Situate:
To place in a person, site, situation, or context, social, cultural, historical, or otherwise; to locate – to unpack the exact place or relational positionality of
Pedagogy:
“a way of being that sparks conversations about life, the environment, community, and relationships” – CECE Practice Guideline, Pedagogical Practice
From the blog
about me
I’m jess woods, RECE, former working RECE (todder, preschool, kindergarten, and school-age), child care supervisor and manager, pedagogical leader and most recently, ECE professor. I am genderqueer and use they/she pronouns.
I split my time between kitchener, living along the O:se kenhionhata:tie (Willow River/so-called-grand river) in the haldimand tract, land which was promised to and rightfully should be actively under the direction and care of the Iroquois/Six Nations (Haudenosaunee), Chonnonton (Neutral Peoples), and Anishinaabe (and/or other Indigenous peoples who live along the tract), and in Tkaronto (toronto), land of the Petun, the Huron, the Wendat, the Neutral Peoples, the Anishinaabe, the Ojibwe – the Mississaugas of the Credit River, as well as the Haudenosaunee (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora).
I am a 6th generation southwestern ontario white settler. As in, on both sides of my ancestry, and in most branches, it was my great-great-great grandparents that came over for the opportunity to homestead and farm (slash try to secure their own basic survival) in so-called-ontario as uninvited-guests-to-turtle-island, and as volunteers/pawns to advance the colonial government’s violent agenda to take over increasing amounts of land. This was a time when the colonial government facilitated a substantial wave of immigration to southwestern ontario. My ancestors were likely seeking relief from famine, shifting agricultural forces, and intense political upheaval occurring in the Celtic isles – all of which were also mostly due to britain’s imperialist capitalist take-over on that side of the atlantic ocean.
For the most part, my family – scottish, english, and irish on my mother’s side, and irish on my father’s side, has been a farming/industrial agriculture family. Through time, my ancestors have lived very close to the land, remained compliant (and therefore complicit) with colonial law, prioritized community and cultural group relations, and, for the most part, we have stayed in the same radius of land — under Treaty 29, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory.
Situating Pedagogy 