Ralston School Celebrates their Diversity and Military Connections

April is Month of the Military Child where the children of parents who serve are recognized for their sacrifices. Military children face unique challenges and must learn to be adaptable to living in various places, where they attend different schools and must make new friends. A move of this magnitude can affect learning and cause the child to fall behind in schoolwork, particularly when transitioning between countries that follow different curriculums.

Ralston School is facing challenges of its own as the British Army continues to reduce its presence in CFB Suffield. “We started off the year with about 79 students, by the end of the year we are expecting to be around 59 students, so we’ve lost 20 students over the year, and we are supposed to be down to 50 by the time the next school year comes around,” explained Principal Stacey Nunweiler, who added that 75% of the student population are military children.

As the school is located on a military base, April is an important event for the community. On Monday, April 29, the entire school got together with the MFRC (Military Family Resource Centre) and Kiddie Care, the daycare on the base, for a hotdog lunch. “Most of us are wearing our teal shirts,” stated Nunweiler. “They want to do a big group picture at the end just to show we are supporting military children. This is a unique event for Ralston School and is a Canadian military celebration, but the British here have adopted it as well.”

Lara and Sienna are in Grade 1 and are having an awesome year. They’ve learnt about animals this year and particularly enjoyed Earth Day when they did a cleanup around the school. “I’m a bit Canada and a bit UK,” explained Sienna. “I did the very first class (Kindergarten) here all the way to Grade 1, so I picked up everything they taught me,” added Lara.

Both said it was great being a military child and felt April was an important month and thought ending the month with a hotdog lunch was super-duper awesome. The best thing about Ralston School is the learning. “It’s kinda of really fun when you are learning something you are interested in,” said Sienna who added, when asked what else she would like to learn, “I’m not sure, I think I’ve learned everything I’m interested in.”

Three Grade 2 students sat down to chat, Aisha, Nkemdi, and Peyton. Science experiments, particularly when they were working with robotics and made machines that moved, seemed to be the most memorable part of their academic year. Pink was mentioned as a favourite colour amongst the group, as well as looking forward to the hotdog lunch. All three have lived in the UK and Canada and said the best thing about Ralston School was learning.

Ousman is in Grade 4 and attended Ralston School before returning to the UK for a couple of years and is now back. Overall, he’s been at the school for three years. He enjoys “playing outside and math, numbers and multiplication and stuff like that. I’ve been to Mexico once, it was kind of nice, it was hot.” He felt Month of the Military Child was important as it helped him and other military children to feel special.

By Samantha Johnson, Prairie Rose Public Schools Content Writer