Today our guest is Dr. Frank Deer, Pro­fes­sor in the Fac­ul­ty of Edu­ca­tion and Act­ing Lead of Indige­nous Achieve­ment. We dis­cuss Dr. Deer’s work as schol­ar in res­i­dence for the Louis Riel School Divi­sion’s (LRSD) Indige­nous Ini­tia­tives pro­grams. Dr. Deer has over­saw the deliv­ery of a num­ber of impor­tant man­dates and core cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ments in West­ern Cana­di­an schools and LRSD, specif­i­cal­ly the ECHO Pro­gram. The ECHO Pro­gram is a cohort mod­el of reor­ga­niz­ing and reori­ent­ing Indige­nous stu­dents togeth­er, in small­er class sizes, with Indige­nous instruc­tion, and uti­liz­ing Indige­nous method­olo­gies. We dis­cuss the strengths of the pro­gram­ming and the state of K‑12 learn­ing for Indige­nous youth and instructors.