Bilingual education steams ahead on a shoestring

The Iqaluit District Education Authority is pressing ahead to get new bilingual education models in Iqaluit schools, despite getting little support from the Department of Education.

“I was expecting more workshops or something to get us going on this,” said Katherine Trumper at a Monday night meeting. She also noticed that although the department set aside four days for professional development workshops this year, not one of them was dedicated to bilingual education.

On Monday, the IDEA asked all school principals to outline where they are at with bilingual education. Two principals suggested working together on the project, which will require a major overhaul of how education is delivered in Iqaluit.

Nakasuk School has already selected a new bilingual model, which adds increasing amounts of English to the Inuktitut stream every year, until both languages get an equal amount of time in the classroom in Grade 4.

Literacy and bilingual literacy are top priorities for Nakasuk in the coming school year, Principal Carol Horn wrote in a letter to the DEA. But in order to implement the new strategy, the school needs some help, including:

* Assistance to screen kindergarten students to see how well they speak English or Inuktitut, so students who lack Inuktitut skills are getting the help they need in the early grades;
* New criteria for new teachers hired at the school, which insists they have Bachelor of Education degrees and are bilingual;
* Money to hire a consultant to track the results of the project and prepare a research report on implementing bilingual education.