At Stelly’s Secondary School in the Saanich School District, a group of students helped to put together their own Indigenous course. Stelly’s student Grace Henry, a member of Paquachin First Nation, told Times Colonist that she was frustrated by the experience of seeing how bored her fellow students were with being taught repetitive classes on the same Indigenous topics. In light of that, she and her fellow students spent the last two years creating a new high school course that reflects the local W̱SÁNEĆ people, culture, and practices and features opportunities to learn on the land. Students will develop a portfolio of work that showcases what they have learned through the program, and teachers will evaluate students’ engagement with the course rather than their knowledge of Indigenous topics.
