New school year, familiar teacher shortage

ODILE NELSON

Even as most young students across Nunavik are breaking in new textbooks and teachers, a few are enjoying a couple of extra, unexpected weeks of summer vacation, after their instructors resigned from their jobs at the last moment.

The Kativik School Board began hiring teachers this past April, and by mid-August, had filled the 60 or so open positions for the 2003-04 school year.

But with only two weeks left to go before most schools re-opened their doors on Aug. 22, six instructors, both new hires straight out of university and returning teachers, abruptly quit their jobs.

In an interview last week, Debbie Astroff, the school board’s public relations officer, said the eleventh-hour teacher shortage is nothing new.

“As happens every single year, there are people who resign at the last moment…. We are missing six teachers, two French, and two English and two Inuit,” Astroff said. “Those [last] two will not be hard to fill, but the English and French teachers will be, because most people have started school already. So even though interviews are going full speed ahead, we don’t have that many candidates.”

Sometimes it can take the school board weeks to find suitable replacements, she said.

Puvirnituq’s Ecole Iguarsivik is in the process of finding two replacement instructors after one English and one special education teacher withdrew at the last moment, principal Aipilie Kenuayuak said.

“It affects students. Here in POV, we don’t have multi-level classes. Those students will not come to school until we have those teachers,” he said.

About 40 students assigned to home-room classes that the teachers withdrew from must wait until replacements are hired before going to school, he said, because the school’s home-room classes are already at maximum capacity.

Home-room teachers are “core” instructors who teach such basics as language, social studies and math.

Ecole Iguarsivik has a student population of about 500 from kindergarten to secondary three. There are currently about 40 instructors at the school, Kenuayuak said.

Jacques Gueye experienced the same problem at Akulivik’s Ecole Tukisiniarvik. Gueye, who is new to Nunavik, was briefly without an instructor when a newly hired French teacher couldn’t adjust to living in a small, northern community.

Only a few days after arriving in Akulivik, the teacher resigned. The school, however, had the good fortune of being hiring another new teacher who had come to Akulivik with her boyfriend – who just happened to be a qualified but unemployed teacher himself.

The teacher’s sudden resignation, Gueye said, only points to the importance of community support for new employees.

“The beginning is very tough for everybody. Until now they are motivated and doing their best,” he said. “As a new principal I have to adjust to my new life too. But everybody is helping. We get a lot of support from the community and staff and this helps.”