A number of hands shoot into the air on a recent afternoon at Howard Coad School in Saskatoon as Donna Kayseas-Brown leads her Grade 2 and 3 students through a lesson on residential schools.
“That’s part of our past right? That’s Canadian history,” she said to the roughly dozen children sitting on the ground in front of her.
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Kayseas-Brown’s teaching credentials on the subject go further than an education degree. She is one of many Saskatoon Public School (SPS) employees who are identified as treaty catalyst teachers that work to implement treaty education across all subject areas.
“It’s one of those things that’s part of our history and makes up who we are today and needs to be alive in our curriculums.”
In 2011 there were 13 catalyst teachers in the SPS division. That number rose to 140 at the start of this school year and Isbister said the division hopes it continues to increase.
“It’s a belief that our school division has around the importance of this and so administrators in schools would get in touch with teachers and let them know about the opportunities that are out there,” Isbister said.
“We just saw it grow and grow and grow because word spread.”
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The treaty catalyst training occurs at workshops put on by the office of the treaty commissioner. Harry Lafond, its executive director, said he hopes teachers leave the workshops with a simple message.
“The elders, the workshop leaders, they’re giving you some tools, some skills, take it home and share it,” Lafond said.
Saskatchewan has become more open minded and receptive to teaching indigenous issues to children Lafond said. However he acknowledged that “we got a long ways to go.”
“We have to look at this as a process, there’s no end here, there’s no magic moment where we say we’re done,” Lafond said.
In 2015-16, SPS Grade 7 students across the division scored an average of 58 per cent on a new treaty essentials learning survey. A report to the school board indicated the survey was a “snapshot of student knowledge at a particular point in time for a particular grade” and consisted of “largely new items.”
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“Am I disheartened? Not really, because if you did the same assessment when I was in school a long, long time ago, that number would have been a lot lower,” Isbister said.
“I think as we continue to move forward with this, we’re going to see an increase in that 58 per cent for sure.”