The second pro-d I attended was for Ally and Active Bystander Training facilitated by Adlen Habacon, The Good Neighbors Committee of Vanderhoof, with grant funding from Resilience BC. First, we learned what an Active Bystander is and what tools and awareness are required to be an active witness. I was impressed by Alden’s use of “Prezi” and “Menti” for his presentation and polling. During the session we confronted different examples of hurtful behavior through micro or macro aggressiveness. With a “first aid” approach in mind, to assess situations for safety, we learned strategies to engage damaging behaviors directly or indirectly to disrupt patterns of hatred, racism, oppression, exclusion etcetera. We discussed the differences between earned and unearned advantages and disadvantages to promote the deep internal work of dissociating fairness and sameness, equity and equality. Notably, we discussed the idea of intersectionality to address how we as active bystanders can begin to implement changes in either our lives or teaching practices to overcome earned advantages or disadvantages. Personally, I plan to learn more about Universal Design for Learning and Differentiated Instruction because I wish to investigate how these techniques may be used to overcome intersectionality and encourage intercultural dialogue, unity and identity flexibility.

The workshop piece of this lecture covered the same information. More depth was added while we discussed personal examples or concerns about becoming an Ally and Active Bystander Trainer. At the time I wasn’t aware that the second piece would grant me access to the information that Alden shared with us, and as such I’m excited that I can add this piece of training to my portfolio. During both sessions we worked through examples as a group to practice our skills and even worked through some personal examples to gain closure or prepare for common situations in our communities.