Successful schools make great students

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Three Aboriginal schools are among 21 secondary schools across the country chosen as part of the Exemplary Schools Project.

The schools were selected from over 260 nominations, because they serve as illustrations of how schools respond to complex varied and often unpredictable challenges, reads a national report released by the Canadian Education Association Aug. 24

Peguis Central School on the Peguis Reserve in Manitoba is one of the first band-operated schools in Canada. It has given priority to improving school attendance and retention, community involvement and a balance between Native and academic studies.

Joe Duquette High School in Saskatoon, Sask. is a small alternative school of Aboriginal students. It stresses Native spirituality, community involvement, healing and wholeness.

Qitiqliq Secondary School is located in Arviat, N.W.T. The school is an isolated Inuit community with a strong community-oriented program that strives to prepare young people for a changing world and to negotiate Inuit and southern approaches to learning.

The Exemplary Schools Project was a two-and-a-half year study of successful practises undertaken in secondary schools and the primary issues confronting them.

"What makes these schools and educators successful at the present time is their sense of being special, their alertness and discernments in reading the landscape, their imagination and energy in responding to pressure points, and their competence and dedication in engaging their students in the pursuit of important ideas, valuable skills and humane values," said Jane Gaskell, principal author of the report.

No claim is made that these are perfect schools or that they are the best schools in Canada, but that they have had success in responding to specific challenges with an accent on well-being and health.

The community that Joe Duquette High School serves has a low rate of school attendance and a high rate of unemployment. The school was established in 1980 as the Saskatoon Native Survival School. About three-quarters of the school's 170 students are Cree, with the remainder about equally divided between Saulteaux and Metis.

The mission of the school is to assist students who have not succeeded in other schools. The school delivers programs offering healthy lifestyles, Cree language, infant day care, and after-school support circles.

What gives this school its distinctive quality is its philosophy of Native spirituality, regular sweetgrass and other traditional ceremonies, the role of Elders as teachers and models, and the focus on healing and wholeness.

Peguis Central High is located north of Winnipeg. It offers a complete program from nursery school to Grade 12 with 230 students enroled at the high school level.

Though the school follows the Manitoba curriculum, it adds special courses in Ojibway. Half of the teaching staff is Native. The community and the school is united in wanting to ensure the Peguis students can compete for jobs and post-secondary education.

Arviat, N.W.T. is unique in that it is isolated in land (it is not accessible by road) and language (90 per cent of the population of 1,325 are Inuit who speak Inuktitut at home). Oitiqliq Secondary School is distinctive because it attempts to deal with this isolation.

The language of instruction is Inuktitut in Grades 1 through 3 and shifts to both Inuktitut and English in the middle grades. In high school the language of instruction is English with Inuktitut taught as a subject.

The school is distinctive in how it tries to deal with change and prepare young people for a different future. One program, in particular, stands out from the rest in its attempt to deal with the problems of teen mothers.

Shared Care is a local initiative, for drop-outs and returning students. Originally it was conceived as a way to provide babysitting services for young mothers while they went back to school, but it has become a teaching opportunity for the school.

As pat of the career and life management course, all returning students with children share the babysitting duties in the shared care program and deliver programs to pre-school children.

The $2.5 million study was carried out by more than 60 researchers and raises policy issues that challenge current teaching practises. There are no single solutions to improving high schools in Canada. The more information we have the better decisions can be made in education.