The excitement of new Christmas gifts has mostly worn off, so I've been listening to a lot of "I'm bored". I can't even send them out to play, since its pitch-black outside, or its -50, or there are gale force winds. While my children are not in school I decided to live vicariously through my blog and write about it instead. This way I can say "Leave Mommy alone. I'm writing." Its working almost as well as "If you are that bored go ahead and strip the sheets off your beds. Wash them. Then there is your bathroom that needs to be cleaned."
School up here is somewhat different than what the kids are used to. The most obvious difference is learning Inuktitut. Each day all students head down to the Inuktitut classroom and learn not just about the language and pronunciation, but also about the Inuit way of life. Coraline confided to me that her Inuktitut class had a spelling test last month. "I got four right out of seventeen." Coraline tends to do very well academically. I was shocked. "Four out of seventeen? Um....don't you think you should have prepared a little more?" She was indignant. "I did better than I thought I would! I was afraid I'd get zero!"
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| Bulletin board in Inuktitut. What does it say? |
Lack of success in spelling aside, Coraline is learning about the seal hunt, the Inuit diet, the role of the hunter in the community, and how to eat a polar bear. "You can't eat the liver or the stomach because they have too much vitamin A!"she told us proudly over dinner one night.
Since school started in September Captain Jack Sparrow has been walking around the house singing songs Inuktitut folk songs and doing his own unique version of "throat singing".
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| At Captain Jack's school's open house. |
However, its not just classes in Inuktitut that make school different than what the kids would normally learn "down south". Coraline just completed her Grade 6 animal project. Students chose an arctic animal to research and created a poster to display what they'd learned. Coraline chose to focus on caribou. One of her friends picked wolves, and another selected muskox.
I've mentioned before the effort the elementary school puts into making the school a community for the students. At the beginning of the year all students were assigned a "spirit team". All year long they earn points for their team by participating in various theme days and events. Before Halloween it was "orange day". Every student who wore orange won a point for their spirit team. In September there was "camo day"--wearing camouflage got you a point. There was was "moustache day" for Movember, and super hero day. (I'm really looking forward to "traditional clothing day".) Spirit teams are an awesome idea-- a great way to engage the students and give them a sense of belonging.
I thought CJS must be proud of his spirit team. Wasn't it cool and exciting, like being in Gryffindor or Slytherin? At a recent school event I pointed at the board tallying up the points so far. "Which team are you on again? Wolf?" He looked at me, bored. "Um....I think I'm on the red one. So whatever animal that is."
Huh. Not as exciting as I'd hoped.
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| Wolf, Polar Bear, and Caribou spirit teams |
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| Seal and Narwhal spirit teams |
There seems to be an emphasis on nature that I haven't seen before, and of living "off the land". These kids have no illusions about where their dinner comes from. I remember buying a whole chicken once from the grocery store in Thunder Bay, then snapping the legs off in front of Coraline to serve it. "Ugh", she gagged. "What a horrible sound!" That night she poked her chicken in front of me, looking for ligaments and cartilage, thoroughly disgusted. "What is the problem?" I asked her. "Its just that I saw the whole thing this time. Its gross. I like it better when you just cook the thighs and I don't have to see the rest of it." I don't think she is different from many kids her age (except for those who live on farms). The kids here are different. They might look at a seal or walrus and think "yum!".
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| Plant eaten by small animal, which is in turn eaten by wolf. |
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| Zebra eaten by lion? |
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| Seal wins "Best Arctic Animal". |
In September, shortly after starting school, Coraline's grade had a "day on the land". I don't know how often these days happen, and I wasn't there to see exactly what went on. It sounds like they ate some traditional "country food" (caribou, arctic char), played traditional Inuit games, and were told stories by elders. Coraline was mostly concerned about where she would be going to the bathroom if she needed to go. "Behind a rock!" I told her, laughing, the day before the trip. When she got home I asked her where she had "gone". "Behind a rock", she replied with a shrug. Ha! Mom is always right. She took her camera with her, so photo credits go to Coraline for the images below.
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| Chillin' on the rocks |
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| Berry picking. |
As great as this experience is for the kids, its not all sunshine and roses. Joamie School has a mini food bank just inside the front door. The staff have done their best to remove stigma about students taking things, with a discussion at an assembly that the food is there for ANYONE to take. In reality though, its tough. One mom told me that last year her daughter brought home a jar of Cheese-whiz. Both parents work for the Government of Nunavut and have good paying jobs. The mother was mortified that her daughter had taken a food item that someone truly "in need" could have used. "But Mom!" her daughter had argued. "They said its for ANYONE!" Obviously there are no easy solutions.
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| Joamie school food bank. |
The school has a supply of Halloween costumes for children who don't have one, so everyone gets to dress up and feel included. A small breakfast (chopped up piece of fruit such as 1/3rd banana and very small bowl of cereal) is provided to all children so that no one feels singled out or comes to school hungry. Every fall the school holds a "winter coat and boot drive", not to donate to the anonymous needy, but to provide to their own students.
The teachers decided to hold a field trip the new aquatic facility in November. To make this possible, parents were notified a month in advance. Before this summer there was no aquatic facility like this in the city, and many children never had a need for a bathing suit. A call went out online from the school principal (through the school's Facebook site) for donations. Many Gr 3, 4 and 5 boys were in need of bathing suits in order to participate.
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| The community came together to make a swimming field trip possible. |
Then there is the problem with over-crowding on buses. Students are expected to sit at least 3 to a seat, and there still isn't enough room. The consensus seems to be that although many children are deemed to be "walkers" (they live close enough to to school to walk), on very cold days they opt instead to head to the nearest bus stop. To me this just seems like common sense. Sure, a 10 minute walk in September is not a big deal. In January though, to walk that same 10 minutes in -30 (or colder) and in total darkness? I'd opt to wait for a bus too. This wasn't taken into account when the 6 school buses that service the area came up on the sealift. Also, the population continues to grow every year, which adds to the overcrowding. This made the news last spring.
At the beginning of the year we were given a bus stop schedule. It looked like this:
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| Whaaaat? |
I could not make heads or tails out of this. Turns out the numbers are house numbers (remember? No street names, just unique numbers on all the homes?), and the time is when the bus starts its run. The schedule is from 2014/15 because it rarely changes. There are 3 stops within walking distance of our house. I call the stops "Up the Hill", "the Park" and "Around the Corner". Kids are not assigned stops. Pick a spot, or don't. There is no hand-holding. The kids leave their homes in the morning and are simply expected to make it to school. There are never parents waiting with children, even the youngest in Kindergarten.
A "fun game" many kids play is to test themselves to see just how close they can time getting the bus. For example: a child at the park will spot the bus coming up the hill. The intelligent thing to do would be to wait the 30 seconds it takes for the bus to continue down the hill, then get on when it stops at the park. Looking for some excitement, however, that child might yell to a friend "Let's go to the stop around the corner! Now!" Then two or more children take off shrieking and running at lightening speed AWAY FROM THE BUS that is coming up the hill toward the park. Yes, they are running in the icy cold away from the warm bus that is coming to pick them up. If they are lucky, they make it to the corner bus stop (by way of scrambling through snow-filled backyards and along icy driveways) before the bus does. If they are unlucky? They walk. The school is about a mile away. Parents seem unconcerned either way.
Something else that's unusual is that children do not receive their report cards. Instead, report card day is a holiday for the kids. Weird, right? Report card day is the day all parents are scheduled a time (between 9am and 3pm) to meet with their child's teacher to discuss their grades. Parents are handed the report cards when they meet with the teacher. So, for Coraline's report card day we had an appointment with her teacher Joanne (Remember? First names only!) at 9:45am. Coraline had the day off.
I don't know if this is done to ensure parents see report cards, or to try to engage parents as much as possible, or because kids just can't be trusted. (Maybe its a way to judge how much involvement parents have with each particular student.)
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| Sealskin mittens trimmed with beaver fur. |
Then there is the other, most important thing about school (at least for my children). Fitting in. No matter how much I extol the virtues of being your own person, thinking with your own brain, and how cool it is to just be yourself, my children want to be just like everyone else. In Iqaluit, one of the ways to be "just like everyone else" is through traditional clothing. Coraline and CJS both wanted sealskin outerwear. Mitts are a big one. It kind of surprises me, with the extreme poverty seen up here, how many kids have sealskin mittens. They are not cheap. Captain Jack Sparrow's are sealskin lined with beaver fur, and cost over $100. For Christmas, Coraline was also hoping for kamiks (boots), and a custom parka with a thick fox fur hood like her friends. Sadly, she didn't get them. After asking around I discovered that most kids who wear kamiks (which sell for many hundreds of dollars, if not more), are wearing hand-me-downs or their parents kamiks. Or, they have a family member who has the traditional knowledge to make them. Same thing with the custom parkas with fur hoods. When Coraline returns to Thunder Bay I'm sure she will once again want to be "just like everyone else"; which means despite paying through the nose from them, the kamiks and custom parka may just end up in the back of a closet. I'm not down with that.
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| No custom parka? Try a lynx fur ponytail holder instead. |
Just before Christmas Captain Jack's school had a "spaghetti supper". It was held at 1:30pm, and the entire school community was invited. I was a little skeptical as to how they were going to pull this off. Really? Spaghetti for all the kids plus relatives? In the little gym? Along with several other parent volunteers I brought in a crockpot full of spaghetti sauce, which I made using ingredients supplied by the school (who bought them in bulk and had them shipped via air cargo). The school staff made the noodles and brought in bread. When I walked in I have to admit I was taken aback--the school's spaghetti supper was served in almost the same way as a traditional Inuit community feast. Community feasts are generally raw (or lightly cooked) locally hunted meat, chopped and served on cardboard on the floor. Captain Jack's school feast used brown paper, not cardboard, but honored the tradition of sitting on the floor.
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| Community feast photo courtesy of CBC. |
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| Joamie School's version of a spaghetti supper/ community feast. |
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| Brown paper was used in lieu of cardboard, but the idea is the same. |
Up next: Stuff and things that make living in Iqaluit different. And remember, next Monday I will be announcing the winner of the giveaway contest! Will it be you?
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