Teach it right, from the right sources.
If you’re teaching Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, you know the weight of getting it right. Here’s CARL’s position, stated plainly: this is a day where the content must come from Indigenous voices, not from an AI, and CARL is built to keep it that way.
What CARL is designed not to do
CARL is built with guardrails against generating or interpreting Indigenous teachings. That’s not a limitation we apologize for; it’s a line built into the design. Indigenous Resource Pathways are designed to point to teacher-facing, vetted Indigenous-authored resources rather than generated content. An AI inventing residential school narratives would be exactly the wrong tool for this day, so CARL is engineered to redirect instead. And because no guardrail replaces judgment: everything lands as a draft you review, and your local protocols lead.
What CARL does instead
Indigenous Resource Pathways (IRP): Points to vetted Indigenous-authored resources; names boundaries instead of generating Indigenous teachings. For Orange Shirt Day that means routing you toward authentic sources, the NCTR’s age-appropriate education materials, Indigenous-authored texts, and your local nation and district guidance, while CARL helps with the parts that are legitimately yours to plan:
Lesson structure
timing, discussion protocols, reflection space, an arc that opens and closes with care
Age-appropriate framing
what depth fits Grade 2 versus Grade 10, with trauma-informed pacing
Companion materials
reflection prompts, vocabulary support for terms like reconciliation, and teacher-facing preparation notes
The teaching around the day
where the day connects to your social studies outcomes across the year, because reconciliation isn’t a one-day unit
The pathways aren’t a separate thing to go find. They generate as a module inside the Lesson Enhancements sheet that comes with every lesson, already sitting in your teacher resources. Here is what those notes say, word for word, pulled from real lessons across subjects:
“Explore the National Centre for Collaborative Education (NCCIE) lesson plans to find math resources that connect geometry, trigonometry, and outdoor measurement with Indigenous land-based knowledge and technologies.”
“Incorporate A Day with Yayah by Nicola I. Campbell to explore how Indigenous knowledge systems identify, respect, and rely on local plants and habitats. Use Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults by Monique Gray Smith to deepen students understanding of ecological reciprocity and the interconnectedness of living things.”
“No allowlisted resources directly address the physics of simple machines, levers, or pulleys for this grade band. Start with the NCTR education resources, and only use locally confirmed connections that genuinely fit the lesson.”
Why this matters for trust
If your school is weighing AI tools, this page is the test case. A tool that will generate anything is a liability on the days that matter most. AI can be wrong, sometimes confidently, so every output lands as an editable draft, and nothing reaches students without you. On this day especially, the teacher, the community, and Indigenous voices lead. CARL carries the logistics.
Questions teachers ask first.
The day matters. Plan it with respect.
Let CARL carry the structure, so your attention goes to the sources that should lead.