When the Aboriginal Education
Task Force was struck in Prince George, BC, in late October 2007, they decided
to set a torrid pace to find solutions. They are racing against time and the
frightful statistics revealed by their own Malatest Aboriginal Needs Assessment
Project (www.sd57.bc.ca).
Lois Boone is the Vice-Chair of
School District 57 and Task Force Chair. Lois Boone said, "There is an
urgency to the task force mandate. I said it 25 years ago when I first joined
the school board," was elected and left, and now came back.
Back then, "I identified
Aboriginal education as an area that requires dramatic improvement." Even
in those days of a quarter century ago, "I believed we couldn't seem to
allow Aboriginal youth to live up to their potential. I believed then and still
believe we have to figure out how to engage them and keep them in the school
system."
When she started so long ago,
she said, First Nation people were often unwilling to identify themselves as to
their origins. "The stigma about culture was still at its strongest.
Hopefully that has ended."
If the turn out at the first
public meeting of the AETF is any indication the change has been made and
people are embracing who they are and where they need to be. And the AETF
meeting was well-organized to permit a flood of voices offering answers about
what to do.
The organization formed four
circles in a room at the Prince George Native Friendship Centre to host the
dozens of people who arrived. Each circle was represented by a specific
question and a moderator and supervisor of each circle permitted open dialogue
and recorded the replies of a dozen respondents.
"We wanted these questions
to focus the public mind as to what we could do to make things better?"
The questions went as follows: What are the needs and issues of Aboriginal
learners? How can parents, guardians, and educators work together? What is the importance
of the educational experience? What has worked and made a difference for
Aboriginal learners?
The respondents came from
across the city on Nov 7 07, including teachers, university and tech school
students, First Nation parents and some neighbourhood people. "I think a
lot of cultural differences are not recognized by the school system," said
Boone.
The AETF is dedicated to a
wider area than simply Prince George, for the school districts runs east of the
city all the way to Valemount, and north of the city all the way to Mackenzie
and as far as McLeod Lake.
"We are going out to
conduct smaller meetings," she said of the rest of November, and then the
AETF will meet each week in SD57 facilities to hammer out a preliminary report
by Dec 10 07, and a final report at the end of Feb 08.
“After we received the results
of the Malatest report it launched our actions to address these concerns,”
because the report clearly identified that practically 50 percent of Aboriginal
students are dropping out before graduation, many of them in so-called Middle
School, as early as grade 8. The full report is available online at www.sd57.bc.ca or email lboone@sd57.bc.ca with
your concerns or suggestions.
VIDEO OF SECOND ROUND PROCEEDINGS AT THE NOV 7 07 TASK
FORCE PUBLIC MEETING AT THE PRINCE GEORGE NATIVE FRIENDSHIP CENTRE: Click picture to watch
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