Congratulations to doctoral candidate Paul Pritchard on winning a 2023-24 TA Teaching Excellence Award from the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program (TATP). This tri-campus award recognizes the outstanding contributions of teaching assistants to undergraduate education. This year’s award is Paul’s third teaching excellence award.
Later this summer, Paul will be participating in the TA Award Winner Panel at Tri-Campus TA Day, which takes place the last week of August.
Through his various roles as a teaching assistant, the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator and a Graduate Educational Developer for the TATP, and as a course instructor, Paul has demonstrated his commitments to center treaty and land relations in the service of supporting Indigenous sovereignty through educational praxis, and has been active in moving the University of Toronto forward in realizing its commitments to indigenization and reconciliation.
Paul has worked closely with Professor Dani Kwan-Lafond to expand community-engaged, land-based, experiential learning opportunities at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. This includes working on curriculum development, implementation, and trip planning for SOCD02: Global Indigenous Field School Costa Rica; developing land-based curriculum utilizing UTSC’s Indigenous Garden, the Ma Moosh Ka Win Trail and Highland Creek Ravine (an initiative for which he recently won a Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship); and helping facilitate the Camp Kawartha Reconciliation Retreat for SOCB47.
In addition, Paul and Professor Jayne Baker were recently awarded a UTM Teaching Development and Innovation Grant. Paul is working with Eshkiniiginaa Enaagdendang Yaawyiing Minwaa Aki (Land First Youth Initiative), based in Sheshegwaning First Nation, to develop the land-based learning components for the Mnidoo Mnising Indigenous Field School, which will include 7-9 days of intra-national travel to Manitoulin Island. The community and land-based learning activities are designed so students can draw links between what they learned in the on-campus portion of the course and the lived experiences of First Nations communities working to maintain, reclaim, and enact sovereignty, rights, and nationhood in various domains of life (e.g. education, health, food security, language retention, and land rights).
Paul’s contributions to indigenizing undergraduate education, particularly related to developing Land-based experiential learning opportunities, were recognized through two teaching excellence awards in 2022-23. Paul won a UTSC Unit 1 Graduate Teaching Assistants Award, as well as the Outstanding Sociology Teaching Assistants Award.
Paul is Michif (Red River Métis) and a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation. He currently holds a graduate student position on the University of Toronto’s Arts and Sciences Dean’s Advisory Committee on Indigenous Research, Teaching and Learning, and is a member of its Working Group on Indigenous Curriculum. He also holds a graduate position on the Canadian Sociological Association’s Decolonization Sub-Committee. In 2023-24, Paul was named a research fellow with the R.F. Harney Program in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.