By Karen Weber & Bryn Dewar
The Aldershot H.S. Experience
Karen Weber, Teacher Librarian
In the spring of 2018, a group of teachers at Aldershot High School in Burlington considered how we could, in a real and meaningful way, honour the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, specifically, those related to Education for Reconciliation (articles 62 and 63).
We also wanted to provide a rich project-based component to our English Language Learning (ELL) program that would foster student resilience, community and positive self-concept.
Serendipitously, an application for a Burlington Foundation Community Fund grant landed on our desks and, from there, our idea for “art in the library” developed. The fund’s goal – to “promote greater collaboration and partnerships within the Burlington community, and showcase our collective impact through personal storytelling ”– seemed to be a perfect fit for our project, particularly when we reviewed certain areas of priority for the fund. including newcomers and social inclusion and youth and young adults.
Using the criteria from above, we developed our grant application, Developing a Sense Belonging: Community and Creativity with Aldershot English-language learners: This grant [will] allow newcomer students at Aldershot to co-create a mural in the school library with a First Nations artist. By co-creating this mural, newcomer students have an opportunity to “look back” and learn about our local First Nations communities; they are also encouraged to see themselves in the present at Aldershot as valued current and future agents of positive change within the school.
With the generous support of Tammy Hardwick, our equity and inclusive education instructional program lead First Nation, Metis, Inuit Education, we arranged for Aura, an Oneida artist (moniqueaura.com), to work with colleague Lindsay Moar’s small ELL class in the library in the fall of 2018.
Aura spent considerable time on the first day encouraging students to reflect on the birth countries, their experiences with language/learning a language and their experience with losing a language, which she likened to her own experience of losing her Indigenous language. She also shared her personal and the more communal challenges of being First Nations in Canada today. In a short time, she built “student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect,” one of the key goals of article 63 of Education for Reconciliation in the Calls to Action.
From Oct. 15 to 17, the students, guided by Aura, co-constructed both the questions and the response to our challenge: How do we create an artistic piece that accurately reflects and celebrates the students and their “stories” or pasts, a First Nations point of view, and our present at Aldershot?
The result was an incredible piece of art that now hangs in the main space of our library. It is every teacher’s dream to ensure that students see themselves reflected in the work that they read, see and do. This artwork contains images, symbols and words from the “home” countries of all of the ELL students, including Iran, Egypt, Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, India and Swaziland, alongside First Nations/local connections: a Haudenosaunee woman (e.g. her facial features, Skydome details on her dress), the Grand River, tobacco flowers, Aura’s signature florals, a turtle shell for Turtle Island, six diamonds for Six Nations. And there is even a lion, the Aldershot school mascot.
Our ELL students felt this was a positive experience. They will be always reminded of their hard work and the relationships they formed every time they come into the library and see their mural. It has become a symbol of their cherished place in our Aldershot community and the kind of collaborative spirit that is possible when different groups of people decide to learn and listen and create together.
The Hayden S.S. Experience
Bryn Dewar, Teacher Librarian
After hearing about Karen Weber’s project at Aldershot High School at a PD session for Teacher Librarians in the Halton District School in November, 2018, I decided to undertake a similar project at Dr. Frank J. Hayden Secondary School.
Our library is a bit different from Aldershot’s in that it is a partnership library with the City of Burlington. Our integrated facility functions as a school and public library. I had to secure permission for the project both from our administration and the public library staff.
Because of the project’s expense, I applied, at Karen’s suggestion, for a grant from the Halton Learning Foundation in December, 2018. The foundation provides grants for schools across our board. I applied for funding from the arts and music stream and was fortunate to receive $1,000.
The plan was for a group of Hayden’s English Language Learning students and newcomers to co-create a mural over the course of three days with Aura – the same artist who created the project at Aldershot. We planned to complete the mural from March 5 to 7, 2019.
Laura Sgambelluri, our ESL teacher and program lead for French, ESL and the arts, was enthusiastic about bringing this opportunity to her students. We had fewer students taking ESL courses in second semester, so we signed out the students from the first semester classes to participate in it as an in-school field trip. In total we had eight students involved, although some were unable to attend all three days.
The ESL classes were a perfect fit for this project because they are small, which allowed each of the students to participate fully in the project, and their classes are scheduled daily in our library.
Some students involved had never before picked up a paint brush, and yet all contributed to the mural, both in its design and execution. Similar to the Aldershot project, cultural details from each student were incorporated throughout the piece: a yellow Vietnamese basket, the mountains of Spain, an Italian-inspired rose tattoo, and a Syrian sword. We even had a husky incorporated as a nod to our school’s mascot.
In addition, over the course of the three days, students experienced smudging ceremonies and found commonalities with Aura in their discussions of the preservation and championing of their first languages.
With the creation of the mural, we now have a strong visual representation of the diverse cultures that our ELL and newcomer students contribute to our school permanently housed in the library – a cross-curricular space that is used by a variety of students and staff. They have an increased positive sense of belonging and community through this visual representation of themselves and their unique cultural identities.
In addition to visually demonstrating an ongoing commitment to valuing our ELL students and newcomers’ cultural diversity, the mural also recognizes our ongoing learning as students and staff about FNMI cultures and honouring the land.
Here are some of the ELL and newcomer student reflections from both Aldershot and Hayden:
“My favourite part was how we used a part of everybody’s culture and things that made them feel like home into one beautiful painting…that meant a lot to us.”
“It has parts in it that show peace and safety. As a newcomer to Canada I feel really safe and welcome to Canada…without having to lose my culture or my language.
“Represent[ing] things through art that people couldn’t talk about while trying to explain they culture. That was really… helpful to me because I couldn’t express things by saying or writing…[and] it was fun.
“I learned what smudging is and the story behind it, I learned Indigenous traditions and stories and I learned some things about the past of Indigenous people.”
“My favourite part was learning the new painting techniques and adding something that reflects me in the mural.”
“The mountain in the back of the mural is a place in Spain where I used to go camping every weekend and it really reminds me of that.”
Aura is Onyota’a:ka (Oneida) artist, currently based in Tkaronto. She graduated from the University of Lethbridge with a BFA (Studio Art) and is a DTATI Candidate. Through her art practice, Aura uses mixed media, beadwork, street art, art as healing, and digital Illustration to discuss intergenerational healing, identity, empowerment, and mothering. She looks to community to collectively explore personal storytelling and truth-sharing.
Aura’s work has been published in (Don’t) Call Me Crazy by Kelly Jensen, #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native America Women by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale, and The Talking Sick is for Indigenous Women: They Take The Quill to Share Their Visions of Sustainable Development.
Karen Weber is a teacher-librarian, TEL lead teacher, English teacher and ELL/ESL teacher at Aldershot High School in the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board in Ontario.
Bryn Dewar is a teacher-librarian at Dr. Frank J. Hayden Secondary School in the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board in Ontario.
This article was originally published in The Teaching Librarian, the magazine of the Ontario School Library Association, and is reproduced here with permission.