Professional Inquiry Project

I chose to do my project on raising the self-esteem of our native students here at Kainai High
school. I first thought of this subject, when I first got here, I noticed a lot of the students were
lacking confidence and self-esteem. When asked questions, a lot of them would just kind of
shell up, even in my Blackfoot 20 class, it would take some real coaxing, before they would join
the discussion.
I made up my mind to do this project when I read an article in the Globe and Mail. The article
was from September 14, it stated that Indigenous youth are lacking confidence and self-
esteem. The article talked about how Native children on reservations are exposed to a lot of
negativity, with violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty and neglect. The problem increases
when they leave the reserve and they experience racism and discrimination.
So I decided to do my project with the inquiry question, how can we use “The Power of Positive
Thinking” to increase the self-esteem of First Nations high school students? My project consisted
of me doing a power point presentation. I would give the students a positive thinking lecture. I
felt that I am well suited to give this lecture, since I have experienced such lectures first hand
when I went to Gary Leffew’s bull riding school when I was seventeen years old. Gary’s lectures
on positive thinking really changed my life. When I got back from his school, I was a changed
person. What Gary taught me about bull riding, I applied to all aspects of life, so I decided to use
the same approach.
My delivery method at first was to do the lectures during advisory period on Fridays, but they
shortened the from half hour to fifteen minutes, this was not enough time, so what I did was
make arrangements with some of the staff to do my presentation during their regular class time. I
left it up to them to when the best time would be. I was able to do all three Blackfoot classes, and
the CALM class. Altogether I delivered to about fifty students.
The results were good. I gave the students a questionnaire at the beginning of the lecture they
were to answer two questions before the lecture, and three after the lecture. All of them said it
was a good presentation, and they all said it would help them in the future. I was really
impressed with their responses. I could also tell by their level of engagement, when I was giving
the lecture, that they were getting something out of it. It was a level of engagement I haven’t
seen from these students. Usually there would be a couple of students zoning out, but this time it
was good.
Only time will tell if their self-esteem will get better, but I think it looks good, and with some of
the comments they made, I think I reached a lot of them, and judging from my own experience, I
think a lot of them will benefit from the lecture.