 So my name is Frances Roth and I'm a teacher and I've worked for the past few years in Old Crow in the north part of the Yukon. I'm talking today mostly about the land-based learning that I was helping with and working with when I was in Old Crow for these past few years. So Old Crow is a small remote First Nation community up in the north part of the Yukon. It's about 150 to 250 people. You get there by way of Dawson or Novik. So it's quite remote and at the school there it's a K-12 school now and while I was there I taught an alternative high school program so Old Crow hadn't had a high school program until about seven years ago now. So the idea was to put in an alternative program for students that wanted to stay in their home community because otherwise they do have to come here to Whitehorse to go to high school. So that's how I first started teaching in Old Crow and then the past years I was teaching grade four, five, six. So nine to 11 year olds. But I think today I'll be speaking a little bit about the experiential land camp that the Montag Wichin First Nation runs a collaboration with the school. So the school is Chief Shea Getlet School and they run a collaborator program every spring. It's about three weeks in April so each the grade one, two, three class goes out for a week, grade four, five, six goes out for a week, grade seven, eight, nine goes out for a week and our kid in our class joins the grade one, two, three class for a day. So the First Nation holds the rights, the intellectual property rights, the content rights to that culture camp but I can speak a little bit too about how that collaboratively works because that's how I first went to Old Crow back in 2007, eight was my master's research was helping out on how to do these sort of collaborative programs, how to use science and traditional knowledge side by side and have students kind of weave back and forth. But then I can also speak a little bit about just land-based learning in Old Crow so how at the school we collaborate together with the First Nation to use students lived experience to meet what we have to do in terms of the school's learning objectives. So as a teacher, I mean the school board, the Department of Education is a big thing we're responsible for is meeting all the learning objectives. So those are laid out by British Columbia learning objectives that we use here in the Yukon, sometimes we have Yukon specific ones. So my challenge as a teacher in Old Crow was how to use Indigenous knowledge skills, attitudes, values to meet those learning objectives. So there's times we can use an Indigenous role view as the baseline and there's times where we have to use the Western protocol, for example like the scientific method as a starting point but how can we use our students lived experience to meet that. And so like as any good teacher you use their everyday life of how you kind of start to make things relevant and useful. So a lot of it would be looking through what I have to do in terms of learning objectives for the year and say, okay how can I use Wantuk Wichin people like resource users and natural resource users, people in the government, people who work for self-government, people who do traditional crafts and skills or any sort of cultural skills. How can we use all these people to meet this Western or as we see in the North, Southern prescribed learning outcomes. So that was kind of the aim is yeah how can you make a student's reality the basis of what we have to do in school. How we approach land-based learning in Old Crow is this whole idea of team teaching. So the goal is to have students that come out that can really move between their Indigenous world view and this external Southern Western world view and be able to go back and forth. And the idea to be honest is people like me that aren't from the community to kind of teach ourselves out of a position where you can have students you don't need a translator there to like that student can do those two things on their own. But right now in Old Crow there weren't there's not many teachers that are actually from the First Nations so there are in their language stream but not in the rest of the stream. So someone like me is basically a translator so I'm a team teacher is how we kind of see our role. And I can understand what the school board means in terms of meeting learning objectives you know field trip protocols in terms of safety and liability when we're out on the land all these kind of things but I saw my role as how do you provide opportunity for people from the community to be providing the cultural instruction that they want in the school. So how can I use those hunters? How can I use the people who trap? How can I use the seamstresses? How can I use the people who do traditional cooking and food preservation in the classroom and provide them with opportunities but that I can show which learning objectives we're meeting and then we have clear assessment so how independent is a student on that skill at this point. Yeah and that was kind of the whole focus was around team teaching so whenever we're doing any sort of land-based learning or using indigenous knowledge the idea is that I'm there to help fit it into the box of the school but to allow the whoever our resource person is from the community to be the instructor. So you're kind of like acting as a translator basically. Yeah not to the students necessarily but as like yeah as a bridge to the to the Western protocol to the what we have to capture within the school framework. So for example so say great I mean a good example is in grade the junior grades in science you have to do a whole lot on body systems so the respiratory system, cardiovascular system, all these kind of systems and the Western protocol would be you know often we'd order a cow eyeball or you know a frog and we dissect something like that. Well in old crow that's a huge observant cost to do that but guess what we need to go collect go caribou hunting in the fall so we have the students can be out on the land with people who are our hunters that they can understand the protocol and the whole value system around hunting. They also yeah so to provide that sort of opportunity but then also at the school we have a hot lunch program it'd be great if we could also be collecting caribou for our hot lunch program so we can have caribou through the winter for hot lunch so we put all these things together we also would go out at the same time as that we do this week long camp with people from the porcupine caribou management board that are doing all the collection on the body health and like the health of the caribou and the herd and so you know collecting blood and you know taking samples of bones and taking samples of the livers and kidneys and so on that then goes into the management of that porcupine caribou that's done between the territorial government and all the different first nations so the idea we'd have the person from the porcupine caribou board we'd have the person a few people from old crow that are hunters we'd have teachers like myself that would be like thinking about the science things that the students need to do everything's laid out ahead of time what learning objectives how we're going to assess it and then yeah we all go out hunting together and so a big thing that the team teaching is for myself is knowing when to step forward when to step back and a lot of that's been developed over a long time of working in old crow and having that relationship but you know I'm hunting with these guys on our own time and kind of know what when you should participate and when to step back and let them teach the students so yeah so we go out we go hunting we get caribou you know they'd be hearing all the stories of how you do what you do and why it's important in the value system in it and as they're cutting we're opening up the animal and we take the skin off and you know then at that point you know the hunter like our education support at the school he knew the person who does the science part really well so he'd step back and that guy would step in and show like the students would be there at the syringes taking blood samples and then go back to the cultural teacher again and he'd finish butchering it up with the students and students are in their knives cutting everything up and we'd use that meat for our lunch and we take everything back to town and yeah that would be used for hot lunch but at the same time the students are then looking at the cardiovascular system respiratory system we'd be opening up and looking at you know why do we have so many chambers in our stomach and what is it that they're eating and looking at okay what is the trophic relationship between all these different animals and why do we have bio contaminants that build up through food chains and why do certain animals have more contaminants and what are those key indicator species and so on so we kind of get into all that content while we're out there on our hunt for the week so it's a pretty big week that's probably one of our biggest ones of the year is fall hunt but we did lots of other things like week of winter camping in crow flat which is about a four-hour scooty ride from a crow and how the gins survive but on the land in the middle of the deep part of the winter it was about minus 40 degrees for the week we had students in grade four five six up there and we're out there and meeting a whole bunch of learning objectives in terms of survival and adaptation and learning a lot about resiliency so yeah so and it kind of gets pieced in throughout the whole year we have we build things in about self-government especially into like English class and how interviewing protocol and how to work with for example our heritage department has a whole protocol on how to conduct interviews and and they have a whole database of interviews that they've saved so the students learn that protocol and then they do interviews and then we document that and that provides like the content for our writing because you know we had to do you know how do you write a paragraph and there's a lot of ways you can teach that well one way could be listening to this interview that you've just conducted and having to write a one paragraph summary and then okay and then how are you actually going to edit all of this information and put it together in some sort of metadata so there's a lot of we try to make everything really realistic we try to make it based on skills that they see that they're going to need in the first nation that they're working in and just make everything interesting and make everything really relevant that's one thing that old crow's really rich in is be especially because it's remote and it's been a little bit outside of how strong some of those colonizing forces are that you know like everyone still can easily go out and harvest on the land if they have that skill set in the economic base to be able to you know house could be removed and all these things to get out so that is the students lived experience and so some of the students are at a lot and it's great for them to be able to kind of shine and have comfort and familiarity and then some students aren't out very much at all and so at the school we kind of are able to provide a basis to to get out some of the students that aren't out for various reasons as much so I mean that's one thing that a remote first nation community I think has going for it for programs like this is especially I mean it's only 150 250 people in town so if you've been there for a few years chances are you have personal relationships with all of the co-instructors as a teacher you'd be working with so you have a good sense of who you can go to for what and and it's I think a lot easier to put some of this stuff in place and to kind of get things done because you have that familiarity there's high interest from the first nation on a whole and from um individual students and families for sure for land-based programming um there was a big influx of money about 10 years ago into the the community to develop for example the culture camp so that their the camp is again a three-week program that happens every spring and if people want more information on that if they contact the director of education of the first nation in front of which in first nation directly they for intellectual property reasons they have housed all that information and all the the student workbooks and the teacher book books and everything and so there was a big interest in doing and building that program because before that big influx it was kind of students and teachers could decide if they wanted to go or not and what would often happen is the students would self-select in that liked being on the land so all the students who were comfortable or parents were comfortable those students would go and some of the other students often would not and then teachers would not because they'd have to stay behind with their with their students um and then teachers were missing out seeing this whole other way of learning if they it wasn't something we're familiar with or seeing the strengths of the students while they're out on the land so um so now with this with the new culture camp program it's a mandatory part of the year for the teachers and the students um and uh yeah and it's been a success in that way and then individually in the classrooms um again yeah I mean as parents everywhere they always everyone wants their their children to be able to kind of start from what they know um and in terms of attendance yeah we we definitely find that students are interested in doing these sorts of programs they're a little bit scary sometimes so it doesn't mean me of all the students show up right away it's we're asking a lot of the students it's it is more work to do things like this than to just sit in the class and write a on a piece of paper about what they've learned um so you know there is but we always find like you know the first day it takes a little bit to get everybody there and get everybody out but no one ever wants to leave once we actually all get out there so um there is that yeah it's not like everything is smooth sailing from day one like there's a bit of a getting everyone out and getting everyone comfortable um but then everyone's happy to be there well very important I mean it's again it's using the students lived experience and I mean as first nation students a lot of time they're not represented in the core way that programs are kind of laid out so um so like for example just little things even like if you look at biology it's broken up into you know um or if you look at science broken up to biology chemistry all these kind of different subsections and kind of get pushed out into units and that's different than say a holistic way of looking at things in terms of say harvesting season or uses of it or skills that you would develop and that the information falls out of that so so I think it's important that sometimes we we use like an indigenous worldview to kind of ground how we approach things in this school sometimes we can't like we just we follow the other protocol especially if we're trying to set up some students for certain skilled trades or something um but I think it's important for students to have times that their schooling is reflects their identity um and challenges and they really get to look at the western protocol why do we do things this other way um again because that's that's the reality that's what they're gonna do even if we don't teach that or provide opportunity to do that so um that's for myself as a teacher I pull in a lot of people who um have already kind of gone through that themselves so either people in the community that have you know worked through both of these worlds or students themselves that are in their 20s 30s that are at school that are addressing these issues day to day so you know they'll come in and do what not with the students so maybe it's part of an art unit we're making jewelry with someone in town and who's come back from being at university and we're you know making traditional forms of jewelry and then at the same time having a conversation about what it means to be someone but duck which is living in the city and going to college university and yeah so I think I think it's important for us at the school to provide opportunities for students to have a little direction from people in their community and mentorship of what these challenges they'll face in their life are and part of it is like a celebration of people who do this every day right like recognizing it's a big challenge to to be someone who moves between these two world views and so when we can kind of get behind people who do that in their day to day all the time and really kind of champion that and celebrate that and and you know provide opportunity for them to see themselves as role models to students I think is also it's it's a it's positive for them too as I say people are looking online for more information about that culture camp at least if they it's funny if they google old crow push up press you'll be able to find the three different newsletters that came out of the first three camps that we did back about 10 years ago now and it just provides an overview of some of the activities and it's just on the Vante Quichen's website there so it provides yeah a little bit a lot of photos a little bit of student write-ups but what they did and why and how they did it so provide some good background for my experience of an old crow and again I'm really biased in terms of the school system just because that is my relationship of how I how I kind of worked in old crow as a teacher but for all these things I mean I always say like the school the schooling is but one tiny part of a student's wider education and so the big thing is really exploring your own identity and your skill set and your passions and your interests and schooling as small of a box it is can be a good chunk of that for especially for some students and really starting to see what your role is and what your strengths are to be able to give back to your nation to your to your community so what what would make you happy what would make you fulfilled what would make you useful like we all need to be useful and needed and so what what is your skill set and and again for myself as a teacher how can I provide opportunities in this huge chunk of time we have in a student's day you know eight thirty to three thirty or whatnot we have this huge chunk of their day how can we use that in a way that provides meaningful time to like explore the identity to explore what their goals are to to get all that background information so they you know when they graduate that they have these opportunities do they want to go on down into college or university do they want to pursue something more in the workplace do they want to become a hunter or tropper that the idea that we're really building up whatever that student's goal set is so that when they get to graduation that they have options they have choices that they feel that they've been we've pushed them just far enough that they really you know develop themselves of a person but we haven't pushed them too far that they've lost confidence in themselves so that's a big part of it for me is just really seeing what your role is and and really valuing yourself too I mean a big part of all of this I see is that we can kind of measure success by the relationships that we build by the identity that's developed by kind of who students have become like I often look at my year plan and say okay is this going to support what I think of individual students that student needs are they going to be the person they want to be when they're 25 even though I'm looking at them when they're nine is this going to give them the skill set that they need to be successful contributing member of their of their community in whatever fashion that is and it's going to be different for each student yeah and are they going to be independent and and that's kind of I guess yeah my role in terms of indigenous education is providing the schooling that they need to get to that point I think the long-term vision is that providing authentic rich demanding land-based programs that develop the whole student so again we have this big chunk of their time in a schooling system we have a good amount of funding too and so using that in a way that meets the community's goals that meets individual goals with the whole idea that we really build identity and build skills and background knowledge so that again it's choice so that students come out doing being able to do what they want to do whether that's whatever level of schooling or something else I think I mean to be honest myself is the barrier the very first time like it it took a long time for me to develop the relationships I needed to be effective for me to look at the politics of myself being in a community that's not my own and and seeing okay what is my role and how do I function here in a way that supports what the community's vision is so and then the big part of that is finding other people that want to do that as well so we were really lucky you know crow I mean people from the U.K. know the name Standa Julie so Stan was our education support worker at the school and he was critical in negotiating the land claim and moving to our self-government today so we have this amazing resource person who knows that living on the land who has all these traditional skills but has also worked you know in Ottawa and in Whitehorse and negotiating at various levels of government and and it's kind of like the sort of sample student we're trying to develop and so yeah so having people like that I think is those resources are really important having people that that can come with it such a diverse set of skills into the classroom that work with students and that students enjoy working with too is really big but then also finding teachers that are willing to work collaboratively and teachers have to be willing to step back and say this I you know I need to be able to give all this time to other people but I can again be this this person that can provide that bridge and so I think it's important for yeah for the resource of having teachers that are willing to kind of go down this path because there's a lot of awkward times you have to move through and there's all the missteps you're going to make and I mean I'm in the 10 years now I think I've been working with Oakrow and and I'm feeling like I now know when I like how I can do certain things so it's important I think to be able to to move through all that and another big resource actually this is a funny one but was us developing a really robust rubric system to develop to to do assessment so a big piece in the western system like in that the department that as myself as a teacher one of my big responsibilities is assessment and tracking and so I mean the system to be honest that we've mostly used is a four point system where you know a student is not passing if they're at the first level or level four depending how you look at it but basically they cannot yet do the skill the next level being like what we would think of same like the 60s where they can do the skill with a lot of assistance the idea that like getting to the 70s and 80s where you can do the skill independently and then to the 90s like the a level where you're like okay I can do the skill and I can teach others and that sort of four point rubric we use for everything I use that use that in pretty much every discipline we use it in the land programming we use it in the more classroom traditional programming and so students become really familiar with the idea that the goal of education is to get to the point where you can do something independently and also show others how to do it and so that idea of mastery so that I think was a big part in terms of my own resource development of understanding how to do assessment of all these this land based learning and to document in a way to be really clear this is what a student can do this is the levels that they're at and that assessment is coming from from the traditional teachers and I can document it in that western protocol way