Dr. Brass Academies: a turnaround for a struggling school

In the 2010s, Dr. Brass elementary school in Yorkton was down to under 90 students, and consideration was being given to closing the school. It is one of the older schools in Yorkton and parents in the area preferred to send their kids to other newer schools in the city. 

Today it is bursting at the seams, primarily due to a program that started in 2020 to attract students not only from within the school’s immediate area, but from other areas of Yorkton, and from nearby communities, including Kamsack, Melville and Saltcoats.

The reason for the turnaround? Six academies that provide all students in grades 5 through 8 with additional learning and activity opportunities.

Transcript

Dick DeRyk 0:00

In the 2010s, Dr. Brass Elementary School in Yorkton was down to under 90 students, and consideration was being given to closing the school. It is one of the early schools in Yorkton, located in the older part of the city, just north of downtown. It struggled with its reputation, and parents in the area preferred to send their kids to other newer schools in the city. Today it is literally bursting at the seams with about 245 students. And that's primarily due to a program started in 2020 that is attracting students not only from within the school's immediate area but from other areas of Yorkton and from nearby communities, including Kamsack, Melville, and Saltcoats. The reason for the turnaround? Academies, an innovative program at the school which allows students to spend at least two periods of each school day learning about and taking part in non-traditional classroom activities. The school offers six academies, hockey, performing arts, visual arts, building active leaders, Indigenous culture, and sports. Students in grades five to eight participate in the academy of their choice. There are fees associated with each academy to cover costs like supplies, transportation, and rental of facilities where applicable. We talked about the academies with Quintin Robertson, the Director of Education of Good Spirit School Division for the past eight years, who was instrumental along with board member Steve Variyan in the early work that led to the academies. We spoke with Dr. Brass School Principal Noel Budz, who came to Dr. Brass when the Academy program started, and with four of the Academy teachers: Tammy Kostersky of the Performing Arts Academy, Lee Seaton of the Sports Academy, Mary Kittleson of the Hockey Academy, and Darcy Lypowich of the Indigenous Culture Academy. Other Academy teachers are Kailee Trost of the Visual Arts Academy and Kristen Nagy of the Building Active Leaders Academy, Director of Education, Quentin Robertson.

Quintin Robertson 3:43

Steve Variyan, board member for the Dr. Brass area, and I attended a school community council meeting at Dr. Brass. And I'm going to say about four to five years ago, we came there and the SCC, the School Community Council, was hoping that the school division would expand the boundaries of Dr. Brass because they were finding that their enrollment was shrinking, and families were making the choice to have their children attend elsewhere. The conversation that we had at the School Community Council was that would not work. People would still make the choice to attend elsewhere because there was an impression that Dr. Brass provided a less than quality level of education, which was false.

Dick DeRyk 4:30

Yeah, Dr. Brass is kind of, was always kind of seen as an inner city type of school.

Quintin Robertson 4:35

And that was the pervasive opinion, I think, even at that time. So we started to have conversations about how to change the perception of the school and to bring students into the school that would normally not have attended, and providing opportunity and specialized programming in the school that might cause the community to think differently of Dr. Brass. So we started to investigate other locations that had done this, and we came up with Saskatoon Public. And we spent several days and took a number of people there to take a look at some of their academies that they offered and to try to determine how that could work at Dr. Brass. We actually sent a videographer, Nathan Grayson, to Saskatoon, employed him to take video of some of their academies and use those as promotional videos for our own and to start to bring forward that idea. And the Performing Arts Academy was one of the first academies that were started. We were able to team up with local leaders like Carrie Pengilly and Tammy from the Dance Academy, two people that were incredible leaders in their area, and it was just good synergy at that point. So that's where it started. It's evolved obviously since then.

Dick DeRyk 6:03

Has it changed the perception? Do you think that it has made the difference that you intended?

Quintin Robertson 6:09

Really, we were moving toward the possibility of a closure, Dr. Brass, if the enrollment continued to get depleted, and now we're bursting at the seams. So there are significantly more students, obviously changed the demographics of the the school, and in the initial information that we sent out, we talked about not forgetting the students in that catchment. That was something we wanted to make sure of, and that's where some of the cultural academies and some of the other activities that are going on in that school have come to be. So it honors the students that live in that catchment, plus it brings in students that normally wouldn't have gone there. You know, little things like Dr. Brass now and being competitive in some of the inter-school sports, whereas before they used to get absolutely thumped. Now they're competitive, if not better than many of the other schools. So I think it's given them a level of confidence, a level of accomplishment that they wouldn't have normally had. We have fewer and fewer applications to attend out of Dr. Brass, whereas that was quite common in the past, where we would have every week an application to attend Yorkdale or M.C. Knoll, we're not getting those anymore. Students who are in the catchment want to stay there, and the academies are staying at a healthy number. So the hockey academy is sustainable, the performing arts academy is sustainable, I think they're able to fund themselves. We're not looking at continuous applications to prop up the funding. Another big component is making sure that there was adequate nutrition and points for students, not just the affluent students in that area.

Dick DeRyk 7:57

Any thoughts of extending the program to other schools or at Dr. Brass?

Quintin Robertson 8:03

We've got hockey academies in a number of our schools and communities. So Canora, Esterhazy, Saltcoats, Melville all have hockey academies, Yorkton as well at the Regional. We have a soccer academy at the Yorkton Regional High School. Melville has long talked about starting a baseball academy. So you have a town that's has a high-level university baseball coach that I think that has piqued everyone's interest. So we'd like to have some conversations with him. And I'd like to expand it to include more, maybe a bit more interest in strings, violin, cello, etc. So those are some things that we've kicked around.

Dick DeRyk 8:43

Specifically for string instruments. That's interesting.

Quintin Robertson 8:47

Lots of research around, obviously, around the power of music and its ability to shape the brain. And as you said, a lot of school divisions, particularly in British Columbia, will have orchestra or string academies, so starting from little little kids all the way up.

Dick DeRyk 9:05

What does this do for students who might otherwise not be all that academically inclined or successful? Does it keep them in the education system?

Quintin Robertson 9:17

Well, and I think that's the idea is to give everybody something that they can they can thrive at. There is a subset of the population that know how to play school, they're very successful in their academic pursuits, and typically school is designed for them. We're trying to broaden that to suggest that there's something for everyone, whether it's academic focus, if it's athletic focus and the arts now, if we can expand it to more musical pursuits, that would be awesome. We have a very healthy band program in grades five up. I'd like to see it extend down.

Dick DeRyk 9:55

You're thinking that this will keep Dr. Brass as an active school within the system. The thoughts of shutting it down are far away now?

Quintin Robertson 10:07

Yeah, it's trying to figure out where to put everybody now and whether or not we need to apply for portables because I know that the space is limited and it would be considered back in the day a castle school, so that old style school. So it's pretty hard to step everyone in there. Lots of hallway space, but the classrooms are limited.

Dick DeRyk 10:29

It could be a success beyond expectation.

Quintin Robertson 10:33

Well, and I think what we have to do is is now start to tell our story a little bit better. And we have talked about redoing our videos and featuring Good Spirit versus Saskatoon. So we did a great job of promoting them and getting the interest going for an academy. Now I think we need to circle back, likely that it'll be a next year task to bring our videographer back and tell the story of the the Dr. Brass Academies. Part of the complication that we've had is the timing was tricky, and I think it shows just how wonderful the academies are that they could be successful even despite of this. We started them right at the beginning of COVID. So it was the first year of COVID, and Noel and his team worked hard to keep them going and to have them to be successful, and I think it just shows the power of that concept that even with a global pandemic they can still be successful.

Dick DeRyk 11:31

Noel Budz, the principal of Dr. Brass School. How do you determine, or how was it determined, which ones?

Noel Budz 11:35

It started with building active leaders, growing citizens, we had a cultural academy, and then we had the Hawking Performing Arts. We started with five. Every year we do a survey with our students to see if they're returning to their academies and what selections, but we also give them another line where they can make a suggestion to other academies that may be of interest to them. So we started in grade four in 2020, our first year, and went to grade eight. We found that that was quite a variety or gap between age levels because they're all learning together. Now it's at grade five, grade five to eight.

Dick DeRyk 12:15

And how does that work into the school day?

Noel Budz 12:19

Our morning is a pretty traditional morning. We have language arts, math, and science in the morning. We go right into our academies right after lunch. So at one or 12:55, we go into our academy time, and then at our break, at recess at 2.05, our academy kids most days return. Every second day, they stay one more period, and then they go into health phys-ed, and the very last period of the day we have the social studies. We are looking at changing potentially our timetable next year, just because our guys and girls are so tired at the end of the day, it's hard to get them to refocus on the socials. So we are looking at maybe the afternoon starting with social, and at the very end of the day, finish off with our academy. It's about an hour at least each day for our academies.

Dick DeRyk 13:04

Every student at Dr. Brass is in an academy?

Noel Budz 13:07

They are in an academy, and so when we do that selection, we do offer traditional classroom. In the four years I've been here, only one student has signed up to go in the traditional classroom, but of course we couldn't offer that because we just couldn't have a class for one student.

Dick DeRyk 13:22

So the ones that were here, the catchment area and others that are coming here for the academies, that's their focus. That's what where they want to be.

Noel Budz 13:29

And that's kind of the reason why we called it play in passionate. We want students to play. At the end of the day, we know that we're all tired and it's really hard to get kids to do high-level thinking at the end of the day, or any of us to do high-level thinking at the end of the day. So give them their passion where they can play and enjoy. And for example, again, visual arts, it's just a nice way to regulate and to calm down after a stressful day.

Dick DeRyk 13:52

Are all of them here? I don't know. Hockey, I'm assuming you utilize arenas for that, right?

Noel Budz 13:57

Yeah, we utilize the Kinsman for the majority of the year, and then the last month traditionally we go to the Westland. After that, when it becomes spring, a couple times a week they go to the golf course. So it's also kind of part and parcel with the golf course, the reason being is sport is a lot in the mental part of it. And as we always say, probably 90% of decisions that make us successful in our sport are made in our head, and we probably don't train the mental part of it as much as we do the physical part. So yeah, so that kind of works the same with our performing artists. They walk to the dance studio and they are at Dance Innovations and they use the studio there, and then they come back.

Dick DeRyk 14:41

Visual arts is done here. Building active leaders is all done within the school.

Noel Budz 14:46

Within the school, but they love to go out in our community. So building active leaders, the program there is kind of what it says. We want to have leaders. So we're working on social concerns in our world and discussing adjustments that have to be made to make our world feel better and safer. They're also being active. So they've done volleyball, they'll go swimming, they'll go play kick golf, they'll go play golf, they'll go kayaking and canoeing, they're involved in our community a lot.

Dick DeRyk 15:18

This requires a fair bit of cooperation on the part of other organizations, entities, facilities in the city. Was that an easy convince to get the community involved in this?

Noel Budz 15:32

Our community's been really good. Like they they support us a lot. And not only was it in our academies, we have an amazing lunch program and we get a lot of donations from our community to support our students for lunches. So we're very, very supportive. Same with some of our programming. Obviously, the programming costs a lot. The rental of the rink, the the bus rentals. So, for example, if we do our Indigenous Culture Academy, they'll go to Fort Qu'Appelle to participate in Treaty 4 territory days. And so they will go there.

Dick DeRyk 16:04

Do you do a lot of fundraising for this?

Noel Budz 16:06

It been different for different parts. Our school divisions have been a huge supporter of it, and they've supported us with obviously some financial aid to help make sure that this dream comes for all students as well. Some of our programs are are paid by parents. It's a registration fee. For all of our academies, we have a registration fee. Some of our programs with that registration fee, we've had awesome support from the community, as we said, and we may have someone that makes a donation to an academy.

Dick DeRyk 16:36

This school was on a downward slide there in the 2010s until this came along. What has the impact been on school population from instituting this program?

Noel Budz 16:49

We have seen a huge increase. Our very first year we had over 100 new students, which obviously created a lot of excitement and enjoyment for being able to meet new people.

Dick DeRyk 17:01

Now you're getting students who would otherwise be in other schools in the city wanting to come here. Is there a process? Is there an application type of process?

Noel Budz 17:12

The school divisions try to make that process pretty seamless. With our computer systems, we can just have them transferred over. The majority of parents just let us know that you know that we're interested in this. We do have some nights where some of our students get to try. So, for example, our hockey students who are interested, go on the ice with our students who are going to be with our academy next year. So they get an opportunity to live in the day of a Dr. Brass student on their academy. We're going to do that same with our performing art. Students indicate to us that they're really interested in coming here, and then we kind of make that process happen.

Dick DeRyk 17:48

What's the impact been on students?

Noel Budz 17:51

I think we're starting to see a greater impact on that. I think we have some good opportunities for students to show their talents. And when we feel like that we can show our talents, then we feel like we belong more. And just in my personal belief, my philosophy is belongings, what kind of impacts how we're going to be in life when we struggle with finding a sense of belonging in a peer group? It's really tough. And I think that's what we've tried to do here is to try to create a sense of belonging in some peer groups.

Dick DeRyk 18:23

What do you hear from parents? Is there a general kind of response that you get as far as the impact the program has on their children that they notice?

Noel Budz 18:33

When we first started, their idea was that they wanted their kids to be more active. Sometimes they felt that they sat too much and they needed their children to be more active. And I think our programs provide that opportunity to burn off some energy, you know, especially the ones, the sport one. Even our Indigenous Cultural Academy, Mr. Lepowick, takes them out on lots of adventures. He has a ranch and they'll go to the ranch and you know, learn about the buffalo there and everything that's going on. So I just think the opportunity to be able to get into the community more. And also we take pride in our students. We got a letter from a bus driver about one of our programs based on that sport academy and how well behaved they were for the weekend because he's with them for the weekend and how respectful. And that's what we kind of try to hang our hat on, is that we're really trying to teach everyone just to be respectful and well-mannered.

Dick DeRyk 19:29

So you have six now, more coming?

Noel Budz 19:33

It depends on the interest survey, right? There's always been some that I've always thought that this would look really good. I know kids are really into the devices, so coding would be something that might interest some kids. Guitar music, you know, like there's a lot of other opportunities. I just think that with more academies means hopefully more students, which then puts us in that maybe that dilemma of space. So we've actually, when I first started here, the basement was not used. The basement now is cleaned out, every inch of our building is being used. So, we used to have that beautiful mezzanine, and like I said, we made that into a classroom now, right? So you know, that was a hard loss because it was a beautiful place to watch sports, right? But we were just short of room and we needed to have another metal classroom.

Dick DeRyk 20:24

Tammy Kostersky is the lead teacher of the performing arts academy. You spent 30 years as a dance teacher, many of those with your own studio. This is a bit of a change where you're now a teacher in the school system. What kind of brought that about?

Tammy Kostersky 20:40

You know, I actually had the opportunity to teach a dance education class at Sacred Heart first. And that just brought about a new perspective of dance and just a new form of joy, really, seeing children who have perhaps never had the opportunity to take a dance class in a dance studio just light up at the opportunity. So I really started to seek out those opportunities, and all of a sudden I got a phone call out of the blue from GSSD saying, Hey, we have this idea. What do you think? And I thought, well, this is my dream job. I would love to have the opportunity to do this. So that's where it started.

Dick DeRyk 21:21

And Dance Innovations is now in the hands of others who worked with you for quite a while.

Tammy Kostersky 21:27

Yeah, so after 28 years, I did sell the dance studio to students who had moved through the ranks of student, teacher, and now they're doing a great job as the new studio owners.

Dick DeRyk 21:40

How many kids in performing arts, which is both dance and drama, right? You do both.

Tammy Kostersky 21:46

Exactly. They do dance, drama, and musical theater. And right now we have 10 students in our academy.

Dick DeRyk 21:53

Boys and girls, boys or girls?

Tammy Kostersky 21:54

Currently there's only girls in the program, but totally open to boys and girls.

Dick DeRyk 22:01

So the students spend five afternoons or a good part of five afternoons a week in dance and drama. Carrie Pengilly from Free My Muse is also teaching.

Tammy Kostersky 22:13

Yes.

Dick DeRyk 22:14

She looks after the drama side of it.

Tammy Kostersky 22:16

Yes, we're so lucky to have her. She's just such a gift and connecting the students to drama.

Dick DeRyk 22:22

Are you finding that the students who are taking Performing Arts Academy, are they new to performing arts? Are they into it and want to increase their skills, the time that they can spend with it?

Tammy Kostersky 22:36

It's actually both. About half of our students are current dance students in our community, and they are here to increase their knowledge, increase their skill level. They love the more dance they can get, the better. So, and then having Miss Carrie work on the drama and characterization has really helped their dancing outside of the school, and so they're really taking that extra jump and leap ahead. And we also have half of our students who have never danced before, and they came into the academy having never had exposure to performing arts and just thought it might be something to try, and they've stuck with it for the four years. Our two grade eights that are are graduating into high school next year, and then we have some new grade five and six students who have never danced before. I just see them connecting more and more. My goal is for them to love to come to school every day, and if that's connecting through the arts, some children will connect through sports or hockey or Indigenous Cultural Academy or Building Active Leaders. For these students, they connect to school through performing arts. And that's my job and that's my joy. First year we started academies in grade four. And so these will be our first graduates, and from my understanding, they've all selected Dance Academy at the Regional high school.

Dick DeRyk 23:56

You have some public performances as well that people can see what these students have learned.

Tammy Kostersky 24:02

Yes, I do. And actually, this year we had three performances. We had one back in December that was only drama. They co-created all of the scenes along with Miss Carrie. In March, we had a performance that was very exciting. Our grade eight students actually choreographed their own solos from concept to choreography to lighting to costuming. So they created that themselves and so they performed that for our audience here in March. We're very lucky to have Paper Bag Players donate the lighting. So our gym became a theater, so our entire school got to experience that. And then coming up June 4th, we have our final performance, and it's called Showstoppers, and it's taking our audience through a story, including all the different musicals. So we're showcasing Cats, Oliver, Bye Bye Birdie, many different musicals that maybe our older folks of our community and our younger folks of our community are all going to connect to. So I think it'll be a great performance.

Dick DeRyk 25:09

You are using the facilities of Dance Innovation on First Avenue.

Tammy Kostersky 25:14

Yes.

Dick DeRyk 25:14

Obviously, it's made for dance instruction, unlike a school gym, perhaps.

Tammy Kostersky 25:20

Yes.

Dick DeRyk 25:20

And you walk down there.

Tammy Kostersky 25:21

We do.

Dick DeRyk 25:22

Just a fresh air break for the students.

Tammy Kostersky 25:25

Absolutely. Every day after lunch, we get ready, whether it's raining, snowing, or sunshine, and we walk down to the studio. So, yeah, a little fresh air on the way there, a little fresher air on the way back. And even those walks, those bring, our students in our academies are grade five to eight. So as we're walking down there, these children from different grades get to connect as well. So it's that visiting and that interacting with people that maybe they normally wouldn't have spent recess with. And so this performing arts academy is becoming quite a close-knit group of people.

Dick DeRyk 25:58

What do you hear from the students? Do they tell you what they think of what's happening? Do you hear that?

Tammy Kostersky 26:04

I do. And you know, after every performance, I'll ask the question, what do you want to remember forever about this moment? And because I always think that that's really a good thing to talk about and it kind of puts you in your mind. And I remember after one of our shows, one of our students said, the feeling of people clapping for me. And you know, that's something we as adults, we don't get that. And I really feel that every child should have that opportunity that people clap for them. They really felt proud of what they did. And watching the students, our last performance, for example, was in March, and after they performed, and all the students in their school clapping for them, coming up to them in the hallway, and it was the hockey players and it was the sports academy students coming up going, wow, that was really good. And so by our performing arts students performing for the Dr. Brass student body, our student body is learning how to respect the arts. And then the arts are learning how to respect the sports, and it's bringing people together.

Dick DeRyk 27:08

Lee Seaton talks about the sports academy. You came to Dr. Brass this year. But what motivated you to get involved, A, with kids and B with the Sports Academy?

Lee Seaton 27:22

Well, coming from where I come from, my background, being a First Nations youth male wasn't always the easiest upbringing. My father was a residential school survivor, I'm a product of residential school myself. So my childhood was filled with a lot of trials and tribulations, right? We had a lot of traumas growing up just from different things. Sports was my way out. Sports was one of the first things I found my best friends in the world, found my family. Everything I gave it, it gave me back. All the hard work I put in came back in results, in skills, right? Where what I put into it, it gave me back. That had a few great people, a few great coaches, and a few great teachers who were able to create not just a sports team, but a family, right? To create a bond between people from all different walks of life and to bring us together. And by the time we left, we were we were unit. We walked together in stride. So the power that coach had to eliminate all the noises of the world, to create something on the court or whatever sport we were playing where there was no color. Right? It was me and my brothers, as opposed to me and the First Nations kid or the non-First Nations kid, right? And then when we ended, it we were a unit, we walked as one. And then on the teaching side as well, I had a great, great teacher who just refused to give up on me. I had to take a step back and look at those things when I was trying to figure out what am I gonna do to make me happy in life? What is my calling? And it just always came back to helping youth, helping the next generation, and not just helping my people, but everyone, because again, that's the mentality we want to have, is we walk as a unit. And that kind of led me to teaching, to getting into education and focusing a little more on sports specifically.

Dick DeRyk 29:12

So the Sports Academy, how many kids?

Lee Seaton 29:14

We have 13 right now.

Dick DeRyk 29:16

And what sports?

Lee Seaton 29:17

Beginning of the year, we play volleyball. My thing is we will train volleyball, then we move into basketball season, we will train basketball. I'm also an archery coach and I do some badminton, and I do a little bit of everything. So when the season comes, we will adjust and we will adapt to the season. If I have athletes who are football players, we're now in the football season, and all year we've been kind of, they all build up all the different workouts, all the different sports we train, just build up to one big giant athlete, is what we're trying to create. So we'll spend days, on our gym days, we'll be in the gym or on the field training our specific sport. Once we're done, we'll come back and we'll do some classroom work. On our non-gym days, we go down to the fitness room, we'll do cardio. Our older kids might do lightweight work. The younger kids will do more body weight than anything. Once we're done our fitness or our cardio, we come back, we do classroom work. And we just kind of alter days like that.

Dick DeRyk 30:18

Yeah. So classroom work related to sports? Do you teach them kind of theory as well?

Lee Seaton 30:24

So even with that, I try to keep it sports focused as possible because it interests them. It's what they love to do. So when we have health, well, we try to do, we try to match our health outcomes and we'll make the topic sport topic. Art, we do a lot of sport-themed art projects. Things like a sports podcast we've created. A lot of my guys are basketball guys, so one thing we did was creating your own signature shoe. Just really sport-themed art project. I try to keep it as much as I can on what they love, what we're here in our specific academy for.

Dick DeRyk 30:59

Do they develop enough of an interest to, or would you know whether this is leading to them getting more serious about sports, or are they doing it as a recreational thing?

Lee Seaton 31:12

I think it started as a recreational, but as we put time and I was able to show the lesson that hard work pays off. What you're gonna put into it, you will get back as long as you're putting, what everything you got, as long as your focus is on getting better. And throughout the year, we've had a lot of kids grow a lot, not just physically but mentally, spiritually, even when we we had some behavioral issues, right? My big thing too is we are student athletes. Student comes first. You have to earn the athlete part. Well, my goal with the Sports Academy is to create hopefully future stars within our province, well, not just our province, but our country. Have them really find to something, and wherever they go after that, they're gonna take that in life. Right? I'm gonna go to this new job, I'm gonna put everything I got into it, and it's gonna give it back to me.

Dick DeRyk 32:02

Sports requires a lot of discipline, and not all students would come to school or to the sports academy having experienced that kind of discipline. Does that present problems or is that is that a challenge?

Lee Seaton 32:15

Oh, absolutely. It absolutely does present issues to start. We did not start this, everything was not all sunshine and rainbows. But also my big, before anything else is respect. I do that in the gym, anywhere I'm training, in the classroom teaching. Respect.

Dick DeRyk 32:36

For each other.

Lee Seaton 32:37

Absolutely. Are you gonna respect yourself to put in enough work to see the outcomes in the classroom. You've got to put in the work to get the grades you want to get. On the court, you've got to respect yourself enough to try and give everything you have, and also your teacher, your coaches when they're teaching you. Be coachable, respect them enough to trust and not question. Respect is number one for me. You know, in most classrooms, you do your classroom rules. Well, my classroom follows the seven sacred teachings. I don't demand it, I also have to earn it, right, by showing you that I'm in, that I'm invested. We're in this together.

Dick DeRyk 33:13

We talked with Murray Kittleson about the hockey academy.

Murray Kittleson 33:17

From September till the end of April, kids are on the ice three times a week for an hour. So we leave just after have a quick lunch. We get picked up by a Good Spirit bus and load their bags and head over to Kinsman Arena and have a good hard one-hour ice session and then get changed and come back for the last last two periods, last hour of instructional time.

Dick DeRyk 33:40

Is it all on ice or do you do classroom work about hockey?

Murray Kittleson 33:43

Yeah, we do a little bit of classroom work and then we do off-ice training and fitness that kind of fits into a regular phys-ed type of programming as well on the days we're not on the ice. So that would be Mondays and Thursdays.

Dick DeRyk 33:56

How many kids did you have in the program this year?

Murray Kittleson 33:58

22.

Dick DeRyk 33:59

22. How many girls?

Murray Kittleson 34:02

Four girls.

Dick DeRyk 34:03

Four girls. Has that been increasing over the last four years or is that been pretty steady?

Murray Kittleson 34:08

It's been pretty steady between four and six females as we've had.

Dick DeRyk 34:12

They train together, they play together.

Murray Kittleson 34:14

Yeah, they train together. Yeah. Mixed academy.

Dick DeRyk 34:16

Yeah. What do you find is the prime motivator for these kids to get into the academy? Do they want to learn the game? Do they already know the game and want to get better?

Murray Kittleson 34:27

It's probably a mixture of both. You know, kids that are new to the game that are learning and trying to get better, and kids that have been playing since they're three, four years old and are are highly skilled and are top players amongst their province, and they're motivated to get even better as well. So all kinds here, and yeah, it's been pretty successful for kids of all skill level getting those extra puck reps and and skating in. You know, we had a girl make Team Saskatchewan this year, another girl was a leading scorer on a Canadian ranked team. We've had kids that you know, came in that are you know your typical sort of player coming through the minor hockey system, and maybe they're kind of more of an average house league type player, and after a couple years now they're known amongst the league leaders in scoring in the major hockey league. So that's considered a success. And we've had, you know players now that have come through here, they're getting a little bit older, and you know, they're playing midget triple A, or we just had a Dr. Brass alumni just sign his entry-level education deal in the WHL, Cameron Eller out of Yorkton here. He played with the Estevan AAA Bears last season.

Dick DeRyk 35:45

Pretty impressive. Some of the high schools also have academies. You were with the Melville Comp Academy, and the Regional high school has a hockey academy.

Murray Kittleson 35:54

That's right, yeah. Yeah, most go on go on into that when they get into grade nine.

Dick DeRyk 35:59

What do you hear from parents?

Murray Kittleson 36:00

The feedback here has all been good. You know, they're skating, puck handling, and passing, and thinking the game all improves while they're getting extra ice time and and you know the kids are having fun and you know it can increase their love of the game. Here you get to do things that you you know typically maybe wouldn't get to spend all your time doing in a minor hockey practice, or you're working on maybe systems and that sort of thing. And here we're just focusing on your pure skills. What can I do to help you become a better player? And I think that's the big advantage of you know going through academy type learning.

Dick DeRyk 36:39

Now you're moving back to Melville for the next school year. There's a new teacher taking over the hockey academy at Dr. Brass.

Murray Kittleson 36:46

Yeah, Natalie Katzberg, yeah.

Dick DeRyk 36:48

And she has some experience and success in hockey herself.

Murray Kittleson 36:52

Yeah, she's a former University of Regina player, and she's been in the game for a long time, so I'm sure the Academy will be in good hands with her expertise.

Dick DeRyk 37:03

Darcy Lypowich, whose mother is Metis and who grew up in that culture, talks about the Indigenous Culture Academy. How deep do you get into Indigenous culture with these students?

Darcy Lypowich 37:18

It's a mixed group, it's of grades five to eight, and there's a few students from each grade. This year is all Indigenous students in the classroom. Last year we had a few non-Indigenous students, and next year there's a few non-Indigenous students as well.

Dick DeRyk 37:30

So are these are these non-Indigenous students? They're obviously interested in the culture.

Darcy Lypowich 37:34

Correct, yeah. And we have a mixture here. In this classroom, we have Cree, Soto, and Metis students.

Dick DeRyk 37:40

Boys and girls.

Darcy Lypowich 37:41

Boys and girls, yes. And what we do, some of the things we do here, we learn about languages. We have Michif is the Metis language, we have Saulteaux or Nakawe is a Saulteaux language, and then we teach Cree as well. We try to do a few words. I'm learning with the students, you know, so as long as I learn the day before, I can teach the students the next day. We have a drum group, we'll sew, we make ribbon shirts, ribbon skirts, for example. We're sewing Metis tents right now for a Metis day that we're gonna have later on in June here at the school. We do cooking, we'll cook everything. We try to cook some more traditional meals like bannock is one. We'll make dried meat, we'll make pemmican, we'll do like bullet soup, even just frying eggs. We use the ingredients in those cooking classes, what they have at home in the fridge. So when they go home, they can cook the same stuff. We'll bring in animals too to skin. We have beavers in here that we skinned, you know. We get to teach about the anatomy of the beaver and then you know, for health as well, instead of on the human body and traditional uses of the beaver. You know, we talk about the fur trade and you know, the beaver, the cash, beaver casters, and you know, the food from the beaver, you know, the tail, and we can make leather and from the hides, and we bring in birds. We've had everything here from ducks and geese to foxes, and we had beavers. We had a porcupine yesterday where we pulled the hair and we took quills. We have plants we grow, we were growing tobacco, like the Three Sisters as well, you know, the corn, squash, and beans we'll grow just to show them and that you can take home seeds and we get the same seeds if you want to take them home too and grow plants at home. We had an incubator. We just hatched eight chicks here. We'll do field trips, we do quite a few. Like we went looking for frog eggs the other day. We'll go look for plants, went and pick sage, and we'll pick red willow. And you know, for red willow, we'll use the outer bark like similar to aspirin. You know, the inner bark to use kinnikinnick or traditional tobacco field trips where we'll go to a sweat. We'll have the elders there that teach a protocol and they'll participate in a sweat.

Dick DeRyk 39:30

So you do involve the the Indigenous community around you and the elders in this as well.

Darcy Lypowich 39:35

Yes, we try to get as many as we can, parents and elders to come into the classroom, and then they teach and tell stories and talk about the history, and you know, it helps with you know behavior of the kids as well, and then they take more pride in learning what's going on here.

Dick DeRyk 39:48

What kind of response do you get from the kids? Like, are they doing it because they have to take a class or are they doing it because of genuine interest in their own culture?

Darcy Lypowich 39:59

A lot of them, are genuine interest in the culture. Some because they are choosing a class and they think it's fun, but you have to make our learning fun as well. If it's not fun, they're not going to learn. But if it's fun, they're learning what we've been doing. They're learning. And we learn about a lot of history too, Indigenous culture. We try to pick from the local Indigenous culture, and that's from the north and from the south, and then from the Metis. It's a variety. What we teach here isn't specific to one group, it's not to Cree or Saulteaux or Métis, but it's sort of a general. We talked about the differences as well.

Dick DeRyk 40:29

Do you get any response from the parents? What is their reaction to their kids learning this?

Darcy Lypowich 40:35

Most of them are really happy that the kids are, you know, coming home and they're talking about it. In the classroom, they may not mention it so much, but the parents say, you know, every day they come home and they say what they've done in the classroom.

Dick DeRyk 40:45

Is this making a difference to the kids as far as , not just their knowledge, but their pride in their Indigenous background?

Darcy Lypowich 40:54

One of the main things is their attendance. A lot of these students miss a lot of school. But since we've been doing a lot of the cultural stuff, the attendance has improved a lot. And at first, it was just they were just coming for the afternoons for a cultural academy, but now we're making it where they have to come in the mornings as well to participate in the cultural academy. So they're happy to come in the mornings and you know, they'll do math and science and ELA in the mornings, and then they're doing the cultural stuff where we do health and phys-ed and art or those some of the classes that we cover in the afternoon as well.

Dick DeRyk 41:22

It's an incentive for them to participate in the school.

Darcy Lypowich 41:26

Yes.