Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Eight regions, 33 communities, 49 schools, 800 educators, 8,350 students over 1.3 million square kilometres. This is, of course, the framework of our education landscape, and it is pretty impressive I must say.

Today we celebrate and give our heartfelt thanks to the profession that is the pillar of our education system, and I am referring to our teachers and our teachers’ aides out there. To be a bit different this year, I thought it would be fun to spell the word teacher using a few of the over 2,700 thank you excerpts from students from across the North who were gathered for this year’s Thank You for Making a Difference campaign sponsored by the Northwest Territories Teachers’ Association.

T is for thank you for always being friendly to me. E is for everything they do. A is for always fun to play with. C is for cares that I am safe. H is for helps me keep going. E is for eternally grateful. R is for respects who I am.

No matter how you spell it, we are very thankful for the over 800 educators in our schools who contribute so strongly to our healthy communities. On behalf of the Members here today, we salute you, the educators, the teachers, the teachers’ aides, and thank you as we strive to work together in the next couple of years in using new innovative learning approaches for our students and our

families across the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.