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| Responding to question one in circle one of four |
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| Lois Boone, task force chair and SD57 board member sets parameters for time and questions in circle |
Photo credits Mack McColl
When the Aboriginal Education Task Force was struck in Prince George, BC, in late October 2007, they decided to set a torrid pace to find solutions. They are racing against time and the frightful statistics revealed by their own Malatest Aboriginal Needs Assessment Project (www.sd57.bc.ca).
Lois Boone is the Vice-Chair of School District 57 and Task Force Chair. Lois Boone said, "There is an urgency to the task force mandate. I said it 25 years ago when I first joined the school board," was elected and left, and now came back.
Back then, "I identified Aboriginal education as an area that requires dramatic improvement." Even in those days of a quarter century ago, "I believed we couldn't seem to allow Aboriginal youth to live up to their potential. I believed then and still believe we have to figure out how to engage them and keep them in the school system."
When she started so long ago, she said, First Nation people were often unwilling to identify themselves as to their origins. "The stigma about culture was still at its strongest. Hopefully that has ended."
If the turn out at the first public meeting of the AETF is any indication the change has been made and people are embracing who they are and where they need to be. And the AETF meeting was well-organized to permit a flood of voices offering answers about what to do.
The organization formed four circles in a room at the Prince George Native Friendship Centre to host the dozens of people who arrived. Each circle was represented by a specific question and a moderator and supervisor of each circle permitted open dialogue and recorded the replies of a dozen respondents.
"We wanted these questions to focus the public mind as to what we could do to make things better?" The questions went as follows: What are the needs and issues of Aboriginal learners? How can parents, guardians, and educators work together? What is the importance of the educational experience? What has worked and made a difference for Aboriginal learners?
The respondents came from across the city on Nov 7 07, including teachers, university and tech school students, First Nation parents and some neighbourhood people. "I think a lot of cultural differences are not recognized by the school system," said Boone.
The AETF is dedicated to a wider area than simply Prince George, for the school districts runs east of the city all the way to Valemount, and north of the city all the way to Mackenzie and as far as McLeod Lake.
"We are going out to conduct smaller meetings," she said of the rest of November, and then the AETF will meet each week in SD57 facilities to hammer out a preliminary report by Dec 10 07, and a final report at the end of Feb 08.
"After we received the results of the Malatest report it launched our actions to address these concerns," because the report clearly identified that practically 50 percent of Aboriginal students are dropping out before graduation, many of them in so-called Middle School, as early as grade 8. The full report is available online at www.sd57.bc.ca or email lboone@sd57.bc.ca with your concerns or suggestions.
