 The Primary Teachers PSA in our province is a world-class leadership organization. We base the network thinking on how the primary teachers have always behaved in this province because they've always been brilliant. The first time I went to a primary PSA conference, it was in Chilliwack, and I was really nervous because I was teaching at Intermediate. And people came up afterwards and said, I love your ideas. It was the days of the young writers. And I thought, this is a group of people who adore ideas. How fantastic is that? And they're persistent. And they're provocative. And they're political in a good way. So spiral of inquiry. We were just at the rural literacy. And a person from Bayview, an intermediate teacher, said, that looks like a lot of one of my failed cabbage roles. So people were kind of looking at the image and making connections. We hope it looks to you like a really fantastic thing because Judy's going to open up this process with you. I love intellectual underpinnings. That's the other thing. It's a dream come true for Judy and I to be here with all of these friends and colleagues because our dream was always to work with a high powered, ethically fit, morally purposeful group of educators on meaningful work wearing comfortable clothes. We want every kid in our province to be as curious when they leave grade 12, when they walk that stage, as when they entered. That's why inquiry. We want that curiosity to drive the system. We don't want to be data driven. We want to be curiosity whole. Does that make sense to you? I'd like to see those vigorous nods. I used to teach grade nine for a while. Yes, thank you. So that's one big goal. And primary teachers are good at this. And then we want this. We want a hard goal. We don't believe in incremental smart goals. We think we need a hard goal. So by 2017, working with Denise and other people, we want to know that we can get every kid in our province walking the stage with dignity, purpose, and options. That means things like math 12 and English 12. And we know to do that. We have to get them off to a good start. Why 2017? Yeah, 2017, five years from now. How hard could this be? It's Canada's 150th birthday. We don't want Aboriginal kids to have success in 2080. That's embarrassing. We're fabulous educators. We get all this brainpower. Look at Mary, our speaker this morning. Wouldn't you like to grow up to be just like her? So we want to make a couple of offers to draw you into the ideas that we've been thinking about. We think that, and I really want to acknowledge Debbie Leyton-Stevens, Laura Tate, Trish Ross-Pro, and Lorna Williams, who's not here, but who has been instrumental in helping to sharpen and focus our thinking over the last several years. And our argument goes like this. Aboriginal education is for everyone. I wish that my daughter had had the opportunity to learn in the way that your kids will, if we weave together the ways that we want to think about a little bit. So we're calling them wise, strong, and new ways. This is the haiku, not the epic, or maybe the appetizer. We'd like to entice you to be curious about these ideas and then over the next while see how these fit with you. Think that our kids need to have that opportunity to think about learning as not something that just happens at circle time or in the confines of the classroom. How do we think about space and land differently? We also think it's really important for kids to have an opportunity to learn across generations. That means even our youngest learners can provide support to a younger child and learn from an older child and learn from a community member and learn from an elder. The storytelling project at W.L. McLeod last year, there's a video clip on the network website just of the importance of story across generations, just how important that is. So we just invite you to be thinking about your learners, their experiences, and as we hear more from Trish and Paige and Laura, how are we building in those indigenous ways of knowing that I wish my kid had, I wish I had? And I've been teaching for a few years and I went to school in Quebec and I knew nothing about Canadian history. I knew a version of it, but it was very, very minimal. So it's our opportunity to explore our own learning as well. Every learner say in their own words why what they're learning is important and how it connects. Do they know what their strengths are and do they know what their next steps are? If they're embedded in a classroom where clarity around learning intentions and feedback is a way of life, they will be able to answer this. And we say even that's not enough. We're gonna reach a lot of kids if we build in indigenous ways of knowing and strong evidence from research, but we're gonna be creating some new opportunities and creating and designing some new learning. And that's the really exciting part of this project is that you're gonna have a chance not to just say this is the program where we're gonna do it, but to be developing your own ideas. So we need to be thinking about how do we build in imagination, innovation, and how do we think about time, space, relationships, curriculum, technology differently. So that's the framework around weaving the ways. And now we're just going to take a look at the spiral of inquiry for a bit. Okay, so this is the beautiful intellectual underpinning. Here's a guarantee. Judy and myself and Dr. Helen Temperley who's actually received an honorary award from her country for her services to education in New Zealand. She is the most knowledgeable person in the world about the research around professional learning that makes a difference. She had a hard time finding studies that connected professional learning to making a difference. Now that's why I'm so pleased that Fay is here because we got to work for three years when I was teaching primary enrichment around a professional learning program in our school that actually changed learners' lives forever. Those, it was just amazing what being able to concentrate in that way did. So here's the promise. This has been field tested with Maori and Pacifica and Pakeha kids in New Zealand. It's been field tested in BC through the various networks. And it's been field tested in Australia. It will be adopted in probably 20 or 30 countries this coming year. So we are at the leading edge of thinking deeply about the kind of inquiry that's team oriented that changes learning lives and gives us 100% of kids walking a stage with dignity purpose and option which is our big moral purpose. And you're not gonna get that graduation and completion which gives you better health outcomes and all the things that we want unless kids get off to a good start with reading. So scanning, broad process, focusing, then we're gonna develop a hunch, new professional learning. Oh, and then how about taking some action? Didn't that's a good idea? You know, trying something out in a supportive learning team way and then checking. Checking to see if we've made a big enough difference. That's the thing, a big enough difference. Or whether we would be better off trying something else that would be even more powerful. And that's the power of this, you know, we see the world as network. So this is a network. What's working well with the kind of kid that you have, this will travel rapidly because it's been set up in that networking way. Scanning though, we need to give ourselves the luxury of doing that. Usually it just happens in universities. Focusing, where are we going to put our attention? You know, I love the work that Faye did. I said at Maple Lane, we had the 10 strategies that were in that wonderful book reaching for a higher thought. I still want that book to come back, Faye. It was just so useful. We tried all of the strategies over a three year period. And then the ones that really stuck with us, we've used them for the rest of our careers. You know, we still use them with our grad students. So the decision about focusing is an important one. And I think it's, for me, if we'd scan broadly and really thought about the weaving of the ways, which we think is a creative metaphor for VC teaching, then we'll focus intelligently. And we'll weave some of those strategies together. The deep listening, the circle work that Susan Leslie's doing. Her kindergarten kids now lead talking circles. The next part is to develop a hunch. How is our practice helping those kids who are really soaring and how is our practice maybe contributing to some of the kids that are struggling? And kind of what's our role in all of this? So it's just that time to have the conversation in a really trusting way where you can put your hunches on the table. And it's just a hunch. So nobody needs to feel afraid or bad. It's just a, you know, I wonder what. So that's the developing on hunch part. And then Linda talked about this before, but this is where kind of the rubber hits the learning road. So we'll use a school that we know quite well as an example. They had a hunch that they saw that a lot of the kids at primary were really struggling and making meaning for tests. And they had a hunch that maybe they didn't know really how to teach that very well. And then they spent a good portion of the year exploring their own learning. So the next stage is checking. And this is, we know that actually we're gonna make a difference in the lives of kids this year. It's just gonna happen. Kids are gonna grow, kids are gonna learn. They're gonna get better at reading. Our question that we wanna be asking as far as this works, are we making enough of a difference? So that's what we need to be thinking about. What's worth the evidence that we're gonna be looking for and Sharon's gonna be talking more about that. And also the image that Stonestone actually flowed on water. There's something underneath that is supporting them. And the imagery of this comes from the work of Roosevelt Moss Cantor who said that leadership is not about walking on water. It's about creating the foundation so that others can. And I think that what we're doing together is we're creating the foundation so that kids are gonna look much better, happier and healthier lives. And our thing is, yes, let's just get at it and do it. So thank you very much for inviting us to be part of this and we're really, really, really pleased about the opportunity to learn and grow together. So thank you.