AT AME WE VALUE:
Our Mission:
Providing students with the highest quality academic, athletic, artistic & social experiences which promote the development of the whole child, foster an appreciation of learning, and prepare our students for the future.
Embracing Our Indigenous Learners & Their Culture:
Our Indigenous students are encouraged to share their culture with pride, and everyone in our community is encouraged to develop their own personalized 'Land Acknowledgement' to honour the fact that we live, work and play on the traditional, unceded territory of the Okanagan Syilx People.
As a staff we are working to wards incorporating the First Peoples Principles of Learning into our classroom curriculum, as it works beautifully with our new Redesigned Curriculum and the OECD 7 Principles of Learning. The First Peoples Principles of Learning states:
- Learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits and the ancestors
- Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place)
- Learning involves recognizing the consequences of ones actions
- Learning involves generational roles and responsibilities
- Learning recognizes the role of indigenous knowledge
- Learning is embedded in memory, history and story
- Learning involves patience and time
- Learning requires exploration of one's identity
- Learning involves recognizing that some knowledge is sacred and only shared with permission and/or in certain situations
7 Sacred Teachings
At AME we are the Timber Wolves! From the 7 Sacred Teachings we have learned that the wolf represents the character trait of Humility:
Humility: Humility is to know yourself as a sacred part of the Creation.
Symbolized by the wolf, humility is about being humble and not arrogant. The expression of this humility is manifested through the consideration of others before ourselves. In this way, the Wolf became the teacher of this lesson. He bows his head in the presence of others out of deference, and once hunted, will not take of the food until it can be shared with the pack. His lack of arrogance and respect for his community is a hard lesson, but integral in the Aboriginal way.
The Timber Wolf motto is: "For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack".
At AME we use the 7 Sacred Teachings to help support our work around developing powerful leadership traits in all the members of our school community. These teachings have animals that represent each trait and we will talk about these animals, and each month we highlight a different animal and teaching:
THE SEVEN SACRED TEACHINGS
BEAVER - To cherish knowledge is to know WISDOM;
EAGLE - To know LOVE is to know peace;
BUFFALO - To honor all of the Creation is to have RESPECT;
BEAR - BRAVERY is to face the foe with integrity;
SABE - HONESTY also means “righteousness”, be honest first with yourself – in word and action;
WOLF - HUMILITY is to know yourself as a sacred part of the Creation,
TURTLE - TRUTH is to know all of these things.
These teachings have roots in the Indigenous communities, but they have great meaning for everyone who hears them. We believe that the teachings cannot be used in isolation. You must practice all of them. To practice one without the other would amount to practicing the opposite of that teaching. Therefore, to not love is to be fearful; to not be humble is to be self-centered; to not be honest is to be dishonest; to not be courageous is to be cowardly. Our goal is to integrate these teachings into our daily lives at AME.