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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - After spending the last year revamping the Yk1 gifted student programming at NJ Macpherson, Mieke Cameron will end her long-lasting career in the school district.

"As I walk away from this place, I will take some time to reflect, but I also know I will jump right back into something and I will give it my everything," said Cameron.

Mieke Cameron sits in her NJ Macpherson School office in mid-May, during the final months of her career as a Yk1 educator. - Tim Edwards/NNSL photo

After leaving her position as principal at Sir John Franklin High School in 2008, Cameron was stationed in NJ Macpherson and given a room that was previously used for storage, which she turned into her office. Renovating and revamping have been the themes of her career.

"Literally from the first day I acted as principal (in 1997), I had to deal with renovations. I talked mainly with the Grade 9s about what our school should look like, and oh, they had ideas - there should be breakout spaces and light," she said, citing the huge foyer and the many expansive windows that now adorn the school because of their input - which she said was practical for the most part.

"They wanted a waterfall," she said with a laugh.

"I said no, but (during the renovations) we did have a very nasty leak that kept going into the plaza, so I said 'there's your waterfall.'"

Her plan was to model the school as a community - there were separate "neighbourhoods" of classrooms for arts, math, social studies, French, and technical programs.

Before serving 11 years as the first female and longest-lasting principal of Sir John, she was the Department of Education, Culture, and Employment's director of education.

Before that, she had spent the majority of her time since 1971 as a teacher and department head at the high school. The only time that she wasn't there was during the years she took off when she became a mother, and the year she took to go back to school and get her master's degree.

"Being a department head of English, of enrichment, being assistant principal, getting my master's, being a director of education. Those things put me in a particular space - they positioned me well to become principal at Sir John," said Cameron.

She described her time at Sir John as a "love affair with learning" and found a sense of closure in leaving the school, despite the difficulty in leaving a place that had been such a part of her life.

"I am hugely satisfied with what Sir John became," she said "It became a place of learning for all who wanted to learn."

She said spending her final year at NJ Macpherson was a fitting end to her career.

"What got Les (her husband) and I to Sir John from Regina was a man named NJ Macpherson. Norman Macpherson interviewed us to come here - and in my final year, I have an office at NJ Macpherson," Cameron said. "It all comes full circle."

Also, she considers the work she did at the school over the last year important as well - fitting in with her motto that we are all here to "live, love, learn, and leave a legacy."

"My work has been to research, rethink and review the gifted programming in Yk1," said Cameron.

"That came out of a review that was done on gifted education about a year and a half ago, and the recommendations that came out of that review were pretty specific in terms of what didn't work in the past, and it guided me in directions of what we could be doing differently so that we would be serving the needs of gifted students in the future.

"My intense journey into giftedness this year has offered answers to some of the questions I had as an administrator, and this is what to do with those students that seemed to have so much going for them but weren't accomplishing what I expected they should be accomplishing."

In retirement, Cameron doesn't intend on slowing down, even though she's not yet sure what she will do.

"Retirement offers a freedom that I probably haven't yet enjoyed, being a very hard worker - but I have a feeling that there is something out there that is calling my name," said Cameron.

"I am really looking forward to finding out what that next step will be."