Students gear up for exchange program
Derek Neary
Northern News Services
Fort Simpson (Feb 16/01) - Students learning about each other through the mail and the Internet will soon have a chance to meet face-to-face.
The Kanata class at Thomas Simpson school will be involved in an exchange program with students from Pioneer school in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta.
Sponsored by the Government of Canada through the YMCA, the Alberta students are expected to arrive in late April.
Twenty to 30 TSS students from grades 7-9 will, in turn, spend a week in Rocky Mountain House later in May.
"Kanata" is derived from the Iroquoian word for "our community."
The Kanata class, offered every second day, focuses on Internet-related activities, such as posting resumes on-line.
"All the students across Canada can read the resumes. You can meet people from New Brunswick, B.C., Ontario, wherever they're on this program," said Harold Prime, who teaches the Kanata class.
Genealogy, or family trees, is also posted on Web sites.
"It's a lot of computer time. That's why a lot of kids like it," said Prime.
Courtney Squirrel, a Grade 9 student, has enrolled in the course three times.
"It's fun... I get to meet people over the computer from different regions and different backgrounds," she said, adding that she has been corresponding with students from Calgary, Moose Jaw and the Yukon.
"I can interact with them. Even though we're different we have the same interest in sports and different things to do."
The students have already sent wampum boxes to their "sister" school in Rocky Mountain House.
They shipped items that included maps, letters, photographs and videos of the school and the community.
"It's trying to introduce southern students to native cultures in the North (and vice-versa)," Prime said.
Last week, the TSS students received their wampum boxes from Rocky Mountain House, a community of 6,000 people, which is nearly equi-distant from Edmonton and Calgary, located west of both major cities. Included was a video introducing TSS students to Pioneer school.
"They had a big library," Tyra Moses said of the video. "It looked like four times the size of our school."
Classmate Amanda Ocko added that she's looking forward to the exchange to meet new people.
