So I'm here to oversee panel two, which is the indigenous perspectives, collaborative approaches to continental scale biology. And this session will explore experiences and insights on traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous data sovereignty and intercultural collaborative partnerships to understand collective approaches to continental scale biology. So my name is Phoebe layman Zarnatsky and I am an associate professor of spatial and community ecology at Michigan State University, where I'm also the director of I beam or the Institute for biodiversity ecology, evolution and macro systems. We will hear from three speakers, Stephanie Russo Carol from the University of Arizona, Christina Eisenberg from Oregon State University, and Danielle Ignace from the University of British Columbia in this session. All questions are going to be taken during our Q&A at the end of all the presentations. So with that, I'm going to introduce our first speaker. Dr. Stephanie Russo Carol is a citizen of the native village of Clutika in Alaska and of Sicilian descent. At the University of Arizona she is an associate professor of public health associate director of the Native Nations Institute and associate research professor at the Udall Center. Her research teaching and engagement seek to transform institutional governance and ethics for indigenous control of indigenous data, particularly within open science, open data and big data contexts. For all of our panelists full bios please refer to the agenda. We will now we would like to invite Dr. Carol to speak. Thank you Phoebe for that great introduction. It means that I have less to say about myself, which is always a great way to start. I do want to tell you that today I joined me from Chexwha and now Tucson, Arizona, a place in which many indigenous people have related to over the years and which is now home to the Niyaki peoples. And I was really grateful to hear others acknowledge the messiness that results from the explosion of data, the growth in programs and repositories and issues around data gaps and bias. I want to acknowledge before I begin that and all the work that I do I'm responsible to my community, my family and ancestors and then we must always remember that our best learnings and work takes place on the land. So, I'm going to begin with a story from one of my colleagues, Dr. Dominic David Chavez from Colorado State University, her dissertation research was an empirical study of how indigenous communities were engaged in climate science research. And she contributed the scale which she's since updated in some testimony to the House of Representatives that looks at how the vast majority of climate studies are on the left side of the scale of extractive research practices that have no engagement with indigenous communities are only working in consultative or contractual fashion. And so, while that might be disappointing, there were a handful of studies over on the right side of the scale that are looking at self determined engagement with indigenous peoples through collaborative research processes but also moving even further where we're looking at collegial processes and processes in which indigenous values systems and historical context community members are centered in the research as researchers as contributors to the process. And so, while this plethora of data on the extractive side that might be disturbing and upsetting. What you see in the right side is really this area of growth. And so the question remains both in the times of crisis and non crisis so we think of covert and climate. As these crises we are facing, how can researchers repositories funders and other institutions support the shift to self determined community engaged science. And one important way is through changing the data relationships. So changes like these are already happening globally and through and though varying in context revealed that the US remains lagging in terms of national policy and standards addressing reconciliation of colonial impacts and indigenous rights and ethics in research and data governance in relation to nation states with similar colonial legacies so Eritrea New Zealand, Australia, Canada. And so we have a lot to learn from them in terms of how we set up our research systems, meaning how funders are structured. How our university research structures are are put into place and then also how we behave as researchers within these systems. So the question then becomes, how do we move university research institutions from extractive transactional colonial data practices and reconfigure power relationships to put indigenous data and indigenous hands. So I want to acknowledge that to include indigenous people's knowledges and data and science and technology advances, we must be able to maintain relationships between people's information in place within our technological infrastructure to both protect knowledge and data and allow indigenous people's to benefit from sharing knowledge and data on their own terms. So I've talked a lot about data and indigenous peoples here and I want to backtrack and give you kind of a picture of how the indigenous data sovereignty movement has conceptualized data. And so indigenous data, very broadly, and it's important to take this broad non discipline view of data, because you learn things I saw in the chat, as someone else said from other disciplines and so the in the chat box we're talking about how museums have grappled with this messiness for a very long time and so indigenous data include data generated by indigenous peoples about indigenous peoples as well as by other governments, private sector and other institutions, both at the collective and the individual level so it's really data about our non human relations, lands waters, air sacred ecosystems whether data data about us as individuals about our health social services so on and so forth and the data about us as collectives, our traditional cultural information our languages, our knowledges. And so it is really important to understand that it's also both tangible and intangible information and so anything as we know today can be taken and put into a data system so thinking about how to persist these relationships that we have with these knowledges, and humans and more than human relatives is really important. So indigenous data sovereignty is the right of indigenous peoples to govern their data from collection and storage to use and reuse so all along this process of not only research but also data collection from a federal or international perspective. It has its roots and inherent sovereignty so only indigenous peoples and nations as rights holders so thinking beyond the stakeholder lens to indigenous peoples as having specific rights to persistent relationships with their data. So only indigenous peoples can exercise indigenous data sovereignty. And it is a responsibility and expression of the ways traditions and roles that communities have for the care and use of their knowledge. So indigenous data sovereignty leverages tools such as policies and agreements including the UN declaration on the rise of indigenous peoples, nation state recognition where it might exist treaties and other mechanisms. It underscores that knowledge belongs to the collective and is fundamental to who we are as indigenous peoples. So indigenous data sovereignty critically expands beyond mainstream data sovereignty which focuses on digital information and geographic limitations to the jurisdiction. So to, to better allow persistent relationships with data specimens information and knowledge across time and space. Indigenous data governance seeks to change these relationships. So in response to developing frameworks of open science, big science, the explosion of data and so on and so forth. A coalition of indigenous scholars and leaders came together to assess the values between mainstream and indigenous data principles and governance so I'm talking fair specifically, but others and realize that most data are focused on indigenous community focused on attributes of data, whereas indigenous peoples own frameworks for focusing more on the people and purpose of data. And so the care principles are working towards bringing more of that people and purpose into data relationships so the care principles include four principles and three some principles for each one and they are collective benefit, which details that indigenous eco data ecosystem shall be designed and function in ways that enable indigenous peoples to benefit as collectives from data authority to control, which emphasizes the need for those working with data to uphold indigenous peoples rights to and support their interest in data. Responsibility which reminds us that those working with indigenous data must center indigenous peoples, self determination and collective benefit and relationship to data and ethics focuses on using indigenous peoples ethics to guide decisions on harms, benefit justice and future use. So these very high level care principles do not set uniform standards to aspire to, rather they set the minimum expectations and direct those interacting with indigenous data towards community specific guidance for the kids. A one size fits all policy at scale does not attend to individual indigenous peoples rights and interest and responsibilities and doesn't really work in the end so the care principles. Work to shift the focus of data governance from consultation to values based relationships and have been widely recognized as enriching discussions of collective rights to data for other populations as well. So I'm going to quickly give you a few examples of how the care principles have been implemented and, and work within this area, particularly thinking about how you create these large scale data collections, such as I heard I think it was Teresa mentioned neon. And what are the responsibilities if you're creating such a such such an institution today. And so I'm just going to give five A's for appropriate action to start with. And the first one is authority that a lot of people confuse the care principles as an ethics framework at its heart, the care principles are governance framework that recognizes recognizes and promotes indigenous authority. So centering indigenous peoples and people in leadership and scholarship is important. So seek and pay for guidance from indigenous leadership and scholarship. Allow us to do our conversations in this round, use existing indigenous expectations to set policy support the growth of tribal policies and practices. People's people and organizations to be part of the process which is what we heard others in conversation already talking about. So, for instance, there are set tribal policies. And some of these are actually tribal laws that reflect responsibilities and the care principles so one thing that some people may have experience with is that some tribes have tribal research codes or policies that much must be followed and detail the expectations largely around issues of jurisdiction issues around interests issues around responsibilities of researchers and so forth. Another resource that I want to put out there is that Dr Lydia Jennings. Now at Duke in Arizona State University but part of our Collaboratory for indigenous data governance and many of us authored a paper a couple weeks ago in nature ecology and an evolution that gives detailed information about how to apply the care principles for indigenous data governance within indigenous population data practices. And so providing these snippets of, sorry, providing these snippets of how do you do that. And then what does it look like so there's some little case studies of what that looks like in practice. The second area. Yeah, I'm almost done is making sure we're talking about enriching metadata which has already been a conversation here today. And then finally thinking about authorship and acknowledgement and recognizing indigenous intellectual property throughout the data and research relationships. So, so finally just want to close and really honing on the point that sovereignty matters. And then that assertions of indigenous data sovereignty actually spur innovation and design in data research policy and practice and find some of the solutions to the messiness that we're all experiencing today. Thank you. Thank you Stephanie that was really, really great to hear about all those important principles to think about. So our next speaker is Dr Christina Eisenberg and she is the associate dean for inclusive excellence and the Mabel Clark McDonald director of tribal initiatives in natural resources at Oregon State University in the College of Forestry. And as the professor of practice who specializes in indigenous knowledge. She is the lead principal investigator on several long term federally funded projects with Native American communities that incorporate indigenous knowledge and best Western science in eco cultural restoration of forests and grasslands in North America. We would now like to invite Dr Eisenberg to speak. Thank you Phoebe. It's a pleasure to be here. And if you could advance my slides to the next slide. So the position that I'm in in the College of Forestry is a radical position. I was created a year ago I started a year ago was created a year and a half ago. And it was with a specific objective of taking the College of Forestry beyond the Latin acknowledgement. And as Stephanie pointed out, the US is lagging behind other nations in terms of honoring sovereignty rights, especially data sovereignty when it comes to academic institutions at Oregon State University we do not have any established standards or policies for partnering with tribal nations. And so I was hired to help create those policies. And I'm very excited that we're currently in the process of hiring a university level director of tribal relations. So things are moving quite rapidly. My scope of work is diversity, equity and inclusion, student success, tribal initiatives. I'm a man of one right now so across the university and indigenous knowledge, helping define it and, you know, develop principles and best practices for working with tribal nations, and then focusing on tribal leadership. And we have a new strategic plan and a new Dean, Tom DeLuca who started three years ago and addressing issues that face tribal partners in partnering with academic institutions was one of his highest priorities and that has really shifted our culture in the College of Forestry. I will add that the College of Forestry is the number one rated school of forestry in the Western Hemisphere. So it's not a small thing that we are working to, you know, identify our gaps such as sovereignty rights for indigenous partners, and, and figuring out how to do better. And that's my role is to help the whole college and the university figure out how we can do better. Next slide.  Assumptions are made about it that, and often it's defined by non indigenous people. So, indigenous knowledge is knowledge and practices passed orally from generation to generation and formed by strong cultural memories sensitivity to change and values that include reciprocity, rooted in spiritual health culture and language and indigenous knowledge is a way of life that's Robin Wall Kimmerer's definition. And as an indigenous person I grew up with my background is mixed heritage Rora Maury and Western Apache. I grew up hearing my grandmother stories about how the natural world works and that profoundly shaped my sensibility. I'm an ecologist I'm a very formally trained Western science. In fact, I knew Phoebe when we were graduate students over a decade ago. But anyway, next slide please. So there's some federal policy context is actually a perfect convergence happening right now.  In 2021, there was a presidential justice 40 initiative in November of 21. Also, there was the White House. I'm a member of the OST PCQ memorandum on itk and federal decision making in November of 22. There was a White House memo guidance on indigenous knowledge and in November 22 also the joint secretarial order 3403 on the trust responsibility to tribes. I'm one of the people that the White House has enlisted to help them move these initiatives forward. So these, these executive orders and memorandum say what the federal government wants to do and ought to do, but does provide a lot of guidance on how to implement these policies. And that's where some of us who are indigenous and working within academia are tapped to help provide some of that leadership and guidance next. So the College of Forestry, one of the first things I did was I led our whole college in developing these principles and best practices for working with indigenous knowledge and partnering with tribal nations. And then the term indigenous knowledge and TEK used to be the preferred term and then the White House got guidance from 1000 indigenous peoples, leaders, and, and learned that indigenous knowledge is the term that we prefer to use to refer to our knowledge. And so you'll hear both terms used out there and I just wanted to give you some context on why you're hearing both of those terms so that things are moving really fast. Anyway, we created these principles. And by the way, I mean the whole college community, it was incredible how much buy-in there was in this. And they are simply to, if you're going to partner with a tribal nation, you have to do these things, all of them, not just some of them. So you start by acknowledging the genocide. You practice early and sustained engagement before you even know what kind of research you want to do. You reach out to that tribal nation or multiple tribal nations with whom you want to partner and sit down and say, what matters to you? What are your priorities? You earn and maintain trust by being transparent, open about ideas and honest at all times. You respect that there are very different processes and worldviews between the settler colonial, western, white world in the indigenous world. You recognize, respond to, adapt to challenges that arise with cultural humility. So indigenous people were here for millennia before the settler colonial culture took over our ways or try to integrate and assimilate us. And so to really be aware of that and be humble and realize that we can't solve today's problems by doing the same thing we've been doing for the last 200 years. So that's part of why we are addressing crises right now, such as climate change, extinction, mass extinction. Consider supporting co-stewardship and co-management partnerships. Always support co-production of knowledge. In case there are any journal articles or reports published, always have your indigenous partners as co-authors and that includes people like elders, for example. Especially, actually, provide ample funding to tribal nations at each step of the partnership to share power and decision making authority with tribal partners. So these principles are basic to our, specific to our college. The university is seeking to adopt them. And the White House has asked for these principles and are using them to refine their policies. So we are in another era right now, and it's an era of tribal empowerment and self-determination and it's really exciting to see what's happening. Next slide. An example, so Phoebe mentioned that I lead several projects with federal funding and their long term studies. I'm going to use this example. In the Pacific Northwest, we have a three-year pilot project, the tribal conservation project for seeds of success. And it involves collecting seeds of native plants, partnering with tribal nations and the five tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest. Next slide. So those are the five tribal nations. Other partners include the Institute for Applied Ecology, the Society for Ecological Restoration and Forest Bridges. Our policies are that any work done with tribal partners on tribal lands involve MOUs and keeping with best practices for tribal relations. And per Indigenous knowledge cultural values, we do non-invasive non-lethal sampling as much as possible. Regarding the first policy, that includes data sovereignty. Next slide. And that's it. I'm happy to answer questions later. Thank you very much, Christina. That was really great to hear about all the great work that you're doing with your position. And now we're going to move on to our next speaker, Dr. Danielle Agnese, as an assistant professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia and a research associate at Harvard Forest. As an enrolled member of the Cordelaine tribe, Dr. Agnese studies how global change, climate change, fire and introduced species impacts ecosystem function and Indigenous communities. She currently serves as an elected officer for the traditional ecological knowledge section of the Ecological Society of America, chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the American Society of Plant Biologists, and is a member of the Resurgent Indigenous Scholars for the Environment or RISE Collective at UBC. We would like to invite Dr. Agnese to begin the presentation. Thank you so much for the introduction and I'm going to be the one presented here without any slides. So that's actually unusual for me. So I just thought I would give all my thoughts today. And thank you for the nice introduction. As was mentioned, I'm an enrolled member of the Cordelaine tribe, which is in northern Idaho. My father's side and I'm also a nominee. And that's in northern Wisconsin. And that's through my mother's side. So that's really informed the work that I do and where I'm coming from with my perspective. And today I wanted just to share a very short example of how you can start a relationship from zero from nothing and also talk about, you know, some ways moving forward and talk about some of the hurdles and ways to move forward in terms of what we can do to expand beyond ourselves and the work that we do. So currently working with the Cordelaine tribe and essentially trying to develop a forest management plan. The tribe has many years of thinking about and working on salmon reintroduction, which is really important to many tribes and First Nations in terms of their culture and, and their ways of being and connecting. And so we've essentially don't have that in development yet. And so working with my own tribe and starting to think about forest health rather than thinking about timber thinking about how what can we do to manage this in the healthiest way in a sustainable way. I've also as a research associate at Harvard Forest have been spending many years there as a mentor in the research experience for undergraduate program. It's an NSF program at Harvard Forest, which is part of the LTER network, which is also located on 4000 acres, which is happens to be the territory of the network people and contrast that amount of land to which they have on the reservation, which is only four acres. So starting from a relationship of nothing in the past three years have grown to have three years worth of two students of color each year involved in this relationship building process. And it's grown quite quickly over the past three years to including indigenous students that actually we're doing this work as we build this relationship with the nation. This involves the director for outreach and education at Harvard Forest, which has a full staff as well.  And so what can you do when you start building this relationship, not only mentor students, but also just change the dynamic of an institution like that to consider fellowships, stipends, as well as compensated work when at being asking of the nation to do so much of that kind of heavy lifting in terms of developing that relationship and bringing their knowledge. So they're they're also co mentors of producers and co writers on proposals. They have fellowships in place for them. And so now it's become quite the force of thinking about how we can have and help and leverage our power as an institution to help with land back initiatives to help with management plans rather than just having these conversations so going from zero to having all of this has really been one of the most fruitful endeavors of my career. But we still have a ways ago ways to go. The students involved in this work still from their peers gets harmful criticism in questions and comments in ways that they don't feel valued or supported in the academy. So we as a group of mentors and all of us on this call and all of us in the academy, definitely have a role to play here in terms of being leaders and helping all the students value and support this kind of work. I can't do this alone. I can certainly lead on a project like this, but this also calls for going beyond myself and we need to think about leadership at the institutional level. So one of the most common questions I get in the past few years giving my talks is, and this is mostly from students. How do I do this work? How do I get started? And, you know, where do I who do I go to? And I think my usual response is probably frustrating yet is is honest at the same time and that it needs to go beyond them as well because students come in and then they leave right so we need an institution to step up. And formalize those relationships they need to reconcile the relationship that they have or perhaps did not have prior to that. And as we've heard from the other speakers, what that might look like at an institutional level. So that needs to be a steady and stable relationship. They can come in many different forms, but it is about leveraging power privilege as well as the resources that are at the institution. So we need to avoid the one off projects and wasting time. And for this there are other points to consider. One of the biggest things is transparency in my work in BC and trying to connect different First Nations with the UBC academic institution is simply that transparency factor, and that there's a lot of partnerships individual like me students with First Nations in indigenous communities that we don't know who has the partnerships. We don't know what they're doing. Who are they working with what are they working on. So that needs to be transparent we need a platform in which to easily access this information. This also is what's been brought up earlier about data who owns the data is it public will it be published is their consent and what to use and the information that is contained within some of these projects. So transparency is a good thing, not only for just knowing what is happening out there, but we can be informed about potential projects. Who can communities go to if they have a need, or perhaps they need someone with specialized training, let's say, I don't know, climate climate change scientists of some sort right then they can know who to go to in which to form these partnerships, leveraging resources and informing the communities about the state of science in order to change policy so that is one of the biggest comments I've heard from First Nations leadership in BC is we want to change policy. We need to know the state of the science within, you know, their communities and and within the province and the nation, which brings me to training as if we're thinking about this at the institution level and even as an individual level. We need the training to do this as well. So even administration and leadership need this training. PI is mentors any kind of mentor regardless of career stage, as well as students. And in this case, we are working on training the mentor. It's important to train both indigenous and non indigenous mentors and how to work with communities, indigenous communities in particular, but also to train their students and how to do this. And this needs to be an ongoing exercise as well. And in the same way, when we work with indigenous communities and we have indigenous or non indigenous students that also needs to be training that needs to be emphasized in this work. Education in general, digitizing the curriculum. That takes time. So I just want to emphasize being patient about that kind of work. But it's important that, you know, there, we have a ways to go with this, but it's important to have this training so that we can reduce the harm and reliving that causing more harm and repeating the past. So I'll just quickly finish here with what can we all do individually and collectively, you know, ask yourself some questions. You know, are we actually involving the communities. If we are trying to come up with solutions to climate change global change fires. We're actually speaking to the communities in which they are truly impacting in a devastating way as we are seeing currently in DC in the past few days. Who are we doing this work for? Is it for ourselves, the institution, our lab group, or for certain communities? Why are we doing this work? We have a seat at the table. So not only thinking about partnerships that we could have intertribal government agencies, institutions and communities, who could be at the table, and also who should be at the table. Thank you. Thank you very much, Danielle. That was great to hear your perspective on this very important topic. So now we're going to begin our Q&A session and just a reminder to the audience that you'll have a Q&A function below the video player to submit your questions. So I encourage you to go ahead and do that now. And then of course for any panelists or other committee members you can add them to the chat as well. All right. Are there any questions from the committee? If not, right now I'll start us off with a question. Maybe I have a question. I don't know if you saw my hand. Sorry, I can't see those. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, sorry. Yeah. So thank you to all the speakers. It was a great, great few talks. One thing I was thinking about was Stephanie talked about authority, authority to control and governance. And Christine also brought that up with her work in this new position, working to go beyond the land acknowledgement. And then I was thinking about Danielle's work at the LTER network and also Neon was brought up. So I was curious what you might envision for a mechanism or a structure to infuse authority to control in some of these long term or large continent scale data networks. I'll start off and then I'm hoping to hear from Christina and Danielle too because I'm grateful for their words today. And like the synergies across what we talked about. So in the work that that I do with the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance, we really focus a lot on institutions. And we talk a lot about scaffolding or building out different mechanisms across the system so that you're upholding those rights. And so some of these mechanisms and what you're just talking about I'm thinking about are things like we heard a lot about enriching metadata from the panel before or to write about how things are messy in certain ways. And so some ways that you can enrich metadata are to include permissions within metadata. So if you have just moving beyond the thinking of consultation but you actually have collective consent and to put that within the metadata. Provanauts really moving towards strict Provanauts adherence. We're working with the IEEE now to create a recommended practice for the Provanauts of Indigenous Peoples Data on an international level. And then also protocols. And so while that mechanism of using metadata might not be fully legal, it's extra legal ways of persistent relationships within data. And then you begin to think about well it has to be how do we make those work within just a specific system like your own database, right? And then how does it move between those databases to when you share data with networks and have access protocols for different places. And so there are things like guidelines and the actual processes of how you work to which Danielle and I think Christina can speak more eloquently than me as well as then thinking through the legal mechanism. And so a lot of time now people use just a straight out MOU. What we're beginning to see is this actually utilizing different types of contractual mechanisms to speak very specifically to certain concerns around that Indigenous Peoples might have. So having a base MOU but then if there are real concerns about publishing having a specific contractual agreement around publishing. Or if there's concern about data access and not just access of Indigenous Peoples Data but Indigenous Peoples access to their own data and other data within the systems, having contracts that actually are around those pieces. So those are just three things I'll start with and then I'll hand off and hopefully Danielle or Christina will add to it. Yes, thank you for that Stephanie and thank you for that good question. The three of us were chosen, invited to speak on this panel because we're considered global leaders in Indigenous knowledge and protection of that knowledge. This is a frontier. So Dr. Frank Lake who many of you may have heard of is a close colleague of mine and he heads a White House committee on data sovereignty. And from him I know that, you know, the question that you just asked doesn't have a clear answer yet. We do know what basic principles are, which the three of us have articulated. So I'm a member of the LTR research team on the HJA Andrews. I also work closely with the director of the Harvard Forest, another LTR site. I work very closely with the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, and they all asked that same question, how do we do this. The key issue is that Indigenous people, we have had everything taken from us, our lands, populations of culturally significant species have been pillaged and plundered. And so we're very fiercely protective of our data about natural resources. How do we protect those data in this era of open access data, which I think is absolutely essential to have data available for all to access. So one way is by redacting those data that pertain to Indigenous people. The MOU, to have it not be a blanket MOU, there isn't a one-size-fits-all way to do this, as Stephanie pointed out. But to be very specific and have it be a tribal nation by tribal nation. For example, I gave us an example, the project that Tom DeLuca and I have in the Pacific Northwest, partnering with five tribal nations. We have separate MOUs with each tribal nation, and they're each different, because each tribal nation has different principles and priorities. And yes, they're all Pacific Northwest tribes, and people tend to mash them all together, but they're not. They're individual communities with individual priorities. So the MOU is really important. Danielle mentioned a lack of awareness of what agreements had been created within her institution. I hear you on that, Danielle. That's a major problem here at OSU too. And I'm working with others to try to reconstruct that. And now with this new hire of a university level director of tribal relations who works at the university office of government relations. We hope that that person can create a much more unified and transparent structure. So that's not a very good answer. The answer is we don't know. We're at a frontier, but we're working very hard to figure this out. And what we've provided today are the basic principles that will hold, I believe, I've worked globally with tribes, indigenous people all over the world. I was a chief scientist at EarthWatch and my role there was, I had oversight over 50 projects on six continents, many of which involved indigenous people. And so, you know, it, it's a universal question right now. And we need to work together across cultures on it. And the only thing I'll add, I think Stephanie and Christina definitely totally explained a lot there and everything that I would have said anyway, so thank you for that. And yes, in the same way that we think about standardizing of methods or sampling, you know, across the LTER sites. There is no one way to standardize working with indigenous communities as has already been mentioned. So it's very nuanced. And just a really short example would be working with Nimuk at Harvard Forest. And last year, not revealing the culturally important species that we were working with. And so that was, you know, something that we agreed upon. And of course, people are desperate to know the species who it was. But we just at that particular time, weren't ready to reveal that. So that's just one example of, you know, a very specific example, something to consider within a site. And so that's why we're still, I think still so early stages of how do we consider this across, across these, this network is very challenging. Thank you all for those great perspectives. Ines, Ivanias. Good morning and thank you for all the presenters for your talks. I have a question that goes a little bit beyond where you have been telling us. We're aware that many indigenous groups are being flooded with requests from researchers to collaborate and create partnerships and is the way it should go. There is no question. We do also understand that these indigenous groups may not take on all these partnerships. It may be a little bit too much. So I wonder what would be your advice for these groups of researchers that will want to have a partner but it may not visible in the short term. What are the guidelines of advice that you will give them. Thank you. So that's something that I'm working on intensively. And if you recall the principles I presented is do not approach a tribal nation with your research proposal already drafted with all the questions in it, and say, we want to partner with you and the indigenous tribal nations are nations sovereign nations. So it's like you wouldn't approach France and say hey let's collaborate you would say let's partner. So, start very early on, before you have an idea. I'm working with a lot of this at my institution because there's this flood of federal funding and researchers on the tenure track system is terrible in this, you know, have to demonstrate their professional advancement professionally on a very tight time scale. And so they come up with these ideas and they present them to tribes as a done deal and done proposal, and that's exploitation. I suggest that you look at the principles that we drafted it in the College of Forestry, the federal government, the White House is using those now to think about next steps in terms of a federal policy that is much more respectful of tribal nations. And start early, build those relationships early on. It takes time. So, there is such a thing as Indian time, right, and our, we're not a transactional peoples. So it takes time to build that trust the earlier you start the better. Stephanie or Daniel did you want to comment on that. Yeah, this gets back to what I was mentioning about the transparency issue and something that we're actively working on in in BC is. How do we kind of make this known in, in a non harmful way about what partnerships already exist and what work is being done and the goals of that work. But also, again, trying to develop a platform like a, you know, a kind of interactive living platform online that everyone can go to everyone has access to to see what is happening and this isn't just because, you know, PI that institutions want to know this information the community wants to know that information as well, not just for their maybe their individual needs but maybe they want to partner with someone maybe there's a new partnership with a group of first nations. That that they didn't know could possibly exist and that's why this information is is so important here. But I think. Yeah, as well I think just, I think having the leadership at the institution really needs to get involved for this to kind of be successful as we heard from Christina talking about I might get the title on a director or liaison of Indian or a community or digits community engagement I'm not sure I got that title right, but we need more of those, you know, even at some of these institution there might be one person we need more than one person to help with that kind of work so I think to avoid that over asking I guess asked early and all of those things that Christina had mentioned, but being just super transparent and just having more support to do that work because one person cannot possibly handle all of that. Yeah, I want to jump off of something Dan now that you just said and also point back to what Christina had said before is that I think that there is a need for transparency and transparency goes both ways and so sometimes right now it's hard to actually know what indigenous expectations are and so there are some movements towards providing access like Danielle has just talked about to, for instance like tribal research processes, tribal expectations for how you engage and partner with them, which aren't easy to find now all of the time unless you access through a portal like our university is a portal the park service has a part of portal that type of stuff. And then also push back to the funders to and so we're talking about a lot of work for researchers and universities but as the federal government starts rolling out mandates around open access and responsible partnerships with with indigenous peoples, we need to also see the federal government and all these agencies that fund research understand that they also need to fund the activities that are central to good research. And that means funding these partnership activities but also funding these for lack of better word I'll call them resource hub or repositories of how you access and engage with indigenous peoples. Yeah, those are some really excellent points Christina did you want to add some. I'd like to add a couple points. Successful partnerships with tribal nations need to be done on their terms. And so the from the first conversation we have you have with them to say we're interested in exploring possibilities to work together on your terms. In every tribal nation, I've said that to says nobody's ever talked to us before. We feel that we can trust you. Another point is, don't reach out to native American indigenous colleagues and ask them to be co ps, just so that you can get that grant through. I have so many requests like that, and other indigenous people do as well. So if you don't have a relationship with an indigenous colleague if you haven't included them from the earliest of conversations, don't include them as a PI it's it's actually an insult to do that. It tokenizes us. So that gets to integrity, you know really think through what you want to do. And it's a very different model of operating than what we typically use in academia and in federal circles for advancing research initiatives. Thank you. Thank you. This advice is really helpful for a lot of us thinking along these lines so I really appreciate your comments. I have a question from the audience. To what extent do you work with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, AI HEC and and how does that help. If you do work with them. Does anyone had experience with that consortium. I've only worked with them peripherally I know they're, they're partnering and some work out of the easel effort at CU Boulder. But I do also know that they themselves have engaged in creating data sharing agreements that are mindful of actual indigenous people's rights within the systems of the kind of education data that they themselves collect. And so this is a really important point because it underscores the need to practice what you're talking about and to employ those mechanisms within your everyday, your everyday work life and everyday life as well because if you're just talking about things you're not really doing stuff anymore and I've gotten to a point in my professional life where I just don't work with people who aren't ready to move because there's plenty of people who are ready to move forward and actually do this work in the right way. And really think through what Christina I think was really just talking about which is we need to forefront indigenous leadership and design. As we've seen from some of the movements that have happened lately, some of this, the leverage that we have as indigenous peoples is in our right space frameworks but also we carry a lot of responsibility. And that echoes with some of the conversation that we had earlier today in the first panel about how do we engage communities and understanding the roles of communities and actually the expertise of communities in the crises that we're talking about addressing. And so, being able to understand and promote that leadership and design of what we're doing in terms of creating new systems of working with data and information, creating new ways of having partnerships and doing science actually in service to community. Did anyone else want to comment on that? All right, I have a question actually. It sounds like, and Stephanie you brought this up in the beginning, the United States is quite far behind in federal policy around indigenous knowledge and engagement. So I was wondering how can we as researchers, perhaps in partnership with indigenous peoples help move this forward in a positive direction. I'm going to start with, I think I brought this up earlier in terms of how I feel my role, you know, is important for mentorship and training in the next generation.  We still are quite challenged by those that devalue the work that we are doing and we have these silos of the Henry and people not being ready to quite push on those boundaries of those silos of disciplines and the work that we're doing. I still feel like I'm fighting all the time for that value and support. It depends on where I am in what audience and who I'm working or who I'm surrounded by any particular week, whether they support this work or value it. You know, in the work that I've done at Harvard Forest, you know, we're leveraging Western science tools. So, you know, having our indigenous knowledge and working with indigenous communities, they need not to exist in opposition, and that's in that way. And, and so, you know, at least for our work, those tools are embraced and leveraged for, you know, how we think about the system. So still getting that pushed back. And so I think, you know, as researchers, what can we do? Well, this can't be, this can't stay siloed, you know, if we think moving beyond interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, you got to think about multidisciplinary work, something that is going beyond all of this, and it need not exist in this box, in the siloed areas. So I think if we think broadly about this work and the importance, and I think value and support that I think as a group of, you know, all of the researchers, you know, rather than devaluing the work that we're doing, you know, support us. And, you know, we're not looking to, yeah, we're looking to, we're looking for that in some, you know, fundamental basic way to be, you know, at the very least treated as equals in that so that's something, you know, I still fight for my students still have to fight for that as well. Thank you, Danielle. And I'm sorry, but we are out of time for our panel right now. And I know that there's so much more we could talk about.


We'd like to begin our webinar by acknowledging that we are, that we are gathering today across Treaty 6, 7, and 8 territory as well as the Métis Nation of Alberta and Métis Settlement Territory. These are traditional meeting places and homes for many Indigenous people, including the Anishabeg, the Blackfoot, the Cree, Dene, Nakorasu, Ojibwe, Doni Nakora, Tina, Soto, and the Inuit and Métis people. We respect the treaties that were made on these territories, and in the spirit of reconciliation and collaboration, we acknowledge the harms and mistakes of the past, and we dedicate ourselves to move forward in partnership with Indigenous communities. In this first session, we'll be spending time on defining and conceptualizing positive mental health, including highlighting the difference between positive mental health and mental illness. We'll talk about the comprehensive school health approach, addressing the questions of what is it and how does the model promote the development of healthy school communities. And finally, we'll illustrate how this comprehensive school health framework connects to the Alberta Education Student Competency. So, let's get started. Part one of our webinar series, I'd like to pose a couple of questions for you to consider. What's the difference between mental health and mental illness? In the chat box, what role do you currently play in promoting mental health in schools? As you take your responses into the chat box, I will highlight a few ways that we know parents and guardians can support the mental health of their children. In the chat box, you'll find yourself typing something similar. Parents can support cause of mental health habits at home, have an awareness of signs of mental health concerns, support their child in obtaining the supports needed, provide information to school staff and service providers that support their child, support communication between home, school, and community, with service providers and school staff and engage in service when and to the extent that it's appropriate. Did you know that the terms mental health and mental illness are often confused? Sometimes people think mental health and mental illness mean about or exactly the same thing. And even when people understand them to be different concepts, many use a mix of the concepts to define them.  The following may be a few of the reasons. First, mental health and mental illness are often used interchangeably.  If we have a mental illness that requires treatment, we often go to a mental health facility or a mental health unit at a hospital. Because these terms are used interchangeably, it leads to confusion about what they actually mean. In reality, we know that five in five people have mental health, while one in five have a mental illness. In the course of a lifetime, not all people will have a mental illness, but everyone will struggle or have a challenge with their mental health or well-being. It's the same as having challenges with their physical health from time to time. However, we all have some level of mental health at any given time in our lives. Second, historically, we haven't always talked about or defined the concept of mental health very well. And we're still learning how to measure it. Mental health or positive mental health is complex, and it's comprised of skills and attitudes that are related to our emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social well-being. Mental health also includes our ability to enjoy life and deal with the challenges that we face. So let's try to conceptualize mental health by looking at our physical health first. So if I asked you to rate your physical health along the continuum on the screen, where the left-hand slide is physically ill and the right side is physically healthy, could you do it? Take a moment to think about where you would place yourself along the line now. Did you find it pretty easy to place yourself along the line? Now, if you were a person who has a chronic illness such as asthma or diabetes, is it still possible to be physically healthy even though you have a physical illness? If you were to have a chronic physical illness, could you stay with yourself along the continuum when one end is healthy and one end is not? As you can see, the continuum isn't enough. A continuum suggests that the absence of illness is health, but in reality that's not true. As you can see, a simple continuum doesn't work to describe our physical health, and in the same way it doesn't work to describe our mental health either. What actually works is to consider health or physical or mental as different and independent from illness. In the model that's now on your screen, this is a more accurate way to think about mental health.  You can have a better look at the details of this graph in the Alberta Education document working together to support mental health in Alberta schools. A link to this document is in this session's resource list. The important areas to focus on in the graph for the purpose of this webinar are the two axes. The vertical or green axis represents mental health ranging from good mental health at the top to poor mental health. The horizontal or the blue axis represents mental illness ranging from no mental illness on the right hand side to severe mental illness on the left. This diagram suggests that even though someone may have a mental illness, they could be considered to have good mental health, and someone without a mental illness can still experience mental health problems. Looking at more detail for each quadrant, starting in the top left. So if we look at the top left, this would be somebody who might have high mental illness but also high mental health. This could be a well functioning person with a diagnosed mental illness but has lots of social supports and is able to do and cope quite well with the stresses of everyday life. Moving along to the top right, this would be someone with low mental illness and high mental health. Again, a highly functioning person without a mental illness is successful and able to do and cope quite well. Also has a lot of social supports in their life. If we move on to the bottom right, these would be people with low mental health but low mental illness or no mental illness. So while not having a diagnosed mental illness, they still may not be coping very well with the stresses of everyday life. They may have low social support networks, lack of friendships and relationships and difficulty managing the challenges of life. Finally moving on to the bottom left, we're in the area of high mental illness and low mental health. A person here may have a diagnosed mental illness and does not have the social supports, networks, friendships, relationships, and supportive environment to keep them mentally healthy. It's very difficult in this position to manage the challenges of life and people in this quadrant may end up institutionalized or on an acute or long term basis. What's important to understand with this model is that if you compare the function of someone who has a mental illness and high level of mental health, someone in the top left, if you compare them with someone who has no mental illness but low mental health, someone in the bottom right, the person who has a mental illness and good mental health, the person in the top left functions better than the person with no mental illness and low mental health. So what we're here to do today is focus on strategies that improve positive mental health for all, which are strategies that would keep everyone regardless of whether they have a mental illness or not above the blue line. So what is the definition of positive mental health? The Public Health Agency of Canada defines positive mental health as the capacity of each of us to feel, think, and act in ways that enhance our ability to enjoy life and deal with the challenges we face. It's a positive sense of emotional and spiritual well-being that respects the importance of culture, equity, social justice, interconnections, and personal dignity. Having good mental health means that you can enjoy life, can deal with life's challenges, can recognize and manage emotions, can have good relationships, and show respect for all people, including culture, equity, social justice, and personal dignity. The value of positive mental health is demonstrated through clear benefits to school staff, students, and schools, families, and parents as well. And the benefits include decreased emotional distress, increased school attendance, staying in school longer, higher grades and test scores, and decreased substance use. We all know that everyone has mental health, and there are ways that we can improve poor or low mental health. Remember from the previous diagram, strategies to get everyone above the horizontal blue line. And school settings play an integral role in supporting positive mental health.  They're a source of social connection, and schools that foster social and emotional skills across the entire school population create caring and supportive environments. Therefore, working together to support mental health in schools is a shared responsibility. Excellent. Thanks Matt. I'm going to take over from here. So as Matt said, supporting positive mental health for students. So it's a shared responsibility. So we're looking at shared responsibility among students themselves, school employees. So whether that's teachers, education assistants, administrative staff, school bus driver, operator, et cetera. The list goes on. Health care providers, and of course parents. And as parents, a main part of supporting mental health for children and youth is to foster that collaboration between places where children live, learn and play. Parents are the connectors between schools, communities and their homes.  There's no one place or one strategy that can create all the conditions that children and youth need to flourish. Therefore, we need to share the responsibility of supporting mental health and coordinate our efforts to have a collective impact on improving health and education. And the model we use to coordinate those efforts is called the comprehensive school health approach, which is illustrated on the diagram on your screen. And I'll talk about what comprehensive school health is and why we recommend this model. So the definition on your screen there is that comprehensive school health is an internationally recognized framework for supporting improvements in students' educational outcomes while addressing school health in a planned, integrated and holistic way. This quote or the definition comes from the Joint Consortium for School Health, which is a partnership of 25 ministries of health and education across Canada. They work to promote a comprehensive school health approach to student wellness, as well as student success for all children and youth. So when we talk about comprehensive school health, we're talking about that it's more than what's taught in class. It's not just about a health class. It's about all the different ways a school can support their students in being healthy. It builds on strengths and activities that are already happening in schools and aims to develop them into sustainable activities that support healthy school culture. It's about supporting school health through multiple components, which I'll touch on in a moment, and can be applied in a variety of areas. So that includes healthy eating, active living, positive mental health, etc. There are several terms used to describe comprehensive school health, so a similar approach. You might hear terms like health promoting schools, coordinated school health, a whole school approach. Regardless of the terminology, they all incorporate the same principles. So you might be asking yourself, why take a comprehensive school health approach? We know that health and education are interdependent, so they feed off of each other. Healthy students are better learners, and better educated individuals are healthier. The research has shown that comprehensive school health is an effective way to enhance that linkage between health and education, so it improves both of those outcomes and encouraging healthy behaviors that last a lifetime. So in the classroom, comprehensive school health facilitates improved academic achievement and can lead to fewer behavioral problems as well. In the broader school environment, it helps students develop the skills they need to be physically and emotionally healthy for life. And comprehensive school health recognizes that healthy students learn better and achieve more, understands that schools can directly influence students' health and behaviors. They're an effective setting for that, encourages healthy lifestyle choices that promote students' health and well-being. Comprehensive school health incorporates health into all aspects of school and learning. It links health and education issues in the systems and needs participation and support of families in the community at large. So again, it goes back to that shared responsibility for health and promoting positive mental health. So it also comes back to that common vision and harmonizing those actions amongst health and education partners and other sectors as well, to try and coordinate those efforts so that we pool our resources and develop action plans together with schools in mind. This whole school model helps to build capacity to incorporate well-being as an essential aspect of student achievement. So when actions and all four components are harmonized or they're working together, students are supported to realize their full potential as learners and as healthy productive members of society. So now I'll just touch on the components of comprehensive school health. This approach has four distinct but interrelated pillars which are shown on the diagram there on your screen. So school health promotion initiatives that include strategies related to all components are the ones that are going to be the most effective. So for example, if we want to improve mental health in schools, we want all of these areas working together towards that common goal. So we need to have policies in place that support positive mental health. We have to have partnerships that support positive mental health and value positive mental health. Our social and physical environments need to be set up to be supportive of positive mental health. And we need to teach each other about different components of mental health so that all of these pieces are working together to create a culture of wellness. This framework supports the goal of Alberta education in that students develop student learner competencies so they can successfully navigate their life and learning. So that's kind of an overview of comprehensive school health. We can get deeper into each of these components in webinar number two, I believe, so stay tuned for that down the road. For now, I'll pass it over to Michelle to further the links of comprehensive school health wellness and the student learner competencies. At this time, I think we've got a bit of time to dedicate to questions so far. So I'm just wondering if any of our listeners have questions on the information that Matt shared about mental health. And if anyone has any questions about the information that Kate shared in the comprehensive school health. If you have a question, just go ahead and enter it into the chat room and we'll address it. I know I worked in a school that followed the components of the comprehensive school health. And we, as a school, did because our school jurisdiction did. I'm just wondering how other families, how you've experienced this model or if you have it all. So Celeste, our Drasim Junior Senior High. Yeah, they focus on a couple of components. So this is a great way for parents to get involved or to see where there's room to come together to support schools in either their focus for the year or focusing on, pardon me, parents can offer support in the areas where they see that there might be supports needed. Just to further that conversation, Michelle, I would add that it's likely that schools are using this model. Sometimes it might be hard to adapt if they're using the model or not or following it. It might require a little bit of investigation to know if all of those pieces are at play. But if you're part of a school health team or a planning group or something like that, these are definitely components that you'd want to look at to try and develop the strategies that you're putting in place to make it that kind of long-term sustainable lasting initiative. Yeah, sometimes it is hard to see how supporting health is going in the background of the school. But Kate, I like that point that you make that sometimes parents have to dig around and investigate to see where these components are being activated. Yeah, talking about the parent council and just even things like offering partnerships and services. If you run a business or you know the owner of the local grocery store and you want to provide healthy snacks, perhaps healthy fruit in the office for kids that don't have lunches, or if you run a business and the school is participating in a school-wide wellness activity, maybe there's a partnership there that you can offer to support their healthy school initiatives. There's a lot of different ways that we can support schools.  And sometimes we have to recognize that sometimes that support is just starting the conversation. Oh, good question, Matt. OK, Marcia, your comment just reminds me of future topics in our webinars down the road for this series. And we're going to address that component, partnerships and services and policy as well as social and physical environments. All of those components come together to support reaching out to families, students and their families in making sure that they feel welcome and we'll be giving you more strategies on how to reach out to those parents. And while I'm talking here, I'm also thinking about, and my friends from Alberta Health Services, you're going to get the title right. It's the safe, welcoming, safe and caring, respectful... Learning environment. ...environment, thank you. Yeah, so that, maybe Kate or Matt, you can put that link into the chat room. But that's a link to Alberta Education and there are ways there for parents to support schools and schools to support parents and there's checklists and stuff like that that perhaps a group of parent council can take a piece of that and take a piece of that policy and sort of model it to, or modify it so that it is more suitable for parents, for parent council to look at. Oh, thanks Matt, that's there. Okay, so are there any other questions? Okay, so I will move on to student learning competencies. So on your screen, you see the eight competencies there. These eight competencies are derived from the ministerial order on student learning from 2013. The competencies are a comprehensive look at the knowledge, skills and attitudes that students develop in order to be successful in their everyday lives. If you're interested in learning more about the competencies after this webinar, please access them on the resources page at the end of the slides. And I am going to be sharing these slides with everyone here today through the chat window. And we've populated the slides with links to all of the websites and resources that we talk about throughout the session. And so Alberta Education and ERLC both have two websites dedicated to the competencies. The competencies for a teacher really talk about, they bring to life that peace, those skills, knowledge and attitudes that are supposed to be developed through learning activities in class. So competencies are things like critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, creativity and innovation, communication, personal growth and well-being, managing information and cultural and global citizenship. So when we put a wellness lens to these ideas, if you look at critical thinking, actually, yeah, if you look at managing information, we've got the verbs there share, sort, find and use. So when your child is sharing information either through social media or is receiving information through text, so on and so forth, you want them to be competent in what they share and how they view what is shared to them. You also want them to be able to sort through all the messages that they're getting through social media or other forms of communication. You want them to be able to find things that are important to them, not only just their, you know, their jacket before they head to school, but you also want them to be competent at finding help or finding a phone number that they can call for support or finding an address and the last verb there is use. We want them to be competent users of the information that they receive and be able to use it so that they benefit from the information that they do receive. So that's one way that managing information can live through a wellness lens. Now, obviously, if we were in a classroom, managing information would be more like, okay, please turn to your partner and share your viewpoint, or I'm going to give you a, you know, a box of math manipulatives and I'm going to ask you to sort through them, or I'm going to ask you to find the definition of something or I'm going to ask you to use this technology in a certain way. So we see that competencies can span between school and classrooms very easily. The next one, problem solving, we have plan, persevere, solve and explore. So if I'm talking about classroom, then I'm talking about can a student make a plan to finish their homework? Can a student persevere through maybe their difficult learning activity? I'm going to ask children to solve problems and I'm going to ask them to explore information or explore a part of the forest or explore something on a field trip. And so it's pretty easy to see those connections to classroom and it's also, sorry, also when you're asking them to look at this through a wellness lens, then when we want them to problem solve, we're asking them maybe to plan when to use their medication. So have a plan and maybe have a plan for how they're going to make some friends or maybe a plan to finish their homework so they don't have such a great degree of anxiety about tons of homework. We're going to ask them to persevere at home and so we're going to ask them, you know, don't give up. You have to, you have to stick with it, you have to keep trying. Through a wellness lens, when we asked our kids to solve, we might ask them to, you know, solve that problem of you're having a difficult time making friends. What are some things that you can do to get started on the path to making friends? We might ask them to solve, you know, the problem of not getting enough sleep or solve the problem of being hungry. So encouraging kids to become competent in problem solving at home closely relates to problem solving in schools where, again, we ask them to make a plan for an essay. We ask them to persevere through a difficult learning task. So we make these connections through all of, all eight competencies and with collaboration, you know, we have trust, compromise, contribute and support. We asked, as a teacher, I asked students to do those things every day and you're asking them to do them at home. If we can make that link between what they're learning at home and what they're learning at school, then that provides them that opportunity to transfer what they're learning in, let's say, transfer what they're learning at school and take it out into the real world with them. And that is how we get to a deeper learning and that's when we know, when a child can transfer what they've learned at home to a learning activity at school, then we know that there's deep understanding and a competency in that area. I am just wondering if anyone has any ideas about how you see competencies playing a role in your children's lives. Marcia, I'm just reading your question. If this is not just happening in health, can you give an example of when you're asking them to use this with regards to mental health during the day? Oh, you mean if this is not just happening in health class, right? And you know what? You bring up a really good point because being healthy doesn't, we don't just practice being healthy for 40 minutes and then walk away and we're reckless throughout the day, right? Everyone needs to attend to their personal wellness all the time and it should be happening in math and it should be happening in social studies and it should be happening in health. These competencies need to be practiced all the time. Students need to have opportunities to develop these competencies so that they come to a deep understanding of what it means to critically think and communicate and then they can transfer that knowledge over. An example of doing this in social studies would be, let's say I look at critical thinking. So I will ask students to reflect on the lesson and share what it meant to them. So if we've read a case study of a person who was interned during the Japanese internment camps during the Second World War, I would ask students to reflect on that person's story and maybe ask them to connect it to feelings of being bullied or I might ask them to put themselves in the same boat where they haven't felt welcome, where they have felt as though they've been judged unfairly and get them to relate their own personal feelings in that way to the internment case study. Another example, let's say if we jump over to goals, if we're talking about, let's say, being mindful in math class before I give students an exam, I might get them to do some breathing exercises to reduce the anxiety that they might be feeling over the math test. In science, I might ask them to look at the consequences of new technology and how actions have consequences and how do those consequences impact things like our health in other areas. I'll just share an example as well, Michelle. If we're looking at maybe a child who's had a problem with a friend, we might look at that managing information for them to share their story, sort out some of the facts, find the information that's useful for them, go through some problem-solving, so that planning, helping to solve the problem, we might touch on communication and collaboration about respect for each other, listening to each other, sharing and contributing to the conversation. So a student might develop these competencies to use outside of the classroom, we hope, of course, and develop that deep understanding of the competencies, and then we hope to develop the school setting to allow that exchange to happen. So create a space where they feel safe and cared for, they feel that they can be open and honest, they're in a safe setting, they're supported to have these conversations with friends, and to go through that managing information process or problem-solving process with them. That was awesome, Kate. I am going to put Matt on the spot here to address the next slide. Okay, so by focusing, and this slide kind of helps to tie all of these concepts together now today, so by focusing on the components of comprehensive school health, school communities can work together to support the development of the skills, knowledge and attitudes that children need to successfully navigate their life learning and work, the student competencies that Michelle was just referring to. So for example, a school's welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environments policy, and I use this example because all schools in Alberta do have a policy based on the welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environments. So for example, this policy can help to support the communication student competency. For example, these policies set the expectations that students consider all perspectives and communicate with each other respectfully, and can help even to provide or clarify language that all students can use to support respectful communication. So in this example, we're linking a positive mental health, the welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environments policy according to the comprehensive school health approach with the student competency of communication. And so as you begin to think of all these linkages, you can just imagine all of the possibilities between students, skills, knowledge and attitudes. So I'm going to give a moment for you to post some examples in the chat room yourselves. Kate and Michelle I believe have several other examples that they're going to add to the chat box as well. So I'll just give everyone a moment to put a few examples in the chat box of maybe how working within a pillar or a component of their comprehensive school health approach can work to support one of the student competencies. See Kate's put an example in there. Thank you, Kate. Yeah, in my example, I just built on that example and also talked about how student creativity and innovation is supported by creating an environment where students feel they're supported to think differently, take risks and apply knowledge in new innovative ways. And a policy like the welcoming, safe, caring, respectful learning environment policy will hopefully help to do that. And I see Michelle put an example in there as well. Healthy school. I just want to interrupt. I wasn't sure if I let everyone know that I'm posing as Christine Kwong in the chat room. So if you see Christine Kwong in the chat room, it's actually Michelle Jones. And the real Christine is Christine Kwong too. So yeah, I apologize for not making that apparent earlier on. I know I told some of the earlier people in the session, but I kind of forgot to let everyone know again. Sorry. No problem. Thank you for that reminder, Michelle. I know it could be confusing for some of those on the line. I see a question from Kathy here. She'd love to see some student opinions on whether they are feeling supported in their school environments. Is there any plan for student input in this process? That's a good question, Kathy. Off the top of my head, I know individual schools would probably look into surveying their students or getting input on whether the school environment is supportive of them. I'm not aware of anything at our organization's level to kind of collect this type of input. But maybe perhaps Kate or Michelle might be able to add a few comments to that question as well. I would just say that student voice or student input is really an important component of comprehensive school health. So we look at a variety of stakeholders having their input into the process. We kind of have comprehensive school health as the foundation of how we want to influence healthy school communities. But then we also have a process model that we follow around developing that shared vision and creating a team and gathering input and data. So that comes from student voice, and we invite students to be a part of that process of creating a healthy school community. And I think when we link it to the student competencies, asking them questions around the competencies, if they're feeling supported around mental health, or are they feeling that they have a safe and welcoming environment, are excellent posing questions to students. When we're have the school health teams going to get their input and then make changes from there. I do know of a school division I'm working with currently is looking at a student voice project to have some input into their mental health strategic plan as they move forward. So although it's not specifically around the competencies, it is asking them questions about feeling connected and belonging in school, ideas for change, and ways that we can move forward. Okay, great. So thanks for the examples in the box. Thanks for the added comments, Kate and Michelle. So hopefully this has kind of given you a bit of a taste of how these things all kind of come together. Now as we sort of approach the end of this first part of our webinar, I just want to take a moment to reflect on everything that we have covered today. And we've thrown a lot at you. We've talked about positive mental health. We've talked about the comprehensive school health approach. And we've talked about student competencies, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that all students need to have. And so we just have a brief reflection plan for you as well. And I'll invite you to work within the chat box here. Before I do though, I just a quick reminder as well that you'll also receive a link in your email to provide feedback on this first webinar. So please just take a moment once you receive that to let us know how we did today and what you think. So as I mentioned, as we come to an end of this session, we'd like to lead you through just a brief reflection. So as I'm talking, please type your thoughts into the chat box as we ask you about your experience in this session. And I'll give you a moment to respond to each of the following four questions. So take a moment now and follow along. Please tell us things that you found today to be emotionally engaging. Something that maybe inspired you, excited you, something that engaged you emotionally in today's session. Give the chat box just a moment to fill up as I see many of you are typing. So Jen, the graph with mental health and mental illness was a great graphic. Thanks, Jen. That's a great comment. And enthusiastic and supportive parents, I agree, Kate. The ideas of how parents can help schools. The website provided some examples. So that's great, Angela. Thank you. Okay, so some great responses coming in here. Oh, that's okay. Let's try that again. There we go. So as we left you, there we go. So please write something in the chat box that you found tangible and practical today. Maybe a strategy that you heard or a new web link or resource. Let me just take a moment to think about something that you found thought-provoking from today's session. And feel free to type that into the chat box. Let's inspire some conversation here. Differences between mental health and mental illness. The concept of mental health and mental illness being different. So there's a theme coming out here. Great. A theme more motivated to get involved with your children's schools to help move the process along. Excellent. So that leads us to our last reflection question. One step that you think you'll take after today's webinar. Maybe that's sharing resources or having conversation with your own children or bringing what you learned back to school council. Really like the verbs.  Excellent. So I know there's only a few minutes left and as you continue to type the one step that you will take after today's webinar into your box. I'm just going to turn it back over to Michelle to just tell you a little bit more about the remaining webinar series and to see if there are any questions on the line. Thanks Matt. We've got some resources up on this slide here. I've shared the webinar with you, the link to the webinar in the chat room. You should be able to make a copy. If you can't actually make a copy just email me and I'll reset the privileges but hopefully shouldn't have a problem. So these are the sites that are all linked. That'll help you learn more about student learner competencies, comprehensive school health and mental health. I included the Alberta Health website as well as the Alberta Family and Wellness website.  So please join us again on October 24, 7 o'clock to 8pm. We'll be hosting our second session. And although this session could function as a standalone, if you, I just would love it if you invited more people to join us. If you are going to invite them to join us, they have to still register. And in doing so, you should know that session two and session three are fairly dependent on each other. So you sort of need to register for both the second session and the third session. I'm hoping to see all of you and five friends back because we really want to get the message out that there are ways that parents can be supporting schools and schools can support parents. And we all have a responsibility to support mental health in our in our school on screen there. You see Matt, Kate and my email or phone numbers. We've got the description there for the next session. And yeah, I guess we'll be doing it again with Adobe Connect. So when you register, we'll be sending out another Adobe Connect email. So I am done. Yeah, it's 8 o'clock. Pretty good timing, everybody. I just want to echo what Kate said there in the chat room. I really do appreciate everyone who took the time out to hear this message today. And I believe you can register for the session right away. If those of you can't remember how you registered, if you look on your screen. You just go to erlc.ca and learning opportunities. You can do chronological listing and just scroll down until you hit October 24 and register right there. So this one has the day one and the day two of the next two sessions. And just tell everybody, you know, and this is no charge, both at erlc and Alberta Health Services are dedicated to helping support mental health in Alberta schools. So we would love to see you back. And yeah, I guess that's it. So anyone have any further concerns or questions, please don't be shy. Please feel free to email us. And we'd love to hear from you and we hope to see you back on October 24. Thanks for Matt and Kate for co-hosting and Christine for providing technology help in the background. And thank you everyone for your patience with some of the dropped audio and split screen. So we'll talk to everyone later. Good night, Kate.


The first one that I would mention as an interesting trend is the movement towards more immersive and interactive learning. Now we've been on that path for a while, but now that you are seeing game-like environments which are really deep experiential learning spaces, it takes it to an entirely new level and it begins to capitalize not just on what technology can do but how technology can be inseparable from the person and yielding much bigger returns in terms of learning. It gets to something called fluid intelligence where you learn through problem-solving, you change the heuristic, you have to get new information, you have to work with other people. So I think the ability to do this immersive and interactive learning is at a whole new level, but right with that goes the assessment that comes from doing that online and I think that will change everything because it's not just end-of-course assessment, it's not just test assessment, it's ongoing formative assessment that really helps shape the learner and the learning environment. A second technology that I would mention I think is around analytics. We've seen huge growth in analytics and they're keeps turning over a new leaf. So in the student support arena, we now have a lot of new systems around integrated planning and advising systems with case management approaches. We've got graduation systems that are all about having the right pathway for students to get through their degree program, dashboards that allow the student, the instructor and the institution to know where they are, early alert systems, all kinds of support systems that are actually reducing the time to degree and if you reduce the time to degree for students, you reduce the cost and that's the number one complaint about higher education. Final trend that I would mention is around credentialing and I think it all relates to the fact that you learn throughout your entire life. There's not a single learning experience. They all go together and formal learning, informal learning, work learning can all begin to come together. So earlier on we did a lot more with instructional systems. We've been doing work on support systems, but now people are thinking about how you redesign credentials. So it's not a static diploma so that it's a credential that follows you through life integrates all the things that you know and that could totally transform the system. So for traditional institutions I would be asking the question how can I make this technology environment support the other things that I do to enhance learning, to deepen engagement, to give me a heads up on things that are happening. When you think about engagement that may be really what we're driving for in using technology. It doesn't matter whether the engagement is face to face, it doesn't matter whether it's online, it doesn't matter whether it's through email or social media. It's really when you get very engaged with people, with the institution, with the subject matter that you learn, you develop that deep sense of belonging. And so if institutions thought about how they engage, whether it's students or the community, I think they would enhance their overall reputation. So one of the pieces of advice would be to think about technology in multiple stages. There's always the support side, the back end, the stuff you don't see, the databases, the networks. There's also sort of a back office, the support system, and there's the face to face or the customer facing. So another way of phrasing that is you've got the on stage, you've got backstage, and you've got support. And I think one of the things that colleges and universities might do is think about all three of those and how they're interconnected, how the data flows, how we make decisions, how we connect all of those environments to really enhance the institution. You can't do one without the others. So it's the integration. The thing I hear talked about most often that I think is very positive is that CAIOs say they are now being asked to be co-creators with others in the institution around the future, around the strategy, around where they are going to go. IT touches everything in the institution. It's involved with business processes. It's involved with getting all the work of the organization done so that the other programmatic efforts will shine. So rather than just being the CIO and responsible for information or IT, it's now becoming integrated with all of the operations of the institution. So that may be a path of evolution for the CIO role. The emphasis needs to be on engagement because that is what brings value to people, whether it's in a learning environment, whether it's in a relationship, whether it's in engaging your alumni so they stay close to the institution. The digital part of it is to remind us that engagement doesn't just happen when you come to campus, when you go to a football game, when you sit in a classroom, that there are many ways to engage and having digital capabilities allows you to go to those places. Think about the social world that we all live in where we're texting and tweeting all the time. That's a way of engaging. And many times when we think about institutions, we don't think about that digital element. And so the point is to remind us that engagement is not just a face-to-face paradigm. It's something that can take place online with mobile, with individuals, with large groups of people. And the larger that engagement, the greater its power. And digital allows us to have engagement we can't have with the physical alone. So IT I think can usher in the next phase of education by understanding that technology fundamentally changes people's expectations and experiences. We don't do things the same way. And if you can help people understand that and adapt to that, I think you can move education forward. So imagine haptic devices, the hologram kind of experience. We can now do that with people. And if technologists can help us change the expectation that education is going to have that kind of interface rather than just a lecture or just a keyboard, that would be massive. I think another way that technologists can change what happens in education is by helping people understand that there are millions of learners and contributors connected out there. When you understand that learning is not confined to people on campus, to people in country, to people in your age group, you really have the ability to do service in radically different ways.