Continuous Small Miracles
Continuous Small Miracles
My school has served this extremely isolated and old community for the past 28 years. We don’t have all of the same opportunities and resources usually available in the “South” and often that is a big issue. Frequently, it is difficult to recruit teachers and retain students and often our achievement test and diploma scores are below provincial average. We don’t have a football team, art or music classes and sometimes, as teachers, we wonder if we have been forgotten.
Athabasca Delta Community School in Fort Chipewyan does have many challenges. But every day I arrive at this school I see hard working, although sometimes frustrated teachers, working small miracles with many troubled and challenging students. During my career I have taught in Islamic, Catholic, Anglican and Public School systems each with its own set of values, challenges, accomplishments and problems, but never before have I seen a staff accomplish so much with so little. Mine is a school of continuous and small miracles.
Daily I witness students far behind in academic achievement, largely due to numerous socioeconomic issues beyond their control and comprehension, begin to make the association between letters and sounds, sounds and words and words and sentences, a small miracle. I marvel at the gradual transformations as the elementary team of teachers instructs their students in values education, while our “Helping Hands to Success” counselors deal with everything from anxiety to anger management issues. I marvel as our Physical Education teacher who effectively develops athletic skills, as he teaches his students to be part of something a little larger than themselves, to be part of a team and learn about the greater good and eventually discover that self worth, accomplishment and success leads to peer respect and cooperation. Our gym too is a place of many small miracles.
I have seen teachers patiently read stories to their students, tie their shoe laces, help the young ones with snow pants, wipe runny noses, get them safely on to the school bus and the day’s end and break up play fights that quickly escalate past the play stage. The children are kinetic and the teachers always busy.
I marvel as our Cree and Dene teachers instruct the values, culture and language of their students, bringing together such disparate abilities around one table and then observe as these students respectfully and quietly listen to instructions and to each other, characteristics less common out on the play yard. The aboriginal teachers work miracles on a regular basis. I learn from them.
Because we have a lunch program our kitchen staff bring healthy snacks and lunches to each classroom every day, our bus drivers transport our students to school every day and our custodians keep our building clean and warm. I witnessed the community come together and organize a Safe Halloween night. Over three hundred people came to the school that night as Nunee Health staff, RCMP officers, teachers, Band leaders, elders and families joined together in celebration. We appreciate these small miracles as they happen.
Fort Chipewyan is a small community and perhaps not very sophisticated, but it is moving forward. I am new to the community and perhaps not part of things as yet, but in two short months I have seen the changes that dedicated and caring teachers and staff members can make under very trying circumstances. Athabasca Delta Community School is the most unlikely candidate to select as a special school. I make this choice because each day I see staff members work at least one small miracle with their students each day. We have no lofty pedagogical goals other than to change this out of the way school one student at a time and that is very special.
Marty Rempel,
My school has served this extremely isolated and old community for the past 28 years. We don’t have all of the same opportunities and resources usually available in the “South” and often that is a big issue. Frequently, it is difficult to recruit teachers and retain students and often our achievement test and diploma scores are below provincial average. We don’t have a football team, art or music classes and sometimes, as teachers, we wonder if we have been forgotten.
Athabasca Delta Community School in Fort Chipewyan does have many challenges. But every day I arrive at this school I see hard working, although sometimes frustrated teachers, working small miracles with many troubled and challenging students. During my career I have taught in Islamic, Catholic, Anglican and Public School systems each with its own set of values, challenges, accomplishments and problems, but never before have I seen a staff accomplish so much with so little. Mine is a school of continuous and small miracles.
Daily I witness students far behind in academic achievement, largely due to numerous socioeconomic issues beyond their control and comprehension, begin to make the association between letters and sounds, sounds and words and words and sentences, a small miracle. I marvel at the gradual transformations as the elementary team of teachers instructs their students in values education, while our “Helping Hands to Success” counselors deal with everything from anxiety to anger management issues. I marvel as our Physical Education teacher who effectively develops athletic skills, as he teaches his students to be part of something a little larger than themselves, to be part of a team and learn about the greater good and eventually discover that self worth, accomplishment and success leads to peer respect and cooperation. Our gym too is a place of many small miracles.
I have seen teachers patiently read stories to their students, tie their shoe laces, help the young ones with snow pants, wipe runny noses, get them safely on to the school bus and the day’s end and break up play fights that quickly escalate past the play stage. The children are kinetic and the teachers always busy.
I marvel as our Cree and Dene teachers instruct the values, culture and language of their students, bringing together such disparate abilities around one table and then observe as these students respectfully and quietly listen to instructions and to each other, characteristics less common out on the play yard. The aboriginal teachers work miracles on a regular basis. I learn from them.
Because we have a lunch program our kitchen staff bring healthy snacks and lunches to each classroom every day, our bus drivers transport our students to school every day and our custodians keep our building clean and warm. I witnessed the community come together and organize a Safe Halloween night. Over three hundred people came to the school that night as Nunee Health staff, RCMP officers, teachers, Band leaders, elders and families joined together in celebration. We appreciate these small miracles as they happen.
Fort Chipewyan is a small community and perhaps not very sophisticated, but it is moving forward. I am new to the community and perhaps not part of things as yet, but in two short months I have seen the changes that dedicated and caring teachers and staff members can make under very trying circumstances. Athabasca Delta Community School is the most unlikely candidate to select as a special school. I make this choice because each day I see staff members work at least one small miracle with their students each day. We have no lofty pedagogical goals other than to change this out of the way school one student at a time and that is very special.
Marty Rempel,
No comments:
Post a Comment