Remote locale means teachers must be creative

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Environment, culture play a part in course adaptations

It's 6:30 a.m. A handful of students from Moose Factory Island near James Bay, Ont., gather on the banks of the Moose River. When the canoe comes, it will take them across the river to the Moosonee Campus of the James Bay Education Centre, where classes for the nursing program promptly begin at 8 a.m.

But for Sister Linda Parent, an instructor of the James Bay Nursing Program, getting to the campus is just half the challenge. Speaking at the Association of Canadian Community College's annual convention last week in Edmonton, Parent discussed the sometimes adverse relationship between education and the environment in the remote communities of James Bay, some 168 kilometres north of Toronto.

"The environment really does impact the delivery of education," she said. "Because of the isolation factor and the uncontrollable elements of nature, the quality of student learning is sometimes inadvertently affected."

Parent, along with sister Diane Sloan, outlined typical environmental disruptions that the pair have encountered during their six years of teaching the program. For example, as most of the James Bay area is muskeg or swamp, it is inaccessible by road. Travel is therefore limited to canoe in the summer and Ski-Doo in the winter.

During winter freeze-up and spring break-up, students from other communities must leave their families and re-locate to Moosonee until the river is safe to travel. This can be anywhere from four to 12 weeks, with visits home on weekends only. The only alternative travel is by helicopter, at a cost of $50 per day.

In addition to making travel difficult, the environment can also affect the students emotionally. Sloan said it is rare to experience sunshine during the dark fall months or "mud season", which can lead to depression. Spring can also be a stressful time because of the potential for severe flooding.

"The environment contributes to a multitude of mixed emotions and sometimes even depression," she said.

Finding a way to cope with these conditions took a little imagination and a lot of flexibility. With input from their students, Parent and Sloan, affectionately dubbed the "Twisted Sisters," incorporated a number of morale-boosting coping strategies into the program.

"We would hold pot-luck lunches, have a class at a professor's home, work on class projects in different locations, and invite guest speakers to class, and above all encourage students to ventilate their feelings of frustrations," Sloan said.

Parent and Sloan were also faced with the challenge of delivering the program in a culturally sensitive manner.

"For Native students, connectedness is important. They tend to lump a lot of details together," Parent explained. "The downside to this is that they have greater difficulty making distinctions with content, particularly the more complex it becomes. For this reason, professors must look for alternate ways and/or strategies to assist students with their learning."

Some of the winning strategies the Sisters incorporated include seminars combined with ice-fishing, anatomy quizzes, formal debates, the use of the medicine wheel, and the use of cartoons.

"I sometimes use the anatomy of a Ski-Doo to describe the circulatory system," Parent said. "Or sometimes a comic strip is all that was required to illustrate an important point."

Although the Sisters have faced some challenging times, they say it's nothing compared to the struggles the student go through. The typical student, Sloan said, is between the age of 26 and 44 and has anywhere from three to six children at home. They live in three-generation households, and have a Grade 9 to 10 education.

Initially, they suffer from low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, poor interpersonal and time management skills. Because of these circumstances, Sloan said family support, band support and positive, supportive professor-student relationships are crucial to a studnt's success.

Despite some seemingly overwhelming odds, the Sisters have made the three-year nursing program a success. The result of an "education partnership" between the Native people of the James Bay/Hudson Bay region and Northern college, the parent college of JBEC, the program has graduated 36 students since its inception in 1986. Most of those students have gone on to obtain a degree or have returned to work in their communities where they may be the only qualified health care professional. Both women hope that these graduates will eventually take over their jobs.

The ultimate goal, the Sisters said, is to help the Natives achieve their dream of self-government. By increasing the number of qualified Aboriginal health care professionals, they will eventually gain control of their own health care system. Parent and Sloan said it is rewarding to watch the students move closer to their goal.

"They are motivated and have a very strong desire to help their own people," Parent said. "Now it looks like the dream of the Native people in our area is becoming a reality."