Seven Oaks School Division initiative hopes to help students get real-world experience

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This article was published 30/11/2018 (2784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It wasn’t until Selena Jasper finished a practicum placement in a pediatric special care unit that she said she finally knew what she wanted to do with her life. Now, a new initiative in the Seven Oaks School Division is aiming to give more of its students these kinds of hands-on experiences.

Jasper’s placement in a small ward at Winnipeg’s Children’s Hospital was part of a co-op vocational program at Maples Collegiate, and it was only six weeks long. But Jasper said that was long enough for it to have a serious impact on her.

“These patients could be there for months and months, or years, of their lives,” said Jasper, 23. “I just liked how big of an impact the nurses, the healthcare aides, the custodians, anyone that enters that patient’s room, can have.”

This kind of practicum placement is just one example of some new approaches to learning that are popping up in schools across Winnipeg.

And a new partnership six months in the making between the Seven Oaks School Division and HP Change, an organization focused on creating opportunities for youth engagement and employment, is aiming to further develop these kinds of programs.

“One of the gaps that we’ve identified is that there’s this knowledge barrier between employers and teachers,” said Scott Angus, a partner at HP Change. “Teachers aren’t really equipped to give the full scope of some of the options out there.”

That’s where Angus said he hopes initiatives like his new partnership with the school division can come in.

The collaboration was announced at a roundtable event with about 200 people in attendance at Maples Collegiate earlier this week. Co-op grads like Jasper were invited to talk to prospective students about what they got out of their experience, and what could still stand to be improved.

“It’s really about capturing feedback from students, and capturing feedback from teachers,” said Angus. “It takes a lot of moving pieces and a lot of insight.”

Sharon Hollins, who has been teaching in the co-op vocational education program at Maples Collegiate for nine years, said the program is rewarding both for students – about 90 per cent of whom, she said, are hired right out of their practicum placements – and for instructors.

“I always get to see my students in the practicum sites,” Hollins said, pulling a photo out of her blazer pocket and proudly counting out her students in the group. “I was in one of the nursing homes last week, and I just happened to bump into one, two, three, four, five (students) at the same time.”

As the school division continues expanding the vocational programs it offers, superintendent Brian O’Leary said he hopes more students take an interest in trying them out.

“We’d like to get to the point where every high school student is doing some internship, some real-world experience as part of going through high school,” said O’Leary. “We want high school to be a launch pad, not simply a finish line.”

The new partnership will begin with its first mentorship day on Dec. 11 for Grade 8 students at École Seven Oaks Middle School.

While HP Change will only offer programs at a handful of schools in the Seven Oaks School Division for now, Angus said he hopes to expand to other school divisions across the province as early as 2019.

caitlyn.gowriluk@freepress.mb.ca