Alisha Hill (BA’07) has spent the last year teaching kindergarten in the Lac Seul First Nation of northern Ontario.

Trained teachers

Through the Toronto-based organization Teach for Canada, Hill was placed at the Waninitawingaang Memorial School in 2015. Her Teach for Canada cohort included 30 other teachers hired and trained to teach in six First Nations communities across Ontario.

Before being hired by Teach for Canada, Hill had earned a Bachelor of Arts from Dalhousie and a Bachelor of Education from Trent University. She had also acquired several years of teaching experience in Japan, Ottawa and western Quebec.

Hill praises the Teach for Canada approach to recruiting teachers, which includes a training program and support network to aid the teachers’ transitions to their new communities.

A community experience

Adjusting to life in a community of less than a thousand people was easier than Hill had imagined. In an interview with The Chronicle Herald, she explained that the biggest change was adjusting to life in a small, close-knit community where things are “up-close-and-personal.” In her first year, Hill says she “felt nothing but acceptance and warmth in the close-knit community.”

Flexibility, involvement in the community, and her mentor Eric Bortlis have been key to Hill’s success. “It’s turned out to be the most rewarding teaching experience of my life,” said Hill.

Along with 23 of her Teach for Canada Colleagues (or 74 per cent of the cohort), Hill has decided to teach a second year at the same school.

Read more in “Staying power: Dartmouth’s Teach for Canada kindergarten teacher” on thechronicleherald.ca.