Tom Eustache

Tom Eustache outside the school in Simpwc.

Tom Eustache is a councillor with the Simpcw First Nation outside of Barrier. I spoke with him last week when I visited the community to tour the community’s school. He’s holds the education portfolio and works for the band as its infrastructure manager.

I spoke with him about his experiences as a councillor involved with the school and as a parent of former students at the school and this is part of our conversation:

“I got involved when my daughter started going, she started to actually going to head start here and she went from head start to kindergarten and she went through the whole school. She was the first one to go up to Grade 7 in this school and my son when through same thing as her and he’s in Grade 9 now so two years ago he finished school here so I’ve had two children go through the school.”

“It’s been really good because we’ve been able to be, it’s pretty much run by the parents so we able to make a lot of decisions on what goes on and have a lot of input into the teachers and stuff and we have great teachers. We were able to hire all the teachers. So all the parents get together as a parent group and we’re involved in hiring the teachers and I think we’ve been, in that way everybody’s involved so I think that’s the key is to have the parents involved,” he said.

“This one’s small enough so there’s a lot of one-on-one. They have more time with the teachers and the assistants so I think they get a lot more out of it. They’ve learned all the basics cause when my son and my daughter went to high school, they said a lot of the first year was review of what they did the previous year.”

When I asked him about the role of having culture practices like language in the school, he felt it was critical.

“I think it’s important so they have some kind of identity, are able to identify with who they are. I think that’s important because if you don’t know who you are then you’re sort of lost in that and when my children were going through they learned a lot of the language which I never did and they actually have learned a lot from their grandparents which I didn’t. They taught them more than they taught me,” he said. “I never had that relationship that way with my parents, the way my children do. Their grandparents are more into teaching them then they were me”

He didn’t have an opportunity in his own education to go to a community school and he feels that kids here have an advantage. 

“I don’t think I got as much interaction with the teachers as they do here. I think the kids have a lot of interaction with the teachers and the teachers know them one-on-one and know each individual student so that’s made a huge difference.”

And that interaction has made a difference on the community level too.

“The cultural pride thing is more or less being part of the community here and I think part of the culture is being part of the community and being part of the people, learning how to be people.”

It’s not just the community that values the school, the chief and council do too.

 “I think for us, here in this community, it’s been probably number one priority for everyone is education over everything else and I think it shows because we’ve got a lot of educated people from this community and some really successful people.”

Education is also important in taking back responsibility for the community from the Federal government.

“It plays a key role in there because you’re able to carry on more not just in your community but outside your community and the bigger city centres if you’re looking for work there and a future somewhere else because in this community there’s not much work in the community,” he said.

“We’ll be able to be more sustainable I believe because we’ll be able to do a lot of stuff on our own and we won’t have to rely on the government for anything hopefully. That’s the way that we’re going. That’s the way our community looks and our chief and council are striving to be doing stuff on our own, not even looking at the self-governance thing, we’re doing it. I think we’re trying to live it right now and trying to move forward with this.”

“The success of the school has been because of the involvement all the parents and the people who believe in bringing the kids here for a better education.”

“I think we’re really lucky. I think we probably live here day in, day out and take a lot of this for granted but I look at my children and how well they do. It’s been great.”