Professional Improvement

This week is a spring break of sorts for the kids at Inuksuit School here in Qikiqtarjuaq. It is a week called P.I. or Professional Improvement week and incorporates all teachers. The focus is placed on how you can improve professionally. There is up to $900 that you can apply for to fund your P.I. activity. Some of the teachers have flown to Iqaluit on points (those Areo points sure are handy) and are using their P.I. money to interview other teachers or do some research on their fields. Other teachers have opted to stay in the community and learn from elders in the community. Both my roommate Kathleen and one of the high school teachers have asked elders to show them how to make Kamiks (or mukaluks) in the traditional way. This includes patterning, homemade tanning, chewing the soles, sewing, and all sorts of other traditional methods. For the most part these teachers are set up in the kitchen at school and I like to drop in to "keep an eye on them" as much as possible. The work is facinating and the elders make it look easy...which it is not. Plus they have hot tea and snacks.

For my P.I. activity I decided to build a couple of units for my class and learn some Inuktitut. Unfortuntately, I started my contract at such a point that my P.I. application needed to be submitted immediately, which made out of community work virtually impossible. I decided to create a unit on space since the kids really took to a lunar eclipse demo that I brought in to explain the red moon the other night. I have also decided to build up my ESL resources in the form of a comprehensive unit. It's funny you know, I will find a great work sheet or activity from the middle of one of the books we've been given to use and the kids will tell me that they've already done it. They will then ask me for help with the sheet. As a digression, these kids have little or no retention of skills learned in the classroom. I have grade 4/5 and we're currently doing grade 2 math review because they have forgotten how to regroup (carry the one or borrow from the tens). I broke new ground the other day with my brightest student by introducing the expression of numbers using the multiplication symbol. The other kids shut down if I give them numbers larger than 3 digits to add or subtract.

Back to P.I. ... this time also gives me a chance to spend some time in my classroom taking stock of all of the resources- and boy do I have a lot of them - and getting organized. Although, it is quite difficult to stay out of the kitchen and in my classroom. I would much rather sit in the kitchen sipping hot lemon tea and admiring one of the elder's new cariboo kamiks and watching closely as she demonstrates how to stretch the skin. I am not so adventurous to make my own kamiks since the cost of tanned fur is quite high and non tanned fur stinks and rots. For your information seal skin that has not been tanned has an all permiating odor of fish. It is an odor that I will quite probably never forget. I was, however, thinking about making some mittens in the traditional way. I will have to order the tanned skins in from Manitoba since there isn't a tannery here.

The beauty of P.I. is that since my staying in Qik is not costing anything that P.I. money is then available to me should I want an elder to show me how to make mittens later on. I can use it to pay for the elder's time but I have to purchase the supplies myself. This is something that I am definitely going to take advantage of in the future.