Pond's Got Talent!

We have had so many cool lessons and awesome experiences since our last blog post! Last week we taught about drug use, puberty, healthy relationships and safe sex.Some highlights of our week of teaching are:

• Teaching the students recovery position: having the kids practice putting each other in the recovery position was highly educational as well as full of funny moments.
• “Tobacco has no place here campaign”: there is a huge campaign in Nunavut right now that strives to put a face to the harm caused by tobacco products. Using resources from this campaign we were able to show the students of Pond Inlet how smoking has negatively affected people in their community, and how older students and role models are trying to quit smoking. We also showed them posters from their school and the students were shocked by how many dangerous chemicals are found in cigarettes!
• Teaching puberty in general: we had a great time teaching puberty this week, the kids were so attentive, quiet, and curious! We received so many great questions and the students were more focused than ever.
• Healthy Relationships and Safe Sex: The students helped us identify red flags in unhealthy relationships and learned a lot about being sexually responsible.

We also had some amazing opportunities after school and within the community last week! We started a project with the high school students in which they were able to draw information from all of our lessons and create their own lesson poster boards that would be presented to the community at the flea market. The focus topics of the poster boards were nutrition, physical fitness, hygiene, and smoking. Many community members had the opportunity to see all of their work displayed at the flea market.We also were able to see some of the talents our students have this week during the talent show on Wednesday. There was a wide variety of talents displayed that night, including video game skills, rapping, throat singing, and fiddle and guitar playing! More talents were on display during the plays on Friday. There was “Little Red Riding Hood” (in Inuktitut) and “The Gingerbread Man”.  The set designs were spectacular!Other huge highlights of the week were “Boys Night” (apparently the boys had a great time watching funny movies, eating popcorn and playing tons of sports) and the soccer BBQ on Friday night! The nursing station was running a Soccer BBQ event and we got to help out by flipping burgers and joining the community in a crazy fun game of snow soccer.(Boys Night)Today we had our last official teaching lesson of the year! Yesterday We taught leadership lessons to the students and had them untangle themselves from the human knot (the record time for the day was 25 seconds) and after school we had gym mayhem and bracelet making (Jon also put on a magic show for a select crowd). Today we talked to the students about goal setting and career options that are possible in the North. There are so many awesome post-secondary options for the students and most of them seemed very interested in taking some of these programs! We ended the night off with move night (School of Rock!).Tomorrow we will be starting a new chapter in our teaching schedule, and we will be helping with CTS (career technology services) sessions in the junior high.  We will be teaching healthy living, wellness, stress management techniques, and doing yoga! We are so sad our teaching time is over but we are very excited to join in with all the wonderful activities planned for the rest of the school year (robot making, science activities, jewelry making, hair and make-up course, and health and wellness lessons to name a few!)This week has been so amazing and we can’t wait to see what our last weeks have in store!