THIS IS WHERE I'M SUPPOSED TO BE'
Northern teacher education programs provide a vision for the future
When the Cree Teacher Education Program started in 2019, Saskatchewan students approached program coordinator Lily Mckay-carriere asking for a start date, hoping to make their dream feel tangible.
She told them they would set foot in a classroom on Sept. 4 and be on their way to becoming teachers. To create another image for them down the road, she added that in 2023 they would walk across the stage at convocation.
The four-year bachelor of education program, delivered out of Charlebois Community School in Cumberland House, a Cree-métis community in northeast Saskatchewan, is heading toward its final year.
After a tumultuous but rewarding few years, that image of the graduation stage is clearer than ever, Mckay-carriere said.
She didn't even have a chance to ask the class about ideas for graduation.
“One day, they said, `You know what? We're going to graduate on May the sixth in 2023,' ” she said.
Educators say northern teacher education programs like CTEP serve an important role in empowering students and keeping learning close, and could serve as a model for developing other kinds of community-driven programs.
CTEP provides a degree in partnership with the University of Saskatchewan. Its two teaching areas are Cree language instruction and Indigenous studies. The cohort's 27 students are between the ages of 20 and 50 and have a range of Cree fluency levels.
The program is a partnership between Northern Lights School Division (NLSD), Cumberland House Cree Nation, the Northern Village of Cumberland House and Métis Nation—saskatchewan.
It came about thanks to brainstorming by northern leaders and NLSD about how to address teacher shortages.
The school division encompasses the northern half of the province, stretching north from Timber Bay — 262 kilometres north of Saskatoon — to Uranium City, and sitting near both the Alberta and Manitoba provincial borders.
Cumberland House is just shy of the border with Manitoba, 447 km northeast of Saskatoon.
“It was long desired for a program to be set up here in the community, where even though we're in the north, we're so far removed from other northern communities,” Mckay-carriere said. “And we're really far removed from access to other educational institutions.”
Hiring and retention of teachers has been an ongoing issue since the end of the Northern Teacher Education Program (NORTEP), the province's original northern teacher education program, NLSD director of education Jason Young said.
Delivered in La Ronge, NORTEP provided free tuition, books and a living allowance to any student who had lived in the north for 10 years or half their life.
Established in 1976, it celebrated 40 years in 2016. Months later, the provincial government announced it would cut the program's funding and hand management of northern teacher education to Northlands College.
“With the demise of NORTEP, unfortunately, and the challenges we saw with that, it really left a void,” Young said. “And I think northern Saskatchewan leaders were left to their own devices to be creative with offering teacher ed programs.”
In the years that followed, new northern “TEPS” started to emerge. The Dene Teacher Education Program (DTEP), delivered from La Loche, was created in 2016.
In 2019, the first group of students entered the Northern Saskatchewan Indigenous Teacher Education Program (NSITEP) in Air Ronge.
The first cohort of the Indigenous Community-based Master of Education Program (ICBMEP) started in July 2020 with online courses before moving to in-class delivery at Northlands College in La Ronge.
Across programs, the consensus among students is the same, Young said. They value being able to attain an education rooted in Indigenous languages and culture, without having to travel south and lose access to their supports.
“I think one of the challenges we have as northern people is that we already have the deficit of being in a region where there's very little socio-economic opportunities,” he said.
“So you've got those barriers that you could try to address or overcome.”
One of the highlights of such a place-based education program is that it's more in sync with northern ways of living.
Staying in or near one's home community means access to family and a greater opportunity for supplemental subsistence living, being able to fish or hunt as a means of subsidizing food, he said.
It was long desired for a program to be set up here in the community, where even though we're in the north, we're so far removed from other northern communities. And we're really far removed from access to other educational institutions. Lily Mckay-carriere
With the demise of NORTEP, unfortunately, and the challenges we saw with that, it really left a void.
“Whether it's just having to talk to someone or just through the food, or the babysitting support for children, the community-based effort I think really does help those kids have success.”
Looking back at the first year of CTEP, Mckay-carriere recalls how it seemed everything would run fairly smoothly.
Many students had just cracked open a laptop for the first time and were learning how to use programs like Microsoft Word for notes and assignments when the pandemic hit.
The program has provided an unexpected crash course in pandemic-era education, and all the challenges that can arise. Seven of the cohort's original 34 students have left.
As with the rest of the province, the CTEP class has experienced periods of online learning as the pandemic has ebbed and flowed in Cumberland House, including a handful of community lockdowns.
Student Francine Chaboyer says that between in-class practicums, CTEP coursework and occasionally running into her own children in the hallways, returning to in-person learning in February has been welcome.
After all, it really feels like the school has become a second home, she said. It's also the school she attended growing up. As part of her practicum this year, which ran until the end of March, she taught Cree 10, 20 and 30 to high school students.
Sharing language with them “feels like a reward,” she said.
“It makes me feel like I need to be here, like this is where I'm supposed to be, because I grew up knowing my identity and who I was, and I grew up with the Cree language. I was brought up from elders and people that were fluent in the language.
“And this gives me the opportunity to teach what I know, and to be proud to let them know who I am and where I come from.”
One of the greatest lessons students have learned is what education can mean for a community — how teachers and students alike can be nation builders, Mckay-carriere said.
Through language, culture-based education and sharing history, teachers have an added level of responsibility to ensure that all students, Indigenous or not, “become much more aware of the Indigenous people of Canada,” she said.
It's a step in confronting the realities of oppression and colonialism.
“Addressing the decline of Indigenous languages is just part of that story,” she said. “So bringing those things alive in a classroom setting is really a big part of being a nation builder.”
Each year, the cohort is given a theme or purpose. This year's goal is to shine, to be a source of light for students on their shared educational journey, Mckay-carriere said.
Those guiding tenets are helpful now as teachers spend more time in classrooms as educators and less as CTEP students, Mckay-carriere said — especially given the pandemic context.
For their final year, they'll be in four-month practicums, hopefully in other communities.
“You're going into classrooms where the pandemic requires people to be even more mindful of the human characteristics of being kind, being understanding, being helpful — all of those virtues, those ethics, that elders enforce, and that you hear as virtues to help people carry each other through,” she said.
With a career in education spanning about four decades, most of it in Cumberland House, Mckay-carriere sees CTEP from a few different perspectives.
She attended Charlebois School, then obtained a teaching degree from the University of Regina before returning in 1982 to become a teacher and eventually, principal.
Mckay-carriere teaches the Swampy Cree dialect and is a passionate proponent for furthering Cree language education.
As an educator, seeing the CTEP cohort's growth is reassuring. As a parent, a grandparent and a community member, there's an enormous sense of pride, she said.
“I hear it from the caretaker who works at the school, who has nephews in here. I hear it from teachers who have sisters who are in the program and are hoping that they'll do really well. I hear it from the children who come by the hallway and ... say, `Is my granny there or my mom there, or my sister there?'”
While CTEP is set to wrap up next year, the solutions it provides have the potential to evolve, Young said.
He expects questions from community members about the possibility of more community-based programs, perhaps in another discipline, like social work or nursing, or in another community.
It comes down to political will and educational leadership, he said.
“I think that it opens the door for those discussions, for sure. And that's exciting. I see why they would think that way, and why wouldn't you? Because you've done it once already. What can we do next time?
“So I encourage them to continue to think big — and dream, I would say. Dream and have a vision for what that future could look like.”
Chaboyer says she's grateful the program was in her community. Familial support has kept her going, from her family at home and the one in the classroom.
“We've learned to help each other, we've learned to just basically stick together and encourage each other to finish what we started,” she said. “And we're all going to walk across that stage ... we're a big, huge family now.”
After finding out she had made the honour roll this year, Chaboyer put together some quotes in Cree that she says reflect her feelings about what's next.
In English, they translate to “hard work pays off when you really work hard enough for your goals in life,” she said.
“Mistayih Niminēnīten Sōgih Atoskaswon Tipiygēpaniw! Mitonih sōgih atoskēk ēgwa minēnīta kīyapits ē-pimatisīyak. Ninanaskomon! Egosi kītwam ānsih!”