"Can you move over two chairs, just like you were on the (Jay) Leno show or Oprah?" asked Maria LeRose, "host" of last evening's New Horizons: Honouring Our Commitment to the Future event. "Once we have our own show, we'll have our own band and music playing."

LeRose was paving the way for two more speakers, following Pamela Hine (deputy education minister) and Shandell McCarthy, the Council of Yukon First Nations' (CYFN's) education technician's opening remarks.

Held at Vanier Catholic Secondary School, the production, replete with multiple cameras, giant video screen and a multitude of "guests", was the Yukon government's multimedia nod to its Education Reform Project Final Report.

Prior to festivities, attendees were requested to sign model release forms that consented to the government using their images "in all media ... manners and forms, for advertising, trade, promotion (and) exhibition."

The talk-show atmosphere, including live video links with participants in Faro, Dawson City and Old Crow, was apparently the template for future such New Horizons gatherings.

"It's not an event, it's a journey and we want you to be part of the journey, with us," said LeRose, a former broadcaster whose last such motivational effort was preparing Boeing employees for middle management in the lickety-split time of a two-day seminar.

For the Yukon, LeRose has been charged with motivating "stakeholders" in education delivery, to try to come up with something tangible from the government's Education Reform Project.

Commissioned in 2005, nearly three years later, the Yukon government and CYFN have delivered their report, which includes 207 recommendations on how to better provide education to the territory's students.

The next step, according to Hine, is for a "technical review team" to look at the report, then employ a "project team" to "engage our partners to move forward in the implementation strategy."

While many of the recommendations can be administered at a local level, with individual schools adding curriculum or enhancing existing curriculum, others, if implemented, would require a rewrite of the Education Act.

After Hine and McCarthy spoke on the challenges of putting more than 200 recommendations into practice, Christie Whitley, assistant deputy minister of public schools, and Brent Slobodin, assistant deputy minister of advanced education, took the stage.

"As we grappled with these (recommendations), we asked ourselves, ‘how are we going to deal with these in a meaningful way?'" Whitley said.

When it was Slobodin's turn, his remarks on reinvigorating the territory's trades programs, enhancing work placement instructor diploma training and promoting trades for women was the first mention of "meaningful" action.

Keeping with the program's interactive approach, table mates were asked to talk about their thoughts on the report and other icebreaking topics, such as our favourite school memory.

Seated around one of more than a dozen tables was a good cross-section of what organizers would refer to as "education stakeholders."

One was a concerned parent, whose child was passed through several grades despite being unable to read.

Only after the parent paid for a diagnosis was the problem revealed; otherwise, the school system was willing to wait another year before making its own determination.

"This was on my own dime," said the parent, worried about the plight of those students without similar resources.

Another was a secondary school teacher who spoke of the constant challenges of teaching a diverse cross-section of abilities.

The third was a post-secondary teacher who complained that many students entering college had to upgrade their high school education to handle the new workload.

The last person was a social services professional who deals with those who have fallen through the cracks.

Among the group, there was unanimous agreement that grammar, spelling and overall communications skills among the younger generation have experienced a decline.

As those seated shared their perspectives of the current education system, talk from the stage - some in response to questions from the floor - wallowed in generalities.

Often, this kind of discourse relies heavily on loaded phrases like "paradigm shift," "concept change," "building capacity" and "moving forward together," used to describe how goals will be achieved without giving any indication as to how that achievement will actually take place.

When the time came for questions from Dawson City, a gentleman attempted to cut through the New Horizons spin.

"What's the end goal here?" he asked. "Can you reduce the number of students upgrading at college and (achieve) higher retention rates?"

In reference to the recent Pan-Canadian Assessment Program tests that placed Yukon students far behind their Canadian counterparts in math and science, he suggested setting a goal to "finish in the middle of the pack" next time around.

To this, Whitley responded that the "common vision" was to improve literacy, numeracy, social responsibility and the delivery of native language and culture programs.

During an interview with the Star this morning, Whitley's colleague Hine said the implementation plan would have annual monitoring and evaluation to measure success.

When asked how long it would take to determine which of the 207 recommendations were viable and implement them, Hine said it would be a multi-year approach.

"It has provided us with a bit of a challenge and that's why we have to go through this process (technical review and project teams)," she said. "That's why we've gone with this process of New Horizons; we don't want the report to stay on the shelf."

Reiterating her remarks the previous evening, Hine said improving the delivery of education is an ongoing responsibility.

"The whole education reform is for the success of all learners and to develop an education system for all learners, it's always evolving ... there's never a time when we say we have the best education and it doesn't need changing."