Nunavik attracts 60 new teachers this year

The Kativik School Board has hired 60 new teachers this year – “it was a good year for teacher recruitment,” says the school board.

“We received more applications than in previous years, and more applications than there were positions to fill,” said KSB spokeswoman Debbie Astroff.

Of the new hires, about 15 resulted from last-minute resignations, sick leaves and preventative maternity. These left more vacant teaching jobs to be filled than expected – most for math and science positions.

“The new teachers are very young, younger than in previous years, and exhibited a very positive attitude,” Astroff said.

Forty-five of these new teachers attended new teacher orientation in Kuujjuaq last week, a program that introduces them to the KSB programs and Inuit culture.

Astroff said a new program on Inuit organizations was added to the training this year.

While new and returning teachers arrived in their home communities to open up classrooms this week, all 130 teachers from the Ungava communities now travel back to Kuujjuaq Aug. 22.

There, they’ll participate in regional pedagogical days and teacher training programs.

That’s before classes start up throughout the region Aug. 29.

Teachers in Hudson coast communities will participate in pedagogical days in Inukjuak during the week of Sept. 12.

This year, the school board’s education services will work to gear up new programs, which have received money under Quebec’s Plan Nord.

One program, called “Echelon Nunavik,” hopes to expand on the success of the KSB’s science camps by offering them throughout the school year.

That proposed program will carry out five events during the school year, when students must complete a task targeting different academic subjects.

As part of new provincial curriculum, Nunavik schools will also offer what’s called “alternative learning paths.”

That means that instead of only academic study, students can choose work-oriented courses and internships to prepare them for a job after they graduate.

These could include virtual courses for students in smaller communities, but to offer these courses means the KSB wants to develop new multimedia classroom tools.

The KSB plans to introduce the ALS programs by the start of the 2012-2013 school year, Astroff said.

The roughly 400 teachers who fall under the Association of Employees of Northern Quebec return to the classroom this year after months of sometimes strained negotiations during the last school year.

The union and the school board signed an agreement-in-principle with the KSB at the end of June.

But the teachers’ union says it still has a few more issues to resolve with the school board, such as how teachers’ cargo benefits will be affected under the new Nutrition North program as well as changes to the taxable housing benefit.

The 2011-2012 school year also marks a change in leadership at the board: Annie Popert has replaced Annie Grenier, who retired, as the KSB’s new director general.

Popert returns to the position she occupied for 10 years from 1983 to 1993.