Roseanna knows the gym at the reserve school has no pennants - only a hardwood floor that was ruined last spring when someone left the locker-room showers running for an entire weekend.

"If they (aboriginal students) feel comfortable they'll likely be more successful in school." David Hull, teacher

Next to Ashern's trophy cases are walls of graduating class photographs that continue to tell the story of disparities. Starting in the 1970s, each successive year sports more faces - more natives faces too - as more and more Prairie children opted for a higher education. In the farming district around Ashern, 42 per cent of the population has a high-school diploma. In Fairford, it's 28 per cent.

Roseanna says her photo will hang on the wall one day, but right now she is simply trying to fit in. Her bell bottoms and the Champs nylon jacket that slides stylishly off her shoulders meld seamlessly with the hip-hop dress code in the corridor, and for a brief moment the native girl seems at ease in this other world.

But then she reaches Dave Hull's math class, and takes her seat alone in the back row. On her desk is a calculator and Pepsi bottle, the tools of higher learning here.

Although Roseanna's parents want her to get an education just like the white kids in Ashern, it is up to Hull to ensure her schooling has a native flavour. As well as teaching math, he is the school's aboriginal education adviser, promoting a new provincial initiative to bring native students into mainstream education and adapt mainstream education to native viewpoints.

As part of the experiment, course material is under review, history books are being revised and posters depicting aboriginal success stories have been taped to Ashern's walls, next to the trophy cases. It's all part of a plan to foster greater understanding and to put native students at ease. "If they feel comfortable," Hull says, taking the plan to its logical conclusion, "they'll likely be more successful in school."

But even he admits that much of what native students need is just good teaching. Like Roseanna, reserve kids tend to sit at the back of their classes, rarely speaking up. There are no native students on the honour roll, and few on the school's championship sports teams. Just five of Ashern's 30 graduates last year were native, but the year before there were only two.

Hull coaches the junior varsity badminton team, and four of the 12 girls are native, but "off-reserve," meaning their families live in and around Ashern.

It is up to him to draw the others out.

As his Grade 10 math class begins, Hull moves from desk to desk, letting the 19 students who have shown up today know in private what their mid-term mark will be. He stops a little longer at Roseanna. She has a 61 - better than most but both teacher and student know it could be much higher.

Hull urges her to bear down and asks if she needs extra help to prepare for an upcoming exam. She shakes her head, but the truth is that she can't stay after school because the bus back to the reserve leaves at 3:30 sharp. Hull seems to know that, and suggests she get help during lunch or spares. Roseanna shakes her head again. Her lunches are booked.

Dishevelled but calm, Hull looks more the part of math teacher than cultural peacemaker as he returns to the blackboard to explain the algebraic concept of dilation.

PART 3 
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