Seeing the Northern light
October 2, 2008
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Paul Dalby
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Teaching literacy to aboriginal children this summer proved to be a life-altering experience for university student Jenny Norman of Burlington.
She had never flown in a small bush plane before, much less seen the untamed wilderness of Ontario's Far North.
"The flight was like riding a roller coaster," she says. "But when we landed in Fort Hope, the landscape was so pristine and perfect."
Newly graduated from Nipissing University with a degree in biology, Norman signed on for one of the literacy camps offered to the First Nations of Ontario by the Frontier College literacy organization. Ontario has the largest aboriginal population of any province – one in five – and 31 per cent have no formal education, according to the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey.
The Ontario Teachers' Federation sponsors the camps at Fort Hope, an hour's flight north of Sioux Lookout. The two camps are among 39 organized this year by Frontier. They appear in 31 communities and 2,500 youngsters from ages 5 to 16 have enrolled.
For 23-year-old Norman – one of five literacy counsellors recruited to work in Fort Hope – the experience was inspiring.
"I learned more than I taught," she says. "I've decided I want to go into teaching and I would love to teach up North."
Norman says that even after all the coaching in Toronto by Frontier, she was not prepared for the low literacy levels she encountered in Fort Hope.
She saw 10-year-olds who struggled with reading a single sentence in a Grade 1 picture book. "The more you help, the more frustrated they get because they think they should know all this stuff."
But patience and persistence paid off, especially for those children who attended every day and came back for the second camp. Norman was touched by the enthusiasm that flowered.
"When they start to bring in books to you and ask if you will read them a story, it's really special," she says.
Fort Hope, also known as Eabametoong, is an Oji-Cree First Nation established during the fur trade era, when the Hudson's Bay Company set up a trading post by Eabamet Lake in 1890. The Fort Hope Band formed in 1905.
In 1985, the official name of Eabametoong First Nation was adopted – in the Anishinaabe language, the name Eabametoong means "the reversing of the waterplace."
The area is rich in natural beauty and splendid in its isolation, but that isolation also works against it in terms of literacy. The problem is clearly evident among native youth living on-reserve, who have an extremely high dropout rate between Grades 9 and 10.
"Many communities don't have high schools, so they have to do their studies by distance learning or leave their communities to attend high school," says Phil Fernandez, project manager of Frontier College's literacy camps in the North.
"Deprived of the support they would receive in their own community, they often find larger communities like North Bay and Thunder Bay overwhelming."
The fact that students in the Far North are typically two or three grades behind their counterparts in southern Ontario only compounds their frustration, he notes. "The dropout rate is very high."
But Fernandez believes the literacy camps are beginning to have an impact.
The turning point, he says, always comes when the younger children begin to enjoy stories.
"Once the kids get hooked on stories, they want to read. It's very simple," Fernandez says.
The literacy camps run for three hours in the morning for young children, with another three-hour session after lunch for older youth.
"We use a more structured approach for younger kids because they really need that. But with older youth, we use digital photography, art, drama, hip-hop – anything to entice them to come to the course."
The literacy summer camp program was launched by Frontier College in 2005 on the initiative of James Bartleman, Ontario's lieutenant-governor at the time. There were 19 camps in that first year. In 2009, the college predicts it will break the 40-camp barrier.
The program is funded by the provincial government, severalOntario universities, colleges, banks and corporations, as well as unions such as the Ontario Teachers' Federation.
However, Fernandez notes, the program is always looking for new funding. "There's a tremendous need up there."
Toronto Star