 I'm Diana McLean and I'm one of the two teachers in the first year of our founding program of the Annapolis Valley First Nations School. We have a school program that's open to children from age four right through to the end of grade 12 and we also offer a program for adult learners. Well the program was developed at the request of our chief and council and they felt that there were a significant number of children and youth in our community that were falling through the cracks and were not being served in the public school system because of challenges in mental health or difficulties in just functioning in a regular school system and so they wanted to provide an alternative on reserve school that would meet the needs of the children and youth in our community. We offer a complete full school program or a certified school that can offer the curriculum from grades primary to grade 12 and we offer an Nova Scotia grade 12 graduation diploma and we can offer any courses from economics, chemistry. We offer the beginning primary level program so we have teachers that are qualified to offer programs at all levels of the school system. We also have a strong indigenous focus so that our reading material, the social studies curriculum, we are mandated to follow the outcomes of the Nova Scotia Provincial Curriculum but we vary very widely from those outcomes in that we really want to be something different. We don't want to just offer our kids more of the same. We really try to look at indigenous learning styles and offer a curriculum that will make our kids proud of their heritage. We also do have a MiGMA language program which is really challenging because there is only one fluent MiGMA speaker in our community but we use resources from the University of Cape Breton and from the MiGMA Guina Mattaway Education Authority to help with some of our MiGMA language but we're all learning together. The students and the teachers, we're all learning MiGMA language as we go along. Well, we have graduated our first grade 12 students just last month. This year we're a very small school and we are in a very small reserve and we have three grade 12 students this year. One has just graduated, we know we will have two more that will graduate in June and these are youth who dropped out of school, who haven't been able to function, who have struggled with issues in mental health or with learning disabilities or attentional or behavior problems and just non-functional in the public system and they are going to graduate. All three of them have post-secondary aspirations and so I suspect that we've got three youth just graduating from our school who would not have had opportunities otherwise. The same goes with our middle schoolers. We have three middle schoolers, all of whom struggled in the public school system and they would not have been able to have been successful unless they had the opportunity of coming to work with us. I think the thing that will make the program even better is to have more funding that will enable us to offer the program to more kids with increasingly more challenges. We do have youth in our community who have been in trouble with the law and we need really intensive programming to offer them the support that they need so I think that if we were able to have maybe even a teacher's aid that we could bring on who would support us. We also need far more access to technology but that's coming because we've become a part of a project called Digital Migma and so we will as of next week have a new technology lab with one of our grade 12 students who will be coordinating that lab and we'll be able to offer many courses in things like robotics, animation, digital technology, artificial intelligence and a lot of things that will, I hope, grab the attention of our kids who need much more experience with digital technology. So we're excited about that. We offer yoga every morning. We have yoga integrated as part of our school program. All of our grade 12 students have a provincial grade 11 credit in yoga and we brought that into the school because there were so many of our students who needed support with relaxation, concentration, suffered from so much stress and anxiety that we thought yoga would be a really good curriculum way to tackle those issues as well as give them a credit but they look forward to it. It's wonderful. We have a terrific time from about 11.30 to 12. Every day yoga is part of the curriculum so we not only do the poses but they do relaxation, breathing, meditation and a little bit of the philosophy of yoga and we have a program that is very much based on the Seven Sacred Teachings. It is a yoga program with an indigenous focus and we try and talk about things like truth and respect and we have poses that represent those Seven Sacred Teachings. We have poses for every animal in the Seven Sacred Teachings and then all of our school participates together. So our middle schoolers and our high schoolers alike. So we have middle school children who are doing a grade 11 yoga curriculum alongside the grade 12 students so it's really wonderful. Our students really tend to support each other so the little ones get along with the older ones and I think it's leadership opportunity for everybody. We have an obligation to offer the Nova Scotia curriculum but I would say that we offer far more and we offer it in a very different way because the reason we started this school is so that we would be different. We do not want to be the same as the public school. We want to be different. We want to have a form of education for our youth that is better, that is different that supports their cultural heritage, their spiritual teachings and so I would say they'll get everything that we get in the public school and more. Plus, we have teachers who are trained in special education and in assessment so that the curriculum is directly trained on focusing on students special and unique learning challenges. We teach children the way they need to learn. That's a really challenging question but I think it is a question, I mean I think that it is a form of education that is different than what is offered in the public school. I think that it involves supporting the heritage of our youth supporting the cultural background supporting the ways they learn and accepting that all Indigenous youth don't learn the way many students are expected to perform in the regular high school. We do a lot of oral instruction. We do a lot of oral assessment and we use a very arts based, an arts based instructional format so we have a lot of traditional crafts. We also let kids express themselves through a lot of arts mediums. Singing, storytelling, drumming, dancing, a lot of things that would be part of a more Indigenous traditional heritage. We do support outdoor education and land based learning and that's an area that we really feel like we want to have a lot more involvement in in the future. Well, I would say the number one hurdle we need to eliminate would be community members feeling that our school isolates children as opposed to enriches their experience of education. And what I hope to show community members is that we have a very, the kids that come to our school have a very rich opportunity to learn and they have a lot of other opportunity for socializing in the community and that we are an enriching activity as opposed to an isolating activity. So I would like to see our numbers increase over the next few years. However, that being said, when we are able to offer a very intensive supportive curriculum to kids with special needs or unique learning challenges in groups of maybe six at a time, we are able to offer a very rich experience. So, you know, it's hard to say. Over the next 10 years, I know our chief and council has the goal of building a school, having a physical building and looking at probably having four classrooms with a science lab, technology lab and supportive services for kids with special needs. So the vision is there that the school will definitely increase in size. And my goal is to keep the curriculum and the quality as high as it is now even as we expand. Well, I feel I have a responsibility to be a knowledge bearer for our children and our youth. It's a challenging thing. We use so much of traditional heritage and so many materials, but we also call upon the wisdom of the elders in our community, which is really important. We also use as many sources and resources as possible that are provided to us through the University of Cape Breton. And because we are so isolated and depend so much on the support of outsiders to, especially with MiGMA language development, we make as much use of those things as we can. Our school is a school whose mission is rooted in the Seven Sacred Teachings. So that just is a part of what we do all the time. And we try and bring it into every subject every day and it just becomes a part of who we are and how we live. It's not an add-on, it is who we are. And we also really try and support the oral tradition and do a lot of work in listening and in speaking and trying to instill in our youth that feeling that they are leaders, that they have so much to contribute to their community. We also have a mission to be of service to our community. That's another... We are founded on the Seven Sacred Teachings, but we also are a school that has a mission of serving others and serving the community. So we're always looking for opportunities for service. Always trying to encourage our young people to be of service to other people. Well, I think probably the thing that inspired me most over the past year is seeing several of our youth who suffered from severe mental health challenges who perhaps this time a year ago were not even able to leave their home let alone attend public school full-time coming to our school and being able to complete a full grade 12 curriculum and look forward to graduating and look forward to having a job. Some of them truly become leaders who a few years ago were struggling to get out of bed. So I think that's probably the most exciting thing for me, seeing that given respect, responsibility and being able to attend a school where they're truly valued and they have a unique individualized education. They just grow and blossom and become such successful human beings. Plus, it's just an absolute joy coming to school every day. I love what I do. Not only are we a P to 12 school, that's a really good question because we are also a school that supports adult learners and they can get in touch with us through the Annapolis Valley First Nations Band Office and they'll send word down to me. And interestingly enough, we are open to all members of the community, not just members of the Annapolis Valley First Nations Band, not even Indigenous people. Any people from the area who wish to upgrade their educational skills, do WIMIS training, learn how to write resumes, they're all welcome to come. And we're open and available from about 12.30 to 3 o'clock every afternoon for adult learners who work alongside our grade 12 students to build all kinds of new skills. We even have one student who is attending a KDA university and works side by side with other students in our learning center. So we offer a full range of opportunities. We do partner with the Nova Scotia Department of Education and the Adult Education and Labor Department and they also support and sponsor students who are part of our school team.