By Melanie Jacob
Journal Editor
Students from St. Augustine Elementary School were able to participate in a week's worth of fun-filled activities for the school's Education Week from Oct. 20-24.
The week was kicked off with a Grade 5-8 battle of the books and guest readers for Grades K-4.
"Every school has a learning improvement plan and I guess ours focused on reading," said Cal Theisen, the school's principal. "Basically, we did a lot of activities over Education Week."
Happening alongside education week was a spirit week, which means kids were able to dress in a certain theme each day to promote school spirit. The first day was Mellow Monday, which allowed kids to wear pajamas, followed by Toque Tuesday, Wacky Hair Day Wednesday, Throwback Thursday, and Famous Friday.
The focus for the week was to promote reading and school spirit, hence the combination. Across the province, the content for Education Week was centered on First Nations/Metis in order to improve student output. However, because St. Augustine doesn't have any self-identified First Nations/Metis, the school instead focused on increasing awareness about the ethnic group.
"Teachers make an effort to include First Nations/Metis content in everything they do," said Theisen. "For example, if we're talking about science and revolution, we don't just talk about Catholic creation, we also look at First Nation Metis (creation stories)."
According to Theisen, there seemed to be a good response from the students. They seemed to particularly enjoy the "school hug," which involved all students going outside and joining hands around the school. Apparently there were just enough students to complete the "hug" around the school.
The week also included activities such as poetry reading; stop, drop, and read sessions; and a teacher swap, which had teachers spending the day in classrooms they're not usually in.
"I think that the week was really good," said Theisen. "We try to promote the education part of it, so if you can do a few things that are different and interesting, they respond well to that."
According to Theisen, this week is an opportunity to show the kids what areas they will be focusing on throughout the school year. The end of the week was concluded with an assembly and a video highlighting the events of the past week.
"It's also almost like a teambuilding thing for school spirit. We're a community," he said. "A lot of the activities are built on creating unity among students and staff. It all went pretty smoothly."
