Dreaming of Quality Education for all Canadians

The main purpose of our Project is to inspire our students to lead their school and local community by raising and increasing awareness of the current issues surrounding First Nations groups. This ties in perfectly with the Grade 6 Social Studies curriculum expectations (– identify some present-day issues concerning First Nation peoples that relate to results of early contact (e.g., the effect of new technologies on First Nation cultures; land claims); –identify achievements and contributions of Aboriginal people in present-day Canada; -– describe the attitude to the environment of various First Nation groups). As most messages received by the students is through media outlets, it's important for them to be engaged in a first-hand perspective. Therefore Janet Wilson (author of Shannen and the Dream for a School) will be coming to the school to speak about Attawapiskat. The students will then have the opportunity to connect as pen pals with the grade 6 students in Attawapiskat. We hope to extend this opportunity for the next 2 years so that when the grade 8 students in Attawapiskat come on their annual trip to Toronto, they will have the chance to meet, after having been pen pals for 2 years! This will engage our students.

The secondary purpose of the Project is to raise funds and to empower our students to determine how best to distribute these funds to assist in providing resources to students of Attawapiskat. The funds will be raised at a Strawberry Festival (which is a First Nations tradition) in June. The students will use their knowledge of Attawapiskat (through Janet Wilson and connecting with the students of Attawapiskat) to co-construct criteria to determine where the funds will be most effectively used. Again, the primary purpose of the Strawberry Festival is to raise awareness and connect with the school and local community, so parents/guardians will also be invited to this.

Update (June 27, 2012)

This year a team of grade 6 students at Erin Centre Middle School put together a club called the Dream Catchers. These students were motivated by social justice, peace and positive change in the world with an emphasis on First Nation relations in Canada.

Our club was inspired by a young girl from Attawapiskat, Ontario who stood up for the rights the First Nation children to have a quality education and a safe school to attend. Her name was Shannen Koostachin and her campaign is called Shannen’s Dream. Our club decided to start to raise awareness in our school and local community about what was happening on the reserve in Attawapiskat. The students have been waiting 10 years to have a proper school built for them as their original school had to be torn down due to toxicity levels in the soil. The felt as though they were forgotten by our own government and country. We didn’t think this was right.

Thanks to our subsidy from the Canadian Teachers' Federation program Imagineaction we first decided to educate the grade sixes at our school by having renowned author/illustrator Janet Wilson in to present. She is the author of “Shannen and the Dream for a School”. Janet was very familiar with the community and supports many of their causes. She taught us about the history of Europeans and First Nations of Canada and updated us on some of the issues between First Nation and Non-First Nation communities in Canada. She made us feel like we could do anything and that young people are key to changing the world. She quoted “Many little people, doing many little things can make a big difference!”. Thank you to the Canadian Teachers Federation for helping us to begin to raise awareness of this worthy cause in our school community.

Since the presentation we have been meeting regularly to continue to spread the word. We even have pen pals with grade sixes who live in Attawapiskat. They have helped to teach us even more about their community. Their teacher and vice-principal thinks that the most important thing is to bridge the gap between First Nation and Non-First Nation communities and begin to work together to make the world a better place. Hopefully that is what we are accomplishing. We hope to keep our pen pals until grade 8 when they travel to Toronto for their graduation present and we may finally get to meet!

We have also been raising awareness in our school community by presenting what we learned from Janet Wilson and Shannen Koostachin and our pen pals in