A note of thanks ...
and congratulations

Nothing raises the blood pressure quite like an evaluation. When that evaluation focuses on relationships, questions about the outcome can strike especially close to home.

So it's noteworthy when an education department and teachers' association take the initiative, and knock on an evaluator's door. It's a sign of a community committed to action.

Many thanks to each person who took the time, and the energy, to contribute to this survey. Particular thanks to Jim Gilbert and the NWT Teachers' Association,and to Judy Desjarlais and the NWT Department of Education, Culture and Employment, for facilitating the work. The results provide a gold mine of information about life in the schools of the NWT.

This study also confirms the fact that the typical Northwest Territories school does not exist. The quality of relationships varies greatly among schools, perhaps reflecting isolation created by the distance between them. Thus no one school will find itself fully reflected in the results.

Yet each school can use these results as a measure, comparing its own classrooms, hallways and playgrounds with the relationships described here. In short, the survey offers a catalyst for taking stock, and then taking action.

Denis Wall
Research co-ordinator
1996

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