Saint Michael School is fully focused on truth and reconciliation this year to provide awareness and inclusiveness for First Nations, Inuit and Metis culture. Different Elders and first nations artist come every month to the school to help students and teach Indigenous practices such as the seven sacred teachings. They have focused on one sacred teaching per visit. Students have also done arts by traditional means and learned about the ceremonies.
In the coming up months they are celebrating National Aboriginal Day on June 21, the orange shirt day, they will be visiting the museum to observe the gallery of First Nations, and they will also have a wrap up from the year with one of the Elders that visits them. There are many opportunities to see kids experiencing the First nations culture and finding themselves through the activities.
Students have hanged the Metis flag in the gym and there is also a small one in each classroom. This year is an awareness year towards First Nation ways of living where teachers and students are heading the same direction in this journey to reconciliation. The principal of the school have mentioned to us that the school staff is also planing to incorporate aboriginal languages to give them a different knowledge.
Regarding inclusiveness with kids with special needs, the school have a team that looks after them. It’s a type of student support team, they meet weekly at the school and provide suggestions to the teachers or recommendations to accommodate different children in their classrooms. As an example, the principal has showed us some posters they have made for a kid from our kindergarten classroom that has some type of attention disorder. The posters contain images that help him understand how his behaviour should be at school and what is not allowed.
We have been told that this school unfortunately does not have any LGTBQ2 club due to its catholic faith. I would have liked to observe this type of gender inclusiveness in the school community.
Regarding honouring multicultural diversity, they had some events last year where families from different backgrounds attended. They also have literacy evenings with language resources like Spanish and English or Tagalog and English together. The EAL population is high at Saint Michael school. The school provides interpreters for the families at school events and some EAL teachers come often to the school to help students. There is not specific EAL class and the EAL teachers are not in the school regularly. Their job is to pull some students out of the class and work with them in small groups or simply work with them in their classrooms.
