Pearl Lorentzen

Local Journalism Initiative

Cree elders are invited into the classroom as part of Cree language and land-based learning classes St. Theresa School in Wabasca.

“I get elders to come and talk to the kids about the old ways of living,” says Amanda Anderson.

Anderson is an education assistant and the instructor for Kindergarten to Grade 2 Cree and land connections for Kindergarten to Grade 4 at St. Theresa School in Wabasca. She is a Bigstone Cree Nation member. She’s worked in the school for 10 years in different grades as an education assistant. She took the role of instructor four months ago.

Northland School Division has a language curriculum.

Anderson follows this and adds her own flourishes. For example, students sometimes want to talk with an elder when they aren’t in the classroom, so Anderson use pantyhose and fabric from clothes in the lost and found to make two elder dolls. They sit by her desk and she uses them when the students want to talk to an elder.

“I try to make everything in Cree,” she adds.

This includes basic commands, shapes, colours, animals, and the basics of spelling and pronouncing Cree words.

“I just want to keep our culture going,” says Anderson, “and our language going. I don’t want the kids to lose it. If you make it fun, they will learn … I want them to be thinking of Cree as a good thing.”

Anderson finds various ways to make language learning fun. For Easter, she made an Easter egg hunt and the kids had to explain the colour of the eggs and how many of each colour they found in Cree.

“They love Cree,” she says of her students.

The land connections class is also connected with Cree culture. Anderson does weekly nature walks with students and other activities.

On March 21, the Indigenous education department held a ‘Mad Trappers’ Competition to raise funds for land-based learning.

The competitions included log sawing, tossing the log, moose calls, etc.