Educators meet to discuss ways to close the gap

Page 10

First Nation educators from across southern Ontario gathered in Niagara Falls from Feb. 23 to 25 to learn about ways they can help improve education attainment levels for students on reserve.

More than 100 people were in attendance for the eighth annual Partnership in Success education conference hosted by the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation and Indian Affairs and Northern Development (INAC), with teachers, administrators and others involved in the area of education joining with more than a dozen presenters to share information.

The theme of this year's event was Closing the Gap, in reference to the recent report by the auditor general of Canada that indicated the gap between education achievement between Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people-measured by the number of people successfully completing high school-is large and getting larger.

In the report, released in November 2004, Auditor General Sheila Fraser estimated it will take about 28 years before the level of education achieved by First Nations people living on reserve reaches the same level as the general Canadian population.

The sessions making up the conference were divided into three strands-culture, literacy and numeracy, and effective management.

"Obviously the strand of literacy is always current and timely," said Max King, education director with the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation.

"We looked at management, management issues, effective classroom management, as well as management of the First Nation education system, so we had a workshop in there for education authority people and a variety of others. We had a math workshop where the issue of teaching strategies was addressed in order, again, to close that gap.

"And then we had a cultural strand. Every place, I think, in First Nation education, we struggle to make sure our curriculum is culturally relevant. So we brought in some people who have been working in that particular field for a number of years and had them again present workshops on that topic."

The primary focus of the annual conference is on education in the primary grades, King said. However, this year some sessions were aimed at how to prepare younger children-those under the age of six-so they are ready to learn when they reach school age.

"We made a couple of workshops that would cater to daycare people and people involved in very, very early literacy development to attempt to start to address those issues," he said.

One of the reasons for the continued success of this annual education conference is the hands-on approach offered up in the various workshops.

"They're very much interactive," King said. "The workshops are about three hours in length and we keep them to no more than 20 participants in each. And we tell the presenters to make it as hands-on as possible, try to limit the formalized part to maybe 20 minutes maximum. The rest of the time is supposed to be interactive. And bring lots of materials to share. And that's what they've done."

While the presenters covered a wide range of topics, from using traditional games, songs and culture to capture the attention of students, to how students process information to how to incorporate youth leadership into the school curriculum, the overall theme focused on how to make what is being taught more relevant to the students.

"And I think that's the secret," King said.

"I mean, teachers and educators now have to compete with the great big multimedia world and that online explosion of sound and visuals and everything else. And you've got to do something to keep the interest of the students when their attention span has become shorter because of the other things they're involved with."

Feedback from conference attendees confirms the conference organizers are continuing to do something right, with 75 to 90 per cent of the people attending each workshop indicating they were very happy to extremely happy with theexperience.

"I think we were presenting topics that were timely and issues which were timely in a format that people like," King said.

"We were very pleased to be able to work again in partnership with INAC and I believe we put on a quality conference that was enjoyed by the majority and we look forward to doing it again next year."