In 2005, Little Current Public School was facing many challenges. In addition to a large teacher turn-over, relations between settler students and First Nations students were tension-filled. Conversations from the kitchen tables at children’s homes were filtering into the school. Some community members felt that Indigenous content, practices and knowledge should not be included in a public school. The two neighbouring First Nations communities were considering pulling their students – about 40% of the student population – out of the school.
Leaders from the school and the First Nations communities spent many months working closely with the Principal, Margaret Stringer, to develop strategies, integrate First Nations input and build better relationships. They created an advisory committee and a Pow Wow committee to build awareness of local First Nations culture, and communicate the needs of students.
4elements Living Arts proposed a vision project to help think creatively about the kind of school that children wanted, to help build conversation, and build a picture of what we could move toward. With funding from the Ontario Arts Council, over six months we facilitated a vision process.
We designed a process in which a team of people spent time with children in each classroom. Children responded to a series of five questions through drawing and word responses. We scribed the comments from the younger children. Also included were members of the School Council, the Home/School association, parents visiting the Pow Wow and other community events, and teachers in each classroom participated along with the children to help build the idea that the vision is something carried by the whole school community.
The vision team included Sophie Edwards and Beth Lindner from 4elements Living Arts, Bill Shawanda (Debajehmujig Storytellers), Chris Osawabine (Debajehmujig Storytellers), Esther Osche (Whitefish River First Nation knowledge keeper), Margaret Stringer (LCPS Principal), with assistance from Jennifer Bowerman (4e Co-op student) and Ruby Thomson (Sheguiandah First Nation).
We gathered hundreds of drawings, and the team spent many hours sifting through them, collating images and word responses to see what emerged.
Sophie Edwards and Bill Shawanda worked together to design the mural, using one of the student drawings as an organizing motif. This particular motif represented a key idea of the mural. This Grade 7 student began his drawing responses with reticence. In response to the question, “How do you see how our school and communities could work together?” he created a picture that depicted him not being at school, and his community not busing the students to LCPS. By the end of the series of questions, he had created a beautiful symbol with a central circle and extending lines; the key word response to describe it was ‘togetherness’.
A number of themes – or core values – emerged from the drawings. While students didn’t necessarily experience all of these values in the present, they were desired and valued.