THUNDER BAY -- High school students got the opportunity to embrace the experiences of different groups of people.
The living library, which was hosted at Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate and Vocational Institute, saw Grade 10 students rotate through stations led by speakers belonging to stereotyped or marginalized groups.
Noel Jones, the school board's experiential learning teacher, said the idea was the creation of school vice-principal Ryan McDonnell.
“It gives them the opportunity to check out stories from different people in the community,” Jones said. “Much like you would check out a library book, to check out a person from the community and hear their story.”
Speakers included members of the Indigenous and Muslim communities, as well as seniors and LGBTQ individuals.
“The people telling the stories today represent the demographic of our schools,” Jones said. “We’re becoming much more diverse, we have students from all over the world and they all have stories.”
Robyn Sulkko, a first-year political science undergraduate, was the board's student trustee last year. She visited Churchill to talk about her upbringing in a low-income family.
“I had financial struggles growing up, but the way I grew up wasn’t terrible or sad, or I never had any fun,” she said.
Sulkko encouraged students to have an open mind about the negative connotations associated with low-income people, and other marginalized communities.
“You don’t know people’s experiences by seeing the way they dress, or the way they carry themselves, or those kinds of things,” she said.
Grade 12 student Brandi Hale only has a few weeks left at Churchill but after leading a group of students through the various stations she said she’s grateful she had the opportunity.
“I think it’s so important to learn about these experiences,” “We all experience diversity in our own different ways, but I think learning how these people view life is so important especially in Thunder Bay.”
