A full day at Qarmartalik School...

Overnight, we traded blue skies for cloud and more wind. By midday, it had warmed up to -15 C but the wind made it feel like -27 C. We had a brisk walk up to the school after a leisurely breakfast and we made it there in time for the end of recess.

The first class of the day was the Grade 5-7s. These are a very curious group who really like science. A number of the students are ones that we had spent some time with last year and we were greeted by "Hey, I know you" and "So you came back!" when we got to the classroom. The presentation was on the atmosphere and ozone. We had them act out ozone production and destruction. It was really fun to ask them to get into the right mind set. They closed their eyes and got right into it. "Imagine you are an oxygen atom floating around in the atmosphere. What do you want most? To have a friend or two because oxygen atoms never want to be alone." Once we had three oxygen molecules formed, Annemarie, the UV-C photon, came by and broke one apart so we could form two ozone molecules. Then Keith, the UV-B photon, came along to photolyze the ozone molecules. We had a tie for who asked the best question and had to give two prizes.

After a quick lunch at Aziz's, we came back to Qarmartalik to talk to the Grade 4 class. For them, we had a presentation that melded the ozone and space science talks together. Again, they were quite keen and sat up close to the front. When I demonstrated how a diffraction grating can separate the white light into all the component colours, I had everyone crowded around the projector to get a better look at where the colours came from. We put the "rainbow" on the ceiling, the wall and even over Keith! We had wide ranging questions from the Grade 4s on the atmosphere, space and beyond. To reinforce the discussion about how we can measure ozone from space, we made rockets out of cardboard and foil. There was lots of creativity shown by the Grade 4s in making their rockets. Thanks to Jennifer, their teacher, for providing a much needed extra pair of hands for this activity.

Our last class of the day was the Grade 1-3s. This group was the furthest in age from what we are used to teaching. We decided to talk about weather and how we measure it. This meshed well with their curriculum because they have been discussing the seasons. They had lots of good suggestions on how to measure different meteorological parameters. "You can measure the wind by licking your hand and holding it up!" They all were familiar with the Resolute Bay weather station and Wayne Davidson who works there. He comes to the school to teach guitar lessons each day. The best reaction was one young girl who said "Wayne's my buddy!" We also learned about balloons which measure the weather above the ground. We decided that the Totex balloons were as big as Wayne Davidson or 2-3 Grade 2s. After talking about the weather, all of the Grade 1-3 "weather scientists" broke into groups to make weather mobiles. Everyone got to make drawings of different aspects of weather to attach to their mobile. A good time was had by all. We give many thanks to Tracey for her support during the activity. The extra pair of hands kept everything on this side of controlled mayhem.

Part way through the afternoon, a call came over the PA system "Keeyoon, please report to the CTS room". Tracey had arranged a demonstration of throat singing, by one of the elders and seven of the female students, for the Korean journalists. He was the lucky member of the team who got to see this demonstration because they needed him to provide translation. The group performed in pairs and Dora, the elder, also performed a solo piece. Keeyoon thought that it was interesting how they made these sounds which he thought mimicked the sounds of nature.

The weather had really blown up over the day into what was really looking like a blizzard. There were announcements as we were finishing our clean-up reminding the younger students to wait for their parents to come and get them or to have their older siblings, cousins or neighbours walk them home. We could not really see anything out of most of the windows. However, Brian kept calling it "just a bit of blowing snow". We spent some time with Brian and Tracey discussing how the two days had gone. We had a wonderful time and feel privileged to be able to work with these great students. We hope that the students had as much fun as we did. There were a few who asked "Will you be back on Monday?" or "So, we'll see you next year, right?"

I don't know whether you can call it coincidence but our visit happened to be at the same time that Emile Hatch (the superintendent of schools for Qikiqtani School Operations) was visiting Qarmartalik school. He had asked for copies of our presentations so I had loaded them onto his memory key. After school, he let us know that he really liked what we had done. He also said that he would like to package us up and send us to the other schools in his district. I said that if we could find the means to do this, we would love to go.

At this point, I have to give credit to Tom and Kim for sharing some of their elementary and high school presentations with me. It was great to have such a good base to start from. Also, I need to thank Annemarie, Keeyoon and Keith for their excellent work during the visit to the school. It would not have been the success it was without their contributions.

We had a rather difficult walk home. We tried to take the most direct route that we knew to ensure that we did not get lost in Resolute. Because of the weather, the bingo for that evening was cancelled. We started to be concerned that we might not get out tomorrow afternoon if the weather kept up. We spent the night listening to the wind pummeling the building and hoping it would break soon.

Best regards,
Kaley.