 I taught kindergarten for 10 years. I worked on curriculum, the Cree Language curriculum for two years and or a year and a half and I've worked with the Cree language for four years now as a Cree language instructor. Please describe your program what called age groups target audience, aim of the program and the learning objectives and your opinion that makes it excellent in Indigenous education. My program is a Cree language program, Nehiawewin in our language is how we say it and I use the ASLA developed by Dr. Steven Graymorning. ASLA stands for Accelerated Second Language Acquisition. The age group that it's targeted towards is grade one to grade six. I currently teach it to the grade sixes only. I also do land-based education with grade threes and basically that's just going out and mother nature is is our teacher. We just go out on land and we learn. We sit and observe a bug. We sit and observe a tree or we sit and just feel the wind and then the kids make notes and tell me of what they felt, how was it warm, cold and stuff like that. Just learning to connect to mother earth and to nature and to understand and know how to read it I guess and and feel it. The aim of the program, using the ASLA, I actually use ASLA in the land-based program as well. The aim and goal of it is to develop fluent Cree speakers. What Dr. Steven Graymorning developed with his ASLA program is you start with it you teach in sets and you use and you use only visuals and the oral language. So the first set is 16 nouns and those 16 nouns consist of four people, four animals, four transportation and four in reference to animacy, animate and inanimate. So that that's your set one and then you move on to set two and set two introduces connectors first. It teaches you how to connect two nouns in a sentence. A man and a woman like that in the language and then you go into plurals and you're required to teach four connectors and extend them to eight and then the plurals you teach 12 plurals, 12 to 16 plurals and then you go into the next set which is verbs. You teach verbs in a singular form and then you teach verbs. You start to introduce verbs in a plural form and then it goes into set four. It goes on like that so it teaches you colors and numbers but you're not not through counting. You're not counting like you're not going one two three four. You're showing a picture with four dots on it and you have to be able to say four when you see it and and not and not count those four dots. So it teaches you numbers out of order and so that when you see when you see six horses in a field you're able to say six horses instead of you know count them but in the target language show you would say when you saw that picture of six horses in a field you'd be able to think in the language using a number and a noun and pluralizing it all at once right and then it goes on it extends it it extends the set five and six that go to clothing. You learn about clothing. You start from the basic like shirt, pants, jacket, shoe, boot and then you extend those and you go in and and learn about sewing. You learn the terms like sewing. You learn how the verb putting on a jacket taken off your shoe so you learn those terms in the target language as well using visuals and only visuals and you can apply and use TPR total physical response where you actually bring me take off your shoe and put on your shoe you know so I do that as well. So that's one way that I've adjusted it for me is by using TPR I include TPR in it and and then it goes in we're clothing and then it goes into foods foods so you go into foods and use you teach the traditional foods first of the target language and then where do we get these foods from so you're extending it from foods to where do you get these foods from you hunt so you're teaching them about you're teaching them verbs and and that the traditional and traditional hunting skills like how to hunt a matzit and so you're teaching you're teaching terms like tracking an animal and aiming at the animal shooting that animal getting that animal and then butchering that animal and drying the meat and frying the meat and boiling it so all of those different phrase phrases come in into play and then the the colors you work that in with the food as well which is fruit and that's a set of its own because traditionally we we picked a lot of fruit like the raspberries the blueberries the strawberries and they are colors right so you say blue red emi quake ayos ka nah red raspberries so you're not teaching the color in isolation you're teaching it with with with the noun of the berry a because they shouldn't they should already know color at a certain grade we shouldn't be teaching it wrote memory anymore right and then I work in liquids because liquids is is kind of a topic of its own because of the fact that it has that certain ending because of the suffix that a that a liquid has in our language so I teach those in isolation and drinking spilling pouring so you get those verbs in there as well so you're always adding verbs and if you can get through that program which is a right now we haven't achieved it because it's still very new or in our third year this is our fourth year and we continue to adjust it because like the grade threes have been exposed to it the kids that are in grade six now have had this program since grade three so now in grade six I'm having to adjust it more each time so instead of adding two two verbs that relate to to food and cooking in grade two I'm adding 12 you know so it's constantly changing that's where the assessment is changing and hopefully in another year I always said five years that then we'd have this program set but that's basically how it goes and you can use any verbs or nouns in your language throughout those sets in any of those sets but it's the first set that's very important that you stick to four people those are your four nouns your four your four transportation your four animals and and your animacy for for animacy it's successful because it dictates it makes you work with four and you take and you take and find animals that are native to your area like I wouldn't teach about I wouldn't put an elephant up there because it's from Africa and we don't even have a term for it in our language it's there's a term has been made so like in the area that we're in a bear was very common we're name our name the community is muskwachis right so muskwa buffalo was our livelihood so I teach buffalo ermine skin is a ermine sikos so I teach that because it's it's got a lot of significance and important to the kid importance to the kids say the kids need to know what an ermine skin is and how it relates to our name and the history of our people and then what's the last one I do a moose because moose a moose is something we lived off of it provided for us as well a another characteristic or aspect that makes this ASLA program work is the fact that there's so much repetition like when you're teaching one new word whether it's a noun or a verb phrase and you have 24 kids in the classroom you teach it to them first they're listening you say it two times three times four times and then you have them repeat after you because they've heard it and they're fine-tuning their ear to your sound to the sound system of the target language while while they're listening and then there's by the time you get them to say it they're able to say it without any problems and then they come up they rotate and each child has to come up each student has to come up and go through that new word or those four new words those four new pictures so by the time the class is over and you have 20 kids in there and each kid has said it I've said it and each child so that's two times two times 22 that's 44 and then I said it four times before that so by the time they leave the class they've heard those four new phrases almost 50 times and there's that repetition repetition is what makes it stick and work what are the programs learning objectives oh that would be like the look the ultimate learning objective is is to develop flu-increase speakers and to have the children thinking in in the language in the target language which is the Cree language that they be able to think in it and speak in it at by the time they leave grade six it's partially used in our high school too but I'm not sure how extensive they use it a what in your opinion makes it an example of excellence in indigenous education the fact that it forces the children to think in the target language I think that's what makes it a successful and excellent program and the fact that the the teacher who was instructing it has to use the language and stay in the language and not once translate any of what she's teaching in the language into another language and always staying in the target language which in my case is the Cree language how do you measure the success of your program the success is measured through benchmarks I've created assessment tools such as benchmarks which we we test on every year every year for grade twos and grade fives we have certain measures where say like for grade two by the time they get to grade two the kids are expected to learn 24 nouns and and 12 verbs but within that they have to know how to use those nouns in singular form and in plural form and they also have to know how to use those nouns with connectors such as and in which in our language is a gua and they have to know how to use those verb in singular form and in plural form and also with connectors and they also know how to know how to use the pronouns demonstrative pronouns like this is and that is and when in our language it's been termed as animacy where they learn how to use a wa and oma in relation to the noun that they're they're using so just knowing when to use proper term a wa or oma there's a term for them yeah I'm pretty sure it's demonstrate them demonstrative pronoun I'm pretty sure that's what it is but like I said I don't concern myself with that stuff but I and I know I should and then of course we assess quarterly we we assess every semester so we have within for each semester we have an assessment tool that that we use that measures the kids comprehension level like do they understand the language do they understand when I say not bail a wa do they understand that I'm saying this is a man and can they tell and and when I point to the picture can they say to me in the language and can they can they properly say it when I point this is a man will they say not bail a wa which is the correct answer or will they say is square a wa so we're we're assessing comprehension that way and then we also have a section in that test where we're we're assessing the application can they give me a sentence of their own using then a noun and the verb that's not displayed as a pictorial phrase on on the wall say we have all these pictures of a man standing a man walking a bear running but we don't have a picture of a woman in any of them can the child come back to me and say when I ask them to create their own phrase and sentence can they come back to me and say because they already know the the noun woman and the noun bird can they say a square a pin part that a woman is running even though they haven't seen that picture yet so taking what they already know and applying it to different visual and in their own mind so it forces them and makes them think in in in the target language decree language and so we have say like in the first term the grade fives have to know what do we have for them they have to know 34 36 nouns 38 now sorry grade fives have to know 38 nouns for the course of 48 nouns for the course of the year so we break those 48 nouns into the three semesters and then there's a final assessment that comes with with everything on a date well not everything but certain ones so those those 48 nouns are broken and broken up and taught into each semester same with the verbs we are in grades 6 they have to know 48 verbs and they have to know them in singular and plural and know how to apply them and use them so same thing indigenous education to me is learning is being taught in our own language and learning about our own culture and our own history as opposed to learning being taught in a foreign language the English language and being taught about English concepts and English perspective English life English world views in the indigenous education to me means that we as indigenous people First Nation people teach our own world views and our own history in our own language and that they not be taught inside of four walls and that it be taught on the land and outside like it was five six hundred years ago before European contact what is your vision for indigenous education over the next ten years my vision is that we are able to take control we do to a certain extent have control of our own education on the First Nation on the reserves however it's still being dictated as to what we can teach we have to teach those six core subjects English science social math my vision of it is that be pushed away and that we come up with our own topics or core subjects in relation to who we are as First Nations people like we need our language again our culture again and again it needs to be outdoors and we indigenous education also needs to be coming from our own people with the help and guidance the whole way through from elders in this day and age our world is so multicultural it's so diverse we have so many cultures and so many different races in our world today that we still need to have a balance and be able to function and communicate in two languages and in two worlds which is basically what we are the First Nations the indigenous world and then the European or the modern American European so I just wanted to add that you know we we still need to be able to learn the English language and how the English how the Western or the modern Western societies function and their their rules and everything just for the sake of history not repeating itself in that loss of communication and then not being able to communicate right like it did happen in history and we just don't want to repeat history and this way if we're both educated in in the Western world and in the indigenous world then that communication will always be there what information materials resources do you need to achieve that vision aside from funding we would need to be able to gather that knowledge from our elders those elders who are the knowledge keepers of the language and the culture who are you know the ones that are that aren't gonna be here with us much longer we need to seek them and get their permission to document or record their knowledge so that we can make curriculum out of it so that it can guide us in creating our own curriculum so we need to make our own curriculum that would be like the material the material and the resources we would probably need not probably I know we would need because it's very hard to take field trips and go to certain areas to be able to teach them about the river we don't have a big clean river like we do in the mountains we don't have that here in muscovites so we would need like a designated area where some of our plants and herbs still grow that are important to us so that we could take the kids there the children there so we'd need designated land I guess or land areas where we could do a lot of our land-based learning and I know buses and stuff like that would fall under funding so we'd need that transportation we'd need that transportation to be able to deliver a program like land-based learning because we we picked and gathered roots not just in the area we lived in we traveled back and forth across this land like from the Great Lakes the Rocky Mountains and in between along the way we always gathered and traded and picked roots because they didn't grow in the region that we lived or whatever right so that kind of knowledge that kind of a resource is something you need transportation for