Lori Huston (she/her)

Welcome!

 To my E-Portfolio, Beneath the Crescent Moon, 

a graduating project for Master of Education (MEd) in Early Childhood Education (ECE). 

​

Hello, My name is Lori Huston; I am closely connected to place, time and Indigenous knowledge on many layers. I invite you to journey through my e-portfolio. I will be presenting my graduating project in Spring 2021. I relate to Zinga and Styres' (2013) title Coming Full Circle: Looking to Grandmother Moon from an edited collection in the Canadian journal of education regarding Indigenous education. I am further connecting to Zinga and Styres' (2013) words shared in the edited collection "In Anishinaabe teachings; the spring moons are associated with rebalancing our lives, cleansing our spirits, recognizing our lives energies and spiritual core as well as reconciliation (p. 1). As you read through my graduating project, please reflect on their words, organized by my three goals. 

1) To build theory and research connected to Indigenous curriculum and pedagogy.   

2) To engage and commit to Truth and Reconciliation in ECE. 

3) To facilitate leadership connected to heart pedagogy through mentoring and advocacy initiatives.

My goals are layers of interconnections to professional, academic and personal heart work as I have come full circle with a new beginning on the horizon. 

 

This brings me to my place in time; throughout my MEd journey, I have discovered my father's Métis ancestral history for the first time, which led to my citizenship with the Métis Nation of Ontario this year. The new knowledge of my identity has inspired profound revelations within my mind, although perhaps my heart knew all along that my ancestors, the grandmother moons, were guiding me. I have been positioning myself as a non-Indigenous early childhood educator in my professional roles supporting Indigenous children and families for over 20 years across Canada and the last 12 years working closely with Elder Brenda Mason and Indigenous ECEs. Elder Brenda Mason's introduction in a recent paper included [she is] "from Sandy Lake First Nation and lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Brenda, who speaks Oji-Cree fluently, is the campus Elder at Oshki-Wenjack, teaching the cultural and spiritual knowledge and traditions of the Anishinabe people" (Huston, Mason, Loon, 2020, p. 69). They have gifted me many teachings and traditional knowledge to my already rich experiences from practice as an ECE supporting Indigenous children and families across Canada. I have had to work with many alternatives learning hard lessons of responsibility in this role, getting my hands dirty, one might say. With this, my values and principles come with an entire career embedded in Indigenous pedagogies. 

​

While considering how I journeyed through the Master’s Program, I am using the metaphor “Beneath the Crescent Moon.” As an educator and student, the process fits into phases, always working its way back to a new beginning. A transition through the moon phases is how my career and education work together as I moved through semesters and balanced each of my roles, building off each phase to the next until it was time to start again - the beginning of a new semester or new project. I have also received many Anishinaabe teachings on the thirteen moons from Elder Brenda and local Indigenous knowledge keeper Audrey DeRoy that connected me to time, place and knowledge, which I hold in my heart and connect the teachings to my ways of doing and knowing in Indigenous ECE curriculum. For information on the thirteen moons, click on the heart icon.

​

I welcome you to create a vision of your ideas and insights while you navigate this e-portfolio: 

You may go to the top menu bar and click on any tab that interests you to begin exploring my M.Ed journey or click the bottom on each page to move forward and backwards on each page to move you through.