Career fairs, university life and post-secondary student engagement were some of the ideas discusses at the Saskatchewan Rivers Public School Division trustee form on Monday.
The forum closed out the school division’s meeting. Sask. Rivers Students for Change rural student trustee Daniel Vidal spearheaded the discussion, sharing some of his ideas for helping graduating high school students make the transition to university life.
The discussion was well received by the board.
“I thought it provided some insight and some potential direction,” Education Director Robert Bratvold said.
“He talked about some great opportunities for students to connect with university life.”
Bratvold said they’re haven’t been the usual career orienteated events like career fairs since the start of COVID-19. However, he said division still plans to work on the issue to develop a replacement.
“I was thankful that he brought that to our attention and saying, ‘this what our students are saying,’ so we can investigate some ways to make that happen,” Bratvold said.
Vidal said he wanted to know if there were more chances to connect with university students through meet and greets or other events.
During his time he asked if there was a chance to have some connections with university students.
“(It’s) so we can have some idea what to expect once we get to university,” Vidal said. “Years before we used to have a Career Fair, but COVID shut it down. What if we did something like that but for universities?”
Board chair Barry Hollick asked if they could do something virtual, something Vidal said is possible.
“Last year we sort of had that, but it was more for careers,” he explained. “It wasn’t for getting to know what university life was like and getting the idea of university.”
His emphasis was that it should be from the university students’ perspecitive. Meet and greets would last about 30 to 45 minutes. Vidal added that if there was a career fair there should be careers on one side and universities on the other.
One idea that was brought forward by Hollick was to get in touch with SRSC alumni who are in post secondary.
Vidal explained that the whole idea was for anybody who is interested in attending university.
The views came from both the SRSC and from his own experience as a student at WP Sandin in Shellbrook.
Vidal’s next question was if the division could organize CPR classes in schools once a year. Those have slowed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Vidal even went through investigating the costs of CPR classed.
“Then we talked about maybe re instigating some of the CPR classes and we have done that in lots of our schools in many ways and I think COVID has put a little bit of a damper on that,” Bratvold said.
Vidal also discussed having mandatory language classes, but that matter is complicated by provincial regulations.
Michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
