MONTREAL/February 23, 2005—
Aboriginal education is a national priority, with two of the Canada / Aboriginal roundtables focusing on education and last fall the Council of Ministers of Education, (CMEC) identified improved educational success for Aboriginal students as one of the three priorities in its current mandate.
Concordia University’s Native Access to Engineering Program (NAEP) is honouring the class room teacher this week at DreamCatching 2005: Workshops in Math and Science for Teachers of Aboriginal Students being held at from February 23 to 26, 2005. More than 70 delegates from Canada and the United States will attend.
There is much discussion about improving the quality of education to which Aboriginal peoples have access to in Canada. While policy initiatives are necessary to move the agenda forward, the NAEP is putting for one simple question: What Can One Teacher Do?
The NAEP believes that Aboriginal educational achievement can only be realized through the efforts of front-line teachers at the community-level. The DreamCatching conference is one of a series of NAEP efforts to support teachers by providing them with concrete ideas and strategies for making science and math more attractive to Aboriginal students.
An international group of facilitators will address this year’s theme, What can one teacher do? in hands-on workshops, plenary sessions and panels. Among them:
• Ed Galindo, a member of NASA’s teacher astronaut programme, will help teacher’s build a science programme when they have no budget
• Lisa Lunney will share methods which have helped her on-reserve high school math students outperform the provincial norm in Nova Scotia
• Sue Dale Tunnicliffe will introduce means of teaching physical science to very young children by using animals
• Florence Glanfield will talk about the importance of communication in the mathematics classroom.
Photo opportunities: Hands-on activities in workshops; Ed Galindo’s workshop: life size whale; Sue Dale Tunnicliffe workshop.
For more information, contact: Dawn Wiseman, Coordinator, Native Access to Engineering Program at (154) 848-2424 x.7847 or by e-mail at dawn@encs.concordia.ca
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Source :
Tanya Churchmuch
Senior Media Relations Advisor
Concordia University
