New Working Arrangements

Sorry about the three-week absence but there wasn’t much to write about.  I finally have enough material to write a post.

The atmosphere at school felt a little strange on April 21.  Everyone greeted each other with elbow bumps and/or waving hands.  We were required to follow a new set of rules laid out by the Nunavut Government and Qikiqtani School Operations.  We had to stay at least 6ft apart from each other, use the photocopiers at prearranged times, and eat by ourselves at lunchtime – (unless you went home).  The principal held a welcome-back-meeting over the school’s intercom.  He explained the above rules and what was expected of us from the higher ups.

Our first priority was to prepare learning packages (LPs) for the week of May 4 – 15.  Once these were completed and ready to go, we could focus our attention on other educational projects.  The LPs are take-home assignments that cover the topics that we taught from the beginning of the semester to the shutdown of schools in March.  Students can complete and return them for extra credit.  The LPs were given out from the school’s main entrance because students are not allowed to enter the school.  The LPs were packaged in large envelopes.

The teachers were required to do something related to their occupation when not working on LPs.  The Nunavut Government did not want to pay teachers to just sit in their classrooms.  I reorganized & re-labelled several learning materials, but the largest project I undertook was adding English subtitles to five educational videos for my Grade 10 Socials Studies class.  These videos are attached to the Residential Schools & Inuit Land Claims modules. 

I wanted all spoken dialogue to be subtitled so that students wouldn’t miss any important information.  Having subtitles also helps when the audio isn’t clear.  We’ve all watched videos where people don’t speak clearly, mumble their words, and/or speak too fast.  To be honest, I personally think all educational videos need to be fully subtitled.  You just have to decide which languages to use.

Adding subtitles is very time consuming.  I find the rate varies between 30 minutes to 1 hour of work to add subtitles to 1 minute of footage.  There were many times when I had to listen to several sections over and over to make out what was being said.  I also had to get help from a co-worker to translate Inuktitut dialogue that hadn’t already been translated into English.  I thanked them for their help.  I was granted permission to work on these videos at home.

I also transcribed two audio recorded interviews from the Residential Schools module.  I’m not sure why these recordings came without written transcripts.  Several other recordings in the resource included transcripts.  The rate of transcription was the same as adding subtitles to the videos.  Having a transcript to go along with an audio recording gives students something to read instead of having to sit in their chairs and just listen.

My skidoo has been running well for the last several weeks.  It finally came out of the repair shop, the engine working at full capacity.  Turns out the problems were a broken piston and a very old oil pump.  A co-worker replaced the broken piston with one of my spares and the oil pump was replaced with a brand new one I ordered off of the Skidoo website.  Unfortunately, getting the lights & dashboard to work still remains a mystery.  We think it may be a wire because the lights are new, the voltage regulator is new, and the battery still works.  If only Bombardier offered skidoo engine repair course to us common folk!  Regardless, I can still use my machine by pull starting it and making sure it’s always topped with gas & oil.

I noticed more & more families were travelling out on the land since the closure of schools.  It’s very easy to social distance out on the land because the land is immense!  The community’s frozen coastline becomes a long parking lot for skidoos & qamutiks.  Most people leave them out there during the spring because there are rarely any blizzards.  Seeing all the vehicles out on the ice got me thinking about doing a day trip somewhere in the near future.  All I needed was a location and a date.

Sled Dogs on ice.

And finally, in the world of COVID-19, the United States has passed a million cases!  The USA always wants to be #1 in everything but why have the most active COVID-19 cases?  I don’t see the pride in it.  I just hope a vaccine is found soon.