U of S Grads Complete Teaching Degrees On-reserve

U of S Grads Complete Teaching Degrees On-reserve

Friday, May 22, 2009 at 15:10

The Big River First Nation celebrated an impressive achievement this morning: the graduation of 17 new teachers from their community and two neighbouring bands.

What makes it even more impressive: all of the students completed their B.Ed. program on the Big River reserve.

This is the first time the University of Saskatchewan has ever taken their four-year teacher education program and delivered all of the courses on a First Nations reserve

Orest Marowski, director of the Indian Teacher Education Program at the U of S, says the Big River chief and council are directly responsible for the bold initative — they approached ITEP with the idea four years ago, and have contributed resources and classroom space in their local school.

Another unique feature of Big River’s program is its focus on the sciences — another request from chief and council, who saw a need for more science teachers. All of the grads have this as their specialty.