Week 4!!

Hello all!!It’s your Sal Pals back and ready to chat about our wild week!In the classes this week, we talked all about smoking and substance abuse. With our younger students, we focused on what goes in a cigarette, activities that we can do instead of smoking, and the idea of peer pressure. We loved hearing all of the fun activities that students liked to do with their friends and family, and they just keep impressing us with their artistic talent!With our older students, we looked at the health consequences of long-term smoking and the economic factor of the habit. It was so fun to hear what students would do with the $5000 that it costs to buy cigarettes for a year; we got everything from travel the world, to save for a ski-doo, to buying 3000 bags of chips (#health). We also got to teach substance abuse in some of our classes and had some really great conversations with our students about how drugs affect our bodies. One of our favourite parts of the lesson was getting to teach our students the recovery position as a way to help a friend who may be intoxicated. All our students were super focused for that and we were really proud of how well they paid attention to how to help a friend.While we had a jam-packed week of teaching, we also got the chance to do some fun activities outside the classroom. On Sunday afternoon, we went cross country skiing with some of the other teachers. We got to go out onto the frozen bay (which is part of the Arctic Ocean!!), it was so beautiful to see Salluit from the water, and we were both completely in awe of how beautiful our surroundings were (the beauty also distracted us from how much cardio cross country skiing requires, rip our muscles).To further our cardio (help) we also got the chance to play soccer after school in the gym which was so much fun, despite the realization that we will never be international soccer stars (oh well, such is life).Heroic Health moment:As we enter into our lessons on emotions and coping strategies, we decided to take a break from lesson planning to put a few of our suggestions into action.So, this week’s heroic health moment is all about taking a break and practicing some of our own self-care. We had one awesome painting night (our artistic skills are nowhere near our students), which was such a nice way to unwind at the end of the day. We’ve also really been diving into the adult colouring trend, the calming effects of colouring in flowers are certainly not lost on us!Fabulous Funny moment:While our students are constantly making us smile, nothing makes us happier than hanging out with them outside the classroom around the community. On our most recent trip to the Co-op, we were greeted by a group of our younger students who insisted on completing our shopping with us. In addition to an impromptu lesson on food groups based on the contents of our cart, they taught us a few new clapping games (to which we have FINALLY learned the words). I think we can both agree that it was one of the most fun trips to the grocery store we’ve ever had, and certainly made us smile. A great end to a great week :)This weekend is a long weekend!! So we have a planned hiked for Saturday with some students and will be busy planning our very first girls night on Wednesday afternoon! Stay tuned for a very exiting long weekend blog post early next week.Stay snazzy!Your Sal Pals <3