Every educator in Canada needs to know what is in this book. In our national and global call to truth and reconciliation action, Toulouse has written an essential resource to teaching and learning about Indigenous history, knowledge, culture, and contributions. Her text moves “beyond acknowledgements and apologies” to restorative education about, and with, Indigenous peoples. In well-organized, clear language, Toulouse maps, scaffolds, and guides important First Nations concepts and methods for meaningful teaching and learning.
Part 1 provides five compelling chapters describing Indigenous information, values, and contexts. Beginning with residential schools, and moving on to contributions, values, and treaties, Toulouse connects the TRC calls to action and curriculum requirements with personal relationships, concepts, and stories from her own experiences, ancestors, and mentors as a bridge to wider Indigenous knowledges.
Part 2 presents direct lessons, grade by grade from K-12, and uses literature, language arts, science, physical education, arts, and social studies to teach the intellect, emotions, and spirit. Toulouse guides educators and students moving forward toward healthier, informed, respectful communities, who learn, live, and laugh together in a difficult world.
This user-friendly, teacher-ready book begins a wave of new, important education to reconnect people and communities across our country. Toulouse tackles the reasons educators have feared to take this on, and then shows us how to wade in and start. We open ourselves to old and new stories and Indigenous knowledge. We restore the fundamental importance of every human being. You will be surprised by light, inspired by heart, and intellectually challenged to integrate what you read into your own teaching. The Sacred Circle teachings and “projects of heart” alone give bedrock foundation for teaching for life in this country. A well-conceived macro (big-picture) view of greater good shapes the direction and range, along with great suggestions for studying core concepts and micro-details with literature and materials already available.
This book is a remarkable map, guide, and companion for educators about how, when, and where to take the restorative education actions we need. Let’s get together and have some important conversations to change things for the better.
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
Portage and Main Press, 2018-03-05 ISBN: 978-1553797456
The transformative changes coming to schools across Canada in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) “calls to action” bring lots of opportunity for discussion around key issues. For example, what structural changes need to be implemented? What innovative frameworks have already proven useful? What are some of the pathways educators and educational authorities are following to work with communities, nurture the Learning Spirit for youth, and create curricula that “bring together” different cultural ways of being, knowing, and doing? What ways might be helpful to bring diverse energies into balance such that the inevitable negatives are meaningfully heard, consensus reached, and positive educational changes fostered?
In this article, we share a few such understandings. Our three voices are woven as a conversational discussion, plus we’ve included some of Elder Murdena’s understandings (unfortunately, her health precludes active involvement). We hope our discussion will help encourage many more both in and outside the classroom, given that learning is a lifelong journey with both formal and informal educational opportunities.
ALBERT: My strong intact Mi’kmaw Spirit enabled me to endure fierce, pervasive cruelty at residential school. Today, our school environments are profoundly different but our Indigenous youth still need to know who they are, where they come from, and how to speak their Ancestors’ language. Why? Because when you force someone to abandon their ways of knowing, their ways of seeing the world, you literally destroy their Spirit and once that Spirit is destroyed it is very, very difficult to embrace anything – academically or through sports or through arts or through anything – because that person is never whole. To have a whole person, their Spirit, their physical being, their emotions, and their intellectual being… all have to be intact and work in a very harmonious way.
CAROLA: At Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey (MK),1 the Mi’kmaw educational authority in Nova Scotia, we understand this and are using Elder Albert’s guiding principle of Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing (E/TES, see definition in this issue’s Network Voices, p. 6). It’s a co-learning journey for all because it’s a new approach. My role on the team is to develop and implement literacy programming while supporting teachers as they continue building their instructional strategies in literacy. I do this in a way that’s consistent with MK’s goal of “ensuring that our students see themselves reflected in the curriculum as essential to creating a strong literacy foundation.” There are so many different dimensions we need to consider, such as creating culturally safe environments, revisiting policies on a regular basis and in inclusive ways to ensure reconnecting with authentic cultural understandings, providing genuine cultural resources, renewing curricular content to address current (student) needs, and creating meaningful networking opportunities for everyone.
CHERYL: Here in Unama’ki – Cape Breton Island – Murdena Marshall had early understandings of these critical dimensions for post-secondary science. In the 1990s, she pushed for an E/TES-guided approach for post-secondary science education and thus we created the then-unique pathway, namely the Toqwa’tu’kl Kjijitaqnn / Integrative Science (TK/IS) program within a four-year undergraduate degree at Cape Breton University. The intent was to make post-secondary science more relevant and attractive for Mi’kmaw students. It functioned from 1999 to the late 2000s; there’s lots of information on the website2 and Carola was one of our early students.
CAROLA: Because of that program and the many traditional teachings I learned from Elders such as the late Gwen Bear, from Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, and from my mom, Serena Francis, who is a retired language teacher in Elsipogtog First Nation in N.B., I know first-hand that the educational approach of Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing can be truly empowering. At MK we are working with community Elders and educators to create foundational understandings for developing curricula whereby we will centre our Mi’kmaw ways of being and doing, and for which Elder Jane Meader from Membertou First Nation in N.S. has provided written understandings.3
Our team recognizes the need to change the way science stories are told and an excellent example in this regard is Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters. It’s an inspiring piece of Two-Eyed Seeing, where collaboration and co-learning are exemplified. This almost forgotten Mi’kmaw story of the north night sky was revived by Elder Lillian Marshall of Potlotek First Nation. Among many things, her work revealed rich Mi’kmaw Knowledge about patterns in the sky, showed the congruency of Western science with this Mi’kmaw Knowledge, and then went further by showing how the holistic Mi’kmaw science interconnects sky knowledge with the behaviour of birds and the actions of the L’nu’k (Mi’kmaw people). The project is an excellent example of what happens when respect for two knowledge systems occurs. Elder Lillian had been working for years to revive the story. But it was the UNESCO-designated International Year of Astronomy in 2009 that finally enabled completion of the work as her energies came together with those of Elder Murdena and other Mi’kmaw Elders, plus knowledgeable and supportive individuals in the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and creative individuals on Cheryl’s Integrative Science research team at Cape Breton University. Their collaborative work resulted in a video and a children’s storybook4 and clearly showed how we can change the way we tell our science knowledge stories so that they are culturally inclusive, accurate, authentic, and respectful. This is exactly what the guiding principle of E/TES encourages.
CHERYL: Having taught in the TK/IS program, I am convinced its approach to teaching science by “bringing together Indigenous and Western scientific knowledges and ways of knowing” could benefit all science students, from all communities and ethnicities. Yet I know negative energies abound: some critics are racist, others poorly-informed or fearful. An excellent learning example for us came in February 2014, when the new federal legislation “Bill C-33 First Nations Control of First Nations Education” was under consideration and, in its regard, The Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson commented that “… the big loser will be students, whose knowledge of basic science, math and other subjects will be so infused with cultural appropriateness by these theorists as to handicap them, rather than assist them, in wider Canadian society.”5 Elder Albert responded with a letter to the editor.
ALBERT: My letter emphasized that E/TES is not easy and that we need to embark on a co-learning journey in which our two paradigms will be put on the table to be scrutinized. We need to honestly be able to say that the essence, the S/spirit of our two ways, has been respected as we work to balance the energies of those ways; we need to put the two together. My letter had to be short. More recently, we have started pondering how we might better deal with negative energies and disagreements. And thus, we now emphasize that co-learning needs to embed capacity for i’l’oqaptmu’k, meaning “to revisit to renew, to maintain movement in the direction Spirit intended.” Differences of opinion or conflict are inevitable, so we need ways for the energies of the various parties to reach consensus. I asked my friend, artist Gerald Gloade from the Mi’kmaw community of Millbrook, to create an image of a Two Bowl Peace Pipe (see picture) to help us ponder how, within a sacred coming together, the negative energies could be burned off as they go through the pipe for purification towards consensus and our energies find balance. Our Mi’kmaw language also provides insights: Kisutmajikmeans “they decided to talk.” Kisutmauk means “we come to consensus so we can move forward because we have taken in these natural energies” (from the land, water, air, and Spirit). And Kisutasik means “consensus has been reached.” This is really the essence of co-learning because we can’t work on the basis of assumptions or hearsay. We need to take time to listen to each other rather than merely talking about each other. Lots of deep dialogue, deep co-learning, and hard work are required for E/TES and all four domains of being human, namely the physical, emotional, intellectual, and Spiritual, have to be involved.
A co-learning journey is necessary for this ‘together approach’ to be successful because, as in every journey, challenges exist: in our mindsets, points of view and perspectives, and approaches to teaching.
CAROLA: “Putting our knowledges together” most definitely needs to be done in appropriate ways. For example, within a typical mainstream framework there will generally be a focus on cognitive or intellectual development. As a Mi’kmaw person, however, I would begin with Spiritual development at the heart, interconnected with the emotional domain in ways that follow our Elders’ teachings and guidance. A co-learning journey is necessary for this “together approach” to be successful because, as in every journey, challenges exist: in our mindsets, points of view and perspectives, and approaches to teaching. Also and very importantly, what is called “Indigenous” has to come from genuine Indigenous voice, community, Spirit, and knowledge.
CHERYL: Years ago, Murdena created a model to emphasize the system nature of Mi’kmaw Knowledge and we’ve adapted it to help serve co-learning and knowledge scrutinization (see Figure 1). Murdena’s model has four concentric circles although, she says, traditionally there would be no intentional layering because stories were used to transmit knowledge in a holistic way. She indicates Mi’kmaw Knowledge and Western Science can share empirical observations of the physical attributes of, for example, a plant and its habitat (see outermost circles for both models in the diagram). In Mi’kmaw Knowledge, the middle circles of personal connection and respect are reciprocal, plus all four circles are interconnective. Sacred knowledge is innermost, can only truly be understood within the Mi’kmaw language, and generally cannot and should not be translated. Western Science relies on mathematical language and our model for it lacks middle circles because subjectivity is intentionally diminished. For Mi’kmaw Knowledge, “the Knowledge Holder / the knower” is an integral participant within the knowledge. In the Western science model, “the knower” stands outside the circles to emphasize objectivity.
ALBERT: These simple models are worth thousands more words… here I want to highlight that Mi’kmaw Knowledge is collective and thus any one Knowledge Holder has only a small piece, and also that our knowledge is alive and thus both physical and Spiritual with our language continually reminding us of our responsibilities.
CHERYL: In the Toqwa’tu’kl Kjijitaqnn / Integrative Science program, we worked within the broadened view of science as “dynamic, pattern-based knowledge shared through stories about our interactions with and within nature” for the Indigenous and Western sciences. Curricula evolved as we explored common ground (outermost circles in the knowledge models) while acknowledging and respecting differences (remaining circles). TK/IS eventually collapsed in the face of financial and political stresses. Nonetheless, it saw considerable student success and I will always say that community facilitators and tutors6 along with Elders and educators working together with mainstream allies were key… a “we together” approach.
CAROLA: At Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey, we are learning with and from Elders in the many Traditional Districts in Mi’kma’ki. We are listening to their stories and envisioning how to put these into curricula woven within our Mi’kmaw Principles of Learning. We are at the beginning of this exciting journey to reconnect with our collective understandings as to how young people can best learn and to try to begin to grow these understandings within formal educational settings. In early elementary programming, Elders identified the importance of outdoor and experiential learning. The MK Board of Directors recognized the value of play and inquiry in learning. This administrative /community support is critical to successfully implementing change. This approach to learning, of framing learning experiences in real-life contexts through exploration via play, is one excellent way to teach our students. Teachers from Preschool to Grade 2 are receiving intensive training on ways to incorporate play-based, inquiry-based learning in their teaching. As we move forward our goal has to be: Toqikutimk / Together We Are Growing.
ALBERT: Again, I wish to say: E/TES is not easy. And so, we need to understand that sometimes our most important job is to plant seeds for the future, for the youth, knowing seeds germinate when the time is right. We must also accept that Indigenous communities need to generate their own understandings around re-awakening their own Indigenous Knowledge – this is what MK’s project through Carola and others is doing – and this takes time. We are entering an era in which what we once had and then came to consider as obsolete, is now coming back. This is especially true in regards to our traditional understandings that richly woven kinship relationships and interconnectivity are what make our natural world. The remembering and relearning will require much transformation of understanding – we will need to invite our Tribal Consciousness back into our daily lives so we are guided as to the way we initially were, and we will need to do a lot of inner reflection. We have for too long been in a period of disconnect from our natural world and from our traditional ways. We have lost a lot of the stories that would normally flow as to our responsibilities in sustaining ourselves as part and parcel of the whole. Education is key, for all of us.
I also want to emphasize that there are words in our language that would be more appropriate to use in place of the English phrases “Indigenous Knowledge” or “Traditional Knowledge.” For “Mi’kmaw Knowledge,” Murdena and I have suggested Ta’ntelo’lti’k meaning “the way we L’nu’k are.”7All Indigenous Nations have their own languages, their own words.
CAROLA: Nurturing the Learning Spirit of our students has to be central to everything we do and many of us firmly believe language is one key. For example, we can look to the community of Eskasoni, which has had an immersion program at the elementary school for at least 18 years. A research project that examined their program revealed the trend towards better educational success for Mi’kmaw students whose formal educational years began with immersion in our Mi’kmaw language.8
CHERYL: Murdena has always said, “We must bring Ta’ntelo’lti’k / Mi’kmaw Knowledge into the present so that everything becomes meaningful in our lives and communities. Our Mi’kmaw Knowledge was not meant to stay in the past; it is not static.9Like all things alive, it grows and changes… it is dynamic.”
CAROLA: We know that MK educational support helps foster our Mi’kmaw communities. In working with our communities and schools, we have seen high rates of graduation from high school.10Young people who know who they are and where they come from and who are connected with their Ancestors’ language, with Elders, with Ta’ntelo’lti’k / Mi’kmaw Knowledge, and with their community and Nation… find themselves woven into a multi-dimensional network of understandings that will help them find success in their chosen careers. This, in turn, helps to enrich our communities in ways that we can only begin to imagine. Our communities will grow. We all benefit.
ALBERT: Elders want to work with projects such as MK’s through Carola and others to ensure the accuracy, authenticity, and sacredness of the Mi’kmaw Knowledge being included. This is the validation by peer-review that we Elders insist must be an integral part of all efforts today involving Indigenous Knowledges. In 2009-2011, Elders from across Atlantic Canada worked together to provide formal recommendations in this regard. These are known as the “Elders Eight Recommendations for Honouring Traditional Knowledge”11and were supported by the Atlantic Chiefs in September 2011. I have great hope these recommendations will soon begin to be acknowledged and acted upon as the Elders intended… especially within educational institutions.
ALBERT, CAROLA AND CHERYL: We need to work together to do this. Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Holders are as interested in knowledge integrity as are mainstream academics and researchers. We need to do this in and for our classrooms, institutions, organizations, communities, Nations… across Canada. The educational need is deep and it is broad. Msit No’kmaq.
Illustration: Gerald Gloade
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
1 http://kinu.ca/introducing-mikmaw-kinamatnewey
2 www.integrativescience.ca
3 http://kinu.ca/document/mikmaw-ways-being-and-knowing
4 www.integrativescience.ca/uploads/activities/BACKGROUND-making-video-Muin-Seven-Bird-Hunters-IYA-binder.pdf
5 Jeffrey Simpson, “Money Alone Can’t Fix Aboriginal Education,” The Globe and Mail (Feb. 21, 2014). www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/aboriginal-education-needs-money-and-more/article17008070
6 Student support was provided by the Mi’kmaw Science Advantage Program, better known as MSAP. This included tutors during 1999-2002 and recruitment facilitation in 1999-2002 plus 2003-2005.
7 www.integrativescience.ca/uploads/articles/2010June-Marshall-Bartlett-Integrative-Science-Two-Eyed-Seeing-environment-Mi’kmaq.pdf
8 www.apcfnc.ca/images/uploads/FinalReport-BestPracticesandChallengesinMikmaqandMaliseet-WolastoqiLanguageImmersionProgramsFinal.pdf
9 C. Bartlett, M. Marshall, and A. Marshall, “Two-Eyed Seeing and other Lessons Learned Within a Co-learning Journey of Bringing Together Indigenous and Mainstream Knowledges and Ways of Knowing,” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 2, no. 4 (2012): 331-340.
10 http://kinu.ca/introducing-mikmaw-kinamatnewey
11 www.apcfnc.ca/images/uploads/ResearchSummary-HonouringTraditionalKnowledgeResearchSummary.pdf
Oki, Niisokowa. Nistoakoak Piikanikoan. Greetings, all my relations. My name is Ira Provost. I am a member of the Piikani Nation, who are members of the Blackfoot Confederacy of what is now known as Southern Alberta in Canada and the Northern State of Montana in the United States of America. I participate and am extensively involved in my Blackfoot culture.
I am an Indigenous educator. My career has granted me a decade-long experience in Indigenous education and educational programming as the Program Coordinator or Administrator of First Nations, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) Education Programs for a Southern Alberta school district. Although I have moved on from schools, my entire professional career has been, and continues to encompass, the role of educating non-Indigenous people about my Blackfoot Culture. It is a role and responsibility that I carry with astute honor and integrity.
I returned to my First Nation as Manager of the Piikani Traditional Knowledge Services, my community’s on-reserve cultural centre. The local school districts often reach out to our organization to provide cultural awareness lessons and instruction to staff and students. On once such occasion, I got a call from the Livingstone Range FNMI Success Coordinator, Georgina Henderson, who invited me to a classroom presentation in Stavely, Alberta. Stavely is a small town in Alberta that would typically not have any Indigenous population in their community. It was not unusual to get a call from small towns in the area to come and present; as a centre, we’ve been to nearly all of them. But this time it was different.
The event was entitled the “Project of Heart Launch.” Invited guests included school board trustees, the superintendent, Stavely’s school principal, FNMI support personnel, and Elders from the Indigenous community. The teacher and project lead, Julaine Guitton, began the presentation by explaining that the students were engaged in a year-long project to learn about the Canadian residential school system. At this event the students had already had frequent lessons and teachings on residential schools, beginning with Orange Shirt Day in September. Each student had prepared a short speech about what they had learned, how they felt about it, and what they hoped they could learn from this point on. The speeches and presentations were absolutely amazing! The students were genuinely interested in their studies and the Indigenous people in attendance were deeply moved by the presentations. They concluded their day with a small feast and conversation with all staff and students.
I was greatly impressed and, like the other invited FNMI guests, was blown away by what was presented and what we had heard! In my view, and by all accounts, meaningful exchange and understanding of Indigenous people took place.
Based upon my experience, qualifications, and background, I believe Project of Heart was a great example of Indigenous learning because of the following:
One of the first impressions I had of the students and the project was that Julaine, the teacher, showed that learning about Indigenous people can take place regardless of your location.Many times in my career I have I heard teachers and school districts debate whether or not learning about Indigenous people or programs should take place as there were no identified First Nations, Métis, or Inuit students in the school. Stavely’s Project of Heart showed this was not the case.
In North America, whether you are near a First Nation reserve or Métis settlement or not, you are in someone’s Indigenous traditional territory. It is therefore important that you know and support who those nations are, as this leads to meaningful engagement with Indigenous communities. You can find out which nation’s traditional territory you are in by contacting the nearest First Nation administration office.
What does “meaningful” mean?
Meaningful engagement with the Indigenous community means taking the time to develop a relationship and nurturing that relationship for mutually beneficial success.
According to many anecdotal comments from the local Indigenous parents I’ve heard from over the years in schools, and from being a parent myself, school personnel do not take enough time to get to know the Indigenous community. I’ve witnessed many occasions where the school staff and students could not identify who their Indigenous neighbours are. Often school communities off reserves do not understand the Indigenous community norms, values and beliefs. Most times these norms and beliefs are quite contradictory to regular school policies and procedures. However, these differences do not mean that the Indigenous community does not value education – quite the contrary. Elders from the many communities I’ve worked with in multiple traditional territories give the same message – that education is important – and encourage their youth to value and attain their education.
Julaine and her students took time before and after their launch to keep the relationship going through local visits and exchanges with the Blackfoot community throughout their school year.
Indigenous education is most effective when the learning goes beyond what is recommended or taught in the provincially mandated Program of Studies. This means that when teachers develop relationships with the Indigenous community, they must nurture that relationship and take measures to ensure it grows. There are many possibilities for utilizing Indigenous knowledge in the classroom to teach and benefit all students.
The primary reason that I believe the project has worked, and will continue to work in the education of these students, is that the learning was organic, interwoven into the continuum of their academic program over a long period of time. The teachings will continue to be a significant part of the Stavely students’ education going forward because the lessons were not structured or confined into a “one-time” or “one and done” unit/thematic lesson approach. Like Indigenous knowledge itself, the teaching of Indigenous knowledge needs “flow” and time to take root.
This Project of Heart stands out for me in the fact that Julaine didn’t wait for training or learning experiences to be provided or for the curriculum to be revamped – she saw the need and she and her class took responsibility for educating themselves.
Generally speaking, non-Indigenous people tend to not take the first step to learn more about Indigenous people. When non-Indigenous people/educators reach out to understand Indigenous cultures, the Indigenous embrace the learners any way they can, as many Indigenous Nations refer to the value of generosity and compassion. When one is willing to learn and place their “Heart” into it, the best learnings come, and yes, Indigenous communities share.
The best advice I have for readers is that there are no quick solutions, lesson plans or instructional keys to creating great teaching moments in Truth and Reconciliation.
In 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission released the 94 Calls to Action. There are a number of the Calls to Action that address education and our need as a Canadian society to correct the gaps that continue to exist in education as one step to “reconciling” with Indigenous communities. In my graduate studies I looked at the life cycle of a teacher: post-secondary student, pre-service teacher, new teacher, and existing classroom teacher. I found that, at the present time, there is very little requirement for teachers to have Indigenous Studies as a significant part of their education to attain their teaching degree, to begin or to continue teaching in classrooms. As a result, there exist many gaps still evident in today’s education system regarding appropriate education for and about, and created with, the local Indigenous community and why these particular Calls to Action exist.
The important step in understanding how to realize the potential in the Calls to Action is to not take action without an Indigenous person to guide your curricular/program development. There is a myriad of possibilities as to how to create meaningful programming and they are quite easy to implement. But educators cannot possibly create educational programming without understanding what their Indigenous communities need and what their values are. Although fascinating, learning about the Haudenosaunee and Iroquois Confederacy is not as valuable as learning about the Blackfoot Confederacy when in Blackfoot Traditional Territory.
The best advice I have for readers is that there are no quick solutions, lesson plans or instructional keys to creating great teaching moments in Truth and Reconciliation. Julaine and her students showed that their learning took a lot of work and time and they achieved so much more at the end of their year by doing so.
As an Indigenous educator, Blackfoot knowledge keeper and ceremonialist, I will always look back and continually reference this Project of Heart as one that should and could be modelled in classrooms and schools across the country. I, as an Indigenous parent, strive to have my Indigenous heritage respected and appropriately represented and taught in my child’s school. For me, the Project of Heart attained what I hoped Indigenous education could be, an equal and balanced relationship between a teacher and her Indigenous community. Throughout the students’ journey, several of them came forward and acknowledged they were of Indigenous heritage and felt comfort in doing so. I believe it was a first time for the school.
I wish Staveley school and students and all readers a happy journey through Canada’s reconciliation. It really is a new dawn for a better next 150 years.
Katamustin (Blackfoot: Until we speak/meet again).
Photo: Courtesy Julaine Guitton
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
As Canada moves to reconciliation, we find ourselves at a crossroads – a crossroads between identifying the problem and finding its solution. And as this country’s perspective on Indigenous issues is rapidly changing, so should our education system. The problem is that we are still stuck in the past. From uninterested teachers to poor, outdated resources, we as students deserve better. Our approach to teaching Canadian history must change.
From Grades 4 to 7 we’ve learned the same progression of Canadian history. It starts when European explorers come to Canada. We’ve moved on from them “discovering” Canada but it’s still in no way a fair account of history. They’re treated as heroes — the French and English explorers who established the European-Canadian society as we know it. What this narrative fails at is both teaching what happened before settlers arrived and how their arrival hurt Indigenous peoples.
History textbooks that are so unjust shouldn’t be permitted today.
Updating our resources is never a priority for school administrations. Students, donors and staff all prefer more tangible investments: new technology, trips or artists/scientists in the school, not a new outlook on our history. Yet history textbooks and other resources should be a number one priority, as the difference between what is and should be taught is drastic. History faces unique problems that are unlike any other subject, as our society’s outlook on its complex issues have changed since our textbook’s publication in 2001. That inaction is leaving people behind.
History textbooks that are so unjust shouldn’t be permitted today. Books that have one page on the more than 10,000 years of history before settlers came. Books that seldom give the view of Indigenous people. And books whose writers thought it was acceptable to write one short chapter on the traditions of Indigenous peoples and throw their hands up in the air. All these flaws create a textbook that chooses whose voices should be heard by the students, instead of letting all sides share their stories and the students make that judgment for themselves.
As Canada comes closer to a turning point, one would think that the time to act is now. Yet no action is being taken. So being tired of that inaction and the same flawed narrative, I proposed a solution.
I presented my teacher with a few pages of the Manitoba curriculum, which went further in depth about Indigenous peoples, and proposed that this could fill some of what was missing in the textbook. It built on what the Ontario curriculum lacked, highlighting the wide range of Indigenous societies and the traditions of pre-contact Indigenous peoples.
I was shut down and told that I could refer students to the resource and they could access it in their own time. A fellow classmate told me afterwards that no other student was going to go to that resource. I agreed with him. If we don’t challenge our students to think differently, nothing will change. And this burden falls on educators. Students shouldn’t be begging to further their education, teachers should be inviting it.
Every Toronto school teaches empathy – putting oneself is someone else’s shoes. Yet the schools’ actions don’t follow through. As non-Indigenous people we need to put ourselves in the shoes of the Indigenous people from across the country whose stories, culture and voice are being left out. We will never be able to repair our relations with Indigenous peoples if we’re being taught that they don’t matter. If our government and our society are so keen on changing those relations, they must start changing our education.
Note: The Ontario government plans to introduce a revised curriculum in Fall 2018 that will include or strengthen Indigenous content in several subject areas.
Photo: courtesy Jed Sears
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
This is an exciting time to be a teacher. Teachers have amazing potential to help make Truth and Reconciliation a reality, and to move the next generation forward in creating a fairer, more just, and more inclusive Canada. It’s a big job, and one that many teachers approach with a bit of fear and more than a few questions.
The teachers in our schools want to do a great job. In addition, they often feel an overwhelming responsibility to right the wrongs of the past and inspire their students to seek equity and social justice. They recognize that infusing Indigenous histories, cultures and perspectives into educational curriculum is a way to contribute towards the goal of reconciliation by providing students with an opportunity to learn about the Indigenous people with whom they share the land, and on whose ancestral territories all Canadians currently reside. Unfortunately, these same teachers also know that they are being asked to inform students about an Indigenous people whom they themselves have learned little about. As well, many teachers have had little, if any, cultural sharing or first-hand experience with Indigenous people. It is not surprising then, that many teachers’ feelings range from nervous and unprepared to woefully inadequate when asked to bring these topics into their classrooms.
To get started, we would like to explore some fundamental approaches to fostering reconciliation in your classroom. It’s very important that teachers realize that the education system has been used to rob Indigenous people of their languages, their cultures, and their communities through the residential school system. This is why teachers have a responsibility to work with Indigenous people, families, and communities, rather than continuing to work in a system that speaks for Indigenous people, families, and communities – that is, don’t do for, do with. It is also vital that teachers understand that doing nothing adds to the problem. When teachers do nothing, Indigenous children don’t see themselves in their classrooms, and non-Indigenous children do not learn about this land’s first – and continuing – inhabitants. Then, students implicitly learn that Indigenous people, knowledge, and perspectives are worth less, and they may continue to pass on the systemic injustices that have gotten us into this situation.
The challenge for teachers is that many don’t know how, or where, to begin. There are more than 50 First Nations in Canada, in addition to the distinct Métis and Inuit groups. If teachers are required to be experts on all these groups before teaching their students, then the teaching and the learning will never happen. Fortunately, teaching is not about having all the answers and teachers are not being asked to be experts on all of Canada’s Indigenous people.
However, the question then becomes: “How can teachers indigenize their classrooms well?” Many teachers are understandably afraid of teaching Indigenous material poorly, perpetuating stereotypes or overstepping their bounds and engaging in cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation can take on many forms. It can be the adoption of elements of one culture into another without fully understanding or acknowledging their meaning. It can mean making use of sacred objects, like headdresses at Hallowe’en for example, without learning about why they are sacred or important. It can mean presenting Indigenous peoples as caricatures or as existing only in the past. It can mean speaking on behalf of Indigenous people or taking on elements of Indigenous spirituality without getting permission from qualified Indigenous knowledge keepers. Basically, cultural appropriation is taking and using important cultural elements that do not belong to you without learning about them first. It is setting yourself up as an expert on a culture you are not a part of, or not respecting the living existence of Indigenous people, the sophistication of Indigenous knowledge and spirituality, or the capability of Indigenous experts, Elders, and knowledge keepers.
The task may seem daunting, but teachers across the country are reading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s “calls to action” and embracing the responsibility to teach for Truth and Reconciliation. They’re finding that there are many tools out there to help them succeed. Many teachers utilize a pedagogy rooted in student inquiry to facilitate this learning. The inquiry approach is a wonderful opportunity for teachers to move metaphorically from the position of all-knowing sage in front of their students, to co-learning partner sitting beside their students. In addition, recent and ongoing changes to curriculum in all provinces means not only that teachers are required to teach Indigenous topics, but that ministries of education are required to provide resources and supports for those teachers. Realistically however, it will take more than resources or a change in pedagogy to facilitate the change that is needed in education. It will take some time and some dedicated work.
If the truth comes before the reconciliation, then Canadian teachers are at the forefront of this country’s future.
The truth is that reconciliation is about relationships, and you can’t have a relationship with someone you don’t know. A good place to start is to learn something about the Indigenous people with whom you share your land. It would be disappointing if students in Canadian classrooms learned more about the Maya and the Maori than they learned about the Salish and the Haudenosaunee. Every teacher in every classroom in Canada is teaching in a school that is physically connected to land that tells the story of the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. Every day our students walk and play on land that has a history and a significance to Indigenous people. Imagine what our relationship would look like if everyone understood that significance, that history, and better understood the people whose enduring presence demands reconciliation. If the truth comes before the reconciliation, then Canadian teachers are at the forefront of this country’s future. It’s not about teaching everything, it’s about having the integrity and humility to teach something – and to teach it in a good way.
Investing time to prepare yourself to teach Indigenous content is crucial to success and helps to build confidence. There are many opportunities available. For example, to better prepare yourself to teach Indigenous content, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) offers a great online resource called It’s Our Time: The AFN Tool Kit, available at www.afn.ca/education/toolkit. The tool kit has many classroom resources, as well as “Plain Talks” available on iTunes, or as PDFs, that will provide you with information on a wide variety of Indigenous topics, from treaties to languages.
Other ways to better prepare yourself include completing an online course, attending Indigenous events, participating in professional development activities offered through the school board or elsewhere, and engaging with Elders or knowledge keepers.
The best resources are human resources. Indigenous people have time-tested knowledge systems, education, governance, and ways of raising children that are sophisticated and beautiful; you won’t regret taking the time to have conversations with Indigenous people in your community and learning about them. In some places, that isn’t easy and there is much healing to do. Some places where you can find experts on these matters include friendship centres, Indigenous Studies departments and Indigenous student services at universities, and most importantly, the Indigenous education experts that many school boards employ.
There are also many print and multimedia resources. The number of Indigenous authors is on the rise, and you can find classroom resources by Indigenous authors, including kits, books, and digital tools. When choosing resources, think about your students and their interests. Choosing resources that are relevant to your area will also make the content more meaningful to your students and teach them about the diversity of Indigenous Nations.
You can be a part of the move to teach for Truth and Reconciliation. As Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chair Justice Murray Sinclair said, “…education, or what passed for it, got us into this situation, and education is what will lead us out.”2 Teachers have great responsibility to move our society forward. But we are teachers. We love learning. We love our students. We shape minds and societies. We are up to the challenge.
First published in Education Canada, May 2018
1 Statistics Canada, Census of Population, 2016.
2 Excerpt from presentation by the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair to the Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, September 28, 2010, p.6. www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/senate%20speech_handout_copy_E_Final.pdf
With practical applications from the H’a H’a Tumxulaux Outdoor Education Program of B.C. School District No. 20 (Kootenay-Columbia)
This case study report examines how three key components of an Indigenous-centred program – land-based learning, spirituality, and the Medicine Wheel – have created a template for heightened student engagement and retention. Through these components, this report proposes recommendations for educators and administrators tasked with integrating Indigenous Worldviews into the classroom.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION RESOURCES
Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit
Archibald, J-A. (2008). Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press.
http://www.ubcpress.ca/books/pdf/chapters/2007/indigenousstorywork.pdf
Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015). Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Ottawa, ON. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/Reports/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf
The State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach to Measuring Success
Canadian Council on Learning (2009). The State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada: A Holistic Approach to Measuring Success. Ottawa, Canada.
http://www.afn.ca/uploads/files/education2/state_of_aboriginal_learning_in_canada-final_report,_ccl,_2009.pdf
L’École en réseau (Remote Networked Schools initiative)
Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. L’École en réseau : Classes collaboratives.
http://eer.qc.ca/
Strong Nations Publishing Inc.
http://www.strongnations.com/
Les éditions du soleil de minuit.
http://www.editions-soleildeminuit.com/
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
United Nations (2007).
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf
REFERENCES
Aikenhead, G. S. (2006, October). Towards Decolonizing the Pan-Canadian Science Framework. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics & Technology Education. pp. 387-399.
Aquash, M. (2013). The First Nations Ways of Knowing: The Circle of Knowledge. First Nations Perspectives, 5(1), 25-36.
Armstrong, H. (2013). Indigenizing the Curriculum: The Importance of Story. First Nations Perspectives, 5(1), 37-64.
Bell, D. (with Anderson, K., Fortin, T., Ottoman, J., Rose, S., Simard, L, Spencer, K., & Raham, H.) (2004). Sharing Our Success: Ten Case Studies of Aboriginal Schooling. Kelowna, BC: Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education.
Laferrière, T., Métivier, J., Boutin, P-A., Racine, S., Perreault, C., Hamel, C., Allaire, S., Turcotte, S., Beaudoin, J., & Breuleux, A., (in press). L’École en réseau : une vision de l’apport du numérique au monde scolaire québécois, une mise en œuvre audacieuse. CEFRIO. 64 pages
LaSpina, J. A. (2003). Designing Diversity: Globalization, Textbooks, and the Story of Nations. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35(6), 667-696.
Lavoie, C., Mark, M-P. and Jenniss, B. (2014). Indigenizing Vocabulary Teaching: An example of multiliteracies pedagogy from Unamen Shipu, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 8, 207-222.
Lévesque, C. and Polèse, G. (2015). Une synthèse des connaissances sur la réussite et la persévérance scolaires des élèves autochtones au Québec et dans les autres provinces canadiennes. Montréal: Réseau de recherche et de connaissances relatives aux peuples autochtones (DIALOG) et Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS).
Thomas, A., & Paynter, F. (2010). The Significance of Creating First Nation Traditional Names Maps. First Nations Perspectives, 3(1), 48-64.
The CEA is pleased to announce that the H’a H’a Tumxulaux Outdoor Education Program has been selected among 47 applicants from across Canada to participate in the 2016 Indigenous ‘Innovation that Sticks’ Case Study Research Program. As part of this initiative, the CEA will conduct field study research to highlight how innovative educators have succeeded in engaging at-risk youth through culturally-relevant, land-based pedagogy.
H’a H’a Tumxuluax means “Sacred Land” in the language of the Sinixt people. This program’s educational model incorporates Aboriginal Worldviews and perspectives of teaching and learning, designed to ensure that students acquire the skills necessary to form positive and healthy relationships with themselves, with their community and with Mother Earth. The program emerged as a timely response to dwindling student engagement and a strong will to offer learners of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descent a culturally-relevant and culturally-sustaining educational experience.
“Our selection panel of leaders in Indigenous education have lauded H’a H’a’s deep investment in propelling Aboriginal traditional knowledge to the forefront as a powerful way to captivate students and improve learning outcomes,” says CEA President and CEO Ron Canuel. “Clearly, this is a whole community approach and is a shining example for Elders, Knowledge Keepers and educators from across the country who seek to engage Indigenous learners in their own schools and communities.”
This program also successfully engages and collaborates with parents, staff and the wider community to ensure that cultural and ceremonial practices are incorporated and honoured. As a result, students have returned from land-based outings with an increased sense of confidence, trust and openness to learning that is grounded in activities that focus on leadership, communication and community involvement.
“Returning to a traditional outdoor educational setting for our students is what matters to us,” says Nathan Robinson, Principal of the Kootenay-Columbia Learning Centre. “Students are tuning in because they’re out of the classroom and they’re learning first-hand about traditional ceremonies, languages and histories. Self-identity and pride in our youth blossoms because they feel loved, respected and valued.”
The Kootenay-Columbia Learning Centre, which delivers the H’a H’a program, will receive a $10,000 contribution courtesy of initiative sponsor State Farm Canada to grow its activities and extend its impact. Program representatives will share their best practices with a CEA researcher, who will produce a case study report about the conditions and processes that allowed H’a H’a to succeed, including the steps that could be taken to spread this innovation to other classrooms and schools across Canada.
For more details about this program, please visit:
www.cea-ace.ca/innovationthatsticks
CEA knows there are Indigenous and provincial schools where tremendous innovation is happening by taking risks and implementing culturally relevant, community-supported, innovative programs that connect deeply with Indigenous learners and their way of learning and coming to know. This case study research program will help CEA to understand and promote how one successful program for Indigenous learners can support other educators in getting their own ‘innovations to stick’.
The Kootenay Columbia Learning Centre hosts multiple alternative education programs across two campuses in Trail and Castlegar, B.C. This alternative school was chosen as the first outreach site for the “Take a Hike” Program, which incorporates academics, adventure-based learning, therapy and community involvement.
For more information:
Max Cooke CEA Director of Communications (bilingual)
|
Nathan Robinson Principal of Alternative Education |
Supported by:
This initiative is generously funded by State Farm Canada, which share CEA’s commitment to supporting leaders who are transforming Canada’s education system.
When Darren McKee attended school in rural Saskatchewan, he was the only brown boy in a sea of white, and he knew it. The bullying and intimidation he suffered drove him to get an education against the odds and work to ensure that no other Aboriginal child experienced what he did.
McKee worked as a teacher and principal, a deputy minister of education, and is now the Executive Director of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association, focusing on what he calls the “cultural responsiveness” of the education system. As an example, he offers an anecdote from his own teaching career: trying to teach Aboriginal kids from remote communities how to spell the word “escalator” when most of them had no idea what that was.
“My own culture was about education and we were always taught how important learning was,” McKee says. “But the system wasn’t about learning, it was about conforming.”
That, he says, is changing, thanks to initiatives like former Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Martin Family Initiative (recently changed from Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative, www.maei-ieam.ca), part of which aims to keep First Nations, Métis and Inuit kids in school through entrepreneurial training tailored to their culture. The Aboriginal Youth Entrepreneurship Program (AYEP) is now offered in 48 high schools in eight provinces and one territory, and so far, about 700 students have completed it. “We know that a majority of the kids who enter the program continue to complete their school, which is a huge thing,” McKee says. “For the first time, they feel like they are successful and they’re treated as successful. One of our students won a national entrepreneurship award.”
Sydney Demerais is enrolled in the AYEP at Prince Albert Collegiate Institute and will be the first of her six siblings to graduate from high school. While this 17-year-old Plains Cree student plans to attend university to become a nurse, she’s loving learning how to be “professional and grown up” in the AYEP.
“I’m very excited about the financial part of the course and learning about banking,” Demerais says in a telephone interview during a break from class. “I’m thinking I’d like to start a non-profit youth centre where kids could do sports or go to a gym.”
Martin himself credits the quality of the teachers and support of principals for the program, which was designed in 2008. But also the workbooks and textbooks – the first of their kind in the world – were designed by two Indigenous teachers with Indigenous culture in mind.
“These kids can see other Indigenous people succeeding,” Martin said in a recent interview. “They have role models to follow.”
“It doesn’t matter where you come from, who you are, you deserve the opportunity to be successful,” says McKee. But one key to that success is networking and being introduced to people and places that in the past may have been out of reach. Making those connections requires going outside the traditional education silo and building partnerships with credit unions, chambers of commerce and corporate sponsors, outfitting the kids with suits and giving them networking opportunities.
“We have to engage in these partnerships that invite those outside of education, like the Martin foundation and the businesses. Traditionally, we haven’t done that in education” McKee says. “There are certain rules when you come to work for kids, but if you follow those rules you’re welcome to be part of it.”
When I spoke with her, Desmerais was looking forward to getting dressed up and attending a formal dinner in a restaurant organized by the local credit union, where she and her fellow students could get to know established business people from Prince Albert.
Tiara Opissinow is a Grade 10 student at Eagleview Comprehensive High School, in Onion Lake, Sask. She says she has learned skills she can use to help her grandmother, who runs a food truck and sells homemade earrings.
“I think I’ll be able to help her with the accounting,” she says over the phone during a break in class. “The course doesn’t just teach us how to start a business, but we also learn life skills like banking, saving money, budgeting and accounting.” Opissinow thinks she may want to become a lawyer, but since signing up for AYEP, she is also considering taking business at university.
Martin has made it his mission to right the inequalities in Aboriginal education and has received assurances from the current Liberal government that funding to Indigenous schools will increase to ensure it happens.
With Canada’s fastest growing population under the age of 15 being Aboriginal, it just makes economic sense, he says. Plus, it’s downright discriminatory that Indigenous schools, which are funded by the federal government, receive 30-50 percent less financial support than other schools, which are funded by the provinces.
“The federal government doesn’t have a department of education, but there’s no way any federal government can plead ignorance,” Martin said in a recent interview. “Those numbers are sitting out there. They’ve been verified by every province and every First Nation in the country. That’s why teachers in these schools leave, this is why there are no special programs for kids with disabilities or any of that.”
And there’s no doubt that Indigenous students are in need of increased support. Statistics Canada figures from 2011 suggest a whopping 58 percent of on-reserve Aboriginal students drop out of high school, compared to just ten percent of their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Martin maintains that many students have given up long before reaching adolescence, partly because they have never learned to read and write fluently. While it may be obvious, studies from around the world have concluded that reading well is fundamental to success in school.
To try to shift the imbalance, his Aboriginal Education Initiative began a literacy pilot project in 2009, based in two Ontario Ojibwa community schools – Hillside School, run by the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation on the shores of Lake Huron, and Walpole Island Elementary School, about two hours from Kettle Point. The results were extraordinary. The number of Grade 3 students whose reading and writing skills met or exceeded the Ontario Ministry of Education’s target jumped to 91 percent, an increase of more than 50 percent and well above the provincial average of 70 percent. Further, the number of students identified as needing speech and language services decreased significantly.
With funding from the Pathy Family Foundation and the Lawrence and Judith Tanenbaum Family Foundation, about $1 million was spent in each of the two schools over five years, mostly on intensive training for teachers. The key change was that reading and writing had to be taught for 100 minutes every morning from Kindergarten to Grade 8.
“At the end of the program, when we had brought Kettle and Stony Point up to the provincial average, which was extraordinary – people said it couldn’t be done – the Chief of Kettle Point said, ‘This proves if you give us the tools, we will do the job’,” Martin says. “And he was so right.”
It was that thinking, says Martin, that inspired the creation of the MAEI in the first place.
“We knew that if we provided the tools to the Métis, the First Nations and the Inuit, they would develop education systems as good as any in the country,” he said. “And if they could demonstrate that, there would be no excuse for any federal government not to fund them properly.”
Now the challenge is to get the program in all Indigenous schools in the country and to see Indigenous Canadians succeeding on the same scale as other Canadians right through from Kindergarten to PhD.
“There’s no doubt in my mind this is possible,” Martin says. “In every area where we have our programs it’s making a difference. People ask, can we afford to do this? If anyone came along to any Canadian and said we can’t afford to give your child a primary school education, Canadians would not stand for that. Why would they stand for it for their next-door neighbour who happens to be Indigenous?”
As for the entrepreneurship program, McKee is already seeing the benefits in the 15 Saskatchewan schools where it is currently offered. “I’m seeing our young Aboriginal people who are confident,” he says. “It was education that got us into this dilemma, through the Indian Act and the residential schools, and it will be education that will get us out of it – but we have to fundamentally shift the way we do things.”
In February of 2015, CEA gathered over 100 Indigenous, education and corporate leaders in Toronto to listen to a conversation between former Prime Minister Paul Martin and CEA President and CEO Ron Canuel about the crucial steps that must be taken to provide Indigenous children the future they deserve.
Watch highlights from “Indigenous Education: The Urgency to Act”: www.cea-ace.ca/paulmartin
En Bref: L’ex-premier ministre Paul Martin s’est donné pour mission de redresser les iniquités de l’éducation autochtone. Il soutient qu’il est tout simplement discriminatoire que le budget des écoles autochtones, financées par le gouvernement fédéral, soit inférieur de 30 à 50 pour cent à celui des autres écoles, qui sont financées par les provinces. Le programme Jeunes entrepreneurs autochtones de l’Initiative d’Éducation Autochtone Martin donne déjà à des élèves du secondaire assez d’assurance pour se lancer dans le monde des entreprises – où leurs ancêtres étaient rarement les bienvenus. En outre, un projet pilote destiné à enseigner la lecture et l’écriture aux plus jeunes dans deux écoles autochtones a remporté un succès retentissant. « Je suis absolument persuadé que c’est possible, affirme Paul Martin. Chacun de nos programmes a des résultats probants. »
Photo: courtesy the Saskatchewan School Board Association
First published in Education Canada, September 2016
Wyatt sat uncomfortably in his chair, squirming as I looked over his transcript and file. Five different grade schools, two middle schools, not back to back. “What happened in the intervening year?” I thought, but deeper down, I understood. I’d seen it all too often before.
For over five years, I worked as a therapist in private practice, leaving my home office to my employees three days each week as I travelled to five separate First Nations. On the days I hadn’t scheduled myself to work in the community health centres, I would arrive at the local school, just as the tired students were filing in for another day of classes.
First, I would speak with the principal or office personnel and lay out the slate of clients I was to see that day. Frequently I would be told, “Oh, she’s not here anymore; they’ve moved to the city. John is back again, though. Things didn’t work out so well down in Toronto.”
The movement of many families from First Nations to the cities and back again is well documented. Some theorists point to the effort to find meaningful employment as the motivation for these transitions, but in my experience, many parents are also seeking to provide a strong education for their children. It’s a different kind of school choice that leads families from First Nations to move to the city in order to enrol in public provincial schools.
After moving from private practice into a public school setting, I continued to see these students. The difference was that I now encountered them as they entered public high school. I looked again at Wyatt’s file. One… two… we were the third high school that he had attended, including the one back in his home community. He had credits at the Grade 9, 10, and 11 levels, but he hadn’t fully completed the core courses in any one of these grades.
“How was it, going to school in the city?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t need to say more. The tone of his voice told it all. Like a fish pulled from the water, First Nations students who arrive in provincial schools from rural communities find themselves surrounded by a culture and educative process that feels unfamiliar, foreign and even threatening. To a lesser extent, but still in a very real sense, those whose families have lived away from their home communities for generations still sense this disconnection. Schools incorporate token nods to Indigenous content, but they seem to be unaware that, to those coming from Indigenous communities, this is very different from the local traditions.
Furthermore, some federally operated schools on reserves may stand decade after decade as counter-cultural institutions, chronically failing to acquire any affinity with the community around them. To be fair to those working in these schools, it should also be noted that, in many communities, acquiring an education from governmental schools is seen as “selling out,” and the pressure not to succeed can be great. At times it is this very dynamic that compels families to make the choice to move to cities and towns, where they sense a greater freedom to achieve.
“I think you’ll find things different here,” I said. Wyatt looked around my office, his eyes fixing briefly on the painting of an eagle soaring over sunlit clouds and then on the traditional cedar bough hanging above the door. His shoulders relaxed, but just a little.
It wasn’t until the bell rang that Wyatt’s eyes began to show a glint, a sparkle of hope. We hadn’t finished crafting his schedule, but one by one First Nations students began to fill my small office. They all knew that they didn’t need to knock – this was their space.
“Hey, are you the new guy from up north?” asked Tyrell.
“That’s my home community where you’re from,” Talia joined in. “But I haven’t been there since I was a baby.”
Wyatt looked at me questioningly. “Can’t keep a secret around here,” I smiled back at him.
“Wyatt, right?” Tyrell continued. “Hey, you want to come with us to the caff? I’ll show you around.”
Wyatt looked again at me. “Go ahead; I’ll be here when you get back.”
Parents considering the move from their First Nation are confronted with the dilemma of weighing the benefits and trade-offs of such a move. To stay in the community will ensure a connection to the local culture, to family and to traditional values. In traditional cultures, success is defined in much broader terms than mere economic security and advancement, in that individuals are only considered to be successful when they take their places well in the circles of community and creation.
On the other hand, federal schools are, in most cases, funded far below the per capita allotments seen in off-reserve schools. School facilities are often not as desirable, a large percentage of teachers do not remain for extended periods of time, and most who are parachuted in from elsewhere bring with them an unfamiliarity with the local culture and a promotion of value systems based in non-Indigenous thought.
Those who leave, however, are not just moving away from that which they perceive to be negative; they are also attracted by certain aspects of off-reserve schooling. Students at provincial schools frequently demonstrate stronger academic achievement and better preparation for post-secondary education. Furthermore, school facilities, in many cases, demonstrate state-of-the-art innovations and technology.
In leaving, parents are aware that their children will be losing intimate contact with their home communities. Other costs are not as immediately obvious. The often-hidden realities of education off-reserve include subtle alienation, which is felt by students who don’t see themselves or their Indigenous heritage reflected in the curriculum, in the teaching staff or in the school’s physical environment. This marginalization inevitably creates a sense of isolation and disconnection that is only heightened by instances of overt racism. When families choose to access the benefits of provincial schools by sending their children to be billeted or to live with relatives, while they themselves remain in the home community, an even greater sense of isolation ensues.
Clearly, parents seek the best for their children, but the trade-offs are real, and many of the negative factors are unforeseen. At the same time, it is within the power of provincial educators to mitigate and even eliminate the factors that cause marginalization.
In June 2015, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) convened a symposium in Yellowknife, NT, inviting delegates from across Canada. The concern being addressed was simple: How do the Indigenous peoples of Canada gain equitable employment as teachers in the classrooms of the nation? In Manitoba, for example, 17 percent of the population identifies as Indigenous,1 while only 10 percent of the teachers in the province do so.2 Furthermore, those teachers who are Indigenous typically gravitate to specific communities, leaving others with an even greater disproportion in representation.
Delegates to the CMEC conference sought to address the central issues, but repeatedly they were confronted with the inescapable fact that education in Canada does not reflect Indigenous values, mores and beliefs.3 Indigenous students feel alienated from the educative process. This more pressing reality underlies the reluctance of Indigenous students to enter careers in education.
Near the close of the conference, working groups were tasked with addressing one of eight key questions focused on bringing more credentialed Indigenous teachers into the system. However, of the eight working groups, fully three returned to report that their primary suggestion would, instead, confront the greater challenge of the ghettoization of Indigenous philosophies and perspectives in the public schools themselves. These three sub-committees each, in turn, made the recommendation that, across all jurisdictions in Canada, a requirement be set in place whereby completion of a minimum of one credit in Indigenous studies would be required for graduation from secondary school, regardless of school or program specializations. Thus, without exception, students graduating from high school in Canada would have some background in Indigenous thought and culture. Thus dual-diploma and technical education programs (i.e. those offering the standard diploma coupled with a second diploma in specialties such as business or the trades), university preparatory programs, and even secondary programs as diverse as those serving Hutterite colonies would all require exposure to Indigenous philosophy and thought.
Informing this recommendation, which was later affirmed by the conference as a whole, is the understanding that Indigenous thought (diverse as it is in its manifestations and nuances) is beneficial to all learners. Moreover, it was noted that simplifying Indigenous philosophical perspectives for sporadic integration into pre-existent course content creates the impression that Indigenous understandings of the world are substandard, crude and unsophisticated – none of which is accurate.
Conference delegates noted that students in the Northwest Territories are already required to complete such a credit before graduating (Northern Studies 10) and those in British Columbia are able to take an English Language Arts course with Indigenous focus at any grade level from 9 through 12. In Manitoba, students are able to select option courses such as The Consequences and Triumphs of Indigenous Philosophy and Current Topics in First Nations, Métis and Inuit Studies.
For the recommendations of the conference to take effect, each jurisdiction would be required to bring forth legislation, changing the graduation requirements. Whether or not this transpires remains to be seen, but the underlying concern should not be dismissed: Indigenous perspectives are, at best, marginalized in public schools and are often absent entirely from the curricula of specialized, secondary schooling. This leaves non-Indigenous students uninformed and intellectually impoverished and Indigenous students feeling alienated from the educative process.
“Not again.” The teacher in the corner of the staff room was looking over the agenda for our upcoming professional development day and obviously did not notice that I had entered the room. “Why do we always have to talk about Aboriginal education, as if they are the only special interest group? Why not Dutch education or Filipino education?”
That question is not uncommon, though perhaps it is not commonly voiced so insensitively. Furthermore, it can and ought to be answered on a number of levels. First, it should be noted that the treaties of Canada provide for the education of First Nations students, and this has implications for the educative process wherever Indigenous students attend for schooling. The graduation rate for Indigenous students is significantly lower than that of others, often hovering just above 50 percent. One of the most significant reasons for this is the alienation and marginalization Indigenous students feel in Canadian schools. As long ago as 2003, Schissel and Wortherspoon conducted groundbreaking research that found that Indigenous students perform best when immersed in curricular programming that thoroughly reflects Indigenous thought and worldviews. Perhaps counterintuitively, the second-best performance for Indigenous students was found when no attempt at all was made to integrate Indigenous perspectives into the curriculum. The least conducive environment for Indigenous students was that where a sprinkling approach was taken with regard to the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives. Although there may be numerous factors that bring about this dynamic, one of the most plausible explanations would be that students in this third group are experiencing Indigenous content as that which is the other, or worse yet, that which is inferior.4 As a result, they are estranged from the institutions that are ostensibly attempting to promote their success.
A second response to the question of why Canadian educators should feel compelled to incorporate and value Indigenous worldviews in curricula has to do with an ethical obligation. This can best be stated in light of history. The displacement of Indigenous peoples in Canada transpired through the dynamics of interaction between sovereign entities. As such, the sovereign rights of Indigenous people were not extinguished by military subjugation. By contrast, immigrants to Canada come to our shores knowing that, among the many changes that they will encounter, is the need to accommodate Canadian forms of pedagogy. This is a choice that they willingly make; whereas Indigenous peoples never were given that option. Instead, the current pedagogical system has been forcibly imposed over the course of history with devastating consequences.
The third reply to questions concerning the need for Indigenous education in Canadian schools is simply the enrichment that exists when Indigenous thought and worldviews are embraced. While Indigenous philosophy around the world does manifest unique aspects from one location to another, there is a striking commonality to Indigenous thought whether it is in Northeast India, Japan, Zambia or Western Canada. Although anthropologists have been baffled by these undeniable commonalities of thought in populations around the globe that had little if any contact with one another, Indigenous people can easily provide the answer. Regardless of where one may live, common teachers among the four-footed, the finned and the winged races can teach us about the world, what exists, how things work and how we should be in the world. These lessons inform all Indigenous wisdom and understanding. Therefore, an education that includes the perspectives of, for example, the Cree of Saskatchewan will, to some degree or another, also reflect the wisdom of the Ainu of Japan, the Nenets of Russia and other Indigenous people of the world.
At present, the Canadian educational landscape demonstrates an all-too-frequent marginalization of Indigenous worldviews. Students opting into specialized schools through “schools of choice” policies quite often leave any vestige of Indigenous philosophy behind. At the same time, students from Inuit, First Nations and Métis territories who relocate in order to attend provincial and territorial schools also frequently encounter a dearth of authentic Indigenous content.
Only when a conscious effort is made to embrace and value Indigenous thought on an equal footing with those worldviews and perspectives that have their genesis in Europe do Indigenous students perform at rates on par with others. In speaking of the Waadookodaading School in Hayward, Wisconsin, Dr. Anton Treuer points out that this Anishinaabemowin immersion school consistently outperforms other schools on state standards exams, which are taken in English. Waadookodaading School has a student population that is over 95 percent Ojibwe, employs Indigenous teachers and incorporates traditional Anishinaabe understandings of the world in the educative process.
The challenge for educators in Canada is to bring this degree of success into both the mainstream of our educational institutions and the disparate corners created by schools of choice policies. This will occur only when we incorporate and thoroughly value Indigenous philosophy and perspectives. I would like to say that Wyatt found this inclusive curricula in the school where I was on staff. Perhaps he did, on some days and in some classes. The reality, however, is that this school was struggling to adjust its pedagogical practice in the same way that most are across the nation. For Wyatt, it was the support of caring instructors and the friendship of fellow students that helped him to navigate his three years with us and to graduate with honours.
En Bref : Chaque année, un grand nombre de familles autochtones optent de quitter leurs collectivités pour profiter des avantages des écoles publiques provinciales établies dans des villes et villages. Bien que les nouvelles écoles choisies par ces élèves transplantés puissent comporter des avantages d’ordre scolaire, il y a aussi lieu de tenir compte des compromis qui sont faits. La richesse de la philosophie et de la pensée autochtones est, dans une large mesure, marginalisée dans les écoles publiques, de sorte que les élèves autochtones se sentent souvent déconnectés de l’école et les autres élèves sont privés de perspectives élargies qui pourraient enrichir leur expérience éducative. D’ores et déjà, il revient aux établissements d’enseignement canadiens d’apporter les importants correctifs nécessaires pour corriger cette dynamique et établir ainsi l’équilibre que méritent tous les élèves canadiens.
Original Photo: courtesy National Reading Campaign
First published in Education Canada, June 2016
1 “National Aboriginal Populations,” Employment and Social Development Canada. http://well-being.esdc.gc.ca/misme-iowb/.3ndic.1t.4r@-eng.jsp?iid=36
2 Aboriginal Education Directorate, “Aboriginal Teachers Questionnaire Report, 2009” (Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth).www.edu.gov.mb.ca/aed/publications/pdf/teachers_questionnaire09.pdf.
3 J. Tim Goddard and Rosemary Y. Foster, “Adapting to Diversity: Where cultures collide – Education issues in Northern Alberta,” Canadian Journal of Education 27 (2002): 9.
4 Bernard Schissel and Terry Wotherspoon, The Legacy of School for Aboriginal People: Education, oppression and emancipation (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2003), 92-95.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Toronto – February 23, 2016 – The Canadian Education Association (CEA) is proud to launch the Indigenous ‘Innovation that Sticks’ School District Case Study Program to showcase how one K-12 First Nations-focused learning program has increased Indigenous student engagement, achievement and retention, and has the potential to be implemented in other classrooms, schools and school districts across the country.
“CEA knows there are on-reserve/off-reserve schools where tremendous innovation is happening by taking risks and implementing culturally relevant, community-supported, innovative programs that connect deeply with Indigenous learners and their way of learning and coming to know.” says CEA President and CEO Ron Canuel. “We want to learn about, understand, and promote how one successful program for Indigenous learners has grown beyond one classroom.”
The selected Indigenous learning program will receive a $10,000 bursary to be used to continue to support the growth of their innovative practice. The educators and community members that help drive this learning program will share their expertise with a CEA case study researcher to package the ‘lessons learned’ from their successful learning program and publish a case study report to share with other change leaders across Canada faced with the challenge of determining how they can get their own ‘innovations to stick’ and achieve their goals.
This case study program represents a golden opportunity for on-reserve/off-reserve schools or district leadership teams to be recognized nationally for their work while informing, inspiring, and impacting colleagues facing similar challenges in their classrooms.
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Max Cooke
CEA Director of Communications (bilingual)
416-592-6300 ext. 225
mcooke@cea-ace.ca
@max_cooke
Founded in 1891, CEA is a network of passionate educators advancing ideas for greater student and teacher engagement in public education.
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This initiative is generously funded by State Farm Canada, which shares CEA’s commitment to supporting leaders who are transforming Canada’s education system.
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I have always believed that all members of the school community should exhibit strong character traits. With these beliefs held close to my heart, I attended a workshop through my school board (York Region District School Board) on First Nations, Native, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) communities. That’s when I was first introduced to the Seven Grandfather Teachings, a set of teachings on human conduct practiced by groups such as the Anishinaabe, Ojibwe and Chippewa people.
I quickly noticed similarities between the ten character traits familiar to my school board and The Seven Grandfather Teachings: wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility and truth. I wanted to find a way to bring these teachings to my students. I realized how challenging it would be, for both my Grade 6 students and me, to try to incorporate all seven teachings simultaneously and seamlessly into our lives. So instead, our class discussed the teachings and decided to hone in on one in particular: wisdom.
We had several reasons for choosing this particular teaching. First and foremost, I personally have been moved by many stories of elder abuse during my time as a former volunteer crisis counsellor with Victim Services, Toronto Police. Secondly, our class had realized that we are exposed to too many reality television shows, which don’t exactly depict youth respecting each other, their elders, or their environment for that matter. Finally, we landed on wisdom because it just felt right. We were compelled and interested to learn more.
We decided to explore wisdom by inviting our own “elders’’ (immediate and extended family members) into our classroom for a Q&A session. Any family member who was willing and able, was welcomed into our classroom community circle. The turnout was fantastic! Most interested elders happened to be parents, who came forth to share their wisdom about their careers, hobbies and interests. Each elder gave a slightly different take and yet all shared valuable insight. I often found myself being truly inspired.
Our central theme in our inquiry process was that we all, young or old, can learn from one another’s experiences by simply asking good questions. In preparation for each elder’s visit, we used the principles of Bloom’s Taxonomy to develop open-ended questions. For example, one of my female students asked a visiting working mom: “How do you find balance between your home and work life?” while another student discovered her own interest in her father’s career when she asked: “How do you cope with difficult clients? What strategies do you use?” I acted as messenger extraordinaire, ensuring that all visiting elders received student questions prior to their Q&A session so that they could prepare appropriate responses ahead of time.
When elders shared with us their answers to our questions, we made sure to reflect after each visit, and refer back to our learnings when an opportunity to apply them arose. As a further follow-up to each elder visit, I emailed out a SurveyMonkey link, with four short multiple choice questions. The feedback from our guests revealed several things. After visiting the class, elders felt that their child was more included and part of the class, and that they themselves were also more included and part of the class. They believed that all students learned a lot from their visits, and they unanimously expressed positive feelings towards the overall experience.
My students’ reflections were very revealing as well, highlighting many realizations, including the importance of: attentive listening, selflessness, collaboration, time-management, work-play balance, on-going learning, patience, healthy relationships, producing quality over quantity, and the benefits of second- and third-language acquisition.
My students made many of their own connections and engaged in meaningful discussions with one another about developing their collaboration and leadership skills. For example, one boy emphasized his new learning: that being a leader doesn’t mean being a know-it-all.
Our school climate focus on mental health and well-being was also furthered through this experience, as students learned the importance of managing emotions effectively and taking care of their own mental and physical health by maintaining a healthy diet, exercise and sleep.
It is clear that as a collective of learners – students, elders and myself – we have learned so much from exploring wisdom on a deeper and more meaningful level. I really feel that through this process, we have grown closer and more appreciative of one another – and that, to me, is really what wisdom is all about.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, December 2015
What should the future of Canadian science education look like? Can we consider a uniquely Canadian approach to science education – one that challenges common assumptions and changes the very nature of science education in Canadian schools? A recent study conducted among a panel of over 100 science education specialists and scientists addressed these and related questions in a quest to identify where the priority areas should be for Canada’s youth, as they prepare to live and work in a technology-rich and selectively globalized society. One member of the expert panel assembled for the study described the sense of urgency to change the orientation of science education in Canada in this way:
Why should we continue to deliver science education in our schools if we fail to recognize the fundamental importance of sustaining the very systems of this planet upon which humanity critically depend? Allow me to be absolutely clear on this point – the human species is presently on a trajectory that could have globally catastrophic outcomes; science education has a role to play in altering that trajectory and so presents an explicit reason to change our approach to education in the sciences, and soon.
The last episode of looking in-depth at the state of science education in Canada took shape in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. That period almost certainly received some degree of inspiration from the Symons Report of the Commission on Canadian Studies released in 1975. The title of the report – To Know Ourselves – was telling, recalling the Delphic maxim from Plato as he wrote in the Republic that to “know thyself” transcends the individual and relates also to the life of the individual functioning in the larger society. The report was a sweeping manifesto which echoed the patriotism felt by many Canadians after our centennial celebrations.
The Symons Report identified such an urgent need to focus on the perceived lack of a Canadian perspective in science education and technology that it devoted an entire chapter to this one discipline area alone. A subsection of the Commission report titled “Is There a Canadian Science?” provoked a spirited debate among the Canadian scientific establishment with the suggestion that the universality of scientific achievement might also bear the marks of a uniquely Canadian character and culture. Symons’ argument reflected a perspective shared by many at the time: “Science in Canada can be simultaneously international and Canadian in the sense that it is approached from a Canadian viewpoint, it fulfils a particular Canadian need, or it is related to a particular Canadian interest aroused by location, geography, climate or by some other distinct feature of the country.”
It should not be surprising that the science of sustainability is of essence to be integrated through the disciplines. On what alternate grounds would the future of science education rest?
The Science Council of Canada’s groundbreaking 1984 release of Science for Every Student: Educating Canadians for Tomorrow’s World is now 30 years behind us.1 In addition, some 20 years have passed since the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada initiated the process culminating in the Common Framework of Science Learning Outcomes K-12 of 1997, which provided a number of Canadian provinces with the basis for new science curricula (variants of which are still in use today). Given the growing influence being felt from the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) movement in recent years – a decidedly American influence – I felt that the timing was opportune for a national scan, not of the present state of play in science education but a consideration of its future.
Centuries ago, at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece, it was customary for influential members of society to pay a visit to the Pythia, the priestess charged with summoning the messages of the gods and delivering “oracles” about the future. The difficulty with these pronouncements was that they were always delivered as an obscure riddle with two possible outcomes – a great success or a catastrophic failure. It was the interpretation of the recipient that determined the outcome.
In recent decades, Delphi has come to represent a widely used research method – particularly in instances where a large-scale, complex problem is addressed. Originally used in classified Cold-War era research, a Delphi panel gathers expert opinion on a subject or issue from a group intended to be representative of those who should typically have a say in the matter. With the advent of the Internet, we can now pull together an online panel of experts, creating a group that is diverse in expertise, experiences, character, and geography. Moreover, many of the traditional pitfalls of face-to-face deliberations are mitigated by this research method, which preserves the anonymity of the participants while at the same time allowing for the free flow of discussion.2 In recent years, Delphi studies of the expert community have become rather common in educational circles and this methodology seemed a very good fit for a study of the future of Canadian science education.
Over a five-month period in early 2014, an expert panel convened online for a series of deliberations. The membership included curriculum specialists from provincial/territorial education departments, award-winning K-12 science teachers, faculty from Canadian universities in the sciences, engineering and education, industry scientists, and the science media. The process was initiated by lengthy, free-form written responses to four “seed” questions. These questions grounded the research in four areas thought to have high levels of effect:
Once I had examined the remarkable diversity of opinion expressed in the panel members’ responses, a series of questionnaires were developed which asked the panel to rank in order of importance the dominant themes across the four questions. Not only was the panel contributing to a broad consensus on priority areas for science education, each was also asked to provide a justification for their respective positions. Between questionnaires, each member was provided with summaries of the group responses prior to the next round of deliberations. This is the custom in a Delphi study, in the hopes that consensus positions will emerge as each member is provided with the thinking of the others involved in the study. The process stops when it appears as though the positions of the panel have solidified, but not always with consensus achieved.
If there was a common thread making its way through the deliberations of the national panel, and one which appeared and re-appeared across responses to the four questions framing this study, it was this: Sustainability of the planet’s systems and humankind’s relationships with, and influences upon, those systems rises to the top of the list of priorities for science education in this country. No less important, the panel encouraged a priority on making strong connections among the pure sciences, sustainability issues, socio-scientific issues, and the relevance of the curriculum for students. An appreciation for the interconnectedness of these important threads, they felt, could be the foundation of a Canadian understanding of science in today’s world.
In short, the emerging consensus proposed a comprehensive and complete re-orientation of science teaching and learning among Canadians. The result would be an approach I like to call “the circumpolar curriculum,” one that appeals to the context of Canadian society, its demographics, its geographic diversity, its traditional knowledge base, and its position internationally as a northern nation of changing influence. As one panel member described it:
“It should not be surprising that the science of sustainability is of essence to be integrated through the disciplines. On what alternate grounds would the future of science education rest? Concerns about sustainability, health, energy, food security and water are examples of significant issues that face today’s societies and must involve both curriculum policymakers and the requirement of action. The issues are massively interconnected.”
If we were to list the qualities which should characterize science education in Canada for the next couple of decades, and do so on a priority basis, the national consensus from this panel would group these into two distinct sets of priorities which should invite a contentious debate. Figure 1 summarizes these priorities:
When asked to describe the nature of science education as it could be practiced in Canada, much of the commentary from the panel pointed to maintaining the traditional strengths we have enjoyed in areas such as socio-scientific issues and broad literacy in science, but now embedded in a sustainability focus. One new element is the explicit demand to focus attention on our founding peoples’ aspirations, with an eye to explicitly advancing this aspect of a circumpolar approach to science. One panel member described it eloquently as follows:
“The involvement of Indigenous peoples in science education is paramount. Indigenous philosophies, ways of seeing the planet, and defensible and de-colonizing pedagogical practices need to be central to the development of science education among our communities. This is essential if we are to foster greater Aboriginal student engagement in the sciences… learners who often have to engage in ‘border crossing’ in order to ‘feel’ what science is to them. In Canada, there is a critical underrepresentation of Aboriginal people going into science-related programs at the post-secondary level. This has an impact on their ability to participate fully, knowingly having a Canadian voice, and be representative in the world’s scientific communities on an equitable footing.”
Encouraging a new view for science education with the sustainability sciences as its hallmark will require a new understanding of what the term “sustainability” means to the science curriculum. Sustainability focuses on the reconciliation of society’s rapid pace of development with the planet’s environmental limits as laid down by networked systems operating on the time scale of geology, not human life spans. Sustainability science is not, then, exclusively focused on environmental science but recognizes that conducting science outside of environmental, citizenship and cultural contexts is neither remotely conceivable nor possible. That is, science (and education) are inescapably embedded within the environments in which it occurs.
We can now envision a new model for science education with sustainability science at its core, which builds on the emphases identified by the Canadian educator Douglas Roberts about three decades ago (see Figure 2, Visions I and II) to add a third dimension (Vision III) inclusive of Indigenous views – thereby strengthening Canada’s role as a circumpolar nation while simultaneously working to de-colonize the curriculum.
Nature and society mutually shape one another, and therefore sustainability science provides for balanced attention to how society alters the physical environment and how the state of that environment shapes society. There is perhaps a no clearer and more provocative vision for a truly Canadian science education, than one that could develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to attaining a more habitable planet for all.
En Bref: Une étude nationale récente a engagé divers intervenants à l’échelle du pays à répondre à des questions portant sur l’avenir de l’enseignement des sciences au Canada età examiner les facteurs appelés à influer sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage des sciences pour la prochaine génération. Ce panel d’experts a donné lieu à un ensemble de positions consensuelles qui pourraient procurer aux éducateurs une occasion historique de réorienter sensiblement les fins mêmes de l’enseignement des sciences dans les écoles canadiennes. Fait étonnant, les opinions du panel allaient à l’encontre de certaines des présomptions courantes qu’ont les éducateurs canadiens sur ce qui est d’une importance vitale en enseignement des sciences. Ces tensions émergentes concernent notamment le rôle des évaluations internationales des élèves telles que le PISA, le prestige international actuel accordé aux sciences, à la technologie, à l’ingénierie et aux mathématiques (STIM) et un appel à mettre la science et le développement durable au cœur même du curriculum.
Photo: courtesy Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board
First published in Education Canada, December 2015
1 G. W. F Orpwood and J.-P. Souque, “Toward the Renewal of Canadian Science Education: II. Findings and recommendations,” Science Education 69, no. 5 (2006): 625-636.
2 For a comprehensive treatment of the Delphi research method, including many sample studies, see Linstone and Turoff (2002), available online at: http://is.njit.edu/pubs/delphibook/
3 The complete national study by the author is available online at http://hdl.handle.net/1993/30080 or directly from the author at: murrayjo@brandonu.ca
The new issue of Education Canada (“Towards Fewer Dropouts”) has prompted a moderate despair for me. I had hoped that parents, teachers, researchers, students and administrators had come down a long painful path together; a path towards knowing why students do not “drop out” but rather how they enter into a complex spiral of leaving school before they graduate. As it turns out, a lot of youth do leave school early; especially those who have been made socially and/or economically marginal by society and/or Aboriginal youth for whom schools did not work – or much worse. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has just aptly shown, Aboriginal youth were in fact harmed within school walls and in the name of a perverse form of education. Did the young Aboriginal students who ran for their lives and dignity “drop out” of residential schools? Absolutely not. This is the wrong term, and it leads to the wrong spirit of understanding education and youth. The term is therefore a purposeful call by CEA to provocation. It must be.
The term “drop out” has long been contested, found wanting, and thrown onto an ever growing, steaming pile of useless educational concepts and jargon that turn young people into the demons of day. On the contrary, most young people are actively working diligently and negotiating the intellectual engagements required by good teachers and schools. Some are not, and the reasons vary from having no time or opportunity to do so to finding themselves in a school or class that is a poor fit for bringing out the best in them. Some have also gone too far down the tech-industry’s rabbit hole to pay attention, but that is another long story.
The story here is that the system of public education often pushes students away from schools, but not from the true education they value, seek and demand. The act of leaving school is part of a longer-term process of disengagement and only one step in reclaiming education at a later date. But researchers and teachers don’t often get to follow these kids over time in the way that their parents do, it only appears like they have “dropped out” but they have important critiques and messages to share about public education. In fact, a growing number of young people and parents are turning these messages and demands for education into a political action. Politicians now contend with the fact that failing school systems will lead to fewer votes. Some students who leave school before receiving their diploma do so for very good reasons and show signs of courage in leaving. This is why “drop out” was a term I had hoped not to encounter again. But, see it we must. The good news is that my despair has been moderated in knowing that the CEA knows this history and has called us to action. And, in reading the articles by George J. Sefa Dei and Konrad Glogowski and the youth stories embedded in this new issue, there is much cause for hope over despair. In my next blog entry, I will tell you why.
This blog post is connected to Education Canada Magazine’s Towards Fewer Dropouts theme issue and The Facts on Education fact sheet, How Can We Prevent High School Dropouts? Please contact info@cea-ace.ca if you would like to contribute a blog post to this series.
The most important voices in a discussion on reducing the dropout rate are those of the people most affected: the students who leave school early.
The three youth who shared their stories with us range in age from 18 to 25. They have all, since dropping out, returned to some form of schooling and are working hard at it. The special programs they’ve taken advantage of have been crucial to their academic success. While their paths and challenges were all different, what they have in common is that the regular high school program did not work for them.
PAUL-ÉMILE HÉBERT, Montreal, QC
Paul-Émile is fluent and articulate in his second language, English. High school for him seems to have involved a series of setbacks, complications and discouragements, all reinforcing the message: “School is not my thing.”
How did you come to leave high school early?
Things started to go wrong when I left the private school I had attended through Grade 7 and followed my older brother into public school. There, based I guess on reports from my old school that I was inattentive and had ADD, they placed me in a “chemin particulier de formation”– a class of about a dozen students, all different ages and learning needs. I found it weird that I was put in this group and although I got myself out of it a year later, I didn’t get the proper depth for the regular program.
In Grade 9 I failed French and Math. Then in Grade 10, repeating French, I failed it again. It was an extremely difficult class; there were a lot of bright students in that class yet the average grade was maybe 65. Still, I couldn’t understand why my grades were so low. I would show my texts to other students and they couldn’t see what was wrong with them. At that point I started losing hope, though I did still have some pride in my other classes.
Going into Grade 10 I had a lot of anxiety, about my academic path and in general. There was a lot of pressure at school and from my father. I had broken up with my first girlfriend, and hooked up with a different group of people who did a lot of partying. That year I failed a bunch of classes and went to summer school.
In Grade 11 I switched to an alternative school and at first it went well. The semester system they used was better for me: I could do fewer classes at a time for a shorter period. I did well in the first semester. In the second semester, I sort of impulsively moved in with my girlfriend, an hour’s bus ride from the school. She was going through a difficult situation and I felt I had to help her out, so I skipped a lot of classes. I failed that semester.
In the third session (Sept.), the school suddenly adopted a hard-line policy about lateness and absence. I wasn’t able to adapt, and I ended up getting kicked out.
What have you been doing since?
Right after leaving school I was living back at home and working at McDonald’s. It was a sad winter – I was depressed about my life, and only getting a few hours when I really wanted full-time work. But with all that free time, I started developing an interest I’d been dabbling in through high school, which is DJ’ing events. I started doing a lot more gigs and working on my own music.
In April I got a full-time job in a better restaurant, and had enough money to go out and connect with people I wanted to work with in the music industry. It gave me a new perspective, in that a lot of people in music don’t have big academic backgrounds.
What’s going on in your life now?
I’m attending an adult centre to complete my high school. It’s not the standard “here’s a huge textbook; go home and come back when you’re ready to write the exam” kind of program. I attend class, with a teacher, every afternoon. We do one course at a time and complete it in six weeks and this is way better for me. I passed my first English course with flying colours and am almost done my next course. I’m still working part-time and doing some DJ sets, so right now things are going pretty well. I should be ready to graduate around the time of my 19th birthday.
What would have helped make school work for you?
I would have liked clearer criteria: Tell me what, exactly, am I being graded on? And there was so much weight placed on the final exam, but what was on the exam didn’t seem to reflect what we did in class – as if nothing you did in class mattered. So I guess for exams to match the content of the class better.
For me, and I would guess for many kids with ADD or ADHD, a ten-month course can seem excruciatingly long. Fewer courses at a time for shorter periods of time works so much better for me.
I don’t feel I really got any support or accommodation at all with my ADD issues.
Any future goals?
I want to work full time for a while to support the costs of my music, which I plan to continue with, and so I can afford to move into my own place. But longer-term, I’d like to qualify for a trade, and I’ve started looking into various options, like pharmacy assistant or cooking.
I’ve come to a place where I feel my personal goals and talents matter more than my grades. A degree is not the most important thing about a person.
NATALIE GERMAN, Toronto, Ont.
Natalie has returned to an alternative program after taking a year off school. Though she sounds confident and energetic in our interview, this is not how she felt through her teen years. Her story shows how vulnerabilities in mental health and a poor fit with the standard academic program impede school success.
How did you come to leave school before graduating?
School was pretty much OK for me until high school. Then I started really having a hard time showing up, arriving on time, or getting motivated to do my assignments.
I wasn’t skipping school to party or anything. Really I guess it was part of a larger teenage depression. It was more than not wanting to go to school; I often didn’t even want to leave the house. I had really low self-esteem and school was just more than I could deal with.
My mom tried putting me in therapy, and I went to one or two sessions, but I didn’t like them and I stopped going.
Even with all that, I was on track to graduate going into Grade 12, but then I failed that year and didn’t go back.
What have you been doing since?
I took a year off and worked as a fitness instructor for kids. That year helped me in lots of ways. I took on a more adult role and was working with adults. I had to come out of my shell, talk to my co-workers, talk to the kids’ parents. That was good for my self-confidence; I can talk to people now. And it’s a really direct reward system: you show up for work, you get paid. Miss work, you don’t. It makes you grow up.
I enjoyed the job, but it also motivated me to return to school. I realized I don’t want to work at minimum wage forever, you know?
I tried to finish high school doing online courses, but I didn’t succeed. It was way too self-directed for me at that time. I couldn’t even manage to show up for classes, let alone read chapters upon chapters of material and write essays all on my own time.
Looking back, is there anything that could have been different at your school that would have worked better for you?
I did have some teachers who were involved and really cared and who tried to help, but with others, it was like if you fell off the radar they just cut you loose. Like they had other things to worry about. So you just get moved through the system – it’s too institutional.
I also think schools need to be able to approach things differently, for kids like me who learn creatively and are more hands-on. The academic approach – read this, write this essay – doesn’t work for them. There could be more options for students to learn the same concepts in a different way. They don’t even really have vocational schools any more.
What’s going on in your life now?
I started at the Oasis Skateboard Factory in September,1 and just started my second semester. I heard about it from some friends who went, and so far it’s going really well. It’s more arts- and reality-based; less like high school, more like a studio. I think also because of the time I took away from school, I’m ready to take advantage of this.
The environment in this program is more relaxed; we do have assignments and deadlines but we can work at our own pace. And the relationship with our teachers is more personal; it’s like we have one teacher and one boss. I’ve been OK this year, but there are students who are struggling with personal issues and the teachers give them a lot of support.
Any future goals?
I’m actually in the process of applying to university right now. I’ve applied to OCAD, but my number one choice is Ryerson for Interior Design. The only thing I know for certain is that I want to work in an art-related field, but I’m willing to change what that is specifically, depending on how these next few months pan out for me. In the meantime, I’m working towards building an online presence so that I can work as a commission artist.
MORRIS CROW SPREADING WINGS, Lethbridge, Alberta
From a young age, experiences of racism, addiction and personal loss turned schooling into a struggle for Morris Crow Spreading Wings. His story is tough to hear, yet it also speaks to hope and resilience.
How was your early school experience?
I started school on the Blood Reserve, but we moved to Lethbridge (Alta.) after my parents divorced. I was only in Grade 2 when a little girl asked my why I had braids and brown skin, and when I told her I was Aboriginal she said, “Aren’t they the bad people?” That was the start of the racism I encountered throughout my life. Teachers and students would question whether I was a girl because of my braids. I was blamed for fights, accused of stealing when things went missing, and received punishments more severe than those given to White students.
Junior high was not much different, except the racism from other students became more vicious and hurtful. I was routinely called abusive names in front of teachers, with no repercussions. Once a kid lost his saxophone reed in band. I wasn’t sitting anywhere near him at the time and didn’t even play a reed instrument, but he decided that I stole it. The teacher brought me into the office and accused me relentlessly. I was so shocked and upset I couldn’t speak up for myself for fear of breaking out in tears.
When I was 12 my father broke my arm. There was no one I could trust enough to tell, so I said I fell down the stairs. They wouldn’t let me take my pain pills at school, assuming I would likely abuse them.
How about high school?
Soon after this I began experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and by high school I was pretty deep into the drug culture. I became the stereotypical “bad kid,” I guess.
I had a social studies teacher who would put me on the spot as the only First Nations student, asking things like, “Do you think it’s right that First Nations people get all this stuff for free?” I didn’t know how to respond and the rest of the class fed off that.
When I was 14, my mom kicked me out of her house and moved to Ontario, so I went back to my dad’s. He was terminally ill and I tried to look after him. He died the next year, and then I was on my own. The school was aware of this, but nobody made any attempt to offer me support or make any accommodations.
I felt threatened by my step-brothers, who wanted my father’s property. I got in trouble for sleeping at school, but it was because I stayed awake all night, on guard against them with my father’s loaded rifle.
By Grade 12 I was really only going to school to sell drugs and make money. I was just focused on survival. I quit in my second year of Grade 12.
What happened with your life after you quit school?
I got a job and worked for the same employers for seven years. Through that time I was constantly the butt of racist comments from my bosses, my colleagues and the customers. I believe that led me further into hard drugs and addiction. I made a number of attempts to get clean over the years, but always fell back.
What made you decide to return to school?
It was in the sweat lodge at the Young Offenders’ Centre, in 2011, that I made the decision. A career counselor hooked me up with the Red Crow Community College upgrading program. I took it seriously and excelled, even while I was working full time and still struggling with addiction. In two years I completed my upgrading and got into the University of Lethbridge First Nations Transition Program, in the Health Science stream.
I was successful in the program, but still couldn’t shake the addiction and the codependent relationship I was in that supplied it. Finally in March 2014 I started on a methadone program and got clean. I had a relapse in August but recovered and have been clean since then.
Where do things stand for you now?
I’ve found my goal – to be an addictions counselor – and am in my second semester of the program. In my first semester I had a GPA of 3.4 and this semester I’ve won a TA position.
School is going great. But I am still struggling with many areas of my life. I’m overcoming the challenges though. I have positive feelings about what the future holds for me.
En Bref – Lorsqu’on parle de réduire le taux de décrochage, les voix les plus importantes à écouter sont celles des personnes les plus concernées : les élèves qui quittent l’école prématurément. Trois jeunesâgés de 18 à 25 ans partagent leur expérience scolaire avec Éducation Canada. Tous trois ont décidé de décrocher avant d’obtenir leur diplôme d’études secondaires. Depuis, ils sont tous retournés aux études sous une forme ou une autre, et les programmes spéciaux dont ils ont profité ont été déterminants pour leur réussite scolaire. Quoique leur parcours et leurs enjeux diffèrent, ils ont quelque chose en commun : le programme régulier d’études secondaires n’a pas fonctionné pour eux.
Photo: M. Evans (istock)
First published in Education Canada, May 2015
1 OSF is an alternative program offered by the Toronto District School Board, previously profiled in the Theme 2012 issue of Education Canada: www.cea-ace.ca/osf
Popular, independent, and social media across Canada are currently filled with stories of conflict related to natural resource development and exploitation in Indigenous territories. Protest and advocacy in response to proposed pipelines such as Northern Gateway, Keystone XL, Energy East, and the Kinder Morgan Burnaby expansion, hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Mi’qmaqi/ New Brunswick, and social movements such as Idle No More are often motivated by inadequate recognition by government, industry, and much of Canadian society of Indigenous treaty and Aboriginal rights.
Despite recent efforts to increase Indigenous perspectives and knowledge in provincial curricula across Canada and the growth of land-based education programs, educational programming that addresses and explores Indigenous ecological knowledge, philosophies, and associated rights remains largely inadequate. As educators working with students in any level or subject area, it behooves us to become familiar with the underpinnings of these issues in order to apply our understanding in our pedagogical praxis.
During the fall of 2012 and winter of 2013, I lived and taught in Prince George, B.C. My role as an assistant professor of Indigenous Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) proved to be especially interesting, as I arrived during the peak of hearings and protests related to the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would pass just north of Prince George en route to the Pacific Coast. That year also marked the introduction of the federal government’s omnibus Bills C-38 and 45, which contained drastic changes to environmental regulations, and the subsequent emergence of Idle No More.
After over a decade of working in outdoor and environmental education settings across Canada with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, moving to UNBC at this time proved to be catalytic for my understanding of and connection to the link between contemporary socio-ecological issues and education. As a Métis academic and educator originally from Calgary, teaching predominantly Indigenous students from across northern B.C. and becoming involved in activism and advocacy as a faculty and community member also forced me to become much more familiar with the relationship between historical and contemporary treaties or lack thereof, constitutional and case law, and contemporary socio-ecological events. This experience also led me to a much deeper understanding of the historical and constitutional underpinnings of Indigenous rights that form the basis of most socio-ecological conflicts today – an understanding that I believe is lacking for many Canadians.
As an educator, I naturally came to view these events and my participation in them through a pedagogical lens, and I observed that significant teaching and learning was happening before, during, and after these rallies, marches, and protests.
I have now returned to Calgary, an economic and intellectual hub of natural resource development, where I work with education students at the University of Calgary to raise not only their awareness, but also their comfort level and confidence to engage with potentially controversial concepts in their studies and future teaching.
As such, I also experience tension at times when facilitating difficult conversations related to contemporary Indigenous and environmental issues. These dynamics have now become a major focus of my research. For example, I am currently leading a study into the pedagogical experiences of Indigenous and allied activists and educators involved in socio-ecological conflicts such as those described above.
In this article, I share insights from my recent experiences teaching and studying the tensions inherent in contemporary socio-ecological issues. I also introduce and discuss the duty to consult as an example of a commonly misunderstood area of Indigenous land and ecological rights. I conclude by providing suggestions based on my recent research in this area as well as links and resources for educators interested in learning more about historical and contemporary Indigenous ecological and educational topics in order to incorporate such discussions into their teaching practice.
Untangling the roots of conflict
The reverence for and maintenance of longstanding reciprocal relationships with specific geographical areas is a key aspect of Indigenous cultures around the world.1 This is certainly the case in Canada, where Indigenous peoples across the country have developed and maintained intricate relationships with particular territories prior to and after contact with Europeans and other settler groups.2
These reciprocal relationships have shaped Indigenous cultures, languages, epistemologies, and ontologies as well as the landscapes which our ancestors inhabited and cared for over thousands of years. These relationships are also practical in nature, as our ancestors learned over time how to survive and thrive in particular areas.2 As such, threats to Indigenous land rights are not only legal, political, and economic in nature; they threaten the very foundations of Indigenous cultures, wellness, and ways of being.
Unfortunately, many non-Indigenous Canadians remain unaware of the multifaceted centrality of the Land for Indigenous peoples and its recognition in rights that were affirmed in early treaties and the Canadian constitution.3 This lack of understanding often manifests in harsh, prejudicial and misinformed reactions to contemporary conflicts over land, such as recent events related to hydraulic fracturing on Mi’kmaq territory near Elsipogtog, New Brunswick.
(Mis)understanding Aboriginal and treaty rights
Early treaties contained specific “treaty rights” to various benefits such as medicine, education, and farming implements.4 However, in recognition of our ancestors’ longstanding relationships with specific territories, they also acknowledged inherent “Aboriginal rights” to continue traditional land-based activities such as hunting, fishing, and harvesting beyond designated reserve lands in territories subsequently designated as Crown land that were traditionally used by particular communities.
Fiduciary limitations on the potential disruption of these activities by settler governments and industry were clarified in Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982 and subsequently affirmed through a series of provincial and federal court cases as the “Duty to Consult and Accommodate.”4 Canadian courts have ruled in favour of Indigenous groups in the vast majority of cases,5 firmly placing the onus on government in partnership with industry to adequately consult and accommodate Indigenous groups potentially impacted by developments in their traditional territories.
Justice Beverley McLachlan’s recent decision in favour of the Tsiqhot’in people of central British Columbia (Tsilqhot’in v British Columbia) has further affirmed, clarified, and extended Indigenous communities’ rights to make decisions regarding development in their traditional territories. Indigenous groups potentially impacted by resource or other development on or near their traditional territory must be adequately consulted and, if an agreement is reached to move ahead with the development, adequately compensated for the disruption.
There have been a number of recent cases of adequate consultation and accommodation that have led to mutually beneficial resource developments and co-management of parks and other areas of land.6 For example, the Haida Watchmen have successfully co-managed Gwaii Hanaas National Park in partnership with federal and provincial authorities since 1993, protecting their coastal waters and fisheries in keeping with traditional practices as well as preserving and sharing traditional knowledge for the benefit of local residents and visitors alike. For more information on the Haida Watchmen visit: http://coastalguardianwatchmen.ca.
However, despite such progress, broad societal misunderstanding and ignorance of Indigenous rights, the duty to consult, and what constitutes adequate consultation and accommodation are still at the root of many conflicts related to natural resource development and management today. Education about these issues is therefore critically important; however, educators attempting to engage their students in such critically informed discussion often encounter strong resistance and tension.
Challenges and strategies for educators
Formal and informal educators attempting to raise discussion and encourage critical thinking regarding social and environmental issues often experience personal stress as well as conflict with other educators, administrators, students, parents, and community members. Reflecting on personal experiences with socio-critical pedagogy, well known educational theorists Aoki7 and Haig-Brown8 invoke Paulo Freire to note that these processes are often characterized by conflict within one’s self, organizations, and the rest of society.
Mi’kmaq scholar Battiste9 also notes that educators engaging with critical Indigenous issues are faced with the dual task of not only providing facts, but also disrupting deeply seated societal assumptions and prejudices towards Indigenous peoples. Educators attempting to introduce critical environmental issues into their praxis also encounter considerable tension and resistance. As Jickling suggests, “the relationship between environmental education and advocacy is a stormy one.”10 Jickling also questions the role of educator as advocate and proposes that critical educators walk a fine line between merely promoting their personal opinions and facilitating authentically critical and open-minded thought by their students.
Education about these issues is critically important; however educators… often encounter strong resistance and tension.
Regardless of the sensitivity or reflexivity of critical educators, they often still encounter intense resistance from students, peers, administrators, and parents since merely raising issues for discussion can be viewed as controversial. It is therefore understandable that many educators consciously or unconsciously respond by distancing themselves from controversial issues.
However, as discussed by several participants in my recent study, those committed to continue working in critical areas often find success through strategies such as:
Fortunately, inspiring cases of educators embracing these strategies are rapidly emerging and often shared, at least in part, on the Internet. A recent project by Grade 7 Science students at Connect, an inquiry-based middle school in Calgary, is a great example. These students had the opportunity to engage in an experiential research project exploring the social, cultural, economic, health, and environmental considerations of the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Their process and findings are shared on their website through a variety of media such as a sophisticated interactive map developed using ArcGIS technology, a physical model of the pipeline’s proposed route built to scale, and video.
This case exemplifies several of the strategies suggested above. The teacher, Greg Neil, clearly went to great lengths to invite various stakeholders into the classroom, foster critical discussion and inquiry, and connect with the broader community through several special events where the class shared their impressive work. Of particular note are the shifting and varied perspectives expressed by students before, during, and after the project. These students were provided with the necessary resources, tools, and intellectual freedom to conduct an inspiring case-based inquiry into a critical socio-ecological issue.12
As societal leaders working with learners of all ages, educators play a key role in questioning and shaping Canada’s understanding of itself. Sharing and gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges and successes experienced by educators and students who engage with critical socio-ecological issues such as Indigenous land rights, is a crucial first step in developing and providing better resources, curricula, and policies to support this highly important work.
En bref – Les médias populaires, indépendants et sociaux du Canada fourmillent actuellement de récits exposant des conflits en matière de développement des ressources naturelles et d’exploitation des territoires autochtones. Les protestations et les pressions qui en résultent et les mouvements sociaux tels Idle No More sont souvent issus du fait que le gouvernement, l’industrie et une grande partie de la société canadienne ne reconnaissent pas les traités et les droits des Autochtones. L’auteur de cet article fait état des constatations tirées de son expérience récente d’enseignement et d’étude des tensions inhérentes aux questions socioécologiques contemporaines. Il présente et examine également l’obligation de consulter, à titre d’exemple, un aspect souvent incompris des territoires autochtones et des droits écologiques. Enfin, des suggestions fondées sur les recherches récentes de l’auteur sont formulées à l’intention d’éducateurs souhaitant explorer les sujets des territoires autochtones et de l’écologie.
Original Photo: Michelle Caron (wikipedia.com)
First published in Education Canada, March 2015
1 G. Cajete, Look to the Mountain: An ecology of Indigenous education (Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press, 1994).
2 L. Simpson, “Anticolonial Strategies for Recovery and Maintenance of Indigenous Knowledge,” American Indian Quarterly 28, no. 3 & 4 (2004): 373-384.
3 G. Jardine, “An Invitation to Explore the Roots of Current Aboriginal/ non-Aboriginal Relations in Canada,” One World in Dialogue 2, no. 1 (2012): 25-37.
4 D.C. Natcher, “Land Use Research and the Duty to Consult: A misrepresentation of the Aboriginal landscape,” Land Use Policy 18 (2001): 113-122.
5 Jardine, “An Invitation to Explore the Roots of Current Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal Relations in Canada”; Natcher, “Land Use Research and the Duty to Consult.”
6 P. Nadasdy, “The Case of the Missing Sheep: Time, space, and the politics of ‘Trust’ in co-management practice,” in Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management, ed. C. Menzies (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 127-151; S. Tsetta, V. Gibson, L. McDevitt, and S. Plotner, “Telling a Story of Change the Dene Way: Indicators for monitoring in diamond impacted communities,” Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health 3, no. 1 (2005): 59-70.
7 T. Aoki, “Experiencing Ethnicity as a Japanese Canadian Teacher: Reflections on a personal curriculum,” Curriculum Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1983): 321-335.
8 C. Haig-Brown, “Taking Control: Contradiction and First Nations adult education,” in First Nations Education in Canada: The circle unfolds, eds. M. Battiste & J. Barman (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1995), 262-287.
9 M. Battiste, “Post-Colonial Remedies for Protecting Indigenous Knowledge,” inTeaching as Activism: Equity meets environmentalism, eds. P. Tripp & L. Muzzin (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2005), 224-232.
10 B. Jickling, “Environmental Education and Advocacy: Revisited,” The Journal of Environmental Education 34, no. 2 (2003): 20-27.
11 B. Niblett, “Appreciative Resistance: Balancing activism and respect,” Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education 20, no. 4, (2008): 4.
12 To view the project summary visit: https://connectcharterschoolblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/an-inquiry-into-the-northern-gateway-pipeline/
In response to an aside from a presenter during the FNESC’s annual conference, when the presenter said something about the word “empowerment” being insulting and that well-intentioned programs built around empowering others actually insinuate that the “other” inherently lacks capacity. A dangerous and destructive assumption. This was a new perspective for me and I found myself wrestling it for the rest of the day. This post is based on the notes I wrote while sitting in the conference, wrestling.
Do I need to be empowered? Here I am in a place of discomfort and wanting – feeling like the education system just isn’t fitting quite right. Do I need someone to empower me so I can find my way through this discomfort? No.
Rather, I need the space, freedom and safety to find my own way. I have the power within me; I do not need to be gifted this strength. What I need is a community to learn with me, so we can ask questions and travel together. I need the space to make mistakes and the time to learn from them. I need the generosity of spirit from myself and others to be gracious and forgiving about my mistakes and missteps.
It isn’t empowerment I need. It is opening. I don’t even need an invitation. I need a place… some space in which to explore, play, fail.
I used to say, “just give teachers space and time and amazing things will happen.” I will revise that now to frame teachers as learners: give learners space and time and amazing things will happen. Give us space and time to explore, question, play and fail and we will fail forward. We will fail our way right into a new place. A place of new understanding and knowledge… the kind of knowledge we can build from and share.
Places like the Networks of Inquiry and Innovation have created openings, places and spaces, for us learners to feel agitated and learn together. The Networks have opened spaces for me to have conversations with mentors like this. Masters programs like this do the same thing – connecting learners to mentors and supporting the learner in his or her journey while sharing the learning of others.
I don’t feel empowered on my learning journey – I feel supported.
Now back to my original question… Do I need to be empowered? No. The idea that we need to empower learners of any kind, Aboriginal or not, places the learners in a passive position, divesting them of agency. Leaders do not need to empower anyone; leaders need to open places and spaces and support the magic that emerges as soon as they do.
As the chief superintendent of Frontier School Division, I love to tell people about the work our division is doing across Manitoba in the area of community development. To understand our efforts to develop the leadership capacity of residents in the communities Frontier School Division serves, it is important to gain some insight into the nature of the Frontier School Division.
A common term used to describe our division is “unique,” defined as “being one of, being distinctive and being without a like.” This certainly fits Frontier.
While we share similarities with other school divisions, our unique characteristics are clearly apparent. Our geography covers over 440,000 square kilometers and we are mandated to provide educational services to all children wherever they live, no matter how remote.
We encompass 40 communities spread out across Manitoba. Each of the communities we serve has unique characteristics. While most are populated with peoples of Aboriginal ancestry, there are vast differences between the aspirations, cultural identities and often the languages of each community. For example, our division encompasses the Cree, Dene, Oji-Cree, Saulteaux/Ojibway, Dakota and Metis people.
I can say with some certainty that we are the only division in Manitoba that operates a formal bus route with a snowmobile and sleigh (Stevenson Island). In Disbrowe, Ministic and Stevenson, community residents are hired as boatbus drivers to transport our students. Frontier is often perceived as a northern division and we do gain a great deal of our identity from the North. What surprises those unfamiliar with our geography is that we have schools as far southeast as Falcon Beach in the Whiteshell and the Birdtail Sioux Dakota Nation in southwest Manitoba.
Our 42 schools range in size from five students in Disbrowe (Red Sucker Lake) to 1,100 students in Helen Betty Osborne Ininiw Education Resource Centre (Norway House). We provide housing in many communities, operating over 300 housing units, as well as water and sewage treatment plants.
Frontier provides educational services to 14 First Nations, with each partnership governed by an Education Agreement reflecting the First Nation’s aspirations. Our services require the participation of both the federal and provincial governments because many of our communities include children who fall within both funding jurisdictions. Approximately 54 percent of the division’s revenue comes from the federal government, while school taxes provide around 2.5 percent. We employ approximately 600 education staff (teachers, principals, vice-principals and consultants) and 900 support staff.
Home-grown staffing
Historically, our division has faced the challenge of attracting the necessary staff to maintain educational services and in some instances, our teacher turnover rate was as high as 25 percent. For many years we received minimal interest in advertised positions.
Another challenge facing Frontier is building a teaching population that is reflective of the people we serve. Thirty years ago, only a few teachers of Aboriginal ancestry worked in our division. The communities demanded more teachers who were reflective of their population. Responding to this imperative, in cooperation with Brandon University, we pioneered the Program for the Education of Native Teachers (PENT) program.
PENT students work in divisional schools from September to April, then attend Brandon University from May to July, in a repeating cycle lasting six to seven years. To date, more than 400 local community members from across Manitoba have graduated as teachers. The PENT program, which is ongoing, has made our teaching population much more reflective of the makeup of the people we serve, significantly reduced teacher turnover and has built leadership capacity within our communities.
Our school division also faced the challenge of finding qualified support staff from within our communities for a whole range of positions. It became apparent that if we wanted staff with particular qualifications we would have to take on the responsibility of providing the training.
As the need for counselors grew within our schools we established a counselor training program, with the result that the school division now has fully credentialed counselors. We followed a similar model for librarians, bus drivers, and to some extent, educational assistants.
In all of our training programs, our focus has been on identifying community members who have the desire and raw potential to be successful. We support and enhance applicants’ initial educational levels and concentrate more on their desire, character and potential to do the job. Critical to the success of our job training model is that once an individual is hired, the division continues to give as much support as possible to ensure their success. Our expectation is that, in a reasonable period of time, candidates will gain the full academic qualifications for the job. We call our approach to hiring “building our own.”
Frontier is the main employer in many of our communities. Our division can take a great deal of the credit for training hundreds of people to become certified teachers, counselors, librarians and administrators. We have “shared our wealth,” contributing significantly to many other organizations and school divisions that have hired people in whom we have invested. For the most part, we do not begrudge providing this service and sharing with the rest of the province!
Frontier School Division covers most of Manitoba and serves 42 schools ranging in size from five to 1,100 students. The question for Frontier is: how do we ensure the unique voice of each community is heard?
Ensuring community voice
In addition to adding enormously to the training levels of people within our communities, we have had a significant influence on developing the leadership capacity in thousands of individuals throughout the division. To a large extent, this has been the result of our three-tiered model of governance.
Respect for the aspirations of each community lies at the heart of our school division. The question for Frontier is: Within our vast geography, how do we ensure the unique voice of each community is heard and the wishes of the people are respected?
The answer lies in the three-tiered governance model established in The Public School Act (PSA). Being founded in legislation gives the school committee real authority, real responsibility and a strong voice of local control from the community. It also lies in our continual emphasis on building the leadership capacity of the hundreds of community members elected to provide community leadership for the local education system.
Every four years, while divisions hold school board elections for, on average, 10 trustees, Frontier conducts an official election for approximately 229 school committee positions throughout all of our communities.
Tier One: The Local School Committee of Trustees
At the heart of our model of governance is a group of five to seven elected members in each of our communities, called the Local School Committee. Approximately 229 individuals serve on 40 school committees across the division. Their role is established in the PSA, which gives the committee authority and responsibility for their mandate. Each committee operates under an approved constitution, terms of reference and code of conduct.
The elected members of the school committee provide direction and advice to the principal in six main areas. School committees are involved in all staff hiring and evaluation, recommending capital projects and facility improvements, and budgets. Committees also help develop policies, procedures, programs, and activities at the local and divisional levels.
As a school division, we have complete commitment to the local committees and expend significant time and resources strengthening this system. School committees are trained on interviewing, school assessment instruments, record keeping, basic accounting and the legislation that governs the school system. Committees are required to conduct business with formal meeting procedures. We employ four governance support officers (GSOs) to provide necessary training to support committee members in fulfilling their responsibilities effectively. GSOs are an important resource to help school committees resolve internal issues and to support their crucial relationship with school administration.
Through committee participation, thousands have discovered their leadership potential while influencing the education of children and adults within their communities.
Tier Two: The Area Advisory Committee
The Frontier School Division is divided into five regions based largely on geography. Once a school committee is elected for each school within a region, a member is elected to represent the community on their Area Advisory Committee (AAC). The Division has five AACs made up of 50 members.
Area Advisory Committees meet three or four times yearly, helping to provide communication with the Frontier School Board of Trustees. Similar to school committees, AACs operate under a legislative framework, an approved constitution, terms of reference and code of conduct. AACs play a major role in the development of policies, procedures and programs, and are responsible for regular reports about their local schools and communities. They are forums for important regional issues to be identified.
Tier Three: The Central School Board of Trustees
Once school committees have elected representatives for the Area Advisory Committees, each AAC elects two members to sit on the Frontier School Board. The Board is comprised of ten members and operates under the same legislation as all other provincial school boards.
Expectations for the individuals who sit on the Frontier School Board in terms of their personal commitment are very high. In addition to two days of board meetings per month and committee work, trustees actively participate on the AAC and their local school committee. Given the geographic location of many of our trustees, attending a one-day meeting often involves two or more days of travel. Participation on the Frontier School Board has been a life-changing experience for many of the trustees who have served our division.
Each February, the Frontier School Division Board hosts a School Committee Conference. Local school committees participate in a range of sessions and professional development activities to support them in their governance responsibilities at the local level. The conference also showcases programs taking place across our division. Here, our hundreds of committee volunteers can meet and be inspired by colleagues doing the same kinds of work throughout the province.
“Let’s do it and see what happens”
In the many conversations I have had explaining the importance of our governance system, a common comment is, “How do you accomplish anything?” Despite the complexities of carrying out our mandate, our experience has not been of paralysis but one of innovation, community commitment and loyalty to the division.
As a division, we believe the individuals who have the biggest stake in the local schools and communities are the people who reside there. The legislated requirement that the system be responsive to local input has enabled us to be highly active in community development, because that is what the local communities have demanded.
Local communities have wanted training programs for local people. They were not content to see outsiders being brought in to take away jobs when jobs were scarce. The division responded to the demands of the communities by shaping programs reflective of the aspirations of each community. Many of the division’s flagship programs, such as our student fiddling program, started because one community wanted something done and their requests were respected.
When ideas come forth, our response as administrators is, “Let’s do it and see what happens.” Is everything successful? Of course not – but we have been successful enough to receive recognition from the United Nations for our gardening program, to have had our student fiddlers play for Her Majesty the Queen of England, to have trained hundreds of teachers of Aboriginal ancestry, to have given thousands of our community members opportunities to realize their leadership capacities, to have enabled communities to develop local community histories used in the school curriculums and most importantly, through our collective engagement with the communities, to have generated hope where hope had been in short supply.
As I lie awake at night, I weigh the challenges our system presents and agonize over mistakes made. I ask myself, is it worth it? Does the system deliver what we promise?
I then have to put our many successes on the other side of the scale: I have to put the Elders there, who never thought they could have a meaningful role in their school; I have to add the individual who left school in tenth grade and is now a qualified teacher; I have to put the single parents who became professionally trained counsellors.
I have only to remember the look in the eyes of the hundreds of local governance volunteers who have enormous pride in the contributions they are making to their community, and then I can feel at peace with the work we do. Once I weigh all these things, I can sleep at least for a few more hours… until my phone rings again!
This article was first published in the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents Journal 14, No. 2 (Fall 2013). It has been edited to fit Education Canada’s editorial requirements.
Illustration: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, September 2014
EN BREF – Couvrant plus de 440 000 kilomètres carrés, la Frontier School Division du Manitoba est chargée d’assurer des services éducatifs à tous les enfants, où qu’ils vivent, même dans les lieux les plus éloignés. Administrant des écoles d’entre 5 et 1 100 élèves et desservant des collectivités comprenant six peuples autochtones distincts, Frontier a mis au point une structure de gouvernance unique en son genre et des programmes d’apprentissage locaux grâce auxquels chaque collectivité peut exprimer ses aspirations, les écoles peuvent répondre aux besoins des collectivités locales et les membres des collectivités peuvent obtenir la formation et le soutien requis pour exceller comme dirigeants et membres du personnel. Tant par l’offre d’hébergement que d’usines de traitement des eaux usées en passant par l’établissement d’un parcours d’« autobus scolaire » par motoneiges et traîneaux, Frontier a suscité un modèle créatif et localement adapté de ce que peut être une communauté d’éducation.
Remembering my first year teaching more than four decades ago, Aboriginal education issues and challenges did not figure among the priorities of my school system or in staffroom conversations with my colleagues. Save for the Indian residential school down the road and the single Aboriginal student in our otherwise all-white elementary school, Aboriginal education matters were not on the agenda.
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