Arviat pre-schoolers getting a 20-year head start

Head Start educator Mary Aulatjut holds up her fingers while she counts with a group of Arviat pre-schoolers last month. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

This Head Start classroom in Arviat is decorated with a sealskin tent and traditional Inuit tools and instruments for pre-schoolers to play with. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

ARVIAT — A group of three- and four-year-olds sits cross-legged in a circle, singing a hunting song in Inuktitut.

Their hand motions tell a story, as they pretend to butcher an animal, eat it and then rub their tummies with satisfaction.

This group of children attend the Head Start program in Arviat, one of the very first communities to welcome the program when it was launched by the federal government in 1995.

Now nearing its 20th anniversary, the community-based pre-school program was designed to encourage school readiness, but also do this in a culturally-relevant way.

And that goal is being met in this Arviat classroom, where children play in a sealskin tent with traditional Inuit tools and instruments.

Arviat’s Head Start program runs out of two classrooms, each hosting a different group of children every morning and afternoon, and they’ve done so for 17 years.

That means 68 of the community’s three- and four-year-olds are getting some form of early childhood education before they begin kindergarten.

“There’s a big difference between kids who attend and those who don’t,” said Mary Aulatjut, a long-time Head Start educator in Arviat.

“Our kids know a lot more.”

Aulatjut should know—- her youngest daughter went through the Head Start program 14 years ago.

“She’d come home and tell me a story about what she learned,” Aulatjut said. “I noticed a big difference with my oldest daughter who didn’t attend.”

Aulatjut said children enrolled in the program learn their basic letters and numbers, colours and shapes; they also learn to work as a group and follow a teacher’s instructions.

That is evident when Aulatjut picks up a shaker to signal free play is over. The children immediately stop their activities and start to tidy up before coming to join her for circle time.

Although it has educational benefits, Aboriginal Head Start is delivered through the Public Health Agency of Canada. Its goal is to help vulnerable populations and benefit the health and social well-being of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children.

Ottawa spends just under $60 million every year to support 300 Head Start programs across the country.

Arviat is one of six communities in Nunavut to run Head Start.

Those programs are funded entirely through the federal government, although the Government of Nunavut monitors their facilities.

And although Head Start carries a specific designation, its Nunavut-based programs operate alongside the 37 licensed childcare programs that operate across the territory.

An additional seven centres offer after-school programs.

Two Inuit-focused Head Start programs operate outside of the territory, one through the Rising Sun daycare centre in Montreal and another through the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre.