The building
has been completely re-organised and extensively modified. To get the project underway
school ended at John William Head Memorial Education Centre, a grade eight to twelve
facility at the end of April. Work went on over the summer and then dragged on into
the fall. School was delayed in starting until October when five classrooms along
the playing field side of the building were established for the students and teachers.
No shop, no home economics room, no lab, no gym, no staff room, just five classrooms
and three single toilets to accommodate five teachers and a hundred students. To make this project work principal Marcel McKay and his eager staff get to work earlier every day and stay later as classes do not end until four in the afternoon and many nights there are night classes with everyone in |
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attendance. Red Earth students are a dedicated bunch and this I can say from first
hand experience as their principal at one time. Most of the families speak "N"
dialect Cree at home, between each other they use a combination language of a mixture
of Cree and English and at school they speak English to their teachers but the spoken
language is still another dialect from what they use in their written work. Cree
is taught in the elementary school and is encouraged throughout the community as
it is the essence of their rich culture. These multi-lingual students all firmly
believe in the benefits of getting an education and are supported in this endeavor
by their parents and the community's elders who have always taken an active part
in the development of the community's youth. On the right are the grade eights as I visited them on Thursday afternoon and on the next page is another of the five usable classrooms. But amidst this effort to get an |
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