Being Presbyterian

Riverside Community School in Prince Albert reflects its city. Sandy Scott, the Minister of St. Paul’s Prebyterian Church tells me Aboriginal people constitute about forty-fiver percent of the population of “PA”. Riverside students reflect the beauty of the Cree, Dene, Metis and other First peoples of the area.

On the first day of spring, the gym at Riverside buzzes with excitement. Kids are arranged in a circle on big blue mats, covered with blankets. They have a great view of the colourful teepee that has been erected at one end of the gym beside a large banner of a medicine wheel on the wall, showing the red, yellow, black and white colours of the four directions, and four peoples of the earth.

Excitement had been building for days. Today the kids have a wonderful break from routine. They won’t sit in the same classroom for most of the day. They had been given passports to attend different workshops in the morning and afternoon, from people they’ve never met. Like them, their teachers will sit in the back like students themselves, learning from others.

In one room, a grade 8 student, named Neanna, a champion Red River Jig dancer, has become a teacher herself–showing a group of grade 3 students the basics of dance. The boys cry with some dismay at first when told to hold hands with a partner to learn how to foxtrot. But by the next dance, a two steps, they are getting into the spirit, and showing off to each other.

Grade 2 students have all kinds of interesting questions for another group of dancers, who are showing them men’s and women’s traditional First Nation dancing. Where do you get the feathers? Who taught you how to dance? How many places have you performed: the answer includes the names of countries on 5 continents.

Volunteers from St. Paul’s Presbtyerian Church help out everywhere, including at a demonstration of fish scale art. where Grade 4 students were applying colourfully died whitefish scales and porcupine quills to tanned deer hide to make beautiful decorations for clothing.

Upstairs in a science room, John teaches grade 8′s about endangered species and the history of the Metis, while the students practicethe skills of traditional carvers: creating polar bears out of Ivory soap.

A few doors down from that clean, soapy smell, one enters a room fragrant with the aroma of sweatgrass where Sheila is telling a multi-grade class about the many uses of local plant life. This is your regular classroom? Have you touched the plants on display? You were told not too? Well you can. The entire class rushes up to the display!

Kindergarten kids sample banana empanadas from Columbia.

A husband and wife from Liberia share African songs over a wonderful traditional feast of bannock and stew back in the gym at lunch.

Les, in his leiderhosen, fakes a pratfall when a he almost walks around a corner into a guitar which Bonnie puts on her back.

A teacher tells me mid-afternoon how amazed she is at the kids’ enthusiasm in the third and final “breakout” session. “They haven’t had a recess, they didn’t get outside at lunch, and look at them. You’d never know it.”

A friend asks, what’s different about this? What’s so special? Many places hold such events.

It was clear from talking to John the Principal of Riverside what a gift it was to have a some funding to pay honoraria to the presenters, to bring in a young men’s drum group, pay for the modest but healthy feast and some gifts. It is rare for many schools, hard pressed to pay for everything involved in delivering the regular curricula to stage an event designed to teach young people about the beauty of other cultures. John’s enthusiasm, the delight in the eyes of his teaching staff, the excitement and rapt attention of the kids who moved with such enthusiasm to each event, and the warmth among the several hundred people who circled the gym in three large rings during the closing round dance told the story of why a school cultural day is so special.