Students have been visiting Churchill Community High School's cabin this week. (Facebook/Churchill Community High School)

By Derek Cornet

Land-based education

Churchill students snowshoe to remote cabin for land-based education

Mar 6, 2019 | 5:00 PM

Students at Churchill Community High School in La Ronge are being educated on subjects they can’t learn in any classroom.

Earlier this week, Grade 7 students were the first group from the school to journey out to a remote cabin about 20 kilometers north of La Ronge. The property was gifted to Churchill back in 1998 by Charles Hunt and is located about six kilometers from a spot halfway along the road to Nemeiben Lake. In all, 59 students snowshoed to the location this week with Grade 8 and 9 students heading there some time this month.

“We used to do it a lot in the early 2000s and now we’re starting up again particularly this year,” said Churchill Vice-Principal Kristianna Merasty. “It’s a one-room cabin. There’s a stove in it and sleeping quarters, cupboards and a table. It’s up on a rock cliff, so it overlooks the lake a bit.”

The Grade 7 girls travelled to the cabin Monday and muscled through the snow to create a path to the structure. Merasty added it involved snowshoeing over Midway Lake, then portaging to a currently unnamed lake where the cabin is located. When they arrived, the girls gathered for a hotdog roast before returning back to the van. The Grade 7 boys, however, had a bit more time Tuesday and were able to be there longer.

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Merasty also stated through some initiatives at the school, teachers are trying to encompass more land-based education into the curriculum . By doing so, northern and Indigenous students are able to demonstrate some of the skills they already know to their peers.

An aerial view of the cabin. (Facebook/Churchill Community High School)

“It’s a great gift for us to have that asset [for students],” Merasty said. “We’re able to access their prior knowledge they’ve gained from families and we’ve been able to have them shine in areas of the classroom. It’s really important for their confidence and belief in themselves.”

Trips to the cabin are also meant to strengthen relationships between teachers and students, which was the case with Grade 7 teacher Alyssa Gale who walked over a frozen lake for the first time. She’s originally from southern Ontario and joined the staff at Churchill back in September. Gale said after the students returned from the cabin, they had a newfound sense of pride because they were all able to complete to 12-kilometer round-trip.

“It was a really neat experience to be able to walk across and be with the students,” she said. “We’d fall in the snow once-in-a-while and help each other up.”

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno