My name is Paige Unger! I am a non-Indigenous woman living in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada of European descent, specifically with a Norwegian and German familial background. I am grateful to live on the unceded traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation and the land of the Dakelh (Carrier) peoples. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a minor in First Nations Studies, and I aspire to be an elementary year’s teacher and teach grades 4-6 in Northern Canada. I have worked as a lifeguard in Prince George and Jasper, Alberta for the last five years where my favorite part of the job was teaching swimming lessons to children and teenagers. Lifeguarding taught me how I can make a difference in the community as an educator, specifically how I can build relationships with students. My mother is a kindergarten teacher in SD57 and has been a big role model in my journey to becoming an educator.

Traveling has had a huge impact on who I am as a person and teacher. In May 2024 I travelled to Thailand for a month to volunteer teaching English in a small rural community. Travelling has taught me that there are many lenses through which people view the world and no perspective is right or wrong. When travelling and teaching abroad, I met new people, met new cultures, experienced new things both good and bad, and discovered more about the role I play as a global citizen in the world of education. Combined with the perspectives I gained from my minor in First Nations Studies, traveling has taught me the importance of place. I experienced what it is like to work in a rural area where there are higher rates of poverty, lack of internet, no access to transportation, and challenges in healthcare and childcare. Despite learning about rural teaching in a continent across the world from home, I hope to take this perspective into my career as a teacher in northern BC because many aspects of Northern Thailand and Northern Canada are very similar.

As a teacher, I believe it is important to recognize my privilege of not having to face the adversity and racism of Indigenous peoples in Canada due to my ancestry, and I recognize the unique struggles of gender discrimination faced by Indigenous women due to colonial factors. As a woman, I have faced discrimination and have been marginalized on a gender basis because of Western colonial values that still exist prominently today through patriarchal practices. I have no experience of facing discrimination in an educational setting and hope to learn more about reconciliation in my process of becoming an educator in Canada. However, I am prepared to recognize that all students come from different backgrounds. I am dedicated to welcoming and deeply valuing each student’s perspective as a beautiful contribution to the classroom space.