 I'm really pleased to be here today to present with Paige Fisher who I know from her work at Vancouver Island University and doing some research with the Ministry of Education and Laura Tate who is a principal in the Nanaimo-Lady Smith School District, principal of Aboriginal Education. So there are some things that we have been working on in the Ministry of Education and with you, people in the field for some time and the focus of my work has really been around improving the academic results for Aboriginal students and for a long time we've done that by focusing on what we do with and to Aboriginal students in the school system. And we're moving and I'm really pleased that we're moving, that our objectives around that are changing and becoming more solid and just the objectives that really guide my team at the Ministry and no longer just the Aboriginal team but all my colleagues in the Ministry and I'm hoping that you will pick these up in your practice as well. And the first is that we need to include Aboriginal voice in everything that we do in education and so while we are there supporting kids, we do that best when we hear from community and we're guided by the Aboriginal voice. That means parents, community members, elders, leaders and students. So there's a handout in your package today, it's on yellow paper that speaks about those three objectives and the way we're working. If you flip the paper over you'll see there are principles of Aboriginal education and these principles were articulated by a group of Aboriginal scholars and knowledge people from the dockets when we worked with them to develop English voice peoples 10, 11, 12. And these principles are principles that can be adopted into all coursework within the school system. Good morning, my name is Paige Fisher, I was born in Prince George and my parents were born in Saskatchewan and well, Lotus Saskatchewan I think and Kelowna and my heritage before that was British on both sides of the family. On one side of the family, my mother's side of the family came as part of the United Empire Loyalists in the 1700s so my family has been settling and settled in this land for a very long time. In my role right now I'm a teacher educator at Vancouver Island University and as Trish said a researcher as well in my research work is most intensely around the emotional impacts of our assessment practices. Here are some big ideas and we're going to go through them sort of individually for a few minutes. The first is the moral imperative and I don't really think I need to talk about this too much. I think that we can look around our schools, we can look around our communities and we can see the state of our Aboriginal students. Our Aboriginal students are neither participating nor succeeding at the same rate as their non-Aboriginal counterparts. There's at least a 20 to 30% gap in graduation rates. We're seeing more Aboriginal students in say our comm 1112 than we are in our English 1112 so we know the state. You look around our communities, you look around our reserves, we see it the moral imperative is there. This is something that I was sort of you know working on and thinking about for a few years and it took me a long time actually to sort of articulate it. These tiles represent about 50% of the Aboriginal kids in residential school who never made it home and they communicated in whatever ways they felt these kids once they did some learning units around residential schools and then they gifted these tiles to a residential school survivor, an elder they smudge these tiles and eventually these tiles were sent back to Ottawa and I believe all of the tiles across Canada are going to come together in a bit of a traveling road show and you'll see we'll be hopefully be able to see all of these tiles together. Trish introduced this concept of Aboriginal education for everyone and I think that that green ball in the middle is how I sort of visualized Aboriginal education over the past you know several decades where we have given a lot of attention and a lot of focus on our Aboriginal students. How can we help them? How can we fix this problem? The energies had sort of looked like that and out of that I believe we've built some amazingly amazingly strong Aboriginal education departments, Aboriginal leaders, Aboriginal focus at the ministry level, all these pieces. I think they've brought us a good ways along the path and in my mind and in my processing and in what I'm learning over the past several years in my rules is that one of the pieces I believe strongly is that what's going to push us I think that next bit and we're going to get there is this idea of collective ownership that we need to grow that responsibility, that passion, that moral imperative so that everybody is taking ownership over our Aboriginal students over Aboriginal education. My next big idea is this idea that well you know what what I get often I'll get a question like for example you know Laura I have this Aboriginal student in my class or I have these Aboriginal students in my class how do I help them? What can I do? What can I do in my classroom for those particular students? I know for example that Aboriginal people have an oral tradition so should I be teaching them orally? You know those kinds of things and I know that me being First Nations, Tsimshian, I'm not an oral learner at all in fact I need the visual I'm totally visual but I don't feel it makes many less native right? So and so when folks would come to me with those kinds of questions I thought oh my gosh I'm an Aboriginal resource teacher I should know the answer to that question I should know that and I'm feeling oh my gosh I don't feel like I know that I'm fraud right? But as I've grown over the over the years I've now come to the place where here's my response that if you as a teacher as an educator as an EA as a principal whatever your role is if you reflect on your practice if you're reflective on who you are as an educator and what you do with students you'll scoop in about 90% of those Aboriginal kids anyway that isn't to say however that the time hasn't come to start starting to weave in those Indigenous principles of learning and what we're talking about when we say that is really a different world view isn't it? I didn't realize that I'd even had a world view or a culture until I actually lived in Asia for four years and was able to look back at Canada and compare and think oh that's why we do this this is how we look at things it's very different from the Chinese that I'm living with right now and I wasn't until I did that that I made that realization so to ask a group of people educators like yourself to say hey look through this different lens look through this different world view that's a really tall order it's one I think that we'll get to bless you and it's one that I and it's one that I think that I hope that's where I you know I hold that sort of as my goal that's where I'm hoping that we'll work toward absolutely to look look at the world in a different way but I want my kids to be immersed in who they are as little Tsimshan and grow up to be big beautiful strong Tsimshan and contributors to our community I want them to we've they were given their traditional names Eli when he was eight months old and Madeline when she was about five they've so they participated in holding a feast they've experienced these protocols I want them to feel proud of that I want them to know it I want them to walk tall I want them to be proud Tsimshan people at the same time I want them to navigate this world that we live in because I could nurture them as much they're my my mom they're they're Jiji they're they could nurture them as you know strong First Nations people but we still have to go back out in that world and sometimes that world's a little scary if you look at it through an Aboriginal lens where I spent probably the first 20 years of my life denying who I was as a Tsimshan person being ashamed of who I was as a Tsimshan person am I successful really right and it wasn't until I was well into my 20s but I began to embrace who I was prior to that I would never tell anybody you know like we're worrying about everyone self-identifying and there's going to be too many of them and we're not going to have resources and money it's like dude people are not coming out of woodwork trying to be Aboriginal it's not necessarily a good thing to be able to and that's how it felt that's how it felt so I spent a long time denying that part of who I was and I don't want that for my kids I want that I want them to have that ability to be strong Aboriginal people but also to navigate this world the educational world the business world the the environmental world but you know whatever their choices might be and have those those that dignity purpose and options right that's what I want for those kids we need kids to be able to write briefs and defend themselves in a court of law and all of those other things that they need that other world experience in as well yeah thank you and I think on that note you know somebody asked me in a master's group the other week what what was it for you right like how how did you and I had no answer I wish I got to work on that so if you're thinking of asking me that I don't have a quid that's already for it but a large piece of it for me without sounding too corny it was education it really was I think the further I went and I was successful the further I got long and I found those adults in my life that were important to me or that believed in me somehow and I keep finding those people like when I look around the room right I've got Trish Paige I've got Linda and Judy got faith they believe in who I am and I think they they are to me now as I'm hoping you will be to your students right and it's that relationship piece that's key and you know that relationship between that classroom teacher and that student is the key especially your vulnerable students and likely many of your vulnerable students are Aboriginal students they need you they need that connection to that classroom teacher to that principal right they don't need to be walked down the hall all the time with the Aboriginal EA that Aboriginal EA can be invited into that classroom that Aboriginal support teacher can be invited into that classroom and there we go building more relationships right utilizing the skills and the wisdom that they have you're modeling you're coaching them along and their skill level and vice versa key those relationships are key I wanted to tell you a little bit about this some of you have likely seen it it's been around for just a couple of years Laurie had first introduced it at the network seminar two years ago and this is where my little assessment brain gets to kick in I strongly believe as I said earlier that I'm very interested in the emotional impacts of our assessment practices and I started out my doctoral work thinking I'm gonna you know do this research and I'm gonna figure out exactly which practices do what well it was impossible but what I did figure out was that it's in the air it's in the room it's in every single thing we do and what's really powerful is I think is that the way that we assess and what we assess is a really powerful signal of what we value so every time we say we're going to assess this we're signaling that that's something that we value and really I would implore you to really really think about that and think about that in the context of what they will be sharing with you later as well so this became then a signal of the values that Laura has as her hopes for the system as her hopes for the kids and for the adults living in this society and in the system and Laura had because I was the assessment gal sort of sent me a rubric and said what do you think about this I said let's sit down and talk about it and we had this amazing afternoon spent two or three hours and you know rubrics are kind of my thing and so we just I just talked to me talk to me what are your hopes what do you hope is going to happen and we really started with this I don't know performance energy might have called it the fully meeting expectations column I would never give it a number by the way but this raising your paddle acquiring these statements here are what came out of our conversation around what would we hope that all of our adults and all of our kids and actually by extension all of the citizens of this province would begin to understand and so really it's not an assessment tool to evaluate your kids with but it may be a place to think or to talk with each other and with your students about where you are where they are and of course if it's an effective rubric it provides some learning progressions