News

For senior science teacher Renée Carrière, simply getting the students out of the classroom is not enough. To truly explore land-based education, strategies and pedagogies that connect both Indigenous and Western ways of knowing and the student’s own relationship to the land are essential.

PRINCE ALBERT – Join McDowell Foundation researcher Renée Carrière in Prince Albert on April 24, at Par Place (off Highway #3 west of the city), from 7 to 9 p.m., for a Salon Series community conversation on land-based education and how it can engage students and help boost attendance and graduation rates.

“Traditional Western paradigms of learning don’t work for all students,” says Carrière, winner of the 2017 McDowell Research Award and teacher at Charlebois Community School in Cumberland House. “Land-based education provides a unique way to connect the curriculum and build meaningful relationships with students so we can create new ways of learning, loving and leading to help students obtain the credits needed to graduate.”

Most of us can never imagine the utter confusion and wide range of emotions that would be an everyday reality for someone who grew up as a Little Person diagnosed with achondroplasia.

If you would like to gain some insight into what curves and challenges life has thrown at retired teacher and longtime Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation councillor Linda Nelson, you can check out her first published book, That is Not Me… A Journey of Perception.

Anxiously awaiting the official book launch on April 28, Nelson visited the STF office to share not only what is contained in the book, but also the genesis of her writing it which stems back to a poem she had written in her early twenties as a young teacher. In the book she acknowledges this was one of the lowest ebbs of her journey, as she wondered about how her life was wasted, and how she was tormented by hidden anger and negative emotions.

Well there it was–a truth that had to be acknowledged. The new Premier of Saskatchewan promised $30 million more for education and the money was delivered. Under the hot lights of the packed rotunda (Saskatchewan’s budget day spin room), certain other immutable truths were also being acknowledged.

The promise of more money came during an intensely competitive leadership race, during which teachers were challenging candidates to at least give a thought to education. Would the $30 million have been promised without the active intervention of teachers? It’s a question that can’t be answered.

This year’s Indigenous Ensemble of Wa`cipi Kte! once again combined the artistic talents of student performers from Saskatoon Public Schools in paying homage to the evolution of the modern day powwow.

As an interesting new twist, the always-colourful performance included a touch of opera this year, but there was also an undeniable symmetry with the past as the production was penned by Darlene Speidel.

She happens to be the mother of Donnie Speidel, the longtime Indigenous Ensemble Artistic Director as well as his full-time duties as Cultural Resource Liaison for the First Nations, Inuit and Métis Education Unit with Saskatoon Public Schools.