“They see us differently” – Winnipeg Free Press

Local high school students will shadow staff at St. Boniface Hospital as part of a new pilot project that will strengthen the teen participants' resumes and expose them to a variety of careers in medicine.

For the next four months, a group of 12 students from River East Transcona School are participating in a special credit internship program.

Grade 11 and 12 participants – all First Nations, Métis or Inuit – are matched with mentors and move through different workstations, from human resources to food sciences, based on their personal interests.

“I feel good about the practice. I'm really excited to continue it…working with patients, learning medical terms and all that,” said Haley Chubaty-Latlin, a Grade 12 student at River East College.

The senior said she's considering a career in social work, but hasn't made a final decision about what she'll do after she graduates in the spring.

Chubati-Latlin, 18, noted that she wants to learn more about what an average day looks like for mental health professionals, ultrasound technicians and labor and delivery staff at Winnipeg Hospital.

Clayton Sandy, RETSD's education custodian, who sits on the hospital's board, pitched the idea to leaders of the two organizations last year.

The pensioner was inspired by a work practice initiative he co-founded in 1996 when he was a civil servant. At the time, Sandy was a provincial advisor tasked with supporting local youth transitioning from school to work.

“We felt it was our duty to open as many career doors as possible for young people,” he said. “So that's what we did.”

Before he retired in 2016, Sandy said he heard hundreds of stories from participants who were proud to graduate and find a job through the program, whether it was a bank teller, RCMP officer or someone else.

He attributes the initiative's success to connecting each student with an indigenous model.

The mentors shared their life experiences of growing up in foster care, living in welfare households and surviving residential schools and Scope in the '60s, and how they overcame those challenges, she said.

Similarly, a typical hospital branch focuses on building relationships.

Sandy noted that the partnership aims to make students feel comfortable in workplaces where Indigenous people have long been underrepresented, as well as challenge stereotypes and preconceptions about themselves.

“(Specialists) spend time with us. They see us differently, and they know who we are, not because of who we think we are, or because of the myths they've heard about indigenous people,” added the member of the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation.

Ryan Thomas, the inaugural Truth and Reconciliation Specialist at St Boniface Hospital, will support the cohort's initial work between February and June.

Students learn general employability skills, how to navigate systems and experience working collaboratively and constructively with professionals from a variety of fields, said Jason Drysdale, assistant superintendent in the division.

“We're teaching the kids how to manage time and priorities because the students are out of school one day a week during the 17 weeks they're involved,” she said.

Drysdale described the partnership as a clear manifestation of “reconciliation in action”.

“(These experiences) open career paths that some students didn't even think were possible for them,” said the district's senior administrator who oversees educational services and planning — a portfolio that includes local education.

He said he hopes to expand the program into a broader partnership with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

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