Babu the Three-Legged Dog
Lisa Howell
Pierre Elliott Trudeau Elementary School
Students in Ms. Howell’s class collaborated with a local author to publish a book about a dog named "Babu", who lost a front leg in a car accident. The vision for the project was to write stories about Babu's courage, perseverance and ability to live a completely normal, satisfying life with one less leg. The aim of the project was to connect students to the illustration and publishing process, work with an author from the community and to distribute the book to local schools and community organizations to promote awareness of the "normalcy" of life with a disability.
The students took a trip to visit the farm that the story is set on; students were able to meet the characters in the book, take in the setting and take photographs and begin sketches. The students continued to work on a number of drafts, develop the illustrations, record songs and finally publishing and distributing the book. The project was embedded into English, Ethics and Religious Culture and Arts Education
Students became a part of the book production process, which was a huge success. The classroom looked like an illustration studio, with drafts and text and photos everywhere.
Ms. Howell reflected that “Community Based Service Learning is the way to engage all students. I learned that CBSL projects make the curriculum come alive. When the Quebec Education Program (QEP) talks of kids "identifying" as authors, this project did more than that: they were part of the entire process of book creation”.
You can visit the Babu website
here
You can access
blurb, the site used to publish the book
here
I highly recommend visiting Lisa Howell's class website
here
Read more about the process of making of the book
here
“Involvement in PoH has led to an increased sense of belonging and comfort level in the school/CLC in general for our aboriginal students and families. This has been reflected in CLC events such as Community Sports Nights where aboriginal family involvement has increased dramatically in the past three months. It was also apparent when we hosted our friends from Fort Albany Cree Nation and a number of our native families joined in our potluck celebration and basketball games!”
~Dermot Guinnane, CLC CoordinatorThis school has one class in particular that has been highly productive with social justice actions, including creating a book called “Kids Have Power”. Having a teacher that supports community engaged pedagogy has certainly helped them to receive an award from the Canadian Coalition for the Right of Children, for Aboriginal focused initiatives at the Have a Heart Rally at Parliament Hill in Feb 2013. These inspired students created their own final art project:
“We decided to create our POH masterpiece with our very own Aboriginal student artists. We met with a group of professional artists and held a meeting with the First Nations kids to brainstorm ideas for an installation. It was at this meeting that the idea for the teepee was born. The students said it would represent ‘ bringing children back to their roots’, ‘back to their homes’.”
