The Prince Albert Catholic School Division celebrated the new school year before it even began with two events during their Opening Week.
Director of Education Lorel Trumier updated the board of education about the BackPAC and New Teacher Orientation during their regular meeting on Sept. 8.
Trumier said the BackPAC Night was a replacement for the traditional Meet the Teacher nights held in previous years.
“Essentially it is the same idea as Meet the Teacher night,” Trumier said. “The parents come, they get to meet the teacher, but what we did is shift its focus a little bit to doing it prior to the school start, so that students would have an opportunity to not only meet their teacher, but the parents get to meet the teacher, (and) the students get to bring their school supplies. They get to see their classroom.”
The BackPAC event was hosted on Aug. 28 at schools across the division. Trumier said the response was positive.
“In the initial few days since start up, we’ve already heard that parents, students and staff are really appreciating the process,” she said.
Trumier added that parents who have talked to her personally have noted that the new concept lessens student anxiety.
“The first day of school is a long time to be away from your family when you’ve just spent the entire summer with them, and for our little children, they have a lot of worry,” Trumier said. “They don’t even know what school really is about.”
In this case they can meet their teacher, see the classroom and have a parent there.
“When your parent is there, it really helps to reduce that anxiety and really start off on the right foot,” she said.
“We’re hearing that there was good success,” Trumier added. “We’ll do a formal survey from our parents and our students and staff and we’ll be making decisions for the following year, but it’s already looking promising.”
On Sept. 8, Trumier also had meetings with her administration staff and also discussed the BackPAC nights.
“My admin team overall said that they felt that this would be worth trying again next year and obviously they also want to see the feedback from staff and students, families, but the initial response was positive,” Trumier said.
She said school administration felt there was room to grow the event.
” Meet the Teacher night, not everybody can make it, but they feel that once the word gets out that they might even see increased attendance to that. I think those are all fair comments,” Trumier said.
She added that formal responses will dictate if the event continues.
“We’ll wait and see what the official responses from families and staff and we’ll make some decisions moving into the fall,” Trumier said. “We’ll make that decision pretty early here. We’ll give it about a month’s time to collect some information from everyone.”
The division also hosted a New Teacher Orientation on Aug. 20. This event welcomed 13 new teachers to the division.
The division actually has 16 new teachers but three had previous experience in the division so they did not attend the orientation.
“We’re really excited about the opportunity for new teachers to be working with our system, and we’re always trying to put them in the best position possible to join our system,” she said.
The event covers items such as procedures, policies, curriculum and areas of focus. Trumier said the division updates them on ministry engagement opportunities and spends the morning orienting them to the school division.
“That’s a big part of having them set up,” Trumier said. “We also connect them with consultants and coordinators and the people in our system that are there to help them so that they never feel alone.”
Each of the new teachers was presented a professional portfolio and school division pin as a gift by board chair Suzanne Stubbs as a gift from the board.
“Our board chair welcomes them officially. She always makes her presence known on that day and so it is nice that she does that,” Trumier said.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
