Full marks for Nunavut-made high school program

Students in Daniel Guay’s Grade 10 social studies class recently took on the roles of real-life hamlet councillors in Igloolik. That’s the kind of hands-on learning activity promoted by this new, made-in-Nunavut, Nunavusiutit social studies module. (PHOTO COURTESY OF D. GUAY)

“Staking the Claim” draws on the experience of Nunavut youth, shown here in an image from the cover of the teachers’ guide, to teach students about Nunavut social and political issues.

Unless you’re a high school student or teacher in Nunavut, you probably don’t know that the new Grade 10, made-in-Nunavut, Nunavusiutit social studies program is being introduced in Nunavut schools.

Its most recent module, “Staking the Claim: Dreams, Democracy and Canadian Inuit,” receives rave reviews from teachers who say their students are more engaged than ever before in learning.

“Staking the Claim,” on the history and development of the Nunavut land claims agreement, wants students to see “how they too can create change in the world around them.”

This module, finished in 2009, also takes a giant step away from the Alberta social studies curriculum, formerly the standard for Nunavut.

That’s because “Staking the Claim” relies on assessments — rather than a final exam — to gauge whether students pass the course.

For Daniel Guay, a teacher at Igloolik’s Ataguttaaluk High School, the new approach works.

Earlier this month, he evaluated his students in an activity that he said demanded much more than a traditional test or exam.

The class split into three groups, each advocating a different model of dealing with alcohol in Igloolik — that is, making it “open,” like Iqaluit, “dry,” like Hall Beach, or “restricted,” as is now the case.

Students first worked in teams to brainstorm ideas. Then, they practiced their arguments in small groups. Finally, the class went to the hamlet’s council chamber for a mock plebiscite debate.

Students donned name-tags, such as “Counsellor Kublu” or “Counsellor Arnatsiaq,” before delivering their arguments.

“Many students made really passionate comments based on real life experience,” Guay said.

Finally, the “councillors” voted on the best model for Igloolik, with one-third favouring a dry community, and two-thirds a restricted community.

“This activity demanded individual work, group work, and critical thinking. Perhaps most importantly, ‘though, it engaged our students in leadership training,” Guay said. “Our new curriculum places a lot more value on the graduates of our system becoming ready to take on leadership roles in our communities.”

Guay said the former Alberta curriculum didn’t “speak” to his students because of its foreign reference points.

“Staking the Claim” — the first of five modules for Grade 10 social studies — is “more culturally appropriate and allows them to show what they learn.”

“We really struggle with engaging them. So this has been really hopeful,” Guay said.

“Awesome” is the word used by Patricia MacNeil, a teacher in Arctic Bay, to describe “Staking the Claim,” which inspired some of her students to participate in the Nunavut Quest dog team race for their assessment project.

On thing emerges from the 157-page “Staking the claim” teachers;’ guide: it’s chock-full of information bits that students in Nunavut may find useful.

These include new words to learn, like “disempowerment” and “hierarchical,” a time-line of events leading up to the creation of Nunavut on April 1, 1999, and a list of mind-boggling acronyms for organizations, like IHT and CIBDC, to match up with their respective names.

There are many hands-on activities suggested for students, snippets of nearly-forgotten history (like the list of everyone at the 1970 Indian and Eskimo Association’s Coppermine conference), and a few hilarious cartoons by the late Alootook Ipellie.

The 10-unit module, inspired by coursework from the college-level program at Nunavut Sivuniksavut in Ottawa, also features DVDs.

While two units have Inuktitut titles, Iliranaqtuq and Inuuqatigiit, and the front cover displays syllabics prominently, “Staking the Claim” is still only available in English and in its French-language version, “Prendre sa place: Rêves, démocratie at Inuit Canadiens.”

The translation of the “Staking the Claim” teachers’ guide into Inuktitut appears to have been too frustrating and an overly expensive task to complete.

For the next modules— and there are nearly 30 more modules to go — more original Inuktitut-language material will be included from the get-go, said Ken Beardsall, the coordinator of the Nunavusiutit social studies program.

Using more Inuktitut “has a way of implanting Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit right at the start,” he said. “IQ is part of Inuktitut, so when you go to English from Inuktitut you’re making it adjust all the time.”

In the future, teachers are also likely to do more on their own because there will be fewer of those ready-made suggestions for activities and lessons, like those listed in “Staking the Claim.”

Instead, teachers will receive detailed module “outcomes” to work towards and then develop these however they wish.

The goal is to produce a complete new Nunavut social studies curriculum by 2014.

But producing textbooks has been expensive because mainstream publishers don’t want to produce materials in the limited quantities Nunavut needs.

For grades five to 12 the finished curriculum will mean original courses on “People of the North,” “Land Thinking,” “Canadians — who are we?,” “Inuugatigiitsiarniq: Seeking harmony,” “Representing the land,” and “the Great Conversation,” each with five modules.

That “great conversation” refers to comments by Jaypetee Arnakak, who said that people on earth have been engaged in a “great conversation” for truth, but one that has increasingly sidelined indigenous peoples.

Working towards getting Nunavut youth into that “great conversation” is the mission of the Nunavusiutit curriculum, which wants to prepare students to become “competent, confident, enthusiastic participants in the ‘great conversation,’” Beardsall said.

At the end of Grade 12 students will complete a “Kajjiq” assessment of their work.

That’s already being phased in, Beardsall said.

While Nunavut schools continue to use parts of the Alberta social studies curriculum, there will be no more diploma exams.

Instead there will be an “alternative assessment” — a much better gauge of student learning and a “better home” for IQ, Beardsall said.

Work on the complete Nunavusiutit curriculum started in 2009 with a five-year deadline.

But Beardsall said this deadline is likely not to be met.

“That could work against us. We’re trying to sell our new curriculum and a new way of thinking,” he said. “If we don’t do a good job at that, people are going to judge it, and say ‘what Nunavut does isn’t good.’”