The education gap for First Nations students in School District 57 is an issue the Northern Aboriginal Education Symposium is working to eliminate.
It’s one of many professional development workshops offered and includes presenters, Keynotes, and cultural performers.
This time around, no other workshops took place at the same time as the symposium, resulting in 720 educators taking part in this year’s edition.
The bi-annual event, beginning in 2012, provides a rare opportunity for educators to meet in person to discuss topics and solutions surrounding the issue.
“Everybody’s in the room together and that’s a way to be able to help narrow that gap because that’s how we start to build our collective knowledge around cultural identity, cultural inclusivity, cultural competency,” says District Administrator of Aboriginal Education, Shelly Niemi.
Since its inception, the Aboriginal graduation rate has increased from 39.9% to 62% within SD 57.
Niemi says a big reason for this is the district revised the curriculum to include content with Indigenous perspective across all subject areas and grade levels.
“What that means is that we’re starting to have that collective conversation around parity within education, not only for Aboriginal students but non-Aboriginal students,” Niemi explains.
SD 57 currently has the most staff working for its Aboriginal Education Department in all of British Columbia with 105; and also has 3,594 self-identified Aboriginal students within the district, making up over 33% of the total student population.
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