Release Date: February 12, 2008
Media Contact: Stephen King, External Relations
E-mail: Stephen.King@uregina.ca
Phone: 306-585-5439
Mobile: 306-536-4312
Fax: 306-585-4997
U of R Faculty of Education hosts Western Canadian conference February 13-16
A Métis student who traced his family’s roots back to Hudson’s Bay Company traders in the 1600s as part of a class project is one of dozens of education students making presentations at the 40th Annual WestCAST conference, being held Feb. 13-16 at the Ramada Hotel in Regina.

WestCAST, the conference of the Western Canadian Association for Student Teaching, is held every year in one of the four western provinces. WestCAST attracts a diverse audience and list of presenters including educators, university instructors and administrators, as well as student teachers. The University of Regina’s Faculty of Education is hosting this year’s conference, which will bring together close to 300 participants from across Western Canada.

This year’s conference theme is Saskatchewan’s provincial motto – “From Many Peoples, Strength” – and in keeping with the theme, the conference features four keynote speakers and dozens of presentations with topics ranging from “Bhangra in the Classroom” to “Strategies to Support Rural Placements” to “Keeping Adolescents Safe Online.”

From Many Peoples, Strength implies many things: each individual has something to contribute to the lives of others, each of us can learn from others, all of us need to learn to work together, and strength comes not just in numbers all the same, but in accentuating our many differences,” says James McNinch, conference chair and associate dean in the Faculty of Education.

The presentation “Cultural Ties in Education” is about a genealogy project undertaken by a team of five Métis students in the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP). The students traced their genealogy using archives from the Hudson’s Bay Company in Winnipeg, as well as the St. Boniface archives and other sources. Second-year SUNTEP student Jed Huntley, who is originally from Prince Albert, traced his roots to James Tate, a servant of the Hudson’s Bay Company who came to Canada from the Orkney Islands in Scotland in the 1600s.

In his team’s presentation (Friday, 11 a.m.- 11:45 a.m.), Huntley will talk about the process of developing his personal genealogy, and will have copies of documents discovered on the journey.

“You learn a lot in the classroom, but these things you can never learn in the classroom,” says Huntley. Not everyone can visit their ancestral homes, Huntley notes, so the team visit to Winnipeg – at one time the central hub of Canadian Métis culture – was invaluable.

For a full conference schedule, please go to http://educationaltechnology.ca/westcast2008/