The Spoken Letters on this site have been created by Vancouver Island University’s 4th-year students in the Bachelor of Social Work Programs’ Social Work with Indigenous Communities class. These audiovisual reflections represent the student’s efforts to better understand and honour Indigenous ways of knowing concerning wellbeing in social service and community-based settings. In the process, students were encouraged to ‘take off their academic hat’, to free their voice and allow themselves to respond from both the heart and mind.
Becoming a strong helper is a lifelong process, requiring authentic engagement in decolonizing and transforming oneself and one’s relationships. The oral components and visual imagery in the Spoken Letters aim to support this leap. I salute the students for their willingness to be vulnerable. I applaud them taking a chance to take flight beyond the books, to engage their fuller senses, and break the 4th wall of academia to share an element of their nascent and iterative learning journey, in an unfamiliar process.
About the Non-Disposable Assignment Method
The “Spoken Letters” assignment uses an inquiry-driven methodology designed to help students reflect on real-life events and show solidarity through authentic engagement as accountable learners. The process encourages students to represent knowledge in various ways, encourages peer-access and review while building collaboration, community engagement and solidarity. It lends itself to many adaptations in a range of academic fields.
The Spoken Letters assignment grew out of a workshop at Vancouver Island University’s Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning (CIEL) on the concept of the ‘non-disposable assignment.’ I am grateful to the CIEL staff for providing opportunities to explore the development of meaningful new pedagogical processes, such as this one.
Past Spoken Letters:
2019: The 2019 Spoken Letters on the MMIWG-2SLGBTQQIA Report These heartfelt responses reflect students’ deep engagement in learning, sometimes for the first time, about the painful truths and legacies behind the violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people. The letters are also a manifestation of the students’ will to actively heed the Report’s Calls to Justice in their future work
2018: Spoken Letters to survivors of the Shubenacadie and other Residential Schools, in solidarity with members of the Mi‘kmawey Debert Cultural Centre were created to honour the experiences of residential school survivors on the eve of Orange Shirt Day, 2018. In preparation, the SOCW 421 class read and viewed residential school survivors’ narratives and statements from the Mi’kmawey Debert Cultural Centre Indian Residential School Legacy Project and Where Are the Children websites.
Professor Finn Meyer Cook, Department of Social Work, Vancouver Island University
Questions or Comments?
If you would like to leave a comment about a specific Spoken Letter I encourage you to leave your message at the end of the presentation in question. If you would like to leave a more general question or comment about the project as a whole, please feel free to leave that here.