On Thursday September 25th, our Andrew Sibbald School community gathered together to observe Orange Shirt Day and honour the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
Learning Intentions: (Wellness)
- Healthy Relationships: Personal well-being is supported through positive relationships built on communication, collaboration, empathy and respect.
I Can:
- Reflect on how personal relationships are maintained and strengthened.
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This week students participated in a variety of tasks, discussions, and read-alouds to gain a deeper understanding of Indigenous cultures, the importance of appreciating different perspectives, as well as some of the unfortunate consequences of Residential Schools.
After reading With Our Orange Hearts by Phyllis Webstad, we reflected on the importance of acknowledging the impact of residential schools. We also read the story Walking Together - a book written by Elder Albert Marshall and Louise Zimanyi, with illustrations by Emily Kewageshig. We talked about the meaning of the word reconciliation as well as the meaning of Two-eyed seeing - Etuaptmumk - which is the gift of multiple perspectives in the Mi'kmaw language.
During our discussion many students shared their thoughts and feelings -
- "Orange Shirt Day is important because every child matters...just like it says on some of our shirts"
- "Everybody should be taken care of, its not very kind to not care about other people."
- "It's like in the picture with the two eyes...they are different colours and that's ok."
- "Even though we're all different we are all important."
- "We can learn lots from each other!"
- "You should still listen to other people and be nice to them even if they are different then you because we're all different...we're all unique!"
Next we discussed the word reconciliACTION and that it was important to not just talk about making a difference but to actually take action to make a difference. We brainstormed words to describe different actions that we thought would be positive and impactful towards others. We decided we can - help, show respect, be a friend, share, be honest, listen carefully, treat others with care, say sorry, appreciate differences, include others, and show gratitude.
Students made paper-doll versions of themselves and then wrote some of the action words down that they would work on.
Learning On The Land - Fall Sketching
