Last week, we were able to catch up with Jennifer Daniels while she was in the MFNERC office. She was busy setting up a student assessment in the boardroom and making sure the child who was here was comfortable.

 As she was gathering the assessment forms from the printer we asked if we could document her, the process, and if we could interview her about what she does. Jennifer is one of the 64 recent graduates from the Resource Inclusive Special Education (RISE) Post-baccalaureate cohort program. The program was the largest cohort that MFNERC has helped facilitate to date, bringing in 64 First Nations teachers from elementary, middle school, and high schools from all over Manitoba. These educators, who had committed to earning a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma with a focus on Inclusive Special Education, are now graduated and working in their First Nations communities building more inclusive classrooms.

 As a Special Education Facilitator at MFNERC, Jennifer works hands on with resource teachers across 10 communities and 12 schools. “When I get into a community” she says, “I ask what the teacher needs some help with. If the Resource Teacher has any concerns about a child I will review their file while I’m there. Checking if the referral process was done appropriately, to see if an assessment has been done, and if the child is delayed in any way.” She went on to explain a scenario of how this process may look. “Let’s say a child cannot read or write properly… what we may do is assign a scribe for that child, or maybe request an iPad so the student can see and learn from picture cues. An assessment like the one I’m doing here (Brigance) helps determine if the student has a gap and where those gaps are. It also determines their grade level. Once these gaps are discovered it would be the goal of the resource teacher to focus on developing the area that needs more attention. The same assessment would be done again at the end of the year to see if the gap has been addressed.

Now that we have learned how these programs serve and help the educators and students, I had also asked Jennifer what the RISE program means for the communities. Essentially these resources mean less money is being spent on having assessments done by outside assessors, and the ability to provide more assessments and educational resources to the students more often, resulting in better educational care and intervention sooner to address any learning gaps. Jennifer, along with another RISE Program graduate, Christina Valiquette, just recently finished some assessment training with a group of First Nations Resource Teachers on the Brigance assessment. The training taught them how to use the Brigance Assessment tools, how it assesses, and how it can benefit the classrooms. “We never had this amount of resources in the communities before MFNERC. The communities do not have the funds to provide these pricey assessments as often as they’ve been able to now with the help of MFNERC. There are many more assessments available to the community now for various concerns and obstacles children face in their education environments.”