For Deline students and mentors, Pink Shirt Day is anchored in Dene law and WITS lessons

Pink is front and center at Ehtseo Ayha School in Deline this week, but the emphasis is not only on shirts. Students and staff are centering the Dene law of respect and month-by-month teachings so that young people and mentors learn practical skills for handling conflict. That audience — students, mentors and families in the community — is being asked to take home both a cultural practice and a concrete set of steps for managing peer problems.

Why Deline’s approach matters to students and mentors on Pink Shirt Day

Principal Jason Dayman, who has led the school for five years, frames the work as skill-building: staff are focused on "giving the kids the skills to be able to deal with conflict on their own, teaching them the skills they need to have to be successful in society. " The school pairs those everyday skills with monthly lessons drawn from Dene laws; the combination aims to make respect and belonging practical rather than abstract for students.

How the classroom teaching and ceremonies are organized

Each month the school examines a different Dene law and recognizes one student who exemplifies those values. That student is awarded a feather as a tangible marker of the teaching. Staff and mentors treat those teachings as integral to how they operate in the school and within the wider community.

WITS: the anti-bullying steps taught alongside cultural instruction

Dayman praised the school’s anti-bullying programming, known as WITS. The program teaches students to:

• Walk away
• Ignore inappropriate behaviour
• Talk the situation out with peers
• Seek help if all else fails

The WITS name is used as a mnemonic — the school says it helps youth remain calm and think through a difficult situation. Dayman also stresses that students are not expected to handle repeated bullying alone: he clarifies that bullying is repeated behaviour, and when students have tried their WITS they have an opportunity to talk to an adult.

• Pink Shirt Day is recognized across Canada on Feb. 25; this year’s theme is ‘Sprinkle Kindness. ’
• Ehtseo Ayha School emphasizes the Dene law of being respectful to everyone around you.
• Monthly Dene-law lessons culminate in a feather award for one student each month.
• WITS frames immediate student responses and the path to adult intervention for repeated behaviour.

Event context and an origin anecdote woven into the day

Dayman reminds students not to use the term bullying lightly — he links that label specifically to repeated behaviour and to the school’s pathway for seeking help. The broader Pink Shirt Day observance and its origins are also part of the narrative the school shares: after a new student was bullied for wearing a pink shirt, a group of Grade 9 boys in Nova Scotia organized a protest and distributed pink shirts to all the boys in the school.

Publication notes and file details

This story was filed by Kody Ferron under the Local Journalism Initiative and published at 4: 01 pm on Tuesday, February 24, 2026. The article file includes a browser notice about an outdated browser message, a photo credited as courtesy of Adobe Stock, and an image credited to a Pink Shirt Day organization (name redacted in this edition). Two additional entries in the file were titled "Just a moment... " with no body text; one is linked to a university item and the other to a regional item (names redacted).

Here’s the part that matters: the combination of cultural teaching and a simple response framework shifts the conversation from a single-day gesture to everyday conduct. What’s easy to miss is how the feather recognition makes monthly values visible in a way that can be carried into community life.

The real question now is whether the paired approach — Dene law lessons plus WITS steps — changes how students respond the next time they face repeated peer problems. Recent coverage in the file highlights classroom practice and the Feb. 25 observance labeled ‘Sprinkle Kindness, ’ but additional outcome details are unclear in the provided context.

Writer note: the presentation here preserves the report’s details while omitting outlet names from the original file as required for this edition.