ABORIGINAL YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROJECT

The goal of the Grade 11 and 12 Aboriginal Youth Entrepreneurship Program is to encourage Aboriginal youth to stay in school where they can develop the attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary to achieve success in secondary school, postsecondary education or training, the workplace and daily life. Students are given entrepreneurial experience and the opportunity for business ownership.

The curriculum is based on Ontario Senior Business Studies curriculum, supplemented by material developed by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). NFTE has been in existence for over 25 years and its program is used in 14 countries, including the USA, Great Britain, Ireland, Belgium, and Israel.

MAEI’s Aboriginal Youth Entrepreneurship Program includes Aboriginal content, including case studies, teaching strategies and examples of successful Canadian Aboriginal business leaders.

Using innovative hands-on activities, guest speakers, and business mentors, Aboriginal students learn how to create a product or service-based business. Funding is provided for students who wish to start each micro-business and using the services of local banks, students open and maintain accounts, and must comply with all required record keeping and other accountability measures.

Students are mentored by established business people, including Aboriginal business owners, throughout the planning and implementation process.

The program is designed to improve students’ proficiency in Business Mathematics, English, Accounting, Marketing, and Information and Communications Technology, while supporting the acquisition of leadership skills. Teaching strategies include classroom instruction, simulations, competitions, guest speakers, field trips to businesses and mentoring. The program is closely monitored and the success is determined through both quantitative and qualitative measures.

Since existing teaching materials did not support the teaching of the program, it was clear to MAEI that new and innovative Aboriginal-focused textbook and teachers’ resources were needed. It is important that Aboriginal students see themselves reflected in the textbooks and other materials they use in school. For this reason, MAEI collaborated with Nelson Education Ltd. to develop Aboriginal teacher and student resource materials. The authors of these materials are Aboriginal teachers who have taught the Grades 11 and 12 programs. These secondary school teaching and learning materials are the first of their kind in Canada and are being implemented in the 2011-12 school year.

ACCOUNTING MENTORING PILOT PROJECT

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants is partnering with MAEI and school boards to mentor Aboriginal youth who have an aptitude or an interest in an accounting career.

The goal of the Accounting Mentoring project is to encourage Aboriginal youth to complete high school and pursue careers in accounting.

Aboriginal secondary school students are identified by their teachers. With parents’ permission, participating accounting firms will mentor these students. The accounting firms work with the students over several years in various activities including job shadowing, co-operative education placements, summer employment, scholarships/bursaries and opportunities to article. It is expected that colleges and universities will also support these young people as they pursue their post-secondary studies.

We anticipate that in the future, pilot projects will be sponsored across Canada and that this will lead to a national project.

BANKING MENTORING

A parallel mentoring program was started in Edmonton and Winnipeg in the 2010-11 school year in partnership with Scotiabank.

PROMISING PRACTICES IN ABORIGINAL EDUCATION WEBSITE
http://www.maei-ppw.ca

MAEI launched the Promising Practices in Aboriginal Education Website in December 2009.

The purpose of the website is to foster the exchange of promising classroom practices and research. The site enables the on-going collection and publicizing of curriculum materials, classroom practices, relevant policies and research related to successful practices in Aboriginal education. Its focus is elementary and secondary education, as well as Early Childhood Education and parent/community engagement. Educators, researchers and others use the site to enhance and share learning opportunities and to improve educational success for Aboriginal students.

An Advisory Group has been established. The site is updated monthly.

An announcement about the launch of the site was sent to First Nations schools, Aboriginal organizations, universities, provincially-funded school boards, teachers’ organizations, ministries of education, and other interested groups and individuals.

MODEL SCHOOLS

The success gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians has deep roots, most of which begin in early childhood. Because of this, improving the quality of education provided by elementary schools on reserve must be a priority. We have initiated two elementary model school projects in partnership with Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation and Walpole Island First Nations in Southwestern Ontario.

The goal of the two projects is to accelerate improvement in literacy and numeracy in band-operated schools. The gains students make should serve as a catalyst for action by the wider Aboriginal leadership, the corporate community and by governments leading to similar programs in First Nation elementary schools across Canada.

The five-year projects were implemented in the 2009-10 school year. The programs are based on the curriculum and teaching strategies that originated in Ontario’s “at-risk” elementary schools, including:

• providing extensive, targeted professional development to assist teachers to enhance their teaching and assessment strategies
• using data to track students’ achievement levels
• funding lead teachers who have training about the best practices and most effective techniques
• ensuring classroom teachers were given individual support, appropriate classroom resources, teaching guides and diagnostic tools to help them develop effective reading and writing, and numeracy strategies.
• assisting all teachers to use common assessment strategies
• on-going assessment of students in order to guide teachers and identify required interventions
• developing a school improvement team that meets regularly to review school data and plan next steps
• hiring external experts to visit the school for a few days a month to assist the principal and teachers
• planning for parent involvement and community engagement
  
  

The Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation have joined MAEI to support an early years component at Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation. The focus will be programming for young children prenatal to six years and their families.

Both projects will receive advice and support from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) and the University of Western Ontario.

We hope that these literacy and numeracy programs will become a model to be embraced elsewhere.

PARTNERSHIPS

Free the Children
In February 2011, Free the Children and MAEI sponsored a campaign to highlight issues related to Aboriginal education in Canada. The purpose was to raise awareness among Canadian children, youth and their teachers, about the many obstacles facing Aboriginal education. The two organizations plan to develop a five-year program to raise further awareness about these obstacles with teachers and students in elementary and secondary schools across Canada, and to suggest avenues of direct action. This program began in the 2011-12 school year.

Ashoka Canada
MAEI has partnered with Ashoka Canada, the McConnell Foundation, the Counselling Foundation, RBC, the Trillium Foundation, the Donner Foundation, the Vancouver Foundation and others to plan an initiative to find innovative and culturally appropriate strategies that promote excellence in education for First Nations, Inuit and Métis students across Canada. The project launched in October 2011.