Teaching in northern rural communities: Experiences and interpretations of a newcomer to BC’s north.

Anita Vaillancourt

Of the many complications associated with teaching in northern communities, the most notable in my experience is teaching at regional campuses. These campuses are more northern, rural and remote than the main northern campus situated in Prince George and often require more course planning, flexibility and patience.

Knowing this, I was still unprepared for the many adventures awaiting me on my teaching journey. Travel plans were among the first details to be arranged and options available for accessing the campus involved seven to ten hours of car travel or a one hour flight on a small turbo prop plan. I selected the latter option feeling confident travelling in small planes and relatively certain that I could successfully avoid motion sickness. As I boarded the plan to find what were possibly the smallest plane seats in the world overflowing with noisy passengers, packages, and puffy down filled jackets, it soon became obvious that the most boisterous passenger was seated beside me. The unfortunate circumstance of him having a cold added to the ‘ambiance’ of the one-hour flight that arrived one hour late. This experience also provided me with an opportunity to learn about airport politics by drawing some parallels between the imbalance of power between northern rural communities and their southern metropolitan neighbors who are often afforded more privileges. Overhearing the conversation on the plane’s radio soon alerted me to the delayed departure of the smaller planes (primarily destined for rural locations) by the 737 jets (headed to metropolitan centres) which were given priority to take-off ahead of the smaller planes. The pilot who was also the flight attendant poignantly identified these injustices and offered granola bars and tea as consolation. My plan of reviewing course materials on the flight was quickly dismissed when it became clear that the limited space and dropping temperature in the plane would not allow me the luxury of concentrating on work.

Upon landing, I convinced myself that the worst of the journey was over and headed to the rental car counter to discover that the rental car company closed its two meter by four meter kiosk and relocated to Vancouver a week prior to my arrival. The two remaining rental companies in town advised me of this ‘fairly frequent occurrence’ as one happily supplied me with a Grand Am. As a northern teacher, I became acutely aware of the economic implications for many northern single industry towns and the resulting vulnerability of small businesses to closure and the relocation of its jobs to larger, urban centres.

In addition to these circumstances, northern rural communities generally have fewer resources than their urban counterparts. As a result, finding appropriate accommodation when teaching at regional campuses has always presented some amount of risk for me. My most memorable experience was this past summer when the Mason’s arrived for an annual meeting and occupied the town’s complete supply of available hotel rooms. A very committed administrative support staff person from a distant regional campus found what was soon confirmed to be the last commercial vacancy in town – a room with stained carpets, a saggy mattress and green polyester drapes that covered only half of the room’s window. Following one night of screeching tires and groups of people involved in heated arguments outside of my door, my suspicions that the motel also substituted as a low-income housing complex for a considerable number of disadvantaged men was confirmed by locals at a meeting I attended the next morning. Several acknowledged that their clients frequently resided at the motel and sympathetically offered rooms in their homes and in the homes of unsuspecting relatives as alternatives. Fortunately, a student in the course I was to teach the next day found additional accommodation at the local campus where I resided there for the duration of the course. The warmth and generosity I found among the students and community members in these small, rural towns has provided some of the most positive teaching experiences I’ve ever had.

Students in northern, rural and remote communities often have close ties with fellow classmates and very often know one another quite intimately. The growing concern I witnessed one February morning as classmates waited for two students to arrive was a testament to the closeness of these students and the culture of mutual aid as a condition of northern living. Winter weather conditions, which often make driving to the campus nothing short of heroic, represent accepted risks for northern students. Classes were often delayed and sometimes shortened to accommodate deteriorating weather conditions, which were difficult to monitor while teaching in a room without windows.

Despite these challenges, I have seen students laugh and cry together in our classes and opportunities for healing and growth were created that would be impossible to offer to students in more populated areas. I have also witnessed students insulate themselves from students and faculty from other northern regions and criticize others for their subsequent feelings of alienation. This mistrust of others does not cause much surprise given the frequent migration seen in rural communities where relationships with service providers and community members are frequently lost as people depart to other northern communities or metropolitan centres to access better employment opportunities for themselves and their families. Allowing others, particularly strangers an opportunity for inclusion is a risk I have understandably seen many rural students refuse to take. Mistrust of outsiders and a tendency to isolate and insulate is a dynamic I have seen among many northern students. Nevertheless, gaining some level of trust and respect from such students must be done quickly as many of the regionally based courses taught by off-site faculty tend to be offered in one week blocks or over several weekends. Failing to achieve this task can result in disastrous consequences for any off-site faculty member. I can recall devoting a significant amount of class time to managing student behaviour as I blocked aggressive and insulting remarks directed at other students and dodged a few myself. The development of student norms that can serve to facilitate or limit learning opportunities is an intriguing part of teaching in northern classrooms.

Classes are generally smaller and students can place considerable demands on their instructor who often faces the additional challenges of being new to the community and to the students. One of my students was genuinely dismayed at my request for students to complete readings and assignments and another believed ten scholarly references for a major undergraduate term paper to be excessive. Despite the legitimacy and appropriateness of these expectations and the fact that the expectations were previously reviewed with and approved by the students, a small mutiny developed in which I was quickly dubbed the oppressive captain of a ship full of pirates seeking a reduction in work expectations. Although these experiences are few, such student activity can have a major impact on the willingness of the class to adhere to course expectations without launching major battles in the classroom. Such dynamics undoubtedly place limits on the range and extent of teaching and learning opportunities in northern classrooms. Relationships between students and faculty members tend to be more informal than in urban settings, which can offer richness in teaching and learning experiences as well as particular insight into student realities. One group of students told me of their experiences taking courses via an audio connection to another instructor. Students expressed feelings of resentment and helplessness at the practice of a small majority of students who routinely pressed the mute button on the polycom and chatted with their classmates throughout the unsuspecting professor’s lecture. Individual students who object to these practices seldom identify their disagreement fearful of being excluded by a peer student network that in many cases is vital to their academic survival.

Students pressures of shift work and childcare responsibilities in addition to their studies often result in stress that is transferred to the classroom and can further interfere with teaching and learning. The challenge of providing flexibility for rural students’ life circumstances without compromising scholarly standards is a contentious and sensitive issue facing many northern campuses. I have permitted children in classrooms with the consent of the class as a result of limited day care and have driven students home on days when freezing temperatures prevented their access to already limited public transportation. I have also granted numerous assignment extensions to accommodate northern student challenges and developed list serves and WEB CT shells to facilitate communication and classroom interaction between in-person visits. In a calculated, act of desperation to gain student attendance to a full-day class on Valentine’s Day, I brought treats of chocolate candy and other sweets for the students. Many students have expressed gratitude at this flexibility, which has also resulted in more beneficial teaching opportunities with students. These efforts have been met with pressures to be creative and innovative are many for the northern instructor who seeks ways to increase teaching and learning potential for rural and remote students.

Additionally, the budgets of northern campuses are generally considerably less than those enjoyed within larger post secondary institutions. Limitations in accessing resources for teaching and learning are common and calming the growing frustrations of northern students becomes an additional task for professors who want to keep the focus on learning. I have fond memories of my ingenuity as a professor who was confined to the use of an office the size of a broom closet with a non-functioning telephone and a fax machine I used in the absence of a photocopier. I bribed the local bookstore for flip chart markers and pens, which reportedly had been taken by previous instructors and brought along a personal supply of articles for students to use in their papers. Forced to use the unwritten side of previously used flip chart paper was an all-time low, but was of little inconvenience in comparison to the limited resources of the ‘bookstore’ that students accessed in one region which was nothing more than a locked cabinet containing the required course text books. In another instance, the local college was kind enough to share its facilities by offering one classroom with a cabinet that I was cautioned to keep locked at all times. Fears that our only television set and VCR might be ‘absorbed’ into the local inventory were rampant and validated with additional reports of previous ‘reallocations’ of equipment to other departments desperate for new resources. My experience is that relationship building and negotiation are critical to one’s success as a teacher as classroom learning experiences rely heavily on one’s ability to quickly negotiate resources such as photocopiers, computer access and other ‘favours’ including access to closed facilities (such as the classroom after-hours). My personal record for the most successful negotiation in a northern community (or rather just plain northern hospitality) included obtaining a free lunch along with photocopying privileges and a parking spot with a plug-in. I was also invited for dinner and an invitation was extended to me to visit whenever I returned to town.

In spite of the struggle to obtain resources for teaching and learning and the challenges experienced by teachers and their students, the development of post secondary institutions in the north has literally served to transform communities. Students and faculty inject resources into local economies and jobs are created which sustain communities. The education received by students provides northern rural and remote communities with continued resources to develop and maintain development in the north. My bias in maintaining existing education in the north is obvious and my hopes and support to expand northern learning opportunities for students and communities will always be a part of me wherever I find myself working and living.