Some districts continue to use the methods that have worked for them in the past, but Evergreen School Division is committed to preparing its learners for today’s world. Superintendent and CEO Paul Cuthbert says the division is proactive and innovative in finding new methods to educate students. “We need to provide learning environments for students that model the environments they’re going to experience when they leave school,” he states.
The growth of the oil, gas and mining industries in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador presents the region both with great economic opportunity as well as the challenge of meeting the need for a qualified local workforce. The province’s public college is rising to this challenge by working closely with staff, students and government officials to make sure it offers the programs needed to fill the expected influx of jobs with the right people.
Cape Breton University (CBU) sits on an island unto itself. CBU is located on Cape Breton Island, which is part of Nova Scotia and is situated northeast of the province. However, much like the island itself, CBU has not allowed its physical location to limit its global stature. When John Harker stepped in as CBU president in 2003, he saw the school’s untapped potential to change the local and global communities. “There was a need, I thought, for the university to help identify how we could embrace the knowledge-based economy,” Harker explains.
There’s school spirit, and then there’s what Shawnigan Lake School in British Columbia has. Headmaster David Robertson says the grade 8-12 school has something that few schools in the region or even the country have, and it’s something that forms the core of the school’s mission. “I would say right up front that it’s our very strong sense of community,” Robertson says. “We’ve always been a boarding school, and we’ve managed to remain a school that’s relatively pure in the boarding school world.”
After a series of provincial school division amalgamations in 2006, Prairie South School Division 210 of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, was created. It consists of 40 schools in the south-central portion of the province and caters to approximately 6,700 students from 19 diverse rural and urban communities spread across 12,643 square miles. The past five years has been a significant period of transition for Prairie South, which has brought new challenges and opportunities not only to the staff and students, but also to the surrounding communities, according to Director of Education Jeff Finell.
Many rural areas are experiencing depopulation as their residents flock to urban centers. As a result, declining student enrollment is often a major problem for school districts, as is the case in the Portage la Prairie School Division. But despite the trend, the Portage la Prairie School Division grows in other ways, countering its enrollment losses with careful and effective budget planning.
It’s one thing to be data driven; it’s a whole other ball game to tailor a system to students’ needs. But that’s exactly what the folks at Parkland School Division have done. With the help of its board, this division is revolutionizing the way Alberta looks 21st century learning. Parkland School Division serves more than 58,000 residents in an area that spans about 4,000 square kilometers. The division is home to about 9,600 students, and it has 21 schools along with a number of alternate sites.
Douglas College is not waiting around for government funding of post-secondary institutions to increase in order to move forward. Instead, the New Westminster, British Columbia-based college is embarking on a plan to self-fund its growth by 17% over the next three to five years. “Our growth is going to be self funded; we are not using any government funds, which is phenomenal. That is not something you see at most institutions,” said Dr. Scott McAlpine, president of the college.
