No nanuq

On Friday, our last full day in Igloolik, we started the day by wrapping up the remaining projects with Yvonne's grade 7s, Jeena's grade 2s, and Yvonne's grade 5s.  We started setting the gym for the assembly before we went back to the hotel for lunch.  When we came back to school at lunchtime, there were a lot more kids running around than earlier in the day.  Some were even climbing the school!

Ataguttaaluk Elementary School on Friday morning.

Ataguttaaluk Elementary School main office window.

Waving from the side of the school.

After lunch, we finished decorating the gym with the students' work and held an assembly, open to the community.  I was pleasantly amazed at how many parents came.  Ashley spoke for a bit about CANDAC and the projects the students worked on, then the students walked around the gym with their teachers to look at the other students' work and some of the demonstrations we set up (make your own thermometer, the hot and cold water in a jar, Cartesian divers, and making clouds in a jar).  We played a slideshow of the students throughout the two weeks we visited to keep the students who were not at a station amused.  I must admit, it went a lot smoother than I could ever imagine!  I was having nightmares of students swinging from the rafters in the nights leading up to the big day!

Jeena's grade 2 display.

Yvonne's grade 7s, my group making a measurement.

Vera's grade 6s, my group's pyranometer data
graphed with a line of best fit.

Leah's grade 5 display.
My group drew the cloud pictures along the bottom.

Yvonne's grade 5s, my group's bar graph
of their pyranometer data.

Clyde (the principal) introducing Ashley to the assembly.

Ashley talking about CANDAC.

The students are going to miss us; a lot of them gave us hugs at lunch or before they left the assembly.  One girl wrote me a poem, another made Ashley and I bracelets, and another student drew the four of us a picture.  And I already miss them.

Complete with a drawing of each of us
that correctly resembles what we were wearing.

After cleaning up the gym, we went over to Dave and Pete's house for supper.  This time, we made them supper.  Ashley made a cucumber, avocado, and tomato salad to start and I--with a lot of help from my two "sous-chefs", Anthony and Jonathan--made pineapple honey garlic chicken on rice for supper and pumpkin dump cake (think pumpkin pie filling topped with apple crisp topping) for dessert.  We played a game of Cranium and played with Siku a bit.  He got much bigger over the week.  When we first visited, he looked a lot like a polar bear cub.  Now he definitely looks like a husky pup!

Siku eagerly awaiting for us to climb the stairs to say hi.

Since Dave has never seen the rooms in the Co-op, and this is his last year teaching in Igloolik, we brought him back to our place and played cards for the rest of the evening.  After checking out in the morning (and paying a $2091.60 bill for the room alone), we drove up to the airport and flew away.

Igloolik airport.

Boarding the plane that took us from Igloolik to Iqaluit.

Interesting things happen in non-inertial reference frames.

25 years already?
I think someone is being a little optimistic!

Just north of Iqaluit.

Iqaluit is the only airport in the north to have security and you only have to go through security if you are flying to Ottawa.  Lucky me got to go through airport security twice!  After the first time I went through, someone getting onto a "non-secure" flight (i.e. not flying to Ottawa) lightly bumped into me.  One of the workers saw this and forced me through security again, in case the lady passed me something.

On the flight from Iqaluit to Ottawa, I sat next to a Toronto-area elementary school teacher.  She was amazed by First Air's ravioli dinner, complimentary wine service, speciality coffee, and warm chocolate chip cookie; but her stories amazed me more than that.  As a teacher, she has a focus in Aboriginal education.  She travelled to Nunavut to experience their way of life and see how the classrooms operate.  As part of this trip, a guide took her and the other teachers she was travelling with out on the land for the weekend.  One of the first things they saw on the land was a nanuq--a polar bear.  She said the first clue to give away his presence was that they could hear him breathe. 

Cumulus and cirrus clouds from the plane.

Big, fluffy cumulus clouds.

My first view of green in a week and a half.

I am slowly adjusting to "normal" life again, though I must admit, I thoroughly miss the midnight sun, the quiet solitude, the ice covered bay and distant snow-covered mountains, the students, and--of course--the inukshuks that watch over it all.

A great start to a hectic end

We finished our projects with Veera's grade 6s this morning.  My group (which turned into one student working and the other two taking photos with someone's camera) made a line graph of their pyranometer data.

Lydia erasing the pencil marks on our graph.

Next we headed across the school to Pat's grade 1 class where we made a pictograph of the sky conditions (sunny, sunny with clouds, cloudy, rainy, or snowy) they saw when recording their measurements.  We gave each of them an observation sheet (which had one of the sky conditions circled) and a piece of construction paper to draw on.  One little boy started drawing clouds, despite the full sun picture being circled on his observation sheet.  Anthony went over to help and asked, "What picture is circled on here?"  The boy replied, "Rainy!"  Anthony encouraged him, "It's not rainy.  Point to the circled picture."  The boy sat for a moment, obviously thinking.  With his orange marker, he circled the rain cloud on the observation sheet, pointed to it, and repeated, "Rainy!"

Pat's grade 1's sky condition pictures.

After our break, we made a sky condition pictograph with Jeena's grade 2s.  When we arrived in the classroom, many of the students were huddled over a dot on the desk, no bigger than a quarter--a warble.  These squishy grubs (yes, I poked it) lay their eggs on caribou.  As larva, they dig themselves under the caribou's skin and travel to the caribou's back, where they stay until the summer (when they break through the skin).  When this warble moved, it looked like a slowly compressing and elongating accordion.  Jeena said they can sting like a bee and it hurts quite a bit.

Grade 2 students huddled over a warble.

A warble from the side.

A warble from the front.

Before lunch we finished with Darlene's class.  They taped their coloured thermometer and wind blade pictures from yesterday together for us, so today we made a really long sky condition pictograph.  We made sure to include the temperature and wind speed on all of the pictures and glue them down in chronological order.

Darlene's grade 3's wind speed and temperature pictographs.

Darlene's grade 3's sky condition pictograph.

We spent an hour after lunch with Yvonne's grade 5 class.  The two boys in my group came back to school late (the girl didn't come), but they made great progress on their bar graph!  I was thoroughly impressed with both of them!  We still have a half hour tomorrow to finish it up.

Next we went to Keriann's grade 4 class for a full hour; usually the grade 3s and 4s are broken into half hour sessions, but this was the best way to fit everything into the schedule.  They were wild!  While the supervising teacher was out of the room, some of the students were well behaved and coloured like we asked, others were completely lost and wandered around the room aimlessly, while most of the students made noises that I have never heard before as they half ran around the classroom.  When the teacher came back, she flashed the lights on and off and they calmed down a fair bit.  But I have to admit, I think all four of us were glad when the hour was up!

We ended the day in Caleb's grade 7 class.  When we broke off to start projects in Caleb's class last time, there were only six students, so we split into two groups.  Anthony and I took three students and Ashley and Jonathan took the others.  Today there were 12 students, so our group doubled in size.  At first it lead to chaos.  Anthony and I trying to get six grade 7s to focus was comparable to training cats to heard sheep.  Dave, the gym teacher who was supervising the class during our time, tried to help, but I feel like he didn't want to step over Anthony and my authority.  So I made a quick decision; split the work of our trivia game into two parts, then assign three students to Anthony to make questions and three to me to make the board.  It turned into a more manageable situation until one of my students ran out of paper to cut.  He started snipping the scissors near my hair.  "If you cut my hair," I warned, "I will personally escort you to Clyde or Dean" (the principal and vice-principal, respectively).  The student continued to snip the scissors in the air, but not near my hair.  Dave left momentarily, and shortly after returned with Dean.  Immediately all of the students swapped to their best behaviour.  It was an amazing transition!  Dean walked around the room and interested himself in each project before leaving.  We managed to get the trivia questions done (not with any answers...) before the home bell rang.

Caleb's grade 7's pyranometer trivia, mostly about clouds.

After school, Jonathan and I went grocery shopping for the dinner we are making Dave (the music teacher) and Pete tomorrow night.  Ashley, Jonathan, Anthony, and I met up for supper and a couple rounds of Rummy before swapping photos and heading back to our rooms.
I really wanted to see the inukshuks up close and we will likely be busy all of tomorrow, so I went for a walk.  Along my way I saw mountains in the distance.  They looked so close! The inukshuks are covered in graffiti, but they are still marvellous and huge--my shoulder only reaches the top of the second rock!

Mountains in the distance.

Tantalizingly close, yet so far.

Snow covered mountains in the distance.

The middle inukshuk.  My shoulder reaches the top of the
second stone from the bottom on the right hand side leg! 

The left hand side inukshuk,
looking towards the town.

The right hand side inukshuk,
looking towards the town.

The three inukshuks, looking away from the town.

The middle inukshuk, looking away from the town.

Looking away from the town, the left hand side inukshuk.

Standing guard over Igloolik.

Starting to finish projects

This morning was our last session with Leah's grade 5 class.  My group and I finished drawing pictures of clouds that they saw during the project.  Jolene drew cirrus clouds, Amelia drew nimbostratus, and I drew altocumulus.  Afterwards we headed to Jeens's class to make a temperature pictograph.  While Ashley was talking to the kids, Jonathan sat in one of their little chairs.  He looked so silly it made me laugh and I had to take a photo to share.

Jonathan sitting in a grade 2's chair.

Grade 2s attaching their coloured thermometers to a string.

Jeena's grade 2's temperature pictograph.

 In Darlene's class after our break, we coloured in thermometers and wind blades so that we can put together a couple pictographs tomorrow.  We then went to Meeka's energetic grade 4 class where we finished making the pictographs and coloured a banner to title their display.

Meeka's grade 4s making a wind speed pictograph.

More of Meeka's grade 4s colouring letters for the banner.

 After lunch we finished up our projects with Tamie's grade 6s.  My group wrote a paragraph about collecting data.

Writing out the good draft of our paragraph.

We spent a half hour with Caleb's grade 7s, trying to come up with a project, before heading to Pat's cute grade 1 class to finish making the temperature pictograph and colour letters.  We ended the day off by starting a project with Veera's grade 6s.  Today ended 20 minutes earlier than we expected; it turns out the grade 6s have a shorter school day than grade 7s.

We planned on going to a community sing-a-long this evening at 7, but my 20 minute nap turned into 2.5 hours, waking up hungry at 6:30 with a really bad ear ache.  We ate supper, took some DayQuill, and played a few games of Euchre.  Ashley amused us with card tricks for a bit before we decided to retire to our rooms.  I am a little upset with myself for not going out into the community more this trip, however, I am hoping that staying in today will give my body the strength it needs to fight off whatever it is I caught.

Saved by the bell

Last night I made sure to set two alarms; one for 7 AM and one for 7:30 AM, just in case I wanted to sleep a little longer.  This morning I woke up to a knock at my door.  I slid to the edge of my bed and tried to hop out, but the blankets wrapped around my legs didn't fall loose and I stumbled into the wall.  I managed to kick my feet free and answer the door (after a second knock) in my cereal-box t-shirt and pyjama shorts with dishevelled hair.  It was Ashley—wearing her coat and ready to go.  “Hey,” she said as she looked me up and down.  Instantly knowing it was time to go to school, I told her I’d meet them there.

I quickly got ready and grabbed a couple slices of peanut buttered toast to eat on my way to school.  I hung up my coat, grabbed my indoor shoes, and rushed over to Vera’s grade 6 class.  I got to class just in time to stand (wearing one shoe) for O Canada and their prayer.  Since this was our first time with the class this trip, we did the category activity.

In Pat's grade 1 class we coloured thermometers to represent each day of data they had.  We will string all of the coloured thermometers together to create a pictograph.  The students thoroughly enjoyed colouring.  With Meeka's grade fours we coloured panels for a temperature pictograph as well as a wind speed pictograph.

Pat's grade 1's coloured thermometers.

Meeka's grade 4's coloured thermometers and wind blades.

 Before lunch we headed to Darlene’s grade 3 class.  They were very eager to see us again and show us some of their other school work.  They are doing a unit on fish right now, so they made a mural with 3D fish and each student made a 3D shadow box with fish swimming around.  They also really enjoyed our project—when we asked them what they wanted to do with their book of data, they shouted, “Do another one!”

Darlene's grade 3's mural.

Darlene's grade 3's shadow boxes.

After lunch we did the categorizing activity with Yvonne’s grade 5 class; the last new class.  Then headed to Tamie’s grade 6s, Leah’s grade 5s, and (a different) Yvonne’s grade 7s to start working on their projects with them.  A lot of the classes are starting to blend together in my mind because they are doing such similar things.  My group in the last class is drawing a picture of them making a measurement.  Before we left the school, we found a map with Igloolik and Avvajja on it to illustrate where we went on Sunday.

Sakku, Ronnie, and Qumangaapik's artwork.

Map with Avvajja and Igloolik.

When we got back to the hotel after school we agreed to meet up at 6:30 for supper.  I decided to take a short nap before reading.  At 6:40 I woke up to Ashley knocking on my door for the second time today, asking if I would like to eat supper with them.  After supper, we quickly went through the remaining data and prepared for tomorrow.  I think the guys have gone off to work for a bit, but I am going to head to bed—I can start to feel a tickle in my throat and I don’t want to be sick for the rest of the week again!