Estevan’s Hillcrest Elementary School participated in Orange Shirt Day on Sept. 28.
The nationwide event serves to promote awareness to the history of residential schools in Canada, and shares the message of no child being left behind.
Kristy Johnson, Grade 7 and Grade 8 homeroom teacher at Hillcrest Elementary School, said the importance of the event is for awareness and education as well as treaty education.
“We started with education in our own classrooms about treaties in Canada’s history, and about the residential school experiences in particular,” said Johnson.
“We then had our students going to different classrooms throughout the school to do activities with other, younger students. We watched some videos, and today we are gathering as a whole school to do an assembly and then splitting into groups to trace our hands on orange construction paper, with the message of how can we make people feel like they matter.”
The student’s gathered for a group photo shortly after the assembly, all proudly wearing their orange shirts.
Next week’s Mercury will have more on the story.
