“Language is life” and always choose water are a few of the messages Erin Public School students learned from speaker Loretta Penny at this year’s Erinspiration week.
On April 9, students at the school heard from Penny, who has been making presentations at the school for almost two decades about indigenous peoples from around the world and their survival techniques.
“Where sharing is not an option, it’s an obligation,” she began her presentation. “And where the best weapon is not your knife but your knowledge.”
Penny used her voice and photos to bring the students with her through her trip to Turkana, Africa, deviating to a different place and time when necessary to further explain the lesson. She went through various survival techniques, from using dung as cooking fuel and foraging water from a certain species of frog.
At the end of her presentation students were given the opportunity to touch and feel items she collected to show how people throughout the world use the materials around them to survive (for example, a purse made out of chopsticks and another made out of coconut).
Erinspiration is in its third year and was started by Grade 6 teacher Cathy Dykstra and school principal Peter Leblanc to boost school morale.
“The idea was that we’d pick different guest speakers that would inspire us in different ways, the staff and the students,” Dykstra explained.
One of the speakers the first year was Chris Bard, former captain of the Snow Birds.
“He talked about goal setting, he talked about the journey that he went through [in] his career,” she said.
The entire cost the first year was just $87.
“It was neat to see how even the kindergartens could make connections,” she said. “By having so many assemblies in one week then the kids are like ‘oh we just heard about that in yesterday’s assembly… and we get it’ and they make connections in different ways than the older kids.”
This year the Water Rockers and the school council sponsored the event, which also included: Canadian ice hockey Olympian Becky Kellar, Simon Woodside from Engineers Without Borders, Gerry Croxall from Nature Force and author and artist Janet Wilson from Eden Mills.
“We try as much as possible to bring assemblies that would be appropriate right from kindergarten to Grade 8,” Dykstra said. “We try to switch it up, we want it to be fun for the whole school … it’s a neat community-building, inspiring thing that hopefully carries into other things.”
