Quinte Mohawk School

So this week for our culture and diversity class, we went on a field trip to the Quinte Mohawk School which is located in Shannonville on the reserve. We got to learn a lot about the native community in our area. I had no idea what these children did at their school or what it even looked like before last Friday. It was very interesting to see the kind of language that they use and what they do as a daily routine.
The routine for these children is not too different when it comes to the hours of class and recess. When it comes to what they do in class, it becomes a little interesting. I went around to different classrooms to check out what kind of crafts the children make and they were making medicine bags. These bags could actually be used and were not just any kind of craft to be made.
We also learned how to do the dance in the gymnasium. There were children of different ages from the school joining in to sing and dance. Everyone got up and walked around in a circle and danced and shuffled side to side while going to the beat of the music. Some of them wore what seemed to look like a cape and they were very decorative.
In the morning class, we went and joined in on a class of about the age of 8. They were all speaking mohawk and their teacher was trying to teach us some of their language as well. She had lived there as a child and decided to go back there to work and raise her family. She seemed to be very confident and the children all seemed to enjoy what they were learning. They even had different games that they had showed us how to play.
All around the school there were paintings, crafts and native belongings that we got to see. We got a tour around the school by Lindsay in our class. She used to attend Quinte Mohawk School as a child and showed us as much as she could.
All in all, we got to learn a lot about what goes on at the Quinte Mohawk School and what their daily activities would be. It was very interesting to learn about how they speak to eachother and the different sounds that different letters make in their words. We also found it interesting to learn that one word could mean an entire sentence. She told us about how when they ask to go to the washroom, the entire sentence could be asking if they could sit their bottom down.
At the end of the field trip, we all got to have a lunch which included turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and much more! It was very delicious and we really appreciated having such a beneficial day for our learning. Thank you Quinte Mohawk School!



~Andy Leggett~

Last week we had a very interesting guest speaker come in to talk to us about working with the Inuit and Métis communities in Quebec. Andy works as a CYW for children in these tribes. There were two places that he had said that he works in but I could not even begin to know how to spell them!

Andy spoke about the challenges of being a CYW in these communities. One of the challenges is trying to define what they do. Another challenge is for them to make connections with children who struggle to make connections, as he put it. What he meant was that these children do not seem to have a lot of guidance. He finds it a struggle to connect with these children on a personal level because these children may not know themselves well enough. They see the world differently than we do where we live. He finds it hard to try to work with these children because they have different norms and opinions in their society than we do. He said that the longer he has worked with them, the more he has learned about their culture, making it easier to connect to them.

Andy told us about the language there and, on the slideshow, it showed what some of the letters and symbols look like in the signs. It seems like it would be very hard to understand. Regardless of the different ways of communication in this community, Andy seemed very confident in his work and seemed to have a lot of experience in this area.

He said that the safety in their area is way different than our area because there seems to be more alcoholism and other issues. Andy talked about the children gashuffing and he spoke about how the girls seemed to think it was okay to be promiscuous with different boys and men. They seemed to think it was the norm and that this was what they were supposed to be doing. This is way different than here because the most children and adolescents that live here are taught what they should and should not do when it comes to such dangerous hobbies and interests.

Andy had told us that the only way to keep him from burning out in his job is to make sure that you have a passion for what you are doing and that you make sure that you feel fierce. If you have a passion for what you are doing then you will reach your goal easier. If you continue to make yourself feel fierce in what you are doing then you will feel like you have the power to reach whatever goal that you can. Andy said that having passion about being fierce and being fierce about having passion go hand in hand and that they will help you out in your future career. As long as you let yourself be fierce and be passionate about what you are doing then you will lose the worry of a burnout.