In-Person Learning
The shift from working with my peers in an online environment to RC in the flesh was a moment I will never forget. We all were glowing with energy and so excited to work with each other. This transition was difficult, but it was also life-changing. I learned how I needed to use my resiliency skills to push myself to be my best. While I learned a lot in first year, this was a foundational year for me as I learned how to enhance connections that I already had. I learned more about who I am as a leader and how I navigate challenges. It was my first experience being on my own and gaining my independence while developing my understanding of self.
Leadership and Foresight
I took this course in the summer between first and second year and I can't imagine a better time to take it. I was in the middle of an intense heat wave while surrounded by smoke from the forest fires and reading a "fictional" book about an all too real issue. In this course we read a variety of academic readings and a novel called The Ministry for the Future. All of these readings were about climate action but I was the most impacted by the novel as it brought us only 5 years into the future where our actions had already made disastrous consequences. In the novel, people in India were dying of heat stroke and by the end of each day, water in lakes was too hot to enter. This was a very eye-opening read because it wasn't fictional, but a legitimate possibility for our future. In contrast, we were also reading The Future: A Very Short Introduction which explored the legitimate sciences behind futures studies.
The main ideas of this course were problem-solving for the future, multi-literacy in futures studies, practicing effective citizenship and the impact of social interaction on futures. The core ideas explored were futures studies, and solving problems facing the global population. More specifically, the climate emergency facing our planet. This is a serious problem that needs attention and futures studies was an effective way of navigating the issue.
In this course, we practiced problem solving by analyzing the problems and proposing solutions for them. This course was also unique in its approach to learning. It was an asynchronous course and yet it was one of the most influential courses that I have taken in my degree. We explored all of the content through multi-literacy strategies such as information literacy. We used a combination of academic text and fictional literature to expand our knowledge in this course. Additionally, we wrote notes on each of the readings which taught us new literacy skills for our future academics. This taught me how to write constructive notes that make reflection and understanding better for the future.
Another key learning outcome developed in this course was social interaction. We explored the urgency or lack there of that our collective society has assigned to climate change and discussed how this affects the way we implement social change, If too many people have different values, it is not uncommon for solutions to seem too far out of reach and undesirable. If there is not enough agreement on the importance of the issue, then there is never going to be a solution. We learned the importance of social interaction and creating community in making progress on these issues.
Finally, we covered effective citizenship in this course by recognizing the urgency of this issue and the level of responsibility we possess in solving it. Because we were centred on futures studies, we were able to see hopeful and realistic solutions instead of facing defeat. We know we need to take action now and learned how to plan for obstacles that may occur. It was a general approach to problem solving, but a key component of my understanding of my role as an effective citizen. In order to make a change, everyone needs to start making adjustments to their daily routine and take on a more eco-friendly mindset. I used the wakeup call that I experienced in this course to be more environmentally conscious and have the taboo conversations about climate change.
The main ideas of this course were problem-solving for the future, multi-literacy in futures studies, practicing effective citizenship and the impact of social interaction on futures. The core ideas explored were futures studies, and solving problems facing the global population. More specifically, the climate emergency facing our planet. This is a serious problem that needs attention and futures studies was an effective way of navigating the issue.
In this course, we practiced problem solving by analyzing the problems and proposing solutions for them. This course was also unique in its approach to learning. It was an asynchronous course and yet it was one of the most influential courses that I have taken in my degree. We explored all of the content through multi-literacy strategies such as information literacy. We used a combination of academic text and fictional literature to expand our knowledge in this course. Additionally, we wrote notes on each of the readings which taught us new literacy skills for our future academics. This taught me how to write constructive notes that make reflection and understanding better for the future.
Another key learning outcome developed in this course was social interaction. We explored the urgency or lack there of that our collective society has assigned to climate change and discussed how this affects the way we implement social change, If too many people have different values, it is not uncommon for solutions to seem too far out of reach and undesirable. If there is not enough agreement on the importance of the issue, then there is never going to be a solution. We learned the importance of social interaction and creating community in making progress on these issues.
Finally, we covered effective citizenship in this course by recognizing the urgency of this issue and the level of responsibility we possess in solving it. Because we were centred on futures studies, we were able to see hopeful and realistic solutions instead of facing defeat. We know we need to take action now and learned how to plan for obstacles that may occur. It was a general approach to problem solving, but a key component of my understanding of my role as an effective citizen. In order to make a change, everyone needs to start making adjustments to their daily routine and take on a more eco-friendly mindset. I used the wakeup call that I experienced in this course to be more environmentally conscious and have the taboo conversations about climate change.
Practicing Leadership in Community Projects
The main objective of this course was to create a project designed to benefit the community. As groups or individually, we created a vision for the project, made a plan for a timeline, identified our BARC (Barriers, Assumptions, Risks, and Constraints), and proposed a budget for our project. There were many other steps in the projects that were completed as we went through the event management process. On top of our personal projects, we experimented with hypothetical projects as a team. All of these projects taught us some of the fundamentals of project management and overcoming obstacles.
I worked with a team for this project and we hosted a Mocktails and Masterpieces event for the Renaissance College community. As a team, we encountered all of the typical road bumps of teamwork with equal work division, following a timeline, and effective communication. From an individual perspective, I learned how to advocate for myself and still be kind to my peers. Group work can be frustrating at times and it is especially tricky when you are working with friends and have small groups. I learned how to take criticism as a team member and not take offence when it is coming from my friends.
In the problem solving aspect of this course, we envisioned the scope of the project and worked out the strategies and procedures necessary to see it through to completion. We were responsible for presenting status updates. These status updates were a new way of presenting information and taught us about information and verbal literacy. We also completed risk management tables which used a combination of data and numerical literacy. These were very useful tools to keep in my back pocket as I enter the world of work and planning large-scale projects.
At the Mocktails and Masterpieces event, we were privileged to meet our future professors, other faculty members, and students from different cohorts. It was a low-stress event that brought in a wide variety of RC members. This event built connections that otherwise would not have been made. We were proud of all that we accomplished and grateful for the connections that were made. In the future, we would do this event again but at a less busy time of year. It was low-stress but also difficult to attract people to take time out of their schedule to do something that they may not have considered as meaningful. That being said, we still wanted to provide students with more relaxed environments to decompress from school.
I worked with a team for this project and we hosted a Mocktails and Masterpieces event for the Renaissance College community. As a team, we encountered all of the typical road bumps of teamwork with equal work division, following a timeline, and effective communication. From an individual perspective, I learned how to advocate for myself and still be kind to my peers. Group work can be frustrating at times and it is especially tricky when you are working with friends and have small groups. I learned how to take criticism as a team member and not take offence when it is coming from my friends.
In the problem solving aspect of this course, we envisioned the scope of the project and worked out the strategies and procedures necessary to see it through to completion. We were responsible for presenting status updates. These status updates were a new way of presenting information and taught us about information and verbal literacy. We also completed risk management tables which used a combination of data and numerical literacy. These were very useful tools to keep in my back pocket as I enter the world of work and planning large-scale projects.
At the Mocktails and Masterpieces event, we were privileged to meet our future professors, other faculty members, and students from different cohorts. It was a low-stress event that brought in a wide variety of RC members. This event built connections that otherwise would not have been made. We were proud of all that we accomplished and grateful for the connections that were made. In the future, we would do this event again but at a less busy time of year. It was low-stress but also difficult to attract people to take time out of their schedule to do something that they may not have considered as meaningful. That being said, we still wanted to provide students with more relaxed environments to decompress from school.
Cross-Cultural Leadership
The purpose of the cross-cultural leadership course is to broaden students understanding of different cultural values, behaviours and norms. By gaining this understanding of culture, students become more aware leaders with strong understanding of others and how to best adapt our leadership practices to support them. This is a major contributor to the knowing self and others learning outcome along with social interaction. We were put into groups to analyze specific cultural norms within a continent. I worked with a team to explore African culture and while I learned a lot about the culture, I also learned a lot about myself and the superiority complex that was embedded in my understandings of culture. My first work on the project was comparing similarities and differences between Canadian and African cultures. While my intentions were to compare them, I found myself trying to assign one as better than the other. When I came to this realization, it was hard to accept but crucial to address. This behaviour is exactly the type of thinking that we are working to break down at RC and my immediate reaction was defensive rather than productive. This was a huge breakthrough in my critical thinking because when I thought I was thinking critically, I was still holding myself on a pedestal. Breaking down this bias was very important for me to do prior to my internship because I was working with people from many different cultures. It was very important for me to be an effective leader in my international internship and navigate cultural difference in a neutral zone rather than expect my opinions to be better than theirs.
In this course, we had the pleasure of working with Guna, who is a very culturally aware individual. That being said, we learned a lot from the unspoken behaviours that he did as well. He often called on certain members of the class to represent an entire country. This was often not representative of the cultural norms for those individuals as they have already lived in Canada for a while at that point. This was a significant learning opportunity as a leader because I wanted to ensure that I never made assumptions based on one persons experience with culture. I made it my intention to actively hear about other perspectives, but not make assumptions that their experiences represent everyone. This was an important lesson for other aspects of my life as well because I often assume that the story I am hearing is the whole story. I learned to listen to everyones experiences without passing judgement on one right or true experience.
The takeaways I learned in this course were not only important for my international internship, but useful for me to take with me in my future life. I will need to be culturally aware and have a clear understanding of my cultural values in relation to others when I enter the workforce. As an aspiring teacher, it is my hope that I will be friends with all of my colleagues and also empower diverse students to be comfortable with themselves. I want to be aware of diversity and embrace it in my classroom and across my school. We have so much to learn from each other and the world of opportunities would grow exponentially if we learned more about the different cultures around us.
In this course, we had the pleasure of working with Guna, who is a very culturally aware individual. That being said, we learned a lot from the unspoken behaviours that he did as well. He often called on certain members of the class to represent an entire country. This was often not representative of the cultural norms for those individuals as they have already lived in Canada for a while at that point. This was a significant learning opportunity as a leader because I wanted to ensure that I never made assumptions based on one persons experience with culture. I made it my intention to actively hear about other perspectives, but not make assumptions that their experiences represent everyone. This was an important lesson for other aspects of my life as well because I often assume that the story I am hearing is the whole story. I learned to listen to everyones experiences without passing judgement on one right or true experience.
The takeaways I learned in this course were not only important for my international internship, but useful for me to take with me in my future life. I will need to be culturally aware and have a clear understanding of my cultural values in relation to others when I enter the workforce. As an aspiring teacher, it is my hope that I will be friends with all of my colleagues and also empower diverse students to be comfortable with themselves. I want to be aware of diversity and embrace it in my classroom and across my school. We have so much to learn from each other and the world of opportunities would grow exponentially if we learned more about the different cultures around us.
Images and Insights
Ethics in Leadership
Ethics in leadership was a course dedicated to engaging in what we think is right and how our values dictate our moral and ethical lens. As leaders, it is important to recognize our personal values, but it is equally as important to learn about the different ethical perspectives. Our reasoning for what we believe to be right and wrong differs based on our morals and values that we were brought up with. This is crucial in leading a group because your perspective may be drastically different than your followers because of familial, cultural, or social values. As an effective leader, you must be adaptable and shift your practices to the needs of the group. This includes doing an ethical analysis of the team you are working with and delegating tasks appropriately.
One of the projects we completed in this course was an analysis of an ethical issue in Canada. My group looked at the lobster fishing conflict in Nova Scotia. This is a conflict between Indigenous lobster fishers who have the right to their land and the environmental conservationists who are worried about fishing out of season. By doing an analysis of both of these perspectives, we practiced mediation and finding common ground in problem solving. We used the Utilitarianism and Deontology (Matthews, 2020) to find the validity in each perspective and propose a solution to the problem. This project was one of my first developments in the conflict management indicator because I was able to navigate the conflict without being worried about my stake in it. This showed me how to solve conflict without our personal emotions involved. I further developed these skills when I inserted emotions into the picture, but that was not in this course.
Another major project in this course was exploring a personal ethical dilemma through the MeRTEC Decision Making Tool. At first, I struggled to come up with an ethical issue in my life as I did not feel conflicted about any problems in my life. With the help of my professor, I realized that I was facing significant HR violations at work from my supervisor. I was feeling helpless in the issue because he continuously convinced me that any of my superiors were rude, scary, and rigid. In reality, they are some of the nicest people I have ever met, but I was terrified to say something about the situation. I used the MeRTEC tool and decided to risk losing my job to talk about the issue. This one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, because I was afraid emotionally and financially about what was going to happen. The conflict has since been resolved and I am becoming more content with the process every day. I am grateful to have had the strong support network from Renaissance College to help me through this process. This experience and the skills from the course have prepared me for the future where I may encounter similar problems. I am more aware of Human Resources Policies and the procedures dedicated to resolving any violations. I am empowered as a leader to take initiative in my future career and actively be aware of my rights and supports in my workplace. While this was not an easy process, or a simple project that I was expecting to take away, I am more brave, resilient, and knowledgeable because of it.
One of the projects we completed in this course was an analysis of an ethical issue in Canada. My group looked at the lobster fishing conflict in Nova Scotia. This is a conflict between Indigenous lobster fishers who have the right to their land and the environmental conservationists who are worried about fishing out of season. By doing an analysis of both of these perspectives, we practiced mediation and finding common ground in problem solving. We used the Utilitarianism and Deontology (Matthews, 2020) to find the validity in each perspective and propose a solution to the problem. This project was one of my first developments in the conflict management indicator because I was able to navigate the conflict without being worried about my stake in it. This showed me how to solve conflict without our personal emotions involved. I further developed these skills when I inserted emotions into the picture, but that was not in this course.
Another major project in this course was exploring a personal ethical dilemma through the MeRTEC Decision Making Tool. At first, I struggled to come up with an ethical issue in my life as I did not feel conflicted about any problems in my life. With the help of my professor, I realized that I was facing significant HR violations at work from my supervisor. I was feeling helpless in the issue because he continuously convinced me that any of my superiors were rude, scary, and rigid. In reality, they are some of the nicest people I have ever met, but I was terrified to say something about the situation. I used the MeRTEC tool and decided to risk losing my job to talk about the issue. This one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, because I was afraid emotionally and financially about what was going to happen. The conflict has since been resolved and I am becoming more content with the process every day. I am grateful to have had the strong support network from Renaissance College to help me through this process. This experience and the skills from the course have prepared me for the future where I may encounter similar problems. I am more aware of Human Resources Policies and the procedures dedicated to resolving any violations. I am empowered as a leader to take initiative in my future career and actively be aware of my rights and supports in my workplace. While this was not an easy process, or a simple project that I was expecting to take away, I am more brave, resilient, and knowledgeable because of it.
Democracy and Policy
In second year, we took two policy courses to explore policy and effective citizenship. The first course, Democracy and Public Policy, was dedicated to looking at social justice issues in Canada that are affected by a variety of contributing systems. The second course was focussed on international issues and the division of responsibility necessary to solve them. Both of these courses were crucial in developing our understanding of effective citizenship. We learned that in order to be an effective citizen, you cannot individually solve the problems facing society. It is our role to make the possible changes in our lifestyle, and to hold corporations and the top 1% accountable for their actions. While we did not come to any concrete solutions to doing this, we recognized that blame and responsibility are correlated. In each semester, we completed one major project exploring and analyzing a social issue that is either international or domestic.
The first project we completed was on a domestic issue facing many Canadians old and young. We explored the Biomedical Model of Health (Antony, et. al, 2017) and how it continuously disadvantages many Canadians. This project expanded my knowledge of information literacy. Prior to taking this course, I was not skilled in research or compiling information. This course was my first experience where I felt confident in my research abilities and motivated to continue. The second project was focussed on the connection between poverty and inequality because one cannot be solved without solving both. We focussed on the Feminization of Poverty in the Global South in my group. This was a complex problem that is connected to a multitude of systems re-enforcing inequality contributing to the issue. This project expanded my research abilities even further as I learned the importance of key search terms. This strategy has saved my other research papers as it presents more information that is unbiased and applicable. In both of these projects, I developed a new understanding of effective citizenship by recognizing my place of privilege. The research does not hide the fact that people are being exploited, discriminated against, and manipulated in our current economic system. As a socially aware individual I have to do my part to help and advocate for the voices that may not be heard. I also have awakened a new understanding of self and others because I can see how my bias intervenes with my interactions. I need to work on being more aware of the underlying family, social, and economic circumstances facing my team and do my part in making everyone feel welcome.
The first project we completed was on a domestic issue facing many Canadians old and young. We explored the Biomedical Model of Health (Antony, et. al, 2017) and how it continuously disadvantages many Canadians. This project expanded my knowledge of information literacy. Prior to taking this course, I was not skilled in research or compiling information. This course was my first experience where I felt confident in my research abilities and motivated to continue. The second project was focussed on the connection between poverty and inequality because one cannot be solved without solving both. We focussed on the Feminization of Poverty in the Global South in my group. This was a complex problem that is connected to a multitude of systems re-enforcing inequality contributing to the issue. This project expanded my research abilities even further as I learned the importance of key search terms. This strategy has saved my other research papers as it presents more information that is unbiased and applicable. In both of these projects, I developed a new understanding of effective citizenship by recognizing my place of privilege. The research does not hide the fact that people are being exploited, discriminated against, and manipulated in our current economic system. As a socially aware individual I have to do my part to help and advocate for the voices that may not be heard. I also have awakened a new understanding of self and others because I can see how my bias intervenes with my interactions. I need to work on being more aware of the underlying family, social, and economic circumstances facing my team and do my part in making everyone feel welcome.