First day of school

Not nearly as excited as they look.

IMPORTANT author's note:  My son (heretofore known as DJ) has declared that in Bloggerland he would now like to be known as "Captain Jack Sparrow".  

Hard to believe the first day of school is upon us again.  This year Coraline is going into Grade 6, so she will be attending Aqsarniit Ilinniarvik Middle School.  There is only one middle school in Iqaluit, housing grades 6,7 and 8.  Aqsarniit (pronounced Ack-sar-neet) means "northern lights" in Inuktitut, and I think Ilinniarvik means "school".  In Thunder Bay Coraline would have continued going to elementary school until the beginning of grade 7, so this is a huge change for her.  She'll get to have a locker, and I think she will have a "homeroom" teacher and learn about changing classrooms.

Aqsarniit Middle School

A local article showing the school choir.

No school is complete without sealskins on display.

Small corner of the music room at Aqsarniit.

Shop classroom at Aqsarniit.

JJ and I took a tour of Aqsarniit when we were up last fall.  The school is beautiful inside, with an enormous shop class, large commercial kitchen where home-economics is taught, computer lab, choir and music room (again, throat-singing is popular).  Students are sent home for lunch unless they are attending a "club".  Coraline will need to determine which club she wants to sign up for.  For instance, sewing club last year met on Mondays during lunch (some clubs only meet one day a week after school).  Other choices are art club, soccer club, intramurals, gamer's club (video games--I bet this one is popular),  wrestling, drama, volleyball, taekwon-do, student council, and running club.  The school serves roughly 320 students.

Joamie School.
(Taken from a teacher's blog: http://cheryltravels12.blogspot.ca)

Captain Jack Sparrow at Joamie.

Leadership club (?) made the papers with new unies a few years ago.

Captain Jack Sparrow will be attending Joamie Ilinniarvik Elementary School (the school is named after the Inuit hunter Joamie).  He will also have a choice of clubs to sign up for, and will be coming home at lunchtime every day like Coraline. The clubs at Joamie school include drama, Japanese, beading, choir, floor hockey, badminton, intramurals, baking, and piqatigiit (I'm not sure what piqatigiit translates to, but the club involves encouraging students in leadership).  Joamie school serves 230 students from Kindergarten to Grade 5.

Posing with the stuffed arctic wolf that guards the entrance at Joamie.

Food bank inside the school. Open to all students to
just take food and put it in their backpacks.

Something I think is interesting is that both the Captain and Coraline will be learning Inuktitut at school. Both schools even have an inuktitut stream where children take all their classes in Inuktitut.  This stream is especially challenging for teachers, as very few teaching resources are available in inuktitut, so they need to make their own.  Due to english encroaching everywhere in northern life (television, video games, people like us moving up here), many Inuit children speak english quite well.  Parents have a difficult decision to make.  They can enrol their children in an english stream, in the hopes this will offer more professional and educational choices for their child in the future; or they can elect to focus on their child's culture and heritage and select the inuktitut stream.  It is an unfair choice to have to make, in my opinion--weighing the importance of past against future.

Neat fact:  students here all call teachers (even the school principal) by their first name only.  Class lists don't even include a last name.  Traditionally, Inuit had multiple names, but no shared "last name" or "family name".  When the Qallunaat arrived (white people) they found Inuit names very difficult to pronounce and remember, so they assigned each person a number. In 1970 there was a government program created (literally called "Project Surname") to assign last names to the Inuit.
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/project-surname/ All Inuit surnames were, therefore, imposed by white people.  This is (not surprisingly) viewed as being a little paternalistic and demeaning.  Though last names are still necessary in today's society, it is considered more respectful to call a person by their given name as opposed to "Mrs. Blank".  Coraline's teacher is Joanne.  Jack's teacher is Renata.  I have no idea what their last names are.

As an aside, we had our first polar bear warning yesterday.  Apparently there is one wandering around the area we live in (Road to Nowhere).  The advice we've received is not to go berry picking for the next couple of days or wandering around the road until the hunters have tracked it down and killed it.

NIMBY!
(This is not the polar bear in our neighbourhood, its a photo taken from
a polar bear in a different neighbourhood.  NO, I am not going to go out and
try to take pictures of the bear near us. That's tempting, but stupid.)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/in-iqaluit-another-polar-bear-spotted-this-time-in-town-1.3155189

Up next: Fall colours on the tundra....or....OUR STUFF IS HERE!