Local profile: Teaching and learning on Vancouver Island’s West Coast
Local 70 stretches from Port Alberni to Bamfield, Ucluelet, and Tofino; the Alberni District Teachers’ Union (ADTU) and Ucluelet-Tofino Teachers’ Association (UTTA) serve communities shaped by rainforest, ocean, and a legacy of Indigenous stewardship of the land. Living in these communities requires creativity and resilience. Tourism creates transient school populations. Housing shortages and increasing workloads make recruiting teachers difficult. But ADTU Local President Ryan Dvorak believes the challenges are balanced by the region’s unique opportunity to be immersed in nature and community.
“Our community is known as the community with a heart,” says Ryan.
He points to the local’s approach to reconciliation to show how teachers bring care and curiosity into their teaching practices. Reconciliation is not an initiative or a one-off learning experience; instead, it’s a daily practice incorporated into multiple aspects of teaching, learning, and leadership.
The school board in this region has adopted a co-governance model where representatives from each of the local nations attend school board meetings and committee meetings with voice at the table.
“It’s more than consultation — it’s moving toward relationship- building with Indigenous partners,” said Ryan.
That commitment to relationship-building is evident in how schools respond to the community’s needs. When the nations requested that schools provide alternate pathways to graduation, a new program was created at Ucluelet Secondary School called Huuḥtakšiiḥ?ap̓at nism̓e?i, which translates to “learning from and with the land” in the central Barkley dialect.
The semester-long, four-block program teaches cross-curricular content through culturally relevant, land-based learning. Students earn all regular course credits as well as independent directed studies course credits in canoe and foods. Arran Jackson and Sheena Charlson have brought the program to life through hands-on, experiential learning informed by decolonial approaches.
What might that look like? In science class, it could be working with the local hatchery to fertilize eggs and raise salmon before learning how to release, harvest, and process the salmon on the land. Students also conduct intertidal surveys as part of local restoration efforts and work with the aquarium to collect samples and identify species.
In social studies, students look closely at the systems we work and live within.
“We look at systems of control and systems that set you free to understand the frameworks of colonization and its effects on all people,” said Arran. “We also discuss supportive systems that can help us stay organized and disciplined to reach goals and create space for more mental and emotional capacity.
The program gives students an opportunity to engage with the curriculum in a different way that is more in tune with Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
“We get to learn while we teach…and we see the difference it makes for students who might struggle to express themselves academically,” said Sheena, who grew up in Tofino and describes the opportunity to connect with her roots and help students connect with the land as a powerful part of the work.
The integration of Indigenous teachings is evident in classrooms across each of the local’s 12 schools. Teachers have found ways to centre relationships and Indigenous ways of knowing and being to meaningfully engage students in reconciliation and decolonization.
For Monique Copeland, that work began with a question.
Monique, a language teacher at Ucluelet Secondary, asked herself what she could do to learn more about the language of the land she lives on when she first started teaching in the area more than 10 years ago.
She learned of a linguistics course focused on language revitalization and signed up. Through the course, she met instructors and community members who helped her learn the basics of Nuu-chah-nulth language.
“The first year, I taught students what I had learned and then we learned together,” says Monique.
Now, the language is integrated into the school. Nuu-chah-nulth words are posted around the school, and teachers bring the language into other classrooms regularly.
Monique brings community members, Elders, drummers, and weavers into her classroom to help students learn more about all the cultural knowledge and practices connected to the language.
To commemorate the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Monique’s students created banners with healing and hopeful Nuu-chah-nulth words. Students recorded the correct pronunciation for each of the words on an iPad that was placed on a stand near the banners. This was part of a broader truth and reconciliation exhibit in the school. Other classes created research projects and orange shirts. After its time at the school, the exhibit traveled to Tofino Tourism, where it stayed on display for two weeks for thousands of people to engage with.
The exhibit is an incredible opportunity for students to not only learn about Canada’s history but also share their learning with the wider community, says Lucas Anderson, the teacher-librarian at Ucluelet Secondary.
In line with efforts to decolonize school spaces and learning opportunities, Lucas has transitioned the library away from the Dewey decimal system to a thematic organization system. Books are also labelled with stickers that help students find suitable books for all reading levels. This is part of Lucas’s efforts to foster more reading for pleasure in the school, an initiative the whole school has embraced by allocating time each day for students to read.
Teachers’ work on literacy education is one of the things Wendy Arnett, ADTU First Vice-President, is most proud of.
“Members have invested incredible amounts of time in literacy education,” said Wendy, and that investment is translating into visible growth for students.
That commitment to literacy also creates an entry point for teachers to explore different ways of learning and knowing.
April Thompson from Wickaninnish Community School uses literacy as a starting point for her deep dive into oral storytelling with her Grades 2–3 class. The class starts by reading books by Indigenous author and artist Roy Henry Vickers. The students practise retelling the stories orally and create beautiful dioramas in the style of Vickers to show their favourite part of a story.
The unit culminates in a gallery showcase where the students, who are referred to as artists-in-residence or storytellers-in-residence, share their stories with family members and other classes.
“They are witnessing the original story, learning it, and sharing it with community members,” says April. The project intentionally moves beyond conventional literacy practices to honour Indigenous approaches to storytelling while allowing students to demonstrate their under-standing in different ways.
Questions about the stories are written on the board so visitors to the gallery showcase can choose a question to ask. This allows students to feel prepared to answer questions while still creating opportunities for dialogue and discussion.
Students attended a storytelling session at the Roy Henry Vickers Gallery, where he praised their work as young artists and storytellers.
“The kids were starstruck,” says April.
The gallery showcase is in its fourth year now and has become something families and students look forward to.
Bringing families and friends into the classroom is part of an intentional strategy to build community and connection.
The same philosophy is at the heart of Ivy Kinvig’s classroom at Ucluelet Elementary School.
Ivy’s class begins every Monday morning sitting together in a circle sharing something each person wants the class to know about them. Creating a community of people who love each other is the most important part of the job, says Ivy.
Students turn to their peers for help. They share their mistakes with the class because they want everyone to be able to learn from them. And former students drop by for a moment of regulation and support. In Ivy’s classroom, care and community are the foundation of all learning.
That sense of community extends well beyond the classroom walls. Teachers describe the community support as the most valuable part of living and teaching in the region.
“People know who you are,” says Ivy, “we are a small group that want to be a part of each other’s lives, it’s the best part of living here.”
The work of ADTU and UTTA teachers reflects a common understanding: learning is strongest when it is connected to place, culture, and one another.
