As part of DVSS’s Canada 150 celebration, keynote speaker Walter McDonald Whitebear spoke to a full gymnasium about cultural diversity and leadership.
Students in the connections options course were challenged to go on a week long connections trip to Kamp Kiwanis and listen to different keynote speakers, participate in leadership activities and group discussions alongside 70 other members.
“It’s students from all these different schools across Alberta so each group will have different students so we get to meet each other and we discuss things like diversity,” said Arland Zatania, one of the spearheads for the celebration.
“It was a pretty diverse crowd too so there was a couple schools like big city schools, little town schools, like a pretty diverse group of people,” added Max Gruner.
Once they come back, they must do some work to broaden other student’s horizons.
Max Gruner and Arland Zatania were the driving forces behind Whitebear’s visit to the school as they had heard him speak during the trip.
Another project the class is working on is a heart outline that will be filled with student’s thumbprints in the near future.
“One of the speakers said that each person is like a thumbprint so we wanted to take that idea and make each student take their thumbprint and put it in an anatomically correct heart,” said Zatania.
So far, the boys are enjoying the course and are happy to learn how to pursue positive change.
“It gives you opportunity to make changes in your school so all-in-all I’d recommend it to anybody I know,” said Gruner.
Along with the presentation and performance by Whitebear, students were able to get into the sunshine and try out the blow-up obstacle courses or line up for the food truck.
