Professional Development is a key part of becoming and being a teacher. As teachers, we want to be lifelong learners and encourage our students to be as well. In order to put this in to practice, on September 14th I attended a "City Talk" at the UVic Legacy Art Gallery in Downtown Victoria. the City Talks are a series of public lectures which aim to address issues and topics surrounding city life, and encourage dialogue about what goes on in cities. These talks are presented by professors at UVic and beyond, as well as public figures, with backgrounds in the humanities, primarily geography and history.

There are three city talks being presented this fall and the one I attended was called "The Urban Streetscape as Political Cosmos/ Panel: The politics of Street Naming in the City of Victoria", and was presented by Reuben Rose-Redwood, Associate Professor in Geography at UVic. At this talk Dr.Rose-Redwood gave a 35 minute lecture on the history of urban development, street numbering and street naming, as well as both how street names are shaped by their political cosmos, and how this cosmos can in turn shape street naming. I absolutely loved this topic as it combines my loves for human geography and history. This was followed by a panel discussion in which issues surrounding street naming in Victoria, both past, present and future were addressed. Specifically, the panel speakers spoke to the issues surrounding the naming of streets after problematic colonizers, who are primarily white men. Perspectives on this topic came from an Indigenous student, a PhD candidate studying Indigenous-settler relations, a city counselor and the head of UVic's History department. 

The BC Teaching Standards outline several standards that help to guide our teaching. One of these standards is, "Career-Long Learning". I have a true passion for the subject areas of history and geography, but I especially love learning about the places we live and the places we often visit. This talk addressed all those things and also helped in my career-long learning. It helped me to learn about Victoria and to feel more connected to the land that it the political cosmos is on. I also felt more connected to the people who established this city and those people that the city of Victoria has chosen to remember. Dr.Rose-Redwood emphasized the fact that in many cases, street names or memorials of people better reflect the people who chose them than those who are being remembered. This was something I hadn't thought a great deal about, and made me realize the importance of looking at a memorial or a commemorative name for more than just what it says or who it is, but for its greater meaning. 

I'm really excited to take what I learnt in this talk into my classroom one day, I would love to explore place making with my students and help them to understand what makes a physical space into a place that has its own unique atmosphere that people interact with in a particular way. I would also like to take students on a walking tour of our city to explore both place names that surround them and the people they refer to, as well as the statues and memorials that are in Victoria. Furthermore, one of the panel speakers mentioned that members of the Esquimalt nation host walking tours of the city that point out areas of importance for their people and I think this would be an invaluable experience for students.