Highlighting Metis culture
The eyes of students inside the George Lee School gymnasium lit up at the mention of a particular phrase on Friday — dance battle.
“Whoa,” they said, grinning as they watched two guest Metis dancers begin a sash dance.
One student even challenged a dancer at her own art, losing after he stepped on one of the red sashes laid out on the floor.
The dancing was part of the school’s second Carnaval de George Lee, a day of activities celebrating French and Metis cultures.
The idea, explained core French teacher Jessica Irvine, is to get students to fully appreciate Canada’s French history.
“I decided to do this because the passion for French was dying,” she said.
“They would say, ‘Why are we learning French? We don’t even speak it.’ I realized they were just not getting the connections.”
In the six weeks leading up to the festival, students learned about the Carnaval de Quebec, Winnipeg’s Festival du Voyageur, the fur trade and how the French “helped make Canada what it is today.”
In other words, Irvine said, making French “something meaningful.”
“They are interested in French, they love learning it, and it’s just a positive environment for the whole school,” she said.
A key part of the day’s events was giving the older students a leadership role in the festival.
Some guided student groups between activities, others led the activity stations.
Those activities included learning how to play the spoons alongside a fiddler, listening to aboriginal stories, making Metis sash bracelets and trying maple syrup ice cubes.
“We really want our senior students to understand that they have a role in this and this is their culture too,” Irvine said.
“We give them ownership and responsibility, and then they take what they’ve learned and they really want to share it with the other kids.”
This is the sixth carnaval Irvine has organized at Regina schools where she has taught, and is adamant it is worth all of the hard work.
Partly because it meets a range of curriculum outcomes in French, social studies and English, but also because it “completely changes the dynamics” in her French classroom.
“If I didn’t do this, I don’t think they would buy into the reasons we learn French to begin with,” she said.