 My name is Catherine Ray, but I go by Kathy Ray. I'm the learning center coordinator for the Adult Learning Center for the Stanley Board of Education and Stanley Board of Education. I've been working with them for 19 years and I started off as secretary, learned my way up and started helping the students achieve the grade 12 with the WASA and the Lake Headboard Adult Learning Center and we picked from 18 to whatever age they want to come and get the grade 12. And so far, the Gabby Small Memorial Learning Center has the highest rate of getting adult graduates. I think we had more than 150 now since it started about 29 years ago. So and then from there we also take training courses like electrical training and plumbing training in oil and filter training. So the students also have an option of graduating grade 12 and then jumping into a college training program. With the grade 12s, we also work with NNEC and Oskie from Thunder Bay and they come here twice a year and we help students try and get their grade 12 so they could jump into a quality program with the organizations like Confederation College or NEPESING teachers. Anything the students want to try and get to get more educated to climb to reach the goals they're doing so we also help them here at the Learning Center to do their applications to go out for school. So that's one of our highest goals is to help the students succeed. So that's what the basically Learning Center what I do is help other people even beside like we have some 15 year olds at the high school. They need an extra carrot to come to the Learning Center and then we help them. And then there's a student that comes home from out there like Thunder Bay so called the river and they're only two credits shy of graduating but they want to go back and graduate with their classmates then we'll give them the option to finish the credits here. Then we send their transcripts out to the DSC or Pelican Falls or Queen Elizabeth and then we'll say they want to graduate here's a transcript okay we'll let them graduate with the class. Yeah so that's what we do here so I can help every one of them that want this and that to graduate so that's why we're here. How would you say you incorporate kind of the the culture of the community and that into the students learning? We have one course and she has a course here taught wassup and like a board has wassup I mean like a board has a credit that would be history and geography that would connect with the culture and in the summer we have a summer camp for ages four to thirteen morning and afternoon classes and for our language it's very important for us to know it because it's like they said that many students speak it like me I don't really speak it but I still speak it sometimes and then for the non-native teachers or for anybody who wants to learn native language we have evening classes for for 20 weeks two times a night two times a week I have three instructors helping me when we do have native language that's Carmen McPherson Carol and Peter and Tina Cacopilla and myself and we always make sure that we keep our notes updated and then we copy it there's a sign early dialect book and we we make copies and we go to each student that come that want to learn also with pictures and we have we made four books each each time we have native language classes we make four books we also have interviews with elders and we do a video conferencing then we translate their stories into English and then we make an English book out of that video conferencing we do with the elders so I think we did 16 all together 16 videos all together from 2013 so those ones after they're done and published and the videos they go to the elementary school and high school yeah so you're helping them with building building resources as well for the schools yes awesome so from your perspective then what does indigenous education mean to you I think it's very important right now and I would continue to like we're going to be doing surveys later on I think probably after the new year same thing what we did with the elder interviews but we're going to we were talking with Carmen and Carol about visualizing different things so the kids could concept it and have it in their head yeah same with the elders to keep keep their voices to be heard and not to be forgotten what they want us to teach our kids so that's very that's very important to keep their words and their wisdom alive to teach the younger people that's uh that's going to be ongoing I think hopefully yeah I'd like to see that and to keep up with the native language to it over here this portable to even pass this one where do you hope to see indigenous education in the next 10 years maybe here in sandy lake is a community but then maybe broader picture as well like what do you hope it's going I think I already from five years from 2013 there was never a native language right class here at learning center and I think people are starting to move up more in teaching it so I'll say in the 10 years hopefully everything they have k4 and k5 and grade one I think already based in native language at the school they have an English curriculum and they also have a native language immersion so that they're already starting to learn the culture speaking and these sand lakes really working together on achieving cultural wellness and educators we work at educating the kids by speaking it yeah so that's what I see in 10 years then maybe we'll get our language back maybe not 100% but maybe between 80 to 100% I'm pretty sure we'll get our language back and do everything as a culture and as a whole thing it's kind of the holistic community as a holistic yeah yeah it's a yeah it's kind of makes a good place to be if you want to learn about this house it's always something a new learning experience there especially when they see hockey players saying some more different they get excited awesome um well is there anything else that you wanted to add at all there's um that learning center also offers um training abilities so training programs with the colleges and we try to provide what we can help the students if they don't want to go out for school we try to bring our out for school here so they go train so that way they're um they're great help diploma doesn't just get collect us so we try to tell you don't just because you have a great help it opens doors for you and trying to pick most of them there's just one great wow student there he never left santa lake before and he only he needed only one easy credit so i kept bugging him and bugging finally he did it then he went out to school i helped him i never knew that he wasn't a san lee bandman but he was a band member from out there so i i helped him get his education i also helped him get his college and university and i thought he'll come back here never came back you opened too many doors i opened too many doors for that guy and he was brainy smart so i thought you'd be good for the band office so that if i know i didn't know the thing so and most of them stay out there they don't come out they don't come back some do and that's really good because we need more educators in sandy yeah so i i get some uh learning experience here first before i come back but i also they say oh no i love my job and i don't want to come back just like me that's for me and mary and we've been here together we grew old old with our learning center and so we already know what you expect what to do to help these students strive for success but we tend to do more sometimes it's never enough sometimes but it's good the learning center is good for everybody we get our first is with wasa it's it's uh located in sulcote ontario the lakehead board is located on 125 south really student tend to be so that's how we get our distance education here so if we each faxed uh faxed our workout it used to be expressed where we so put it on a plane but then they started losing it the airways we know we sent it out then they would lose it so we started faxing copies of it before we faxed it off so now she does first through email and uh she does first through faxed them but then there's many changes to it they're starting to go on a computer e-learning they call it and uh most of us here are not kind you can't share with the computers like some most of them are computer illiterate but they could use an ipod but it's not a keyboard and so when they go on a regular computer they say uh can't do it then or the fees were free by the time they finish their thing they they don't know how to save their work and then and then it's freezes and they have to reboot it and the workers lost even though we try to tell say we work here five minutes but they didn't keep in mind so we just gave them hard copies so then we faxed off with that hopefully these young people come on a computer