HAY RIVER - For Shelene Giraldi, teaching at a storefront school is more than just a job.

Shelene Giraldi teaches at the DJSS Storefront School in Hay River. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

"It's kind of your life," said Giraldi, who works at the storefront school operated by Diamond Jenness Secondary School (DJSS) in Hay River.

She has been the teacher at storefront school since it opened across the street from the high school in October of 2009.

At a storefront school, students may have more things going on in their lives than those at a regular school, Giraldi said. "They may have children. They may have a full-time job. So you're trying to accommodate. Maybe they come on their lunch hour. Maybe they phone and say, 'Can I come after work?' So I wait here."

A storefront school is like a little community, she said. "A lot of things go on here where you're helping them with life things. They help each other."

Giraldi graduated as a teacher in Alberta in 1985. She and her husband moved to Hay River five years ago, and she began subbing at DJSS and then filled a teaching position starting in November of 2006.

When the opportunity at DJSS Storefront School arose, she said it sounded interesting and she applied.

Giraldi, 47, said the storefront school has been a good experience.

In the beginning, it involved a lot of learning for her as a teacher because she had to know how to teach many subjects, not just one.

"It was not something in my realm, because normally you teach English, a whole lot of English," she explained. "Now you have to know science, social studies, math, English, plus all the other things that go with it."

Aside from some help from an alternative school in Fort Smith, Giraldi did not have a road-map to follow.

An alternative school is different from a regular school because a teacher does not plan a lesson and prepare it for the whole class, she said. "You're really catering to a lot of people's individual needs and you're sitting with people. Oftentimes, a group will be together – three or four people at a table or a couple of people might be working on the same thing. But there are never two lessons, in a sense, that are the same or two days that are the same because you've got so many different people and they don't all come at the same time."

The students do whatever works for them, and come and go, Giraldi said. "So every day is very unique."

The teaching is more one on one with a student, who may have trouble with some topic, she added. "So it's very tailored in many ways to each little situation, each person, each day."

The school had two graduates in its first year and may have as many as eight this year.

In the two years it has been open, more than 100 students – ranging in age from 15 to 49 – have registered, including 40 to 45 this school year.

On any given school day, between 10 to 15 students may show up, Giraldi said.

Recently, a GNWT funding change for alternative schools has brought into question the future of DJSS Storefront School.

Giraldi said she hopes the funding issue will work itself out and she is looking forward to continuing at the school, adding it would be awful if it closed.

Everybody knows the storefront school is successful, she said. "It's certainly doing its job."

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