 First and foremost, we'd like to acknowledge that we are on Treaty 7 Territory and also, I guess we would like to thank the elders, you know, for starting us off in a good way, also for prayer for our food that we enjoyed so much at lunchtime. And also acknowledge all the elders, knowledge keepers and cultural advisors that are here today. And thank you so much for this opportunity. My name is Melissa Purcell. I am the acting supervisor with First Nation Métis in a new education. I am from Treaty 8 Territory. I'm Danae from Smithsland in First Nation. And I'd like to invite my colleagues up here to come up here and introduce themselves in the best way that they know how. Good afternoon. My name is Glenda Thiel. And I was born here in Calgary on traditional Treaty 7 Territory. But I grew up in Edmonton in traditional Treaty 6 Territory. I am the mother of two and I am a third generation settler who has passion and heart for the work that we are doing and reconciliation. Up and down, up and down. I am a third generation settler who has passion and heart for the work that we are doing and reconciliation. I am a third generation settler who has passion and heart for the work that we are doing and reconciliation. So hello everybody. My name is Jeremy Albert. I'm from Sweetgrass First Nation in Treaty 6 Territory in Saskatchewan. But I work and live in Edmonton and I work as a consultant for Edmonton Public Schools. Some of you have heard me say this before but usually I don't get nervous when I talk Cree in front of a group. But when I know there's Cree speakers in the room I get like, I feel like the pressure is on. So yeah, a little nervous speaking Cree in front of all these Cree speakers right now. But something that I'm trying to learn and it's something that's really important to me. So hi, hi. All right. So up here, I think we were joking, I guess when we arrived here, the first time that we came here, there was one person that represented First Nation-Mate Union Education Edmonton Public Schools a few years ago. And last year there were two of us and now there are three. So we are growing by one and we're really thankful to be here but we're representing a team of 13 people. It's comprised of consultants that are... And I'll share a bit more about through our presentation about the work that we do. We do have a liaison within our team. Although that we're moving away from having liaisons within our central team that liaisons are hired directly by our school. Schools, our district is very unique that our district is site-based managed. So the principals are hiring liaisons to work directly within their school communities. So that's something that we're very supportive of. And yeah, we have a really amazing team, very passionate team. And today we're going to talk to you about reconciliation and education. And looking at building capacity within our district and also speak about our district is comprised of a community. And our communities consist of students, educators, families, community members. And with that are elders, knowledge keepers and cultural advisors. So we're looking to build capacity within all of our school communities. Our district is... We have about 202-ish schools within our district. There's approximately 90,000 students within our district. There are approximately 8,000 self-identified First Nation Métis and Inuit students within our district. So one of our prime objectives is really building capacity within our schools. Because how can 13 people support all 202 schools? So we're going to share a bit about the work that we're doing and really excited about that. The picture that I have up on this slide, I like to share this picture because it's a picture of a really, really old school. It's a junior high school. It's Highlands Junior High School with an Emerton. And this school has done some amazing things, a lot of amazing work. And we often talk about within our team that a lot of our schools, they look like residential schools because they are so old. And we work hard in helping support our schools create a welcoming, warm community environment. And so that can look like, sound like, feel like many different things. This was a day they brought in... There was a whole bunch of people that were involved in schools and students were involved in many different things. And so this TV was set outside. Elder Wilson Bearhead was providing storytelling to small groups of students. And there's a picture of me peeking out of this TV. And when my colleague, she took the picture and we were laughing about it after. I'm like, oh, you know, that looks kind of funny. But then I look at it and I think, wow, this I feel represents some of the work that we're doing. Looking how can we... We First Nation Maintain and Education and Culture to make it living and breathing within our schools. And Highlands School is a prime example of what can be done in collaboration with our team. So there's a few things that we take great pride in doing in showing at our district that we are not just one more thing. And because oftentimes with our work, it can feel like, wow, you're adding more resources to my plate. You're adding more things to my plate. I'm already feeling like I have a lot to do. And so what we do is we take and look at our district, like our strategic goals for our district. Also, our First Nation Maintain and a Guiding Document. We do have a board policy and administrative regulations. There's foundational pieces that we take those and we try to our best to bring them alive into our schools. And we also try hard in demonstrating that we can become, we are a part of the district, whether it be supporting district-wide initiatives or being strategic and intentional about certain planning that schools can do. So I just wanted to make mention of that. We framed our presentation with this wonderful model that was shared to us. And so we're, you know, quite proud to share this. So we're going to speak about learning today. And, you know, we talked about, wow, like in 30 minutes, what can we share in 30 minutes? There's so much. And I know you're all feeling the same thing. So what we thought we would do is we would share with you how we're creating space, the space within our classroom schools, within professional learning sessions for educators to want to listen and creating that space where they feel respected and they can ask those really tough questions or those questions that they don't feel comfortable necessarily asking. And so building relationships is a really important piece in our work. And I was so thankful for Elder to speaking about it just before lunch because relationships are super important. And relationships can happen in a variety of places. I know face-to-face is really, really important. But oftentimes we need to utilize space and think outside the box. And so we've created space on our website where we house a lot of our resources, supports and information. And we've also created a Google Plus community. So it's a space. Emmett and public schools is very Google. Like we're Google crazy. So we've jumped on board and really seized this opportunity for us to share some of the great things that are happening within our district, outside of our district. So we have, you know, within our district we have about, well, every school has identified a lead teacher. And so we brought them together for professional learning. And I know Jeremy will speak a bit about that in a little bit. But we communicate with our lead teachers bi-weekly. And we also make regular updates to our Google Plus community as well. Up on our, on the reply there, there's a poster. And this poster is something that is new to us and that we are beginning to share this with our district. It's a acknowledgement statement, acknowledgement of the treaty territory and also our First Nation, Métis and Inuit people and cultures. And so the artwork that is displayed up here has been created by a great health student from one of our high schools. We did a mini art contest. And so the graphic designer within our central office worked to create this beautiful poster. And so we're sharing that with our district is, you know, display this proudly. And also to use that as a teachable moment. Because what does it mean to be on treaty territory? And why do we acknowledge this? And so we use these little teachable moments or ways for us to engage and share and build relationships. So this is something that we're sharing with our district. And it's on our website in case you're wanting to print it, look at it, and you're more than welcome to use it as well. I wanted to share about a, it's a one minute video clip from a video. And this video is, was created from the journey to reconciliation student conference. We collaborated with Edmonton Catholic and I'm so happy that they're here today. So we collaborated with Edmonton Catholic School District as well as the city of Edmonton to offer a student conference. And so it was following the year after our mayor had announced it was the year of reconciliation within Edmonton. And so students came together and were engaged in many different sessions. But out of that came this video. And so this video is something that we're using also as a teachable moment for many within our district. And you'll see that there's our superintendent, Edmonton Catholic superintendent, the mayor. So lots of people are on here as well as students talking about this work. So I'm going to play the one minute video clip from here. One minute video is also on our website and you're more than welcome to view it and use it and share it. It's about a 14 minute video. And what I'm going to play for you is a little bit of tail end. And this is our Darrell Robertson, our superintendent of Edmonton Public Schools. Speaking about relationship. This isn't just about our Aboriginal kids. It's not just about our Aboriginal community or Aboriginal families. It's about all of us. It's about all of us embracing each other as people and understanding that where we can contribute, we need to. It's about, at the end of it, something I call social capital. It's about relationships. It's about being able to know each other and to connect with each other. And at the end of the day, develop that trust for us to be able to make a cooperative action in our community possible. But in the end, reconciliation really lies with each one of us. It's about what we learned and how we want to craft together a Canada where every child's dreams matter. Where no one is left behind. Where everyone holds their head up because they're so proud of their heritage and where they come from. And then together we build a country that we really, truly feel proud of. Isn't that what we want to do? So within our team, we're always trying to find ways that we can inspire people. And we're using, not using, we are embracing the calls to action that have been recently released. We're also, we're sharing that with our district, sharing and trying to work really hard and inspiring people to take ownership of those calls to action. And also, we talk often about the upcoming the draft teaching quality standards as well as the school leader standards and the school authority standards that now is a time for you to learn, to learn more so that when it comes time where you actually, when you have to speak about this in front of your students and families and community members that you feel confident and comfortable to do this. So that's a little bit about what I wanted to share with you about learning to be. So moving on, learning to know the part where, with us, how this worked in our district worked in a number of ways, but really trying to create that foundational piece for teachers and staff in our district. And so Melissa touched on the fact that we have over 200 schools and we have a lead teacher, we've identified at First Nations meeting a new lead teacher in each of those schools. So we started work last year where we had lead teacher sessions and that continued into this year. So in the fall, we had sessions for all of our teachers really just trying to create that foundational piece looking at a wide range of activities. And it's been really, really good. In April 7th we had a reconciliation through education PL for our lead teachers too, which was really good. So really equipping our teachers with that knowledge and that learning to know peace so they can then take that into their classrooms. One of the things that we also do for our teachers is cultural engagement sessions. And this really goes beyond just the teachers, this goes into the classrooms. We have an amazingly talented staff member named Holly Yuzichipi, Dakota Sue, and she goes into the school visits, cultural engagement visits, really weaving curriculum and culture together. One of the things that she does on a yearly basis is she holds a junior high health week. And so we get junior high students from across our district and spend a week down at our central office. And Holly leads them through kind of land-based identity and art teachings and really teaches the kids a lot of amazing techniques. And so this year the theme was reconciliation and utilizing the calls to action in art pieces. And the pieces the students made were just amazing. The opportunity was also extended to teachers in our district so there's teachers who spent a day down again at our office and went through this call to action piece. And so the best part of it all was on June 1st all the students and the teachers are showcasing their art pieces at the Stanley Momer Library, like a public exhibition so they get a chance to talk about what they did and how they are working towards truth and reconciliation and responding to those calls to action. The blanket exercise we mentioned a little bit earlier but we do that with early teachers. We get called out a lot to work with school staffs and in school classrooms. We did it with our superintendent and our board of trustees last year. So it's something that we do quite a bit. We're also working with schools to facilitate student leaders to facilitate the exercise. So we do it in high school and junior high so we have junior high leaders and high school leaders who facilitate the exercise for either other school staff or for maybe some division two students or other schools in their school. Our district, we're also very fortunate. We do a new staff orientation whether you're fresh out of university or you're an experienced teacher, if you're new to our district you've got to go through a new staff orientation. It applies to teachers, to management, to custodial staff, to EAs. Everyone goes through it and part of our day is changing the conversation where we talk about the historical and contemporary realities that First Nations, Métis and Inuit students and families face. And so it's a really good, again, foundational piece for our new staff coming into our district to have that foundation. One of the many amazing parts of my job is I get to do a lot of, we get to work on a lot of projects and the project that I've been fortunate enough to work on for the past year or so has been creating an edu site. It's called the Amiskwichi Waskaya on edu site. And it's looking at the history of Edmonton from an indigenous perspective. It's been really quite a learning for me personally and I'm still continuing to learn and I'm really examining Edmonton kind of prior to 1900. Looking at, you know, when we acknowledge territory we acknowledge the amount of time that First Nations people have been occupying these lands and Métis people and Inuit people who have been to these lands is just acknowledging that history. There's a lot of history within Edmonton that a lot of people don't know and certainly I didn't know especially regarding the Papis Chase First Nation and similar stories across the Prairie provinces. So I've been fortunate enough to work on a resource, creating lessons and really trying to get teachers to learn about the history as well from that indigenous perspective. And on May 18th I'm going to be hosting a teacher PL for teachers in our district but we'll go through the resource and then we're going to go through a river valley walk and looking at the historical areas that lie within the river valley including the Rossdale burial grounds that are located really right in the heart of Edmonton. And so the intention is to get teachers out with students to have students explore this history get out on the land so to speak even though it is within the city but it's in the river valley and a really good opportunity so it's really really exciting. The brain game was touched on before so we've done some work with the brain game too and we're looking at introducing that more into our district as well. Moving on to learning to do project based learning so we have some teachers and schools in our district that are really really good at this. And as a team we recently had the opportunity through the ERLC to go through some project based learning PL so our whole unit went through it. But we have a teacher in our district who took all the information from our lead teacher sessions and she started a five month project with her grade five six students and it was really remarkable they ended the five months with an evening where they showcased their projects and it was really transformational not only for the students but for the teacher herself she was really really moved by it there was elder involvement throughout the process and a lot of the parents who left that evening commented how they didn't know a lot of the information that was shared, wide variety of topics but it was really really really powerful experience for all those involved. So we're constantly working hard in developing resources and or bringing resources together that are recommended for use within classrooms and so we're excited that we worked on developing a early learning educate so with a literacy and numeracy focus so that is something that is new to our district as well as a MATE Educate that we have offered to our schools I know we're looking at developing a treaty educate as well for our school just really quickly our educates are really it's essentially a box it's a box full of many cultural items but lots and lots of background information for our teachers and for our students so that they know what the significance is of the materials within that box and so they're designed around various things and so the ones the MATE Educate these are borrowed, lent out to our district free of charge and we often try and put a little plug in there for educators you know to have this educate maybe you should think about creating your own in collaboration with other surrounding schools that you can look at having one in your school developed with students and community members to create something that is unique for your school community we've also been working on a protocol document and this one's been very challenging for our team because we know that when it comes to writing down protocol that that is very it's really uncomfortable and it's something that we really shouldn't do however we're doing it in a way that is general enough that it's not offensive and but specific enough that our educators feel empowered to begin to have conversations with elders, knowledge keepers and cultural advisors because we have many who said wow I'm so scared to do the wrong thing and so they'll just you know not do it and or there are some that don't understand the importance of why you would want to engage with someone in the community so we're using it really as a another I guess teaching moment for our schools to engage with people just so you know our protocol document has been we've received guidance from many many elders knowledge keepers and cultural advisors from throughout the province and we were hoping to have this release in the fall of this year but we know with documents or guides like this that we have to make sure that we are being very respectful and that we are seeking guidance from as many people as possible so we are not rushing this particular guide but I know that it will be very well received by many teachers within our district I literacy and numeracy you know we have many just like all of you have many district wide initiatives surrounding literacy and numeracy so we work hard in bringing First Nation Métis and new education and culture into these large district initiatives and we know that it's so important to be at that table when that initial planning begins with large initiatives like this so we work hard again on building relationships across many decision units within our central office so that they'll invite us so that we can sit down and begin planning and providing feedback from the very beginning and I just want to welcome Glenda to speak a bit about the work that she's been doing so sorry one thing I forgot to mention is through the work that we were doing with our edu site looking at the history is I had an opportunity earlier a few months ago to was through Solange and through Parks Canada and Barbas here I had an opportunity to head out to Jasper it was really tough but I had an opportunity to go there and take part in a pilot project that they're doing in the teaching of the mountain people and looking at the history of the indigenous peoples who were there and kind of what happened as time has gone on and Jasper was formed into a national park so I just wanted to thank you for that opportunity it was a really great learning experience and I know there's people from Edmonton Catholic there who are working with us to network and to take part in that opportunity so thank you and here's Glenda put me last so I can move the mic down so I'm just going to talk about the last point on this slide which is the early years guide so in collaboration with one of my co-workers we're working to create an early years guide for First Nation Métis and New Art Families who are looking to choose Edmonton Public Schools it has information about play-based learning it has information about sorry it has information about health concerns if you want to look for health dental any of that how can you access any of this in Edmonton and through this we have consulted with former members of the ECMAP project we've also looked with internally within our early years cohort group we've also consulted outside of Edmonton Public and looked at some of the Aboriginal Head Starts with Ben Daryl and we've also consulted Elders with this so we're looking forward to when it'll come out and it'll be on the website so this slide the learning to relate slide is all about relationships and as you heard Daryl talk about relationships are so important we heard Elder Sykes talk about building relationships as well and how important that is so within Edmonton Public Schools we have family nights that we are partners with also we're looking to have schools who want to host family nights on the Empowering the Spirit website in collaboration with ERLC we worked on how to host a family night guide and you can find that under the cultural awareness piece but within Edmonton we work with community partners such as social workers big brothers, big sisters Canadian Native Friendship Centre Ben Daryl organizations that we work together and we all cook we make hamburger soup I learned how to make meatballs soup this year and we serve the families and we also have cultural activities the picture that you see there is Erin Paquette who is a First Nation Artist who did some storytelling with the families and then he told the story because this was in Mill Woods he told the story of the 1987 tornado and then he had the kids draw pictures and he pasted them on his artwork it was fabulous we have also built relationships with Treaty 6 Confederacy of Treaty 6 who host the Treaty 6 Educators Conference they just had their fifth annual and Edmonton Public was able to partner and provide some sessions there but we also attended sessions which some of my colleagues were very excited to make all of those connections and be able to learn because sometimes we don't get to step out of our own roles and then lastly building relationships is the building collaboration and capacity and education grant through Alberta Education that we're looking to move forward with and building those relationships and understanding where our students are from building those community relationships to be able to support transition support should they come with to Edmonton Public Schools or if they're going back to their band operated school and then being able to also learn for us cultural pieces to share to collaborate on anything we can to create those webs of support to support those relationships that need to be built to enhance the learning for so many of our students. Alright so lastly I'm just watching the time here and we're doing good so continuing our journey we know and we recognize there is so much work to be done and I know that you know that but it's important to take time to celebrate all of the accomplishments that are happening while we are on this journey whether it be a really small tiny success or something really large and it's really important to take a moment to reflect on that and celebrate that. I have this quote up here on education is what got us here and education is what will get us out and we strongly believe that our schools within the district really have the best intentions to support our students but we often hear I don't know what I don't know and that's what we feel is a really huge part of our job and our work and you know having conversations and sharing a lot of the work that can be done and I want to share with you just lastly this is a picture of a box that we've created and this box is a we're calling it Reconciliation Commitment box similar to the Bentwood box and this box has a collection of project of part tiles that were created from all of our lead teachers throughout our district and we are looking to have a celebration within the Centre for Education on June 3rd which is the anniversary of the closing event for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and we're calling on our district, district leadership students, schools, community members families to come forth and put gestures of commitment towards reconciliation on either in the Centre for Education and make them into this box or to have their own celebrations or commitments within their school and so we are working in collaboration with Edmonton Catholic School as well as the City of Edmonton to do something all together so within both of our districts in the City of Edmonton we are going to be witnessing each of our events on June 3rd beginning within the Centre for Education and then walking towards Aboriginal Learning Services with Edmonton Catholic and then lastly going through the City of Edmonton so I invite you to take part in that day wherever you are and put forth your commitment to continuing on our journey towards reconciliation and supporting First Nation making new students and eliminating that achievement gap for our kids so I guess on behalf of us thank you I'm truly honored to be here so thank you very much