High school students offered jump start on college career
Early childhood education course offered at Sir John Franklin
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Several Grade 11 and 12 students will be getting a jump on their college education when they begin an Introduction to Early Childhood Education course at Sir John Franklin High School early next month.
Three-year-old Jaxon Bernier hangs from the monkey bars set up in the gymnasium at J.H. Sissons School on Sunday. The gym was full of activities for children coming to check out the school with their parents to learn about preschool and kindergarten programs, as well as what the older grades are offered at the school. - Candace Thomson/NNSL photo |
The course will be taught at Sir John Franklin but also offered to St. Patrick High School students.
The course is a pilot project being offered in conjunction with Aurora College and the Department of Education, Culture and Employment.
The idea is to offer high-school students programs that will better prepare them to move to college or university or enter the workforce with better vocational training than they would have otherwise. It's a dual credit program where students who successfully complete the course will earn a high-school credit as well as a credit in early childhood education from Aurora College.
Dave Porter, chair of the school of education at Aurora College said the course will be taught for one period, every other day. The instructor has yet to be named, he said, but will be an Aurora College employee.
The course will begin the first week of February as the second semester of the school year gets underway. He said it is still considered a pilot project even though the course was taught in Yellowknife in 2015.
"The college has been exploring the dual credit concept with (the department) and the senior secondary schools," Porter said. "Early childhood education and support for trained and qualified practitioners in our communities is very important."
Porter said high-school students who complete the course will have received exactly the same level of education as they would have if they had taken the course at Aurora College. The course involves hands-on training and well as theory.
He added there is a need for more early childhood education practitioners in the NWT.
"According to recent reports - we can always use more. There is certainly a need for qualified, trained early childhood educators in all our communities to support parents and families across the North," Porter said.
Assistant deputy minister of Education, Culture and Employment Rita Mueller said this initiative falls under the department's education renewal program which she said has been a work in progress for the past five years. She said the department wants to offer students more choices.
"More vocational - or hands-on - courses would be one element or one pathway. Another pathway would be for students who are looking to go into the very high academic university programs that require a lot of science or math," Mueller said.
"Part of the opportunity we have here is not only to get students better prepared to go into a field after high school but actually get some courses or credits completed while they are still in high school."
Students at Ecole Allain St. Cyr were also offered the opportunity to take the course but there was no interest shown, according to Commission Scolaire de Francophone superintendent Yvonne Careen.
