• All students are of the Hay River Dene, most are between the ages of 25 and 35, with an average of three to six years of formal schooling. Learners with children receive a child-care subsidy to permit them to attend the course.

• The program is full-time, approximately 30 hours a week for 32 weeks.

• While the basic curriculum is provided by Aurora College, the instructor is attempting to introduce elements of Aboriginal values and tradition, including a craft workshop, an exercise in transcribing interviews and stories told by Elders, and children’s rhymes and games in the ancestral language.

Some Final Observations & Concerns:

According to the instructor, learners are motivated to enrol in the program by a variety of factors. Some are keenly interested in learning and upgrading their skills, while others are looking for a pastime for the winter months or waiting to find full-time work. Regardless of their motivation, she feels that they will enjoy and benefit from the course. The Office Procedures focus will give learners hands-on experience with computers, which is generally of great interest to learners and a really good learning tool for language. The course also involves several weeks of placement in an office environment, which will give learners direct job-related experience.

The main challenge to the instructor is to find and stretch the resources needed to make the course work. She currently has access to three computers, which is inadequate for a course of this kind, and she is struggling to find another six computers for her students to use. Another issue is the budget allocated for course materials. Since the textbooks for this type of program are extremely expensive, purchasing them from her budget would consume the total annual amount for materials. The instructor is hoping that the Band will assume the cost of books, which could be kept for future use by other learners.