INUVIK - It's June 28 at Sir Alexander Mackenzie school, and the final bell of the year has rung.

At 4 p.m., all the students have left, and teacher Mary Ellen Binder sits in a classroom that's suddenly empty and quiet.

For Inuvik teacher Mary Ellen Binder, receiving a thank-you note from a student makes the job worthwhile. On June 28, the last day of class at Sir Alexander Mackenzie school, she read such a note, left by Grade 3 student Shae-Lynn Rinas. Philippe Morin/NNSL photo

She has been teaching at the Inuvik school for 33 years.

The end of a school year is something she has experienced many times.

"I think a lot teachers think it's hard this time of year," she said.

"You have your students for 10 months, you get close to them and then you have to let go. But every year it starts again. Every year is different."

Binder added that a teacher's job doesn't end with the school year.

"Usually I spend a week in the school after classes, cleaning up, organizing, preparing for next year," she said.

This includes creating lesson plans - because even after 33 years every class can use a little improvement - and buying classroom materials for the next year.

Before school starts in September, she added, teachers will usually spend another week getting ready.

When asked to reflect on her career, Binder said Sir Alexander Mackenzie has changed since she arrived in the 1970s.

At that time, the Grolier and Stringer Hall residential schools were still active in Inuvik, and children as young as Grade 1 were isolated from their families.

Many of the school's original teachers were nuns, and many children were from nomadic families that lived off the land.

Binder added Alexander Mackenzie school used to have many more students because of the military base.

"It was much bigger at the time," she said, remembering the school in 1974.

"We had about 650 students. We needed to have portables at the back," she said.

Today, the school has about 470 students.

Binder said she is proud to have stayed at one school for her entire career.

Today she teaches the sons and daughters of her former students.

"I taught her father, Delmer Rinas," she said, holding a note from Grade 3 student Shae-Lynn Rinas.

As the end of her career approaches - always, it seems, in a few more years' time because she enjoys the work - Binder said she has become attached to the building itself.

When she was asked about the pending demolition of Sir Alexander Mackenzie school - a place her own three children attended - Binder's eyes started to tear up.

"I hope I'm not here to see it because of the beautiful memories," she said.

"I've seen a lot of children go through here. I know there's a lot of people who feel differently because we had the residential schools, but for me it will be sad."

Of the school itself, she said she would always have fond memories of its wood-panelled, old-fashioned style.

"It's a symbol of a bygone era," she said.