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​It has been a busy week for our staff and students with Alien inline skating, National Indigenous People's Day, a Kindergarten field trip to Safety City and Provincial Achievement Tests for our Grade 6 students. We appreciate the many parent volunteers who have helped us out with the many opportunities this week.

To continue our acts of commitment towards the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report, we renewed our implementation goal for next year. We will continue to acknowledge the land and the Indigenous people of the land in authentic and meaningful ways. To leverage opportunities for students and staff to learn from the land and the significance of place. To honour land as a teacher and to protect and respect the life it shares and the stories it holds. To understand the truth and impact of residential schooling on Canadian history and in our community today. In making our commitment, Calls to Action #57 & 63 offered inspiration.

Through this school year in art class, each student gathered a stone from the river bank and wrote a message and/or symbol on it. Their messages were based on reflections they had after learning about Canada's history with residential schools. These stones have been painted and arranged to resemble a medicine wheel. This echoes the CBE's holistic learning framework that is grounded in the four directions of the wheel. Starting in the east, yellow represents “Spirit – To Be", south is “Heart – To Belong," west is black representing “Body – To Do," and north is white for “Mind – To Know." We intend for the stones to remain outside year-long as a symbol of our commitment to these teachings as acts of reconciliation. Please feel free to visit this in our outdoor boulder classroom on the east side of the school grounds. Click here to see our renewed commitment to the TRC and to view a photograph of the medicine wheel.

Every CBE school was also gifted three Indigenous flags (Treaty 7, Metis and Inuit) to hang in our school. They are now located in our office beside our Land Acknowledgment after the flag ceremony that we held on Wednesday morning with our students. This explained the symbols on each of the flags as well as how most government buildings now hang these flags alongside the Canadian and provincial flags. After this assembly, we arranged to have a virtual live presentation for students that was hosted by an Alberta author, Sigmund Brouwer, who visited our school in the spring. He was joined by artist and Calgary resident Elizabeth Buller Page (member of Treaty 6 Mistawasis Nehiyawak of Saskatchewan) and rising country music star Mat Cardinal (Big Stone Cree Nation, Desmarais, AB) to share art, music, stories and video. We also heard from former NHL player, Bryan Trottier, best-selling author, seven-time Stanley Cup winner and recognized as the most decorated Indigenous athlete in all of sports history. His message was about giving your best effort in everything that you do.

We also thank our Parent Society for a lovely end-of-year staff luncheon. This allowed us to say thank you and farewell to some of our staff members who will not be at Elbow Park School next year: Miss Karly (literacy, art, PE), Ms. Hunter (Gr.3-4), Mr. Scullion (PE), Ms. Kunerth (supply teacher), and two of our lunch supervisors: Miss Alaire and Miss Susie. We thank them for their time and dedication and success in their new roles next year. We do anticipate the return of Mr. Messer from his leave of absence for next school year.