Unisha, a Grade 3 student at George Davison, stands in a giant singing bowl while Danielle Levesque gives her a sound bath. Unisha is wearing a dress from Nepal that her auntie made. The singing bowls were provided by Nirvana 101--NEWS PHOTO SAMANTHA JOHNSON
reporter@medicinehatnews.com
George Davison School held its inaugural Diversity Day on Wednesday.
Wendy Weiss, vice principal, said, “We’ve invited different community services. We want that to grow bigger, too, and get more people involved.”
The school invited all families and any community members to come and participate.
The students started working on their projects in February and each table had student-made posters to showcase the things they love about their culture and to share foods, family recipes, flags and maps of their country.
The event was organized by Brittany LeBlanc, a family school liaison worker, and Shari Burk, a teacher at George Davison and Medicine Hat Christian School.
“Our intention was to give our students a chance to share with us a little about their culture and their heritage,” explained LeBlanc. “We have lots of diversity at this school and we want to celebrate it and share our differences and our commonalities.”
Saamis Immigration had a table set up and some of the families that are currently with them came to join in the event.
“We are one of the highest populations of a multicultural school in Medicine Hat,” stated Burk. “We wanted to give the students an opportunity to come and showcase how diverse and interesting their cultures are and to show their classmates, community members and parents.”
Countries represented were Syria, Nepal, India, Chad, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kurdistan, Scotland and England. There were also several Indigenous tables from the Dene Nation, Tlingit Tribe, Cree and Metis. Many posters included different foods and one had recipes for both Bannock and Saskatoon Berry Soup.
The importance of having a day focused on the different cultures represented in the school was highlighted when a student came into school that morning and told her teacher she didn’t think her culture was important and was overwhelmed because she couldn’t believe Diversity Day was happening.
