CCL Home > Newsroom > Practically Speaking
If you ask April Shopland, a First Nations support worker in the small Vancouver Island city of Courtenay, what the inspiration was for the innovative Ravens Alternative Education Program, she inevitably thinks of Andrew Johnson.
In 2002, the 18-year-old Ojibway student dropped out of his Courtenay-area high school after being injured in a car accident. A bright kid with loads of potential, Johnson suffered a head injury that affected his memory and made it difficult to concentrate in class. That, combined with ongoing family problems, led to his decision to cut short his formal education.
Ken Lees and Florence Jean talk about the Ravens First Nations Studies program. » Listen
Unfortunately, the move came as no surprise to Shopland. As a home–school worker at Georges P. Vanier Secondary School, Shopland had seen dozens of young Aboriginal students drop out since she began working at the school in 1997. “One year,” she says. “We had 15 to 20 students drop out in the first semester.”
According to Statistics Canada, nearly 50% of Aboriginal youth in Canada never graduate from high school; a disproportionate number of whom are young men. That figure is even higher in Alberta, where an estimated 70% of Aboriginal youth have left high school without graduating. It’s a reality that Shopland and others in the Aboriginal education community have been wrestling with for decades.
In 2002, with Johnson as inspiration, Shopland sat down with her school’s then-principal Clyde Woolman, and Lynn Daniels, the Aboriginal education coordinator for the local school district, to devise a plan to stem the predictable flow of students out of G. P. Vanier. “We were just looking for some way to keep them here and make it a more meaningful place for them,” she says.
What they came up with was a proposal for a new program designed explicitly for First Nations students at risk of dropping out. Unlike most public schools, which boast large class sizes and are rooted in traditional Western curricula, their program envisioned small class sizes of no more than 15 students, each with a dedicated teacher and educational assistant who would incorporate Aboriginal traditions into their coursework.
The proposal was approved in February 2003 and within days it had found a teacher: Ken Lees. The former social worker would now have to bring the program into existence with little more than a course outline—the course was so new that he couldn’t even rely on textbooks. The inaugural class of students arrived in Lees’ classroom that semester, and Andrew Johnson was among them. Shopland had tracked him down and convinced him to give school, and the new program, another try. “I wasn’t really planning on going back to school,” Johnson, now 22, says. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life.”
The one-semester program—which the students named after the trickster in First Nations mythology who provides opportunities for growth and achievement—integrates B.C. First Nations Studies alongside more traditional curriculum such as English, math, sciences, communications and career planning. Unlike many other secondary schools, Ravens students attend all of their classes together, helping to foster a level of comfort and camaraderie not often seen in regular classrooms.
With Shopland’s support the students also receive any required support, whether social or emotional, that they might need.
The result was a revelation for Johnson. For the first time in a long time school was something more than a hard slog for the teenager. “It completely changed my outlook on things,” he says. “It totally gave me a big confidence boost.”
He cites First Nations course material, from learning about his own clan to getting to know the history of land claims, to the hands-on assistance from Lees and Shopland, for helping him rediscover learning.
“The teachers were great—[they were] definitely the best teachers I’ve had at Vanier,” he says. “And when I needed help I’d go to Mr. Lees whenever I could. And April helped me out a lot. She’d do a lot of reading with me and spell-checking.”
Pretty soon Johnson left his Bs and Cs behind, trading them in for straight As—and not just in Ravens courses. He was able to transfer the skills he learned in Lees’ classroom to the more traditional studies that had tripped him up previously.
He eventually graduated, earning an academic award in science and in his agriculture course. (After graduating, Johnson went on to take a post-secondary course and is currently apprenticing as a certified utility arborist. He’s working for a small company in the Comox Valley and loves his job.)
Andrew Johnson’s experience is by no means unique. Lees is convinced that the program’s design, which takes into account each student’s strengths instead of focussing on their weaknesses, is responsible for its success.
Since its inception in Feb. 2003, more than 100 students have passed through the Ravens Alternative Education Program, a one-semester course aimed at reducing the high dropout rates among Aboriginal students in one Vancouver Island school. Evidence gathered in the five years since has shown that the unconventional program has had some very conventional results.
During the 2006 provincial First Nations Studies examinations for Grade 12, a semi-annual standardized test, the students enrolled in The Ravens scored the highest marks in British Columbia. Since then the program has proven so successful that it now boasts a waiting list, with students requesting transfers from other schools in the area in order to attend.
The idea of tailoring teaching approaches to suit a specific group of students has gained popularity over the past few years, with some school boards promoting the idea of focussed schooling. In Nov. 2007, CCL released three holistic lifelong learning models designed to better measure the full learning experiences of Aboriginal people. These innovative models were developed to better capture the full spectrum of learning, including traditional knowledge and history, that is often missed by standardized testing.
More information about the models for First Nations, Inuit and Métis learners, can be found in CCL’s report Redefining How Success is Measured in First Nations, Inuit and Métis Learning.
The latest data collected from the program shows marked improvement among the more than 100 students who have passed through it. For example, as a cohort, before entering the program the students mean grade in English was a C. That average rose to a B+ after the cohort entered Ravens—and it stayed at that level after the students re-entered mainstream Grade 12 classes.
It’s numbers such as this that led Lees to think it wasn’t that his students were failing within the education system, but rather that the education system was failing them.
“We never looked at the student as being the problem for low-graduate success rates,” he explains. “We thought ‘These are students who care, but who have specific problems. So we need to identify those.’”
For her part, Shopland believes that the high Aboriginal dropout rate was never a reflection on the potential or the abilities of the students. In fact, she points to studies that show many Aboriginal students keep trying to graduate, even after they’ve left, opting for alternative settings and distance education in an effort to get their high-school diplomas.
“I knew they could do the work,” she says. “It was just the way it was being offered and the situation of their lives that was getting in the way.”
Together, Shopland and Lees designed a program based on personal relationships; one of the essential components is personal contact and a family attitude. They then worked to tailor the program to students with a variety of needs, from learning disabilities and low self-esteem to difficulties at home. This holistic approach has paid dividends for all involved in Ravens.
“We formed a little community,” says Cody Fee, a 17-year-old who attended the program in 2006. “In larger classes everyone’s a little nervous to say something. In Ravens, I found a lot of people weren’t that shy to speak up.”
Cody got some of his best marks in the Ravens, and even after he finished he’d return to Lees and his educational assistant, Florence Jean, for help with other courses. Today, he’s planning to attend community college where he’ll enrol in First Nations studies. “It sparked an interest,” he says about the program.
Lees began by teaching the program from an employment counselling viewpoint. A former social worker and employment counsellor, he figures out what skills his students lack and teaches them those. Then he assigns essays on a First Nations topic, evaluating the writing for both English and First Nations courses. “We focus on literacy building, so if students came to us as poor readers, we want them to leave as better readers.”
Paige Kingsley was one of Lees’ students in 2006. A Métis, she didn’t know many other Aboriginal students until she came into the program. Sometimes, she says shyly, non-Aboriginal students at the school mock the native kids. Once she joined the Ravens, she had a family who stuck together. “Sometimes they like to make fun of us,” the 17-year-old says. “But I guess they don’t really know how close the group is.”
Paige, who was struggling academically before joining Ravens, raised her grades to a B average in the course. Shy and reserved by nature, she used to freeze up during tests and exams. But not in the Ravens program. She liked the material and her fondness for it helped her to remember things on the exam.
“When I first met Mr. Lees I was kind of a deer caught in the headlights. I was really shy,” Paige says. “Now I’m using my voice and talking to people, even helping them out when I can.”
These stories of overcoming adversity are remarkably commonplace among graduates of the Ravens program. Over and over, Lees’ students describe the importance of the smaller class setting and the personal attention they receive (the connection is so strong that sometimes that recent graduates, like Paige, will return to volunteer with new students).
Although solidarity and self-esteem are the immediate rewards of the program, Lees is adamant that his students use Ravens as a stepping stone to high-school graduation, and beyond.
“What we try to do is honour the parents’ wishes. And the parents of our Aboriginal students want their kids to graduate,” he says. “They recognize that without graduation, they’re closing doors on themselves.”
Shopland says that all of the evidence shows that the students who go through the program are achieving greater academic success. And although she acknowledges it hasn’t completely stemmed the dropout tide, Shopland says more aboriginal students at G.P. Vanier are completing high school than ever before.
As well, more students are seriously considering post-secondary opportunities; a process the program’s coordinators make accessible through post-secondary nights where college and university representatives attend to promote their programs.
Ravens has been so successful that there’s a lineup to get in: the program now has three times as many applicants as it has spaces. It has even begun admitting non-Aboriginal students at risk of dropping out, with four graduating in 2007.
In fact, Lees think the Ravens formula is applicable for any student struggling to learn regardless of cultural background or experience. The key as he sees it is the forging of a sincere connection between the teacher and his or her students.
“In that way we bring in those holistic Aboriginal values of family and community, and the idea that no one does it alone.”
Lees also hopes that despite the need for healing among the current generation of Aboriginal people, in time, students won’t need programs like The Ravens.
“I would like to see our Aboriginal students be proud of who they are in the regular classroom,” he says. “I’m hoping the success I’m having with my children means they’ll have success with their children. And then they won’t need a program like this.”