Each year, a couple of dozen new teachers join the school board, bound for one of our nine teaching communities. They hail from the south, bringing their teaching degrees to our schools to ensure Cree children receive solid education. However, the HR department identified that one of the barriers to teachers staying in the north – even for the first full year – was their lack of orientation to the culture and life in the Cree territory.

The communications office had prepared countless printed and online activities to assist in teacher orientation, and we were in the midst of consolidating this into an online platform when I suddenly wondered why we didn’t just bring all the teachers together for a week at the beginning of the year and let them learn the culture hands on. After logistics were smoothed out (teachers would have to be paid for this extra time), we hosted our first Teacher Orientation Event in Ouje-Bougoumou in August of 2019.

The new hires were joined by local Elders to learn about culture and traditions; they ate local food – and even helped prepare some of it; they visited the cultural camp and the cultural museum, and they participated in three days of hands-on workshops led by directors in various departments of the school board. This had the intended consequence of not only ensuring the new teachers were introduced to Cree culture and way of life, and that they learned the workings of the school board as a group, but also that they connected with one another before heading off to their chosen communities for the school year. 

The event is still held annually.