First Full Week Back

It's impossible to start a fire and not have a swarm of kids show up.

It’s the weekend, and other than the tell-tale throat tickles and headaches, Ender and I have survived our first full week of teaching grade 6 together. Our classrooms are beginning to shape up (though my supply closet is still a mess and I haven’t even started on the filing cabinets. This week in art we made chalk letters to display this year’s art quote:

Thanks Degas

Many of my students have a hard time articulating their thoughts and feelings. For some it’s because they aren't as comfortable with English, and others just aren't used to being asked. Art is a great way to communicate ideas without having to speak, and sometimes it’s easier to talk about a piece of art you made than it is to just say what your feeling.

We also started some torn paper animals. I like this project because it’s deceptively easy. Starting with a contour drawing, students need to try and fit their torn pieces together like a mosaic to fill in the shapes making up their animal. The really successful ones consider the negative space and how everything fits together. It’s a project that’s really hard to rush and have something that makes sense.

 

Ender and I tried to find the trail leading to the cranberry patch we visited last year this morning. While we were able to find a path and what looked like what might be where the cranberries were last year, we were unable to find any actual berries this time out. It may have been that we were looking in the wrong place, or it just might be that we came too early or too late, or that this year there aren't many berries at all. Still it was nice to get outside while the weather is still relatively warm.

We have one more week till ‘Traditional Week,’ and I am excited to use the break as a chance to regroup, get my classroom and lessons in order and get one camping trip in before the cold weather hits.

Return to Eden

 After two months of family, friends, good food (and beer!) and art making, summer is officially over and Ender and I have returned to Garden Hill. We miss everyone back home terribly, but are happy to be back at work and teaching. This year we are both grade 6 teachers at the elementary school. We will share two classes, Ender will teach Math and Science and I’ll be teaching English, Social Studies and Art. This first week we moved into our new unit, set up our classroom and welcomed our students.

Our living conditions have been upgraded this year. It’s a smaller unit but has a much nicer kitchen and three times the storage. Because we now know what to expect and most of our things stayed here over the summer, the move was relatively easy (though half unpacked boxes remain in corners throughout the house). Having towels and sheets this time around was wonderful! Another major change is the 17’ canoe that is hanging above our couch. We’re both excited to take it out once the initial back-to-school business is under control.

There was a high turnover of teachers this year as well. I think it will be nice to have some new faces and new ideas in both the high school and the elementary.  Alex and I were disappointed to discover that very few of the teachers were given the guide we wrote in the spring (the ones who did receive it found it very helpful). There is a tendency here not to communicate helpful or necessary information from the Education Office down to the teachers. We had precious little contact with the Education Office all summer. Things haven’t gotten better now that we no longer have an acting Education Director. We are also waiting to have several positions filled in both the elementary and the high school, including the two in grade five and one in grade 6 (our hallway). 

While administration is a bit of a mess, we successfully completed our first two days of teaching this week and so far I love grade 6! My students are talkative and excited to be in school, which is a big change from last year. I also have my own office which is slowly being transformed into an art supply and prep space. We began rotation this week and so far it has gone well and we have already started reading our first novel of the year, “Bridge to Terabithia.” We also brought a number of books up with us to add to our class libraries. We are trying to build a decent collection of books and comics for our student so any suggestions of new titles are always welcome.

I’m going to try and update every weekend (she said with naive optimism), as well as try to take more photos this year. Alex and I have also promised ourselves that we are going to set aside time each week, starting in October, for our personal writing and art. With all the teaching, outdoor activities, taking and ABQ and art/writing it’s going to be a busy year!

Winter Styles and Summer Heat

His and Hers

Two more weeks till summer break and it's all report cards and packing for us in Garden Hill. Ender and I are moving into another unit which is smaller but also has a far superior layout and should be much more secure than our current unit. If you recall earlier in the year our unit was broken into and our 'front' door was broken beyond repair. We have since sealed it up, but it will be nice to have our stuff locked away in a unit that has only one entrance that can be seen from the road.

For my first attempt at beading I tried something simple.

Little Beaded Link

I'm also just finishing up a pair of moccasins for Ender. Since March Break the High School has been running a beading workshop on Wednesday evenings. I've been learning how to bead and sew my own gathered toe moccasins. I finished a pair for myself a few weeks ago but now that the workshops are no longer being held I've been slacking a bit.


Recently I ordered this book by Christi Belcourt, a Metis bead work artist, which I am very excited about. Next year I want to do some kind of art project with the kids that involves bead work designs and pointillism. The book also comes with a folio of images from the book that can be assembled to make a larger image that might make for good classroom wall decoration... depending on how much wall space I end up having.

I don't think I'll be writing another post about Garden Hill till the fall. Ender and I will be spending our vacation visiting family and friends. We are also doing an art residency at Spark Box Studio in Picton. Ender will be writing and I will be printing and we are both very excited to have some time to work on personal projects.

Have a lovely summer!

Ice Fishing

It's been a while since I've felt like writing. Spring has been taking it's sweet coming to Garden Hill. This is the first weekend that I would call warm and there is no longer any snow on the ground. But I wouldn't go so far as to say it's nice out yet. The ground is very muddy, so muddy in fact that the buses were not running for THREE WEEKS in April and the beginning of May because of road conditions. We just had our first full week back and it's clear that the both staff and students are ready for the summer break.

All the mud and lack of school has made for poor picture conditions so I don't really have much to post lately. However, back in March a few Elders from the community took the grade sevens ice fishing. I went with my class to find out how it's done and to take some pictures which I neglected to post. Here are the results of that day:

First you need to re-break the surface of the ice. 

The class was invited out to bring the lines in for the last time this season. The ice fishing and trapping season ends in March, likely because you can't guarantee cold enough weather beyond March. At the time the ice on the lake was around 14" thick.

This man introduced himself as Soc. He's pulling out the rock that weights the line down.

The net is set up under the water by cutting a whole into the ice using an auger or chainsaw and then running a jigger under the ice. A jigger is a floating board with a metal lever that can be pulled using a rope held by the operator. When the rope is pulled the metal tip of the lever digs into the ice and propels the jigger forward, pulling the line along with it. You can hear a tapping as the jigger moves along so it's easy to know where it is. Once the length of the net is reached, another hole is cut and the jigger and trailing rope is retrieved. This rope is used to then pull the net under the ice between the two holes.

Pulling the nets out.

Fingers crossed for fish!

The nets are left over night and then pulled up the next day. Unfortunately the wrong kind of net was set up so we told it was unlikely we would catch anything...

A jack fish!

Norman holding our prize.

We caught a single jack fish which the elders kept. It was kind of a let down when we found out our lunch was hot dogs and not fried jack fish. But the kids didn't seem to mind too much.

Oh winter, how I do not miss you.

The Final Stretch

Peggy's Cove

For our March break Ender and I decided that instead of going home to Ontario for a week - spending our vacation madly trying see everyone we love and inevitably coming up short - we would go somewhere new and try and visit just one person. So we headed East and spent the week with our friends Sarah and Max who we have not seen since our wedding in August. He have never been to Halifax before and we liked the novelty of visiting both coasts in the same year.

Theodore!

Sarah and a scorpion

Unfortunately Ender and I got pretty sick near the start of the trip and were couch ridden for several days. Our plan was always just to catch up with friends over good food and drinks, but stomach bugs didn't allow for that until the later half of the week. I recovered a bit faster and spent my time exploring the parts of the city within and hours walk of Sarah and Max's house. I got lucky and was able to see NSCAD's "March of Prints" show where I picked up an etching by print student Hayley O’Byrne. It's really interesting to see another school's atheistic and I'm glad I got a chance to check out the college while I was there.

Ian and Ender

Ready for warm food and a change of clothes.

Our friend Ian also lives in Halifax and he took us to Peggy's Cove for an afternoon. It was a rainy and windy and we had a lot of fun climbing around on rocks, getting soaked with rain water and Atlantic air. Apparently a fair number of people are swept off the rocks each year because they venture too close to the unpredictable surf despite numerous warnings. After exploring, we had some warm apple cider and seafood chowder with great big pieces of lobster.

Now that we are back in GH it's the final stretch till summer. Temperatures are still well below zero and we expect the ice road to Stevenson Island will last for at least another week or two. The days are getting longer though (the sun sets at 8:30pm!) so at least we aren't living in darkness anymore. My attendance has also dropped considerably which is a bit disheartening. I've tried calling parents in the past but that has yet to produce results, and if the parents don't feel they can make their children attend school (they can) then there isn't much I can do other than teaching the ones who do attend.

Tortoise! 

Long Weekend

Fancy Shall Dancers

Sometimes things can get rather depressing here. Garden Hill is a community that has chosen to refrain from many cultural practices such as drumming, dancing, sweat lodges and traditional medicines in favour of a very narrow minded interpretation of Christianity. There are many  residential school survivors living up here, and one of the goals of those schools was to sever the connection those children had to an indigenous education. However about a 20 minute drive from here is St. Theresa Point, a larger reserve where the people have found a way to incorporate traditional practices rather than demonize them. This week we attended a PD there to learn about incorporating traditional knowledge into the classroom. Drumming is alive and well in STP and we were privileged to hear several songs.  The community considers the Creator and God as the same being and therefore has brought drumming into the Church for worship making it an important part of daily life.

Grass Dancers

Fancy Shall Dancer

Jingle Dancer

Fancy Dancer

This weekend we were invited  to attend a pow wow at STPS. For those of you who don't know a pow wow is a gathering for dancing, socializing and celebrating tradition. There were dancers and drummers from many different reserves in Manitoba and I was lucky to be invited to experience the culture. One of the other teachers who was with us commented that Garden Hill is about 50 years behind STP and that as soon as the youth start demanding to learn about their culture it will become a part of the community again. A hopeful outlook was welcome.

Traditional Dancers

Yes. All of it beads. All of it hand sewn.

Regalia is hand made by the wearer or family member and is determined by the kind of dance the dancer wants to do. Fancy shall dancers spin and twirl while jingle dress wearing dancers have many tin cones sewn onto their dress which 'jingle' as they move. Fancy dancers wear elaborate feather adorned regalia and have slow careful movements. I loved the grass dancers. Mostly children, they were all seeping motions and waving fringe.



The same teacher who invited us to the pow wow (Art the elementary Phys. Ed Teacher) asked if I wanted to tag along to help him check his trap lines. Art considers himself a 'weekend trapper' and mainly does it to keep the practice alive as well as supplement his income. Plus it's an excuse to get out to the bush. Art mainly traps marten for their furs and snares the occasional rabbit for food. It's the end of the trapping season, animals are breeding now and it's bad practice to trap pregnant mothers so we were taking everything down. This year he has caught about 70 marten and the average market price for their furs is $60. The traps we collected only caught two squirrels (not the target animal) but we talked a lot about animals, how he learned trapping and snaring from his father, and about recent wolf sightings. A  wolf pelt is about $450 but Art doesn't believe in killing wolves for their fur. He sees them as his brothers and you don't skin family.

Tricksters

I've done a terrible job of updating these past few weeks and I really have no excuse for it. I guess I just haven't felt like writing anything. But things have been happening and I have photos to post so better now then never I suppose.

Last Friday the grade tens performed the the story of how the crow became black. They worked for two weeks with three performers from a program called the Trickster Effect. Trickster Effect is a partnership with Breakfast Canada and performers from Cirque du Soleil. The program goes from community to community visiting First Nations and Inuit schools, working with the students to tell traditional stories through acrobatics, juggling, dance and costume.

For two weeks the students learned how to tumble, juggle and perform in front of their community and peers. They also explored ideas of identity making, creativity, collaboration and belonging.

The final show was really great. The kids were focused and professional, the music was well chosen and they were really proud of their accomplishments. They performed the show twice, once for the elementary and once for the high school.

They got the story from Charlotte Monias who is one of the community elders. It was a story her kookum told her when she was little. The crow used to be the most beautiful bird in existence, but he wasn't satisfied with his beauty. So he asked Nannabush (the Creator) to change him. First he asks to be blue like a blue jay, then red breasted like a robin and finally yellow like an canary. At this point Nannabush is getting annoyed and warns the crow that if he asks to be changed again that's it, he'll stay that way forever. The crow agrees and while flying around the Earth he sees a peacock and asks to be transformed a final time. Nannabush agrees but instead of becoming like a peacock, all of the colours blend together and the crow becomes black. it turns out Nannabush is also a trickster and felt like teaching the crow a lesson. The theme of the show was to be satisfied with who you are and your own talents rather than being jealous of others.



I volunteered to help make the costumes after school with the kids and the guys form Quebec. We had simple felt masks for the birds and larger masks for the crow and Nannabush (Who can appear as anything and any gender which made things tricky. Eventually so we went with bear.). I am keeping the crow and bear masks as examples for an Art/English project my class will be doing in March.

While working on the masks one evening, three girls from the elementary school came to visit and brought a kitten with them! They were taking her to the 't.v. station' to sell her because their mother no longer wanted a playful kitten running all through their house. It took all of my will power not to buy her from them. As nice as it would be to have a kitten here, it would make coming home and traveling in general very difficult. Besides, we're dog people.

Those eyes!