Engaging Families at A.A. Wright

During the 2017/2018 school year, we set out to include more opportunities to learn about and share Indigenous culture in meaningful and appropriate ways while boosting family engagement at A.A. Wright.    Through our after-school events such as drum making, beading, drum socials, and shaker making we were able to reach a lot of people, host many families at our school, make connections and form relationships.   The relationships that were formed will help us in continuing to honour and celebrate the families at our school while sharing Indigenous culture with our school community as a whole.   We have worked and are working to help the students and their families who are Indigenous to see themselves represented in our school environment.  Through our after-school events this past year we saw an increase in family engagement and we are hoping to use the lessons learned to continue engaging families in the future. ...

Family Drum Social and Tacos! With the school year coming to a close we wanted to have one more special event after school at A.A. Wright.  Since we had opportunities to invite families into the school to make drums and shakers we decided to have one more Family Drum Social after school.  We wanted to make it a special night, so we asked one of the moms at our school to make her delicious frybread and have some Anishinaabe Tacos (also called Indian Tacos, NDN Tacos, but always delicious). We invited all students, staff, and friends to come to our Family Drum Social.  We asked Cedric, Sandra and Lieghann Isaac to come and lead the social.  They have been to our school many times throughout the years to share their Anishinaabe and Mohawk culture with our students.  Cedric and Sandra have grandsons who go to our school and it's always special for the boys when their Misho (Ojibwe for "grandpa") and Tota (Mohawk for "grandparent") come to visit. ...

On June 11th we held our 4th annual First Nation Cultural Celebration.  We sent invitations to all our students' families through Facebook posts and notes home on Seesaw to come and join us for this event.  We also invited community members who have regalia and dance in pow wows to come join in.  We had many visitors from the Wallaceburg and Bkejwanong communities joining us this day.   We were also joined by The Whiteye Singers.  They did a fantastic job drumming and singing all the songs for us this day.  We were joined by Tyler White from Bkejwanong to be our MC.  He is so generous and always does a great job sharing his knowledge of pow wows and Anishinaabe culture with our staff, students and families.   Miigwech, Tyler! We had 13 dancers this year!  I believe that it the most we've ever had, and we even had representatives for each style of dance!   After Grand Entry and demonstrations of e...

On May 31st our A.A. Wright family was joined by Leslie Stonefish from Bkejwanong (Walpole Island).  We had 34 participants at this event!   We had some hide left over from our drum making nights so we decided to use it to make shakers.   First Leslie talked to us about the importance of being thankful when using materials that came from a living thing such as a plant or an animal.  We were using cowhide for our shakers, so we had to be sure to be thankful to those cows for giving their lives so we can make shakers.  We soaked the hide to make it soft, then we all learned how to sew a stitch called "the baseball stitch".  It was tricky! Once it was stitched up we filled our shakers with sand so the hide can dry in a rounded shape.  Then we let the shakers dry for 2 weeks.    When they were dry we poured the sand out of the shaker and put some dried popcorn in.   We attached the handle...

Our team decided that we wanted to create a mural to honour the land, water and animals of our community and we wanted to include an Indigenous perspective.  We decided that it would be important to include an artist from Bkejwanong to help us in the planning and creation of the mural.  We contacted Mexican/Ojibwe/Potawatomi artist Summer Garcia from Bkejwanong to help us in the creation of this mural.  We looked at the art of many Indigenous artists to get an idea of what murals look like, as many of our students haven't seen a mural in person.   We also talked about what the land in our town of Wallaceburg looked like before the settlers came to this area.  The students decided they wanted to include a lot of animals and plants because these were much more prevalent before the farms and houses and stores were built.  They also talked about the importance of the rivers and streams in our area and wanted to make sure to include the fork in the rive...

On April 26th Leslie Stonefish from Bkejwanong joined around 55 students, families and staff at AA Wright for an afternoon of beading, friendship and fun.  Leslie started the afternoon by teaching participants about the importance of respecting and honoring the natural items we were using.  We learned that a deer gave its life and we are using its hide to create our bracelets.  She also talked about how when hunting, Anishinaabe people give tobacco to the animal who has given its life as a way of giving thanks and showing respect.   It is important to remember to have tobacco as an offering of thanks to any presenters, knowledge keepers and elders who come to your school to visit.  Tobacco is a sacred plant to the Anishinaabe people.  To learn more about this plant and how to respectfully offer it to presenters, knowledge keepers and elders I recommend contacting your school board's Indigenous Lead or Indigenous Education Special Proj...

On the evening of March 27th, we again invited families to A.A. Wright to experience Anishinaabe culture.  We started the evening by sharing a meal (very important after a long day of school and work!) and joined Cecil Isaac in our Learning Commons.  He shared teachings on the importance of our drums and why we need to take good care of them.   We then made our drumsticks and were ready to proceed with our drum awakening ceremony.    Our group had made 20 drums together and it was great to see them all together and ready to be feasted and sounded.  Cecil brings much knowledge to our school and it was great to learn about the traditions of the Anishinaabe and the importance of the drum in Ojibwe culture.  Each drum was feasted by a child and given a drink of water.  After this, each child got to stand up with their drum and play it to the 4 directions and let out their own "whoop". It was amazing to see the pride that each child had ...