Hope needs more Indigenous educators—but so does everyone else

The Fraser-Cascades school district had a difficult time hiring Indigenous educators last year. But it wasn’t for lack of trying (or funding).

Hope’s public school system is home to about 1,700 students, about 40% of whom are Indigenous.

Delivering cultural, emotional, and social assistance (which can involve everything from helping students with behavioural challenges navigate a classroom, to incorporating cultural knowledge in a lesson, to assisting with academic work) for 700 Indigenous students is no small task.

That kind of cultural and emotional support is particularly important for students in education systems that historically have not served—and often abused—Indigenous families.

Support in a classroom is often a prerequisite for academic success for many, says Indigenous Education Principal Christine Seymour. Seymour, whose grandfather went to residential school and whose father was former BC Lieutenant-Governor Steven Point, became an educator in part to see Indigenous students thrive. (The Current profiled Seymour in 2021.)

“I've been through the education system, and it was my goal to come back and support our students on their journey and through their education journey and academic success,” she said

But hiring for vital support roles isn’t always easy.

Seymour talks about several forms of support, but each is embodied by people in classrooms, including specified Indigenous Education teachers, language teachers, and Indigenous Support Workers (or ISWs), who take on a role similar to an education assistant and work in classrooms with specific students.

But finding people to fill those roles can be challenging.

Last year, the Fraser-Cascade school district didn’t spend more than $300,000 that it had earmarked for salaries and benefits for Indigenous teachers, Indigenous support workers, and support staff.

Support workers and teachers

The District had money left over for both ISWs and an Indigenous Education teacher last year. It’s also hiring a Halq'eméylem language teacher.

Indigenous Support Workers (ISWs) who help students navigate school life—and sometimes simply life in general, are an important part of Indigenous Education for Seymour. “When I first started in this position, our ISWs were my heart work,” she said.

“Indigenous people know that our people are still healing from the residential school era,” Seymour said. Indigenous students are all on a journey to reclaim identity, culture, and language, Seymour said. But each support worker is on that journey, too, and are important role models for the students following in their footsteps.

“Oftentimes, I think that that's first and foremost. In order to have academic success, they need to have all those other things,” she said.

With more than a dozen different Indigenous communities in the Fraser-Cascade area, hiring for Indigenous teaching and support roles is important and will affect hundreds of students.

Many positions posted are eventually filled, and money budgeted spent. Sometimes, though, the specialized roles that Seymour and Moody hope to fill stay empty.

Meeting the demand for qualified staff requires flexibility, and such adaptation can also bring benefits for students. One such position, a new Indigenous graduation coach, was filled in January with funding left over from last year. The district was originally looking for a teacher with a master’s degree to fill the role, but they were happy to hire an applicant with a social work master’s degree and experience working with local First Nations and schools instead. The new graduation coach will focus on helping at-risk students prepare for life after high school.

Language learning

The district is also currently looking for a full-time Halq'eméylem language teacher. But it’s inevitably hard to find a teacher with enough experience to teach an endangered language.

The biggest requirement for the role is experience with Halq'eméylem. A full teaching certificate, or a high enough level of fluency in the language to get a special Indigenous Language Teaching certificate, are also prerequisites.

Having been banned in residential schools, Halq'eméylem is severely endangered. As of 2022, there was only one fully fluent Halq'eméylem speaker left. But the number of speakers—and teachers—is now slowly growing.

While fluency remains fairly rare and the language endangered, students can study Halq'eméylem up to the graduate level at the University of the Fraser Valley and learn to teach in the language. In some schools, like the Seabird Island Community School, many of the teachers can teach in Halq'eméylem.

(Read more about the resurgence of the Halq'eméylem language in the FVC’s three-part series here.)

But in the Fraser-Cascades district, it remains difficult to hire language educators.

Location plays a role in the challenge. The school district largely consists of rural areas and small towns, and the district’s distance from those Fraser Valley centres, which can feel significant, can make it tricky to attract teachers. Moorthy said that the area also has its advantages: Hope is close enough to the Fraser Valley to draw talented teachers from the seething masses of the Lower Mainland, and doesn’t feel quite the same pressure that districts farther afield can face.

The stiff competition for the small pool of qualified Halq'eméylem teachers also poses a challenge. While the UFV program in Halq'eméylem teaching has been running for years, there are still relatively few teachers and plenty of Indigenous communities, schools, and public districts that hope to hire them. So Moorthy and Seymour have gotten creative.

“It's a priority to get the language spoken and taught in this school,” Seymour said. “So oftentimes we end up taking students that are knowledgeable in the language, with less training, but we get them in a building to collaborate with teachers to get language spoken and taught in the classes.”

Building the language into the classroom and day-to-day routine of schools can be validating for Indigenous students, Seymour said. The students know the state of the language, and they understand the significance of its present in their everyday lives. In many schools, there’s a “Word of the Day” and competitions in Halq'eméylem. There are extracurricular workshops (taken by classroom teachers and students alike) in the language held after school in Agassiz.

“We're trying to get the language that's relevant to the place and the area and the people that live here [involved]” Moorthy said. “And what a power it is to see it come alive in the schools.”