forward for Otahpiaaki and other research in the future, Spirit, based on the research you've done and sort of with the new project coming up, what are you working on now or what are you hoping to expand this research into? Where do you want to take it?

SR: Right now? The fashion show in November, making sure that we have our volunteers and our partnerships doing well and that their relationships are going well and so forth. 

For my research side it's interesting to be able to look a little bit deeper into economic development in macroeconomics. Which I've been undertaking within these last couple of semesters and trying to find those models. For me, it's been trying to find the language and finding the connection to classical economics and Keynesian and economics and trying to see how does something like this work. 

How do we integrate Indigenous economics into the broader conversation of economics, which is, like I had mentioned before, it's such a missing component of economics. It's usually about developing nations or developed nations like Canada. And there's just not a lot of room there for Indigenous communities that have been affected and how that works. Yea, and also the other thing too that we're working on is with Ryerson university. We're creating a chapter there, so someone that we've been working with, Riley Katrin, who is...I think he's undertaking his PhD. Is that correct?

PD: He is, absolutely.

SR: Yeah. And so he approached us with this project about putting our work and the conversations we've been having into a textbook that will be used for students in fashion. So that we can have a deeper conversation about fashion and entrepreneurship and barriers to entrepreneurship for Indigenous entrepreneurs, especially those that are in the fashion and arts. And so that's definitely one thing that I've been looking at for my work as well as this deeper research into economics and so forth.

MW: Wow, well, it sounds like if you want, there's a whole career there if you really want it to.

SR: Yeah. True.

MW: Thank you so much for joining me you guys.

PD: Thank you.

SR: Thanks for having us.

MW: That was Spirit River Striped Wolf and Patti Derbyshire, co-founders of Otahpiaaki. The fashion week returns from November 5th to 9th. And you can find out more at otahpiaakiweek.com. Teaching strides is produced by Hadeel Abdel-Nabi and me, Meg Wilcox, in conjunction with the Academic Development Center at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. We're proud to broadcast from the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3). We look forward to sharing the stories and experiences of the many people who live, learn, and teach in the treaty seven region. You can find us wherever you podcast and at teachingstrides.ca.

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