First Nations graduation rates on the rise in B.C.
Credit to Author: Randy Shore| Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:21:15 +0000
SUNSHINE COAST — Nicholas Zalan Haines wasn’t at all sure he would graduate from high school.
A continent away from the heart of the Ojibwe culture he was born to, he started his long climb to graduation at tiny Pender Harbour Secondary on the Sunshine Coast. But he was not alone.
Nick’s adoptive parents Rob and Val Haines reached out to the school district when he entered high school to ensure the entire “village” would guide their son as he made his way.
School District 46 employs an all-encompassing “wrap around” strategy for students that need extra support in which the student, guardians, counsellors, teachers and senior district staff get together to create a plan for success at the beginning of each year. And then they execute it together.
“High school was pretty tough for me, so I was lucky that I had all those supports,” said Haines, who graduated in June before heading to Vancouver Island University to pursue culinary arts training.
“Early in high school, I struggled with focusing and organization,” he said. “One of the goals that was set out for me in Grade 11 was to fix those issues that I had been struggling with for years.
“I worked with my mentors and I did overcome those issues. In my last two years of high school, my grades improved significantly. I totally felt supported.”
Elders, government social workers and even the police may join in this institutional group hug that ensures no child is ever out of sight or out of mind.
“We really pay attention to what each student needs, our whole team, so that falling between the cracks would take some serious work on their part,” said Kerry Mahlman, district principal for Aboriginal education. “That’s one of the reasons our grad rate for Indigenous students is going up.”
Indigenous graduation rates are up impressively in B.C., rising about eight per cent over the past five years to more than 69 per cent. The completion rate for all students is also at a historic high of 88.8 per cent in 2019.
The Nicola-Similkameen, Nisga’a, Saanich and New Westminster school districts all improved their grad rates by more than 20 per cent over the past five years.
You can look up your district’s performance at https://studentsuccess.gov.bc.ca/all/school-districts
Between 2005 and 2010, less than 50 per cent of Indigenous students on the Sunshine Coast completed high school within six years of starting, compared with 80 per cent of all students.
Today, the hard work and determination of the district’s Indigenous education team and its teachers are finally having an impact. The Indigenous completion rate on the Sunshine Coast peaked at 83 per cent in 2018, near parity with all learners. That parity extends to all the core skills, reading, writing and numeracy.
It was no accident.
B.C.’s public school system has undergone a massive attitude change, starting at the ministry and permeating every aspect of the student experience in the classroom and beyond.
For kids like Nick, that means the world. His wraparound team ensured he got opportunities to engage meaningfully with local Indigenous culture.
Paddling in traditional seagoing canoes on the 10-day Pulling Together canoe treks added to his school experience.
“I would argue that these canoeing journeys did shape me as a person,” he said.
With each successive journey, he gained experience and grew from learner to mentor.
“My last journey was a major shift in how I acted, my responsibilities to the canoe and our canoe family changed and grew,” he said.
He also spent many hours carving traditional poles with shíshálh (Sechelt) First Nation master carver Arnie Jones.
Nick Zalan Haines dedicated many hours to carving a welcome pole for his school with a shíshálh (Sechelt) First Nation master carver.
“When I first arrived at Pender Harbour in Grade 7, the poles had just arrived,” Haines recalled. “At first, some of the kids complained that it was some extra task they had to do, but as time went on the students got really engaged with the project. At one point there were eight of us working on the pole at once, students of Indigenous and European descent.”
Two welcome poles now stand at the entrance to the school at Pender Harbour. A Skwxwu7mesh (Squamish) First Nation pole telling the creation story of the Chekwelhp village stands outside Gibsons Elementary and a new totem is underway for Kinnikinnick Elementary in Sechelt.
An Indigenous advisory circle including representatives of the school district and local First Nations meets regularly to ensure student needs are met and to proactively plan for continuous improvement.
“Our Indigenous team ensures that we see Indigenous culture reflected in every aspect of our schools, to ensure all of our students feel at home,” said Patrick Bocking, superintendent of schools for the Sunshine Coast.
Crucially, First Nations history and culture is incorporated into the curriculum for all students, not only Indigenous students.
“Our Indigenous education team visits elementary classrooms once a week to co-teach with their instructors, bringing that content to the kids and modelling how that is done for our teacher colleagues,” said Mahlman.
Historically, the experience of Indigenous students was less than affirming, according to Earl Einarson, an Indigenous tech educator of Ktunaxa First Nation heritage. He finished high school in 1981 and has worked extensively in adult basic education.
Earl Einarson is an Indigenous tech educator.
“We didn’t expect much from schools, to be honest, and we didn’t see our culture reflected in that experience at all,” he said. “There was kind of brother- and sisterhood between the Indigenous kids, in that we all knew things weren’t all that great for us there.”
An Indigenous classmate committed suicide in Einarson’s graduating year.
“Even a few years ago, I would see so many kids who had left the school system and it had really let them down,” he said. “Some of them didn’t even have the literacy skills to get into ABE.
“Now, the students I see understand the value of education and they see it as the way to get where they want to go,” he said.
The passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the legislature, the rapid expansion of the Indigenous resource economy and the way Vancouver-area First Nations are flexing their muscle in real estate development are changing attitudes.
“We can see that there is real economic opportunity for Indigenous people coming and it sure wasn’t like that when I was younger,” he said.
The Vancouver school district has also turned around what was a dismal success rate for its Indigenous learners, raising its graduation rate for Indigenous learners from 21 per cent 12 years ago to 62 per cent in 2018.
As in many districts, Indigenous education in Vancouver is guided by the principles of an Aboriginal education enhancement agreement — now in its second iteration — that sets goals for student mastery, and fosters a sense of belonging and community.
“We have implemented the principles of the first enhancement agreement and that has really educated people about what we have to do to help Indigenous learners achieve parity with all of our students,” said the Indigenous education district principal, Chas Desjarlais, who is of Nêhiyaw and Métis heritage.
Chas Desjarlais is a Nêhiyaw/Métis educator and scholar working for the Vancouver school board as the Indigenous education district principal.
“Our hashtag is #WalkTogether and we want everyone to walk beside us in this work,” she said. “We’ve made that data visible to the entire system and you can really see how the numbers have climbed.”
Indigenous principles of learning have been embedded in the provincial curriculum since 2016 in virtually every subject, and instruction now includes Indigenous world views and Indigenous ways of being.
“That really helps create a sense of belonging and promotes mastery by Indigenous learners,” she said. “When we talk about Indigenous education, we are talking about Indigenous education for everyone.”
As Mahlman noted, if students are learning about the constellations, they wouldn’t stop with the names and characters in Greek mythology, since many First Nations traditions have their own relationship with the stars, their own constellations, characters and stories.
As part of B.C.’s larger reconciliation efforts, the ministry is working with 31 districts through a program called Equity in Action, which includes an “equity scan” to evaluate the experience of Indigenous students and identify strategies for improvement.
Scan teams are assembled with local First Nations to work collaboratively with students, families and their communities to produce an plan to create a focused response to service gaps and set long-term goals for equity and transformation, the ministry said in a statement.
Last June, the ministry set aside $3 million to help districts create Local Education Agreements with their partner First Nations.
“Local Education Agreements with school boards serve as a road map to ensure each First Nation is directly involved in decisions about how their children are educated,” the ministry said.
Educators continue to press further gains. About 800 teachers and administrators gathered in Vancouver last week for the First Nations Education Steering Committee’s 25th Annual Indigenous Education Conference, this year with a focus on meeting diverse student needs.