Local Schools Teaching Respect And Celebrating Diversity

Located in the north east sector of Saint-Laurent, Cedarcrest School has exactly 200 students enrolled. Slightly less than half are anglophones and three are francophones while the rest come from a variety of cultures around the world.

They are largely south Asian (Indian, Tamil from Sri Lanka, Bengali and Punjabi), over a dozen Arab, with the other origins including Chinese, Greek, Italian, and Armenian. Most come from Saint-Laurent.

"Our basic philosophy is 'Cedarcrest Cares'," declared principal Beverley Townsend, now into her fourth year at the elementary school. "It's a school that's very inclusive of students from any culture, intellect, and socio-economic need."

Promoting multi-culturalism is simply a way of life at the school. "It's something that we just do daily in all our classes. It's reinforced just in how we teach and how we lead," she said.

Its basic focus is communication - meaning respect and understanding for each other. This year's theme is "Living in Harmony" that can only be achieved if the children have learned to communicate, Townsend explained.

Teachers often take their charges on field-trips to museums and science centres, among other places, to learn about Canadian and Quebec cultures. Holiday and year-end concerts are ways to learn about the host cultures and plays are also presented to teach the schoolchildren about other cultures.

With an Egyptian teacher on staff, students learned traditional dances from that country and even performed them for a school-board fundraiser. This year, Townsend hopes to have former students from south Asia come back and show off some of their traditional dances.

With kids being kids sometimes, she admitted that they sometimes use racial slurs against a different cultural group. However, when it does happen, school officials deal quickly and directly with it, she said.

"We're a very open, welcoming school," said vice-principal Harry Weiner, who has been at the school since its inception in 1992 and at Sir Winston Churchill, its predecessor, since 1980. "In all that time, I'm amazed at how well that we all get along. We don't have one group versus another here."

The school's size has much to do with that respectful, peaceful situation, asserted principal Dan Sipos. In a small school, a few members of a cultural group can feel separated from the larger group. However, at a large school such as LaurenHill, there are larger groups of minorities where individuals can all find each other and can all fit in.

And with its artistic classes - music, drama, dance - students there build many bridges and bonds with those of other cultures by studying and often working together for four or five years. Each spring, that work results in big drama and musical shows when hundreds of students from Grades 7 to 11 wait behind the stage before they can show off their talents

When it comes to requests from specific groups of students based on their cultural or religious needs, the school tries to accommodate them. LaurenHill Academy was probably the first English high school to give Muslim students a prayer room, Sipos said.

One of the school's special activities takes place during Hanukkah when a Jewish youth group comes and brings potato latkes and other delights for a lunch-time discussion that's open to everybody. "Food breaks down a lot of barriers, especially for teenagers." The Secondary IV enriched group puts on an international dinner every spring where every student prepares food and performs for their parents.

"There's a feeling from the kids that this school has always welcomed them and they feel comfortable. It builds a common respect."