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IKPIARJUK/ARCTIC BAY - After a journey of nearly five years, Sarah Alooloo is one of five students in Arctic College's community teacher education program in Arctic Bay set to graduate this June.

"What I find is that it's very important for Inuit students to have Inuktitut teachers," she said. "It's very good. Inuktitut teachers is the key, since they know the culture and they know how to speak it and how to write it. It's very special since it's our mother tongue and we've got to keep it."

Sarah Alooloo, soon to graduate from the community teacher education class in Arctic Bay, with Inuujaq School student Sipporah Ejangiaq. Alooloo has already been hired as a teacher at Inuujaq, set to start her first year as a certified teacher this fall. - photo courtesy of Kendra Haines

Alooloo and her classmates started studying for their chosen careers in the fall of 2003 with a year of the college's teaching access training to prepare them for the actual Nunavut Teacher Education Program. The four-year NTEP program offers a bachelor's degree thanks to Arctic College's collaboration with the University of Regina.

"Some of the program is very challenging for me," Alooloo said. "We just finished technology, so that's very challenging." Alooloo is specializing in teaching junior high grades and already has a job lined up at Inuujaq School in Arctic Bay. During her studies she acted as a special language educator there and also at Netsilik School in Taloyoak.

"It's really different from when I was going to school," Alooloo said. "When I was in school, I wasn't supposed to speak my language but only English, but I didn't know how. Today, a lot of students could speak it. But in my age, in my schooling, it was very different."

Alooloo was also surprised by how much less formal relations are between students and teachers now versus when she was a child.

"In my school days, I found the southerners very scary at the beginning. But today the kids are not like that. I'm so grateful that the kids could talk with the southern people."

Now nearing the end of her studies, Alooloo wanted to send encouragement to any NTEP students as they make their way through the program.

"Just continue," she said. "Just go forward."