Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the summer, I tabled a response to the recommendations of the Forum on Education. One of the areas that were highlighted in the response was the need to share the best ideas of educators across the Northwest Territories. In individual classrooms, teachers or other school staff are using innovative and interesting approaches for teaching different subjects and concepts. These approaches might work for other students in other classrooms but there has not been a good way to share them.
Efforts are underway to find ways to share information between schools and teachers. One excellent example of collaboration and sharing of best practices is a binder of material entitled "Promising Practices, Ideas That Work in Northern Secondary Classrooms" which has just been produced by the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. This document contains the ideas, techniques and strategies that have worked for teachers in northern classrooms.
The binder includes a broad range of topics including general teaching and learning strategies; strategies specific to certain subjects; strategies for program and student support; administration; school spirit and school wide events; and encouraging school/community interaction.
There are more than 104 different ideas in this resource binder. For each strategy, there is information on what the benefits are to the student, what material are needed, detailed how to instructions and a section called "Keep in Mind" which gives practical tips for making the strategy work for students. Each strategy also identifies the teacher who submitted the strategy and at which school they were teaching.
The binder will be distributed to all schools in the NWT and will also be available electronically. the hope is that this is only the beginning and teachers will continue to contribute their most successful ideas, adding to this initial collection.
Mr. Speaker, this excellent practical support material can only exist with the contributions of those who are working with our students on a daily basis. We appreciate the efforts of the many teachers who contributed to this resource binder and will try to encourage all educators to expand the sharing of ideas and resources. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
--Applause