CSB wins award for innovative summer reading camps
The Cree School Board has been awarded the college’s prestigious Fitzpatrick Award for the summer literacy camps it established in Eeyou Istchee five years ago in partnership with Frontier College.
CSB School Operations Director Kim Quinn is deeply honoured by the award, as winners in recent years have included groups like Scholastic Canada and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation.
“We got this award in recognition for outstanding services in the mission of literacy for all and furthering literacy in all our communities,” explained Quinn. “Not only do our camps reach over 600 young Crees each summer, we have involved more parents in promoting family literacy, and we have incorporated Cree cultural language elements into the camp experience.”
A graduate of McGill and Harvard universities, Quinn has dedicated her career to bringing the children of Eeyou Istchee up to grade level in terms of literacy and to give them literacy material by ensuring that there is a guaranteed and viable curriculum and stronger resources in the grade level for literacy.
The camps were created as a means of preventing summer reading loss when children are out of the classroom for two months. During their vacation, some students never touch a book, leading to a loss of knowledge by the time school starts in September.
According to Quinn, the camps have grown according to the culture and needs of each community.
“What I love about these camps is that they keep getting more popular and our communities have connected with them and made them their own. Each camp is the different, because we have responded to the needs of each community. Though they all promote the same important elements, they have their own unique identity,” said Quinn.
This year, the camps hired 20 Cree counsellors out of a total of 44, for the first time making it possible to have Cree counsellors in every community. The year’s attendance reached 646 and those children took home a total of 2178 books at the end of the camp to their own home libraries.
Campers spent an average of 68 minutes a day reading and an average of 98 minutes of outdoor play doing physical activities. When polled at the end of the summer, practically every parent said that they would recommend the experience to other families.
Quinn stated that while the CSB had a vision of setting up reading camps in all the communities, none of it would have been possible without Frontier College staff and their ability to set up camps on such a large scale. Quinn thanked them profusely for their effort, knowledge and expertise.
“I commend them because they made this possible for us. When we began we wanted to start big, it was a huge endeavour to do nine camps in nine different communities. We didn’t want to do a handful of communities because we wanted to be able to give equal resources to all of our communities so that they could have access to something that very special,” said Quinn.