As the new school year beckons, the incoming Grade 6 students at St. John XXIII Catholic School in Oshawa, Ont., are getting set to take the reins of the class's newly founded charitable e-commerce website. 

The website, www.gradesixflyingfishart.com, was the product of last year’s sixth-grade students and their teacher Manfred von Vulte, who collectively began selling artwork made by each student with proceeds going to support Indigenous disability programs and services across the country. 

Von Vulte explained that although the concept had been toyed with in other schools throughout the Durham Catholic District School Board over the last two years, it wasn’t until the start of last year’s curriculum that everything came together. 

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“There is a real focus in Ontario now with financial literacy in mathematics and also a genuine attention to quality in where we, as teachers, try cross-curricular applications and the website was intended to do that. It certainly hits aspects of religion, visual arts, social studies, mathematics and financial literacy all in one,” he said. 

Throughout the school year, students learned about the various components of visual arts through practical techniques such as shading, lighting and perspective, but also about certain historical artists from Canada’s Group of Seven all the way through European influence such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. 

Each student crafted custom artwork for the class throughout the year while simultaneously learning how to operate the website that displayed each piece. They also worked on identifying a specific cause to support. In the end, the Indigenous Disability Canada/British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society (IDC/BCANDS) was chosen, as its mission is one the class identifies with in more ways than one. 

“I am a lower left leg amputee myself and we also do a lot of Indigenous education at the Durham Catholic District School Board. I was a supporter of the charity BCANDS, who take care of Indigenous people across the country who need a prosthesis. We chose them not only because of the connection to my disability but also because several students in the class have Indigenous heritage themselves,” von Vulte explained. 

The Grade Six Flying Fish Art Initiative managed to sell 40 distinct paintings by late June to accumulate over $400 to be donated to their selected charity, an impressive feat for the student-led program that only began listing the handmade artwork for sale in March. 

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“I thought that it was really important to be able to give back and also to help people who are not able to afford prosthetics. The whole class contributed to the artwork and they all put their talents and their background into it which I think made it really special,” said Jamilee Lynch, a student from last year’s Grade 6 class. 

For Lynch, the teamwork was a special aspect of the project, a sentiment shared by her teacher, who attributes the success of the website to the constant support of principal Kate Remiz as well as each student’s ability to share their unique talents with one another.  

Apart from that, he also credits Catholic social teachings and the idea of faith in action as some of the most important takeaways from last year’s inaugural launch. 

“Faith through good works is a true virtue and we can ground it to what the faith says. Pope John XXIII, who was the namesake of the school, said ‘Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.’ I like doing that with the students,” von Vulte said.

“It feels like you are giving them the agency that all is not lost, that they can help out their little corner of the world and that all that charity and generosity cost them is just an effort. You can inspire the students to practice faith by good works and that puts them in touch with the faith tangibly,” he continued. 

The class is expected to relaunch the e-commerce website once the new school year gets underway and while the pioneering students at St. John XXIII will be moving on, a handful have already provided ideas on how they would like to see the initiative continue to grow through its second year.  

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“We thought it was cool that we had someone from Alberta purchase art from our website but we would like to see it go even further and have more people from other places be able to purchase as our website grows bigger,” Lynch said. 

“There is a sense among the students that are coming into the class that they want it to be a year-long initiative where we keep changing the inventory and maybe one day spreading it to other schools. I could see other grades contributing their work, but we will have to see, maybe down the road we can identify other areas where we can help out in Durham Region,” von Vulte said.