SANDRA M STANWAY
Brooks Bulletin
The first collegiate students from Grasslands School Division will graduate with a college certificate this spring.
“We’ll be graduating our first five students this May. So those students will have a certificate in veterinary technical assistant from Olds College and they’re not done high school,” said Katie Graham, assistant superintendent at Grasslands.
With that certificate those high school students will be eligible to work in a vet’s office or an animal shelter.
There are also two students who will be done their first year of health care aide and next year, while still in high school, they will be doing their college lab work with Medicine Hat College.
“This would be like going to college to do trades while you’re sitting in high school,” Graham said.
The collegiate programs have become popular with about a dozen collegiates around the province and there are more to come.
Last year Alberta Education received over $60 million for the development of new collegiates.
Grasslands, Lethbridge Polytechnic and Medicine Hat Public School Division hope to get some of those funds for Prairie Sky Collegiate.
The new collegiate would allow many high school students to access college classes in their own school, taught by journeyman and Red Seal staff in programs like plumbing/gasfitting, automotive service tech and heavy duty mechanic.
To help get students interested in the collegiate path Grasslands introduces broad opportunities that are related to the curriculum like science, engineering, technology and agriculture, to students beginning in Grade 5. As they reach junior high the options become more narrowed with career and technology foundations.
“We want our kids to have that well-rounded focus on things outside the classroom. That real world connection,” Graham said.
The idea of the collegiate is relatively new and continues to be developed but the goal, locally, is that all students will have a definite direction.
“I know for Grasslands, the dream Cam (Bernhard) and I both have is that every student in high school is on a clear cut, career pathway so we know where every kid is, where they’re headed and that those pathways are flexible for teenagers. They can make decisions and that when they leave our high schools, they’re leaving with confidence,” said Graham.
