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'There's life after high school'

R.B. Russell students put on path to better future

By: Nick Martin

Posted: 05/28/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

WAYNE.GLOWACKI@FREEPRESS.MB.CA Enlarge Image

These R.B. Russell students are being encouraged to pursue higher education. From left, Seneca Chartrand (foreground), Jared Ottertail, Harold Sosnowicz, school counsellor, Lisa Spence, Deanna Harper, Joel Maxwell, Joshua Monias, Tiffany Greyeyes (seated) and Kim Deeley, a school counsellor.

ONE year he's Josh Monias, doesn't come to class much, doesn't do homework, barely passing.

Next year, he's on the road to being the future Dr. Joshua Monias.

Monias got tapped by teachers at R.B. Russell High School as a bright kid whose future would be a whole lot brighter with a post-secondary education.

And he's responded.

Guidance counsellor Kim Deeley and school social worker Harold Sosnowicz had been agonizing over the exceptionally low post-secondary success of RBR students a couple of years ago.

"We didn't have a very high transfer into post-secondary, and the question was why," said Deeley.

Sitting in the North End high school, Deeley held up five fingers: "I could count on this many fingers and have fingers left over, (grads who went to college or university) in the last four years."

Said Sosnowicz: "What is it that stops our kids from going on further? Our kids are coming from a (family) tradition of not finishing high school, let alone going on."

Deeley said that R.B. Russell staff were pushing students to go on. "We needed someone on the other end to pull."

Christine Pierre was happy to pull. She's the aboriginal student recruitment officer at the University of Manitoba.

"The whole guidance department came out to U of M," said Pierre, and a year ago January, she started coming to R.B. Russell every three weeks to work with 13 students who now plan on going on to college or university.

"The whole notion of aboriginal recruitment is still fairly new," said Pierre, who has a lot of autonomy and could free up time regularly to work with the RBR students and staff.

The students have visited U of M, as well as the University of Winnipeg and Red River College, getting them comfortable with being on campus, figuring out what kind of career might appeal to them, seeing that they can join the young people already in those programs.

At U of M, said Sosnowicz, "We did a scavenger hunt. The kids went to different buildings on the campus....have fun, and learn how this place connects."

Monias now takes an adult-learning health care aide course at R.B. Russell, has a summer job in the health care field, and will take , academic courses at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate next year that are prerequisites for undergrad courses leading to medical school.

"In Grade 10, I wasn't motivated, I didn't care about marks or going to class," said Monias, who wants to specialize in pediatrics and return to his community of Garden Hill First Nation as a doctor.

Rebecce Mayo said she was initially "scared....big, huge campuses," but she's now heading for Red River. "I'm thinking of going into carpentry -- I like building stuff."

Deanna Harper hopes to enrol in social work at U of M, Joel Maxwell's eyes light up at a future spent in the massive automotive shops at Red River, Tiffany Greyeyes wants to study early childhood education at red River.

Seneca Chartrand said that the R.B. Russell students in the postsecondary program have become her closest friends.

"It shows us there's life after high school," said Chartrand.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 28, 2010 B2

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