Headstart program shows success
Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
Fort Smith (May 07/01) - Educators are beginning to see the positive effects of working with play in students who've come through the Aboriginal Headstart Program.
Headstart is a pre-kindergarten program for aboriginal children between the ages of three and four-years-old. The pre-school is sponsored through grants from Health Canada and Education Culture and Employment to First Nations.
The mandate of the program is to foster the spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical growth of children, with a goal to inspire life-long learning.
Ed Hunter is the teacher supervisor at Nihkanis Headstart in Fort Smith. Now in his second year with the program, Hunter says he loves his job and says the program is really showing rewards.
"When you talk to other teachers, they see a noticeable difference in the children who come from this program," he said. "They can sit for longer periods of time, follow rules and pay attention."
Hunter says the program's success lies in learning through play. The social interaction is the best experience children can gain at an early age.
"You would think that academics is the big thing; learning how to count and all that, but the way I see it they forget all that over the summer break and pick it up again in the fall," he added. "Language development and social interaction stay with them."
"It's a child's job to play," he said. "There is a whole learning process involved in play and we give them lots of opportunity to play."
While the class was packed last year, Hunter says the numbers were a bit disappointing when he knows of children in the community who need the program.
"Enrolment is down a bit this year," he said. "We're sitting at about 24 students, but last year we had a full-house with 34."
The curriculum is flexible, but makes room for plenty of play and interaction with the community.
"We revolve around themes; we do everything from exploring who they are in their community and who they are in their family and move on from there," he said.
The themes follow the events of the calendar with traditional holidays and the group often makes field trips out into the community.
Lots of help from parents eager to help out with driving the kids to activities in and around the community such as last year's culture camp.
"We try to incorporate as much native tradition to the program as we can," Hunter said. "We have a number of local elders who come into the program and tell stories to the children."
"We have one elder who comes in once a week to teach drumming and two days a week, we have someone come in to teach Cree."
The students learn Cree for about half an hour at each lesson, but Hunter fears they might lose all they've learned once they enter the regular school system. While there is a Chipewyan language instructor at JBT Elementary, there is no Cree instruction and headstart could not find a Chipewyan language instructor.
With Fort Smith being home to Aurora College, Hunter says they get students from all over the territory sharing language and culture with the class.
"We have Slavey children, Dogrib children, people from the Eastern Arctic are all living in Fort Smith," he said. "We pull them all in together and they learn from each other."
Nihkanis will hold their graduation on June 15, with the students all decked-out in gold caps and gowns. Hunter says he hopes to see his students together again for their next grad ceremony.
"It's something to see them all standing there together and who knows, maybe in 12 years we'll see them all standing there together again," Hunter said.
