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IQALUIT - A couple months into her first teaching job, Ashley Paniyuk-Dean is bubbling over with enthusiasm about the new experience.

"I'm loving it, just loving it," she says. "I've got a great class and the staff is supportive. I'm getting involved in extracurricular activities, which I'm loving, too."

Ashley Paniyuk-Dean is in her first year of teaching at Aqsarniit middle school in Iqaluit. --Karen Mackenzie/NNSL photo

A recent graduate of the Nunavut Teacher Education Program, Paniyuk-Dean now finds herself at the helm of a group of Grade 6 students.

As a youth herself, she lived in a number of different communities with her family, including Qikiqtarjuaq; Arctic Bay; Fort Smith, NWT; and Rankin Inlet.

She credits her decision to become a teacher to her own good experiences as a student.

"My high school years were a blast and I was really enjoying sports, tournaments, exchange trips, everything that ties in with school. Nunavut had just become a territory, so things were really booming. Everyone was looking for representatives from the territory, so I travelled a lot and I really grew a lot," she says.

After high school, Paniyuk-Dean travelled to Ottawa to attend the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program. In her first year of college she embarked on a further adventure as one of the National Aboriginal Health Organization's youth role models.

Nominated secretly by a classmate, Paniyuk-Dean was taken by surprise by the phone call.

"They told me I'd been selected, and they'd be making posters of me and cards, that I'd get to travel and share my story," she remembers with a laugh. "I thought that was pretty awesome."

Over the next year, Paniyuk-Dean travelled to First Nations reserves and other aboriginal communities across the North, and got used to being recognized by strangers.

With so much independence, it could have been easy to go astray, but Paniyuk-Dean says she thinks it was the support of her family for helping her to make the right decisions in life.

"Lately, being a teacher and being part of the children's lives, I am reflecting more on when I was in Grade 6 and the things I was doing then. I realize more and more that my parents gave me the support I needed," she says. "I wasn't being held back or dictated to, and it was important that I was given choice. I'm pretty grounded and a healthy person, and I stayed on my path."

Looking forward, Paniyuk-Dean says she could see herself someday running her own business again, perhaps a hairdressing salon. She'd also like to teach Northern studies in the future, maybe after moving back to Rankin Inlet in a few years.

"I'm interested in many things but a lot of it stays in Nunavut and is geared towards maintaining it," she says. "I really think that as Inuit we have come a long way. I think we should give ourselves credit, especially because we have so many educated Inuit now."