Leigh Kweon

Pedagogical Commitments:

It is with humility that I identify and live as an uninvited guest on the unceded traditional and ancestral lands of the Katzie, Semiahmoo, Kwantlen, Tsawwassen, and Coast Salish nations. With this acknowledgment, I commit to learning the legacies of colonization that prevail to this day in early childhood education. As an ECPN pedagogist, I hope to create with educators a responsive curriculum that disrupts these legacies and allows us to live responsibly on the lands on which we walk.

I am committed to walking with educators with questions that ask us to pay attention to what goes unnoticed, what is strange, and what can be otherwise (Vintimilla, 2016), and to learn from experiencing the moments where children meet the world. One of the ways this commitment comes to life is by creating and working through pedagogical narrations with educators to cocreate curriculum with children and families that responds to the centre’s/program’s geographical, cultural, and social context (Government of British Columbia, 2018, p. 51). The practicality of this work lies within and is driven by pedagogical questions and conversations, where we publicly discuss the issues and concerns that call to us. I am dedicated to creating spaces for such conversations that welcome diversity and ask us to intensify our thinking and to actively engage with questions that invite further wonderings rather than clearly defined answers.

Because pedagogical work requires such bravery, I am committed to walking alongside educators, children, and families with humility and modesty, and also with the certainty that we will create and become something more than what we are now (Todd, 2001).