Stephanie Powell-Hellyer’s Innovative Teaching in INTS 298, Globalization and Religion

February 22, 2017
Stephanie Powell-Hellyer

Let me, as department chair, give you insight into how one of our instructors, Stephanie Powell-Hellyer, developed a novel class assignment for her fall 2016 special topics course entitled “Globalization and Religion”. By chance, Stephanie heard that an elementary school teacher in Prince George wanted to creatively engage her students in learning about First Nation Creation Stories. Stephanie saw in this an opportunity to link what this teacher wanted to what her students were learning in the globalization and religion course. Stephanie presented to her INTS 298 students the option of doing a First Nations Creation Story project as an alternate to a term paper. Four students immediately stepped forward. She then needed to develop with them a way for university students to teach elementary school students (grades 3 to 5) about First Nations Creation Stories. Stephanie first set her students to researching different Canadian Creation Stories. In the meantime, she clarified with the school Principal what was needed to fulfill their curriculum requirements for this topic. She also consulted with UNBC’s Dr. Tracy Summerville about how to formulate this type of unique student-to-student project. Stephanie proposed to use an interactive, art-based activity. In the end, the UNBC students each told a Canadian First Nations Creation Story to the children, who helped act it out and who then also painted the story on tiles that were put together in a large mosaic. It was clearly a challenge for the UNBC students to, instead of presenting to peers, present to young kids. But they pulled it off in brilliant fashion. Everyone seemed pleased with the final result. Both Stephanie and the four students stepped out of the box of typical university assignments to devise a novel, art-based, interactive, “university student to elementary student” learning exercise.