New high school courses that seek to build relationships and understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were approved this year after being developed by staff at the Foothills School Division.
After being approved by Alberta Education, a three-course sequence of options called All My Relations is being taught at Foothills Composite High School in Okotoks and is available to other high schools in the province.
Charity Tegler, divisional co-ordinator of Indigenous education, said the courses offer updated information compared to an Aboriginal Studies program that was created two decades ago.
“Since then, we've had our 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (and) the calls to action have been released,” Tegler said. “There was a need for updating some of that content that students were learning."
The courses were developed by Tegler and Cameron Campos, a teacher at Foothills Composite High School, in collaboration with other teachers, knowledge keepers and elders.
“A lot of my work is connected with knowledge keepers and others,” said Tegler, who is Cree Métis.
The courses allow Indigenous students to see themselves in the curriculum and non-Indigenous students to learn about history and stories that continue to be uncovered.
“At the heart of it is building relationship and understanding around history and stories between our Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities,” she said.
Grade 10 students will have the chance to learn Métis history and stories, Grade 11 will focus on Indigenous art and ceremonies and Grade 12 students will learn about reconciliation.
“Grade 12 was where we wanted to dig into some of the heavier content,” she said, including the calls to action and missing and murdered Indigenous women.
“This is an avenue for teachers to begin to navigate those discussions.”
The courses are localized for the Treaty 7 area, but can be tweaked for any region.
“That was our intention, that it be very place based and an opportunity for our schools to connect with local communities,” she said. “To hear their stories and see the local art, the local ceremonies, (and) to build that connection to the place that we live and reside.”
Developing the courses aligns with the school division’s goals to support Indigenous students and respond to the calls to action that relate to education, she said.
The sequence of classes was approved shortly before the start of the school year, and it might take a year for them to be rolled out in other schools across the division or the province, she said.
