Sharing skills

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

A group of students is scattered on the floor of the library of Nakasuk School in Iqaluit, cutting out pattern pieces for today’s assignment: sewing a traditional Inuit doll.

They look curiously at the jumbled bits of paper and material in front of them and listen intently to their instructors, who circle the room, peering over their shoulders and inspecting their work.

While sewing and traditional arts were part of every young Inuit girl’s education years ago, they are not skills embedded in the education system in Nunavut today.

But what’s strange about the group of students assembled in the Nakasuk library is not that they are learning to sew — even though some of them have never picked up a needle before — it’ s that the students are actually teachers.

While the kids are on holiday for their annual winter break, a group of about 25 teachers has gathered for a workshop aimed at sharing their skills and building their collection of teaching materials.

Meeting together to develop new ideas is perhaps more important for teachers — and Inuktitut teachers in particular — than for anyone else. Most of what they teach, and the material they use to teach it, has been created from scratch. So it’s appropriate that this week is called a “professional development week.”

Lucy Taqtu, a kindergarten teacher at Nakasuk and the school’s vice-principal, has co-ordinated the workshop with fellow teacher Meeka Kakudluk. The goal of the workshop, Taqtu explains, is to pass along traditional knowledge to keep it from dying out.

“Come and share your expertise with others,” her invitation to teachers reads. “It will be a great opportunity to share teaching materials.”

Teachers workshops have probably been going on informally for years. But the Iqaluit workshop — which drew some from across Nunavut to meet old friends and learn new things – is the continuation of a tradition begun just last year. It began at a dollmaking session taught last winter by Cape Dorset artist Annie Manning.

The workshop is not simply about making a doll, it is about keeping the culture alive so that it can be passed down to future generations.

Reinventing the system

According to Lou Budgell, president of the Federation of Nunavut Teachers, Inuit teachers make up 46 per cent of the federation’ s membership. But despite their numbers, teachers of Inuktitut aren’t getting the resources they need to do their job.

“They spend a lot of time. They have to reinvent or reproduce all the materials they use,” Budgell says. “The alphabet to go around the class — they can’t buy that.”

While some materials exist, they are simply not enough to go around. “Some resources have been produced – but not enough to meet the need of Inuit educators in their classroom,” he says.

On the second day of the week-long teachers’ workshop, Taqtu has brought in Shorty Shoo, an elder from Iqaluit, to teach the assembled teachers about some of the more obscure or technical aspects of the Inuktitut language.

Shoo sits in front of a large pad of paper on an easel. Taqtu sits on the floor by the easel, drawing pictures with coloured markers. She creates the outline of a kayak, building it up with lines and ridges to create a three-dimensional effect. Shoo shouts out words in Inuktitut as Taqtu points to different elements of her drawings.

When the kayak is complete, she turns the page and makes several lines, connected and unconnected. Below the lines, she makes jagged marks, all in black marker. Shoo once again shouts out words, and Taqtu labels her drawings. There are many different words for snow, she explains. There’s a word for when it snows, a different word for when the snow piles up, and yet another word for when the top layer of accumulated snow hardens in the cold.

It’s easy to imagine the library filled with dozens of elementary school children, each raising their hands to shout out the word to describe each picture.

First things first.