FTLComm - Red Earth - March 18, 1999
Its been a long difficult struggle this school year of 1998-99, for the students of John William Head Memorial Education Centre at Red Earth Reserve, East of Nipawin. This is Carla The construction project that began in the spring has progressed along with the school closing early to make it possible to get the work done then not openning until October. The students have had to attend night classes to catch up on their courses and as of now on the grade twelves are feeling the pinch toward keeping up with the time line. Each school day is slightly longer then in other communities and though the teachers and students have worked along without a gym, home economics lab, science lab or shop they have made do crammed into four classrooms at one end of the building. But spring is approaching and its time to celebrate a little. This week has been filled with activities and fun as Wednesday morning the students were in class then stopped for lunch at eleven around open fires to cook up some hot dogs. Then after assembly in the afternoon they set out on a scavenger hunt. Thursday the whole school left on buses to go over to Wapati to go skiing. John William Head Memorial Education Centre had always been a high school but with the new renovations it is expanding and since Monday the grade sixes and their teacher have joined them and in time grades four and five will find this their new school making more room in the Elementary school. In the pictures below left we see the students in their new computer lab using their Macintosh 5200s. At the time they were working on their keyboarding skills. I was there to install new equipment in the room and was waiting for the truck with fifteen new computers to arrive. The 5200s have been in storage since June and did suffer some damage but the students are glad to have them back up and running.
Red Earth children are multilingual speaking "N" dialect Cree and in school, English	Here are some of the staff having lunch. On the left is the grade six teacher who just moved this week.
I had my hot dogs with the grade six students and they got me a stick for my wieners and a place by the fire. They were cheerful and I felt right a home with them except to each other they speak Cree so I could not get much of a feel for their conversations. Their teacher told me that they are quite excited this week from moving over to the big school and she is hoping they will be able to settle down soon back to the hard working and well behaved class she is used to. Having seen grade six students all across Western Canada I thought they were remarkably well behaved and we could all wish to have chidlren with such great manners.