“It's a warrior that goes out and brings the means back to the people and today, those means have become education, and our weapon is the knowledge…”

ATEP Conference 2013 is a celebration of 10 years of success for the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta. ATEP was launched in 2002 as part of a strategy to increase the number of First Nations, Métis and Inuit teachers and school personnel (Alberta Learning, 2003) in the province under Alberta Education’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit Education Policy Framework. In conjunction with Blue Quills College and Northern Lakes College, the University of Alberta supported two cohorts of future Aboriginal teachers through Alberta Learning Access Fund Grants. The first cohort began in January 2002 in cooperation with Blue Quills College. The second cohort at Slave Lake, in cooperation with Northern Lakes College, began in September 2002. To date, ATEP has graduated more than 100 teachers. Some of the benefits of ATEP are highlighted by one of our graduates:

“Overall my whole experience with the ATEP program I felt was really positive and I would tell that to everybody… the fact that it was comfortable, it was convenient, the fact that it was a small classroom, and we still had the same university teachers from the U of A coming to us.

This conference is an opportunity to bring our graduates full circle by bringing their expertise from the classroom back to the university. It is different from other academic and professional conferences because it is grounded in Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy in that teacher expertise and voice are privileged as to how they can inform teacher education policy and practice. We will be inviting some of our ATEP graduates, current students, and instructors to give presentations during the conference profiling their experiences and the knowledge they have accumulated through their teaching practice.

ATEP Conference 2013 will take place on October 18 & 19, 2013 at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. There will be keynote and breakout sessions for both days. To register, go to http://www.ualberta.ca/~atep2013/  For further information, contact Angela Wolfe aw1@ualberta.ca.