Warm Recognition in Canada’s Hinterland

Profile

After Curtis Brown graduated from the University of Calgary, he jumped at the offer of a job thousands of miles northeast, in a tiny school above Hudson Bay.

The teaching post was in Cape Dorset on Baffin Island in the territory now known as Nunavut. Inuit children arrived at the school door speaking their native Inuktitut. Winter temperatures dipped to 40 below — a place where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet. Trees topped out at three feet.

When spring came, children often arrived at school exhausted, having played much of the night in the sub-Arctic light. “It was part of their culture,” Brown recalls. “If it was light out, why wouldn’t you be out playing in the sun?”
Brown figured on spending a year way up north. But he fell in love with the area and the people. He spent four years in Cape Dorset and has spent the ensuing 25 years in other education leadership berths across Canada’s Northwest Territories.

For the past 17 years, he has led the South Slave Divisional Education Council in Fort Smith, some 1,200 miles north of the Canadian border with Montana. There, he says, it gets down to 40 below for only a week or two each year. And, he insists, “It’s a dry cold.”

Brown, who is married with two children, has thrived in the hinterland. In 2011, he was named Canadian Superintendent of the Year.

South Slave has about 1,300 students, 70 percent of them aboriginal, across eight schools in Fort Smith, Hay River and three other outposts. They include a “fly-in school” in Lutsel K’e with 60 Chipewyan children. Brown takes an hour-long flight from Fort Smith to Yellowknife and then another hour-long flight to the eastern arm of Great Slave Lake to get there. Or he charters a four-seater and flies direct.

Much of the recognition Brown has received stems from Leadership for Literacy, an initiative he started in 2007. The district hired literacy coaches for each school, giving them 21 days of training in best classroom practices, assessment and interventions.

The initiative has yielded steady gains. Brown and Brent Kaulback, the assistant superintendent, keep the focus strong by traveling the district to observe and meet with each teacher twice a year.

At the same time, they expanded instruction in the aboriginal languages of Chipewyan, Cree and Slavey. Their use was fading, but a renewed focus and the district’s publication of some 280 aboriginal language books have helped to change that.

Brown also established an award-winning trades awareness program that annually brings 50 students to Fort Smith, a city of 2,500 residents, for a two-week immersion program in a variety of trades.

Kate Powell, principal of South Slave’s Deninu School in Fort Resolution, 180 miles northwest of Fort Smith, says Brown is a superb listener who rarely puts the spotlight on himself. She was surprised once when he mentioned having lived in Australia. She hadn’t known Brown was a hockey star growing up in British Columbia or that he was recruited during college to play and coach professionally in Australia.

The superintendent says his conviction that he is making a difference has kept him from retreating to the relative warmth of southern Canada.

“There’s a sense that, hey, I really can have an impact here and help kids grow and become good people.”