Our Definition of Student Success
Lunaapeew Worldview
We
as Lunaapeew people have an ancestral worldview that allows us to understand
our ancestral relationship with the land.
This relationship explains to us how natural law governs our family,
community, nation and the rest of creation.
We feel that our worldview and our history is best taught by integrating
our Lunaape cultural practices and Lunaapeew language into all aspects of our
learning and wellness.
We
have a vision of a cultural/environmental school that will offer an alternative
educational experience to our Lunaapeew families in our community. This experience will use both innovative
practices of the ‘our old Lunaapeew world’ and best practices of today's
educational experience’. We hold our
cultural understandings and language as the foundational pieces to revitalizing
and preserving our ancestral identity while adhering to the natural laws of
creation. while Our vision is ultimately meant to move
towards wellness in our Lunaape families and community
Personal Gifts and
Purpose
We
are taught that we come into creation with personal purpose – that we come into
creation to fulfill a specific purpose to our family of creation. In order to fulfill this purpose we come into
creation with what we call personal gifts.
These personal gifts are natural skills and abilities that we have that
will help us fulfill our purpose. These
gifts might leadership, the ability to heal the ability to teach or even as
simple as the ability to run fast, do math or even fish or hunt. We understand that there are many different
abilities needed for our families and communities healthy and happy.
Personal
gifts were seen as central to individual identity as even the name you were
given centered on your personal gifts.
Depending on the gift determined who was responsible of teaching
youth. In ancestral time teachers and
students were matched and directly from the families and communities of the
students. While there were standards to living
a sustainable life and responsibilities to to family roles – learning was very
much a respected and honored individualized path
Personal Gifts Program
Our
ancestral understanding is that these gifts are not just seen a personal gifts
but were revered as gifts for the families, communities and the rest of
creation. For this reason the
development of the individual personal gifts was essential. Our ancestral education systems focused on
what we know today as ‘Individualized Education Programs. Today they are used for exceptionalities or
learning challenges of students and classified as Special Education
programming.
We
have developed what we are calling a Personal Gifts Program which is a program
that focuses on the personal gifts of our students. We have created a program where we develop
individualized student plans called Personal Gifts Plan outline a path to educational
programing, specialized instructors and experience that will ensure the
personal gifts and aspirations of each students are central to learning.
Some
features of our PGP include:
● Individualized student
plans outlining learning expectations, suggested instructors and focused
experiences.
o
Learning Expectations-at a minimum meet
Ontario Curriculum Guidelines.
o
Suggested Instructors - Specialized
instructors are sought out to participate in student learning – matching
personal gifts with community masters.
o
Focused Experiences - Structure
experiences such as field trips, community participation, coop programs and
independent learning to meet individual learning expectations.
Learning from the
Natural Cycles of Creation
It
is essential that our program reconnect our students and families to the
land. This reconnection is dependent on
hand-on learning on the land. By
ensuring outdoor learning and educational spaces that are land based we cab
centre on harmonizing student, family and community wellness with environmental
wellness. Ancestral knowledge is very
much based in the natural cycles of creation.
The cycles of animal and plant life hold such understanding of family
and community or even life and death.
The stars, moon and climate all possess their own knowledge on
sustaining life. Wellness is built into
mother earth and allo of our family of creation in every way.
We
will be looking to include such activities as:
● Seasonal Harvests of
plants, fish and animals
● Foraging for basic
needs
● Collecting medicines
● Ceremony, Celebrations,
Fasting and Feasting
● Camping and Hiking
● Traditional Games and
Bush Skills
● Meesingw Environmental
CleanUps, Projects and Co-0ps
● Etc.