Walking into Mrs. General’s classroom is like walking into a soothing warm hug. Soft lighting, an inviting herbal-infused aroma, widely spaced desks facing each other, all set against a backdrop of a quietly babbling brook through a dense, lush forest on the large projector screen at the front of the room set the stage for a day of learning.
If there was ever a school or classroom environment conducive to holistic learning, Six Nations Polytechnic Secondary School in Brantford is it. SNPSS, formerly known as the STEAM Academy, is a private secondary school on Elgin Street in Brantford that houses both rural and off-reserve Indigenous students, as well as non-Indigenous students, in an environment far different than most secondary schools in the province.
Both the physical and psychological environment of the school are inspired by Haudenosaunee teachings to provide a holistic educational offering for students where praise and positivity replace punishment and obedience. Teachers speak with students and include them to be active participants in their learning. Student-created artwork is everywhere. Student input is welcomed. Teachers have flexibility to add more inspiring content and methods to delivering curricula.
Suzie Miller, social counsellor at SNPSS, is doing everything she can to promote positivity, cultural teachings and the emotional well-being of the students who attend the school. Miller, a former mental health worker and elementary teacher at Emily C. General school, recently came up with an ingenious positivity initiative using the teachings of the Two Row Wampum in a visual and practical way. She got a hold of a gigantic, digitized version of the Two Row Wampum belt and hung it on the wall along one of the school’s hallways with hundreds of white spaces on the plastic, banner-like wampum belt for students, teachers and staff to write positive messages on it as they walk by.
“We’re reminding people how to live with peace, respect and friendship,” said Mrs. Miller. A container with markers is available to anyone walking by to write messages on the empty wampum spaces. Some of the messages written on it combine youthful slang with positive messaging: “be yourself”, “you are loved”, “be nice to your peers”, and “you’re so lit.”
“This is what we want to portray because this is who we are,” said Mrs. Miller. “We are to be walking in this Two Row fashion. We made this treaty and it’s still alive today and we need to teach people about it and we need to be living it.”
Mrs. General, one of the teachers at SNPSS, is living that example in her classroom every day. She combines learning and self-empowerment with her students. One of her innovative teaching projects is a gigantic historical timeline on the wall outside her classroom, also displayed in the image of the Two Row Wampum. The historical timeline runs the spectrum from the time of the Peacemaker to the present-day and all the colonial history that went along with it during that time, here on Turtle Island and abroad.
Students cut out articles and documents and pasted them alongside all of the historical events along the gigantic Two Row Wampum on the wall outside Mrs. General’s classroom, along with how those historical events impacted Indigenous people. For example, joining the army to fight in any of the world wars resulted in disenfranchisement for Indigenous people.
“It’s our way of going through history,” said Mrs. General. She asked the students to put up what they wanted to include in history and what they wanted to talk about. The project also helped the students understand how Indigenous people identified with the struggles of other minorities or marginalized people throughout history, such as the Holocaust, Japanese Internment Camps, the Chinese Head Tax, and Black Lives Matter, to name a few.
“It was such a cool project – the lessons we took from that,” said Mrs. General. Mrs. General teaches history, Indigenous governance, civics and careers for grades 10 and 12. “I did a whole lesson on Black Lives Matter and how it’s connected to Indigenous Solidarity.” Mrs. General says they sing in class, they braid cornhusks, and they do pottery, among other activities. “It doesn’t always have to be about books.”
Mrs. Miller says all kids have a right to be taught this way. “We’re actually living it, in this fashion.” Mrs. General encourages her students to share their voices. “Your voice is so important. I don’t know of any other school that operates this way.” Mrs. Miller added, “we’re holistic. We’re inviting them to participate in their education.”
Another example of her holistic teaching style was when the students did an exercise honouring missing and murdered indigenous women. The male students were fully involved in helping the female students make red dresses, which have become a symbol for the now-expanded cause of missing and murdered Indigenous women, boys, men and two-spirit people. About 100 students attend SNPSS.
