The Friday Post

Do you know WHAT? Today, finally, I received a very important parcel from the United States. You see, I ordered some t-shirts from Threadless, and I have been waiting impatiently. The t's are cool... printed on american apparel t-shirts from original designs submitted to, and voted on by, an online community. t-shirts that collect high votes are printed. I am really excited about my new shirts.

this is also the first time I've ordered anything online from outside Canada. I had to pay customs to pick up my parcel at the post office, but it wasn't too much.

Today we underwent the beginning of an interesting procedure at school. It's called School Improvement, and it is a largely political process. I was nervous going in, because often when we all get together to talk about improving the school, it turns into a huge ordeal about everything we are doing wrong. Today that didn't happen, but it was also largely a waste of time. It is frustrating when something is worth doing, and you have the time and resources to do it, and yet it turns into a half-assed effort. We were supposed to learn a little bit about the residential schools, and the history of education here. which we did. but we learned nothing more than i have already read. then we were read to from a handout which we could have read on our own in a third of the time. finally, we got to the interactive part of the day, where we were placed in small groups to discuss the three things we felt showed a successful school.

and here is where the wheels fell off. the first parts of the meeting were done in a large group, with a simultaneous translator. when we split into groups, we lost the two-language advantage, and it became a disadvantage. most groups had two or three southerners and 5 or 6 locals. in my group, anyway, there was a lot of inuktitut which was occasionally paused to translate for those of us who don't know much of the language, but not enough for us to really participate in the conversation, and i had to keep asking for translation. some groups were more successful in bridging the language gap than us.

i know it can work... this is not the first time i have worked in a bi- or tri-lingual environment. and it does work, but things have to go slower. and care has to be taken not exclude people based on language. sometimes there is a feeling here that our input, as southerners, is not wanted. sometimes it is strong, and in our face. sometimes it is quieter... like today. simply not bothering. it stings, especially since most of us do make a real effort to learn the local way: the language, the customs, and the psychology of the culture.

and it is so aggravating... here I am, a person so keen to learn languages, especially this one, since it's where i am right now. and i can't get anything more intense than picking up a word or a phrase from my students. they used to offer a course in the evening, once a week. but now they do it during the day. they want inuktitut to be the working language here by 2020, but there is no effort to facilitate southerners learning!