The arrival of December marked the beginning of the last
two weeks of school. The hallways were
covered with Christmas decorations. In
the elementary wing, a large decorated tree stood in a corner. The wall behind the tree was converted into a
display: green stockings, each labeled with a staff member's name, were pasted
around a brown fireplace. A brief
message from the staff in Inuktitut & English occupied the top half of the
wall. Two small Santa dolls stood on a
nearby window ledge.
The last Attendance Awards Assembly of 2016 was held on
December 6th. Everyone gathered in the
gym to applaud the winners for the month of November. However, the first part of the assembly
focused on last year's high school graduates.
For the last several years, high school graduates receive free laptops
from the Baffinland mining company. Unfortunately,
the laptops were unavailable at the time of the graduation ceremony in
June. They finally arrived and would be
presented to the grads in front of the entire student body. Better late than never.
Each high school graduate was called up individually to
receive their Lenovo laptop and external DVD drive. The laptops don't have internal disc
drives. (I'm not sure why, but for some
time now, computer companies have been selling laptops without internal disc
drives. Personally, the removal of these
drives is a terrible decision. Customers
should not be forced to buy external disc drives. Hopefully, the companies will reverse this bad
trend in the very near future).
All the high school teachers were called up to the front
of the gym to pose for photos with the grads.
Kindergarten Perfect Attenders. |
Me with the HS perfect attenders. |
The assembly continued with the awarding of certificates
to the students who achieved perfect attendance for the previous month. I think Grade 5 had the most perfect
attenders. The lucky winners posed with
their respective teachers. I had the
honour of calling out, awarding, and posing for a photograph with the four high
school students. I was glad I wore my
sealskin tie that day.
With only two weeks left in the fall semester, the high
school teachers, and hopefully students, knew that final exams were right
around the corner. We got to work on
preparing our exams and reviewing all the relevant material with our
students. Exam schedules were posted in
all high school classrooms, hallway, and washroom doors. I only had two final exams to prepare because
my drummers had a final performance test.
We were also preparing for the upcoming Christmas concert. (More on that
in a future post).
The final exam for my Grade 10 Social Studies class would
mainly focus on the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, but also briefly touch upon
the three other agreements in northern Quebec, Northwest Territories, and
Labrador. The final exam for Grade 11
Social Studies would focus on Women's Suffrage and the First World War.
The last week of school will be quite challenging
because: all exams & class work need to be marked, final marks &
comments have to be inputted into the school's computer database, and I am in
charge of directing the Christmas concert this year.
The first full week of December ended on a humourous tone
for me and JF. He was cleaning out the
storage room in the high school science classroom and found a very old
binder. The binder was an educational
resource from the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, dated February
15, 1981. The binder included a large, 5.25-inch floppy disk, containing information about aestheometry. At least, that's what we could gather from
reading the stickers. None of us had a
computer with a 5.25-inch floppy drive to verify the information. In fact, I don't think anyone uses 5.25-inch
floppy disks nowadays. They are beyond
obsolete.
JF & the floppy disk. |
I asked JF what he was going to do with the floppy disk
and binder. He said he would dispose it
because there was no need to keep it. We
wondered if the resource was ever used at the school.
The year-end Christmas Pot Luck Dinner for Inuujaq School
staff was held on the evening of December 9th.
Staff were encouraged to write what they would bring on a large paper in
the main office, thus avoiding two of the same dishes. Staff were allowed to bring two guests. JF's classroom was converted into a dining
hall, with long tables, chairs, and Christmas decorations. The Christmas tree in the elementary wing was
brought in to serve as the centrepiece.
Kraft paper was used as table cloth, enabling everyone to write &
draw on them with crayons. (Just like in
family restaurants!)
Desserts |
My contributions to the pot luck were different this
year. I brought two large blocks of mild
& smoked Gouda cheeses, Polish Kielbasa, and crackers. (I was the "Shrimp Man" for 2015
& 2014). The rest of the menu
consisted of: turkey, arctic char, bannock, salads, stuffing, mashed potatoes,
desserts, juice, tea, coffee, and other foods that I can't name. JF made a large chocolate log cake.
Cooked arctic char. |
The pot luck began at 6:30pm. An elder blessed the food before we all lined
up to fill our plates. I was glad to see
people sampling the Gouda cheeses I brought.
Such cheeses aren't readily available in Arctic Bay. I brought them from down south. I was able to taste most of the foods that
were brought. Unfortunately, the arctic
char was gone by the time I got through the line.
The principal congratulated everyone for a successful
fall semester. He wished everyone a
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Secret
Santa gifts were exchanged between staff members. We all went home with satisfied
appetites.
Hello there, Adrian. The floppy is a 5.25" disk for the Apple II series of microcomputers (based on the 6502 microprocessor) that helped Apple make its fortune in the early days. As you can see from the label, it was copy-protected in a way that prevents the owner from making a backup copy. Breaking the copy protection on software was frequently necessary thoughout the 80s, in order to exercise your right to make archival copies of software that you've legally purchased. If you still have that floppy disk, I have the hardware to run it...
ReplyDeleteMECC, the software manufactuer, produced lots of educational software in those days. You can download an Apple II emulator (such as AppleWin) and use it to run lots of old MECC disk images, located here.
Nice post!
Cheers,
Mike