Sarnia Lambton Native Friendship Centre

Jen's Reflection

When we started this project and thought about potential connections, the Sarnia-Lambton Native Friendship Centre was a must. It is only a few blocks away from P.E. McGibbon which makes it easily accessible for our school community and we see it as a valuable resource for ourselves, and our students. Problem, we had no idea who to contact or how we should go about making contact. It was a barrier we made for ourselves that didn’t need to exist. We did what a lot of us do, nothing, because we were unsure. So, we reached out to Gretchen and asked her first. She suggested we connect with Nancy Peters. Nancy is the Cultural Resource Coordinator at the SLNFC. 

Chantima and I decided we would pop over to the SLNFC and see if we could meet Nancy. When we were walking to the doors of the SLNFC, I looked at Chantima and said “Are you nervous?” and thank goodness she said, “Yes”. I was not alone in my nerves and general feeling of discomfort. Why was I feeling this way? I think Chantima and I realized we were entering a space of unknowns. That is a scary place for an A-type teacher. But, I’ve learned throughout this project that I need to push myself to be uncomfortable. If I don’t, I’m not going to take risks, reach out, or learn things that will change how I think. Fast forward, the meet and greet with Nancy was wonderful. She welcomed us, our project, and was willing to support us in our journey. 

Throughout our initial conversation with Nancy, Chantima and I recognized she could be a key person in helping us shape our overall learning theme for this project. We had started Ojibwe Word of the Week with greetings and were using them in our schools but, what next? Where do we go after greetings? We needed another meeting!

We arranged another meeting with Nancy and thankfully Allie was able to attend as well. At this meeting we wanted to brainstorm ideas for where we were going to go with our learning. Our main focus was the Word of the Week because November was fast approaching and we had no clue what to do. We wanted the Word of the Week to be connected to deeper learning so we started brainstorming different ideas. We started with seasons and celebrations. We could do pumpkins, snow, winter, etc. But then, we looked at Nancy and said, “Is this really authentic to learning your culture?” In that moment, we recognized that our conversation about trying to find deeper learning had shifted to fitting Anishinaabe language and culture into our teacher box. This is one of the biggest dangers I see for educators. We take things and warp them into our teaching world. We make them fit our unit plans or timelines and lose authenticity. We needed to do better. 

So, we asked Nancy where would she start with students that were not making connections to Ojibwe Word of the Week and Ojibwe people themselves. Our students were hearing Ojibwe words every day but did not realize Ojibwe was a language spoken in our area, by Ojibwe people, before newcomers arrived. How could support them making these connections? 

As a group, we landed on storytelling. We would start with Turtle Island. Then, the Ojibwe Words of the Week would come from the story. We would choose four animals from the story (loon, turtle, otter, muskrat) and as Allie said “Feed the students breadcrumbs”, so they would build some schema for the Ojibwe story they would hear that month. We had a plan! Each month we would arrange a guest speaker to share a story and pull words from the story to be used for our Ojibwe Words of the Week. It sounds like a daunting task, but the more connections we make, the easier it becomes. 

We left our meeting with Nancy feeling inspired and excited about our new direction. Stay tuned to see how it unfolds.

Ojibwe Word of the Week: October

This month we continued our focus on common phrases that students and teachers can use every day. Our words of the month are:

Baamaapii - See you later/Later on
Wiijkiwenh - Friend
Biindigen - Come in
Gaawii mijda - I'm sorry 

Click here to access the Ojibwe Word of the Week October Words PDF

Word of the Week - A Work in Progress...

Allie's Reflection

Introducing the Ojibwe Word of the Week was a concept that started in both of our schools (P.E. McGibbon and A.A. Wright) during the last school year.  Luckily, this meant that we had a base to build upon this September when we began to roll the program out again.

This year we were deliberate in the words that were chosen for September.  The thought was that by focusing on greetings we would be providing our students with words that could quickly be used in their everyday conversations.

Many students have taken to it quite quickly and it is pretty incredible how often you can hear boozhoo, miigwech, and most recently, baamaapii being used around the school.  Teachers also seemed to be thankful to be given word wall cards for their own classrooms.  All in all it seemed as though all things were going well.

However, after recently surveying a random sample of students at both of our schools we realized that many kids were missing the pretty basic connection between the Ojibwe words they were beginning to use and the fact that it was an actual First Nations language spoken in close proximity to where they live and go to school.  This was a pretty clear message to us, as educators, that there was still a need for more teaching in this area.

Another aspect of our word of the week project that has been very eye opening and interesting to me has been how the Ojibwe language and the English language DO NOT mesh seamlessly and more often than not there is no literal translation from Ojibwe to English.  A great example of this is how Mino Giizghad (Indigenous Education Lead) explained to us the context in which the word miigwech was traditionally used.  Another example of this is how there was no word for “opossum” or “phragmite” because these are both species that are not native to this area.

While we have made some great first steps in the first month of school we obviously still have a lot of work to do - stay tuned! Baamaapii!