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Longfellow Elementary School celebrates Native American Heritage Week

Posted at 5:22 PM, Sep 21, 2018
and last updated 2018-09-21 20:03:34-04

(GREAT FALLS) Students at Longfellow Elementary School capped off Native American Heritage Week with a jingle dance celebration.

“We have one of the highest percentage of Native American students and it just seemed like a great thing to do to get them to celebrate their heritage,” teacher Jessica Gray said.

Students performed a jingle dance to cap off Native American Heritage Week.
Students performed a jingle dance to cap off Native American Heritage Week.

All week her students incorporated the heritage into different subjects. For example, adding jingles to a dress and having to find the sums and differences of jingles to solve a math problem.

Gray says that it’s important to teach students traditions and way of life of other cultures.

This is Gray’s first year teaching at Longfellow and says she loved being able to hear about her students traditions and hopes to continue talking about it throughout the school year.

“I think it’s important to teach everybody about heritage, everyone’s heritage. Native American heritage is such a big part of American history. We can really learn from the past and we can learn respect and tradition. It’s just a wonderful way to get kids involved in the past and in their families and here at school,” Gray said.

At the celebration, they had a tepee set up and an educator that taught the students some of the history of Native Americans.