Forging new paths forward in Carmacks

When Lauren Skookum dropped out of school in Grade 11, she didn’t think she’d ever want to come back.

“I made some bad choices – I regret it,” says Lauren, a citizen of the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation. “I wasted so much time and now I am almost 30 and going back to school when I could have been done a long time ago.”

More than 10 years after dropping out, she enrolled in classes at Yukon College’s Carmacks Campus. Over the past year she been upgrading her course work – taking clerical skills, math, PowerPoint, and English – so she can get into the Office, Administration via Distance program.

“Now I actually enjoy coming into school, which might sound weird,” she adds with a laugh. 

Being able to study from her home community has made a big difference.

“I just got a new house; all of my family is here, and I want to work here,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to go to Whitehorse to study, so I was happy that it could be done from here.” 

After dropping out of high school, Lauren spent years working odd jobs in Carmacks. 

“It’s harder to get work without education. I couldn’t find a job that I could look forward to or a paycheque that I could depend on,” she says. “I would like to have it be stable, instead of having trouble finding work.”

Six years ago, Lauren had a daughter and spent her time at home. Now her daughter is in kindergarten full time, so Lauren can focus on her future.  

“Now, I want to be a positive influence for my daughter,” she says. “I never had that positive influence telling me that I had to go to school, so now I try to do that for her.” 

After Lauren graduates, she hopes to work for her First Nation. 

Tara Wheeler achieves a decade-long goal

Tara Wheeler does not give up. 

After 10 years of studying through distance learning from Carmacks, she finally earned her Early Learning and Childcare Diploma. And she is graduating with honours. 

“It’s taken a long time and it feels awesome to be done,” she says. 

It took Tara so long to finish because she was busy with work, and family, and governance – she was elected to Carmacks Village Council in 2009. And because the courses were not always offered through distance when she needed to take them.  

That’s something she has seen improve over the years. 

“The College is offering a lot more classes more often through distance learning,” she says. “It used to be there were only one or two classes available each semester.”

Over the years, she has also seen a lot of changes in the technology used in distance learning. The first course she took was through teleconference where she struggled to hear the instructor through a phone, and she had to fax in her assignments.

“It was a struggle at first – I don’t know how people work full time and take a full course load. There are times that I have had to bring my kids to the classes, and they draw on the white boards or sit in the corner with their headphones on.”

Tara moved to Pelly Crossing in 2001, to flip burgers at Penny’s Place. After spending two summers at the job, she decided she want to stay in Yukon. So, she moved to Carmacks to take a job as an Educational Assistant at Tantalus School. She loved the community and the people, so she stayed. 

“I bought a house, I had kids, I manage the daycare here, and now I am Deputy Mayor,” she says.  The diploma is required for people working in a daycare, but Tara did not want to leave home to get her education.  

“I had a staff member who took a year off and went in Whitehorse to study. It was hard on her financially and she had to uproot the children,” she says. “I like living here and I don’t want to leave. It’s nice to be able to come to the campus and login to my classes and then go home to my family and my own bed.”

Over the years she has also seen how the approach to teaching young children has evolved, from having a set schedule  of activities that changed with the seasons to being more responsive to the children’s interests.

“It’s been interesting for me to follow what the kids are interested in,” she says.

Though Tara enjoyed the program, she’d like to see more opportunities for students to get real-world experience in  childcare while studying from the communities. She’s like to  see the Early Learning and Childcare program be more of an apprenticeship program.

“Being able to write a good paper doesn’t make you a good childcare provider,” she says. “In the future, I’d like to see more hands-on learning in the communities. I can read and I can write papers, but that’s not what everyone’s strength is. People learn better when they’re doing.”

Now she is challenging her staff at the Dune’na Zra Sunch’l Ku Daycare to complete their certificates as well. 

“I tell them, I graduated, now you guys have to catch up,” she adds with a laugh. 

And even though Tara has completed her certificate, it does not mean she’ll stop taking classes. 

“Because I am managing the daycare, I want to take more business classes to round out that side of my skills,” she says. “It’s all about lifelong learning – it never stops.”