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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A group of Yellowknife students fulfilled a rebellious childhood fantasy last week and buried their principal - with food.

It was an added incentive for students to participate in this year's food drive at Range Lake North School.

"I came out with oatmeal on my pants," principal Michelle Krause said of her experience under a pile of non-perishable items.

"It was fun, and it was fun for the kids to do it. They were very careful - they put the soft things on top of me like the packages of cereal and toilet paper."

Classes competed against one another to win one of two pizza parties for their class. Points were given for each item donated - so, for something like a case of soup, one point was given for each individual can. Ultimately, the school collected between 4,500 and 5,000 items.

Half of the items will be donated to the Salvation Army and the rest will be given to Yellowknife's women's shelter, the Alison McIntyre House.

The winner for the school's main floor - preschool to Grade 3 - was Christeen Hanuschuk's Grade 2 class with 1,113 points. The winner for the second floor - Grade 4 to Grade 8 students - was Jodi Keats's Grade 7 class with 1,084 points.

Of the 17 classes which participated, three scored more than 1,000 points.

Steve Poitras' Grade 6 class took the lead in organizing the food drive, a job they embraced. Different teams completed different tasks, such as making posters and publishing their a newspaper filled with updates on events surrounding the drive, which they distributed around the school.

The class gave a resounding "Yes" when Poitras asked if they found social services more interesting while doing this project than when reading about it in books.

The class took over halfway into the drive, which started on Feb. 1 and collected items up until the March break.

"Bury the Principal is Range Lake North's version of an annual food drive," said Krause.

"Oftentimes, the schools will do a food drive around Christmas time, and we thought ... we would do it a little bit after Christmas around February or March when maybe the food banks are running a little low on food."

Students in Poitras' Grade 6 class told Yellowknifer they learned many things during this social studies project. They said that some of the main things they learned include the importance of community service; the importance and challenges of teamwork; time management skills; poverty and hunger issues, since most of these students are unaffected by these; and how to write professional letters to businesses asking for support (out of all the businesses students wrote to, only Shoppers Drug Mart donated items).

"I learned that if you have posters up, you can get more food," said Gabe Clark, a student in Poitras' class. "If you didn't have food for a week, you could starve and die."

"I learned that if the food is going to a good cause, people will be willing to donate," said 11-year-old Katie Cameron.

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