Teacher input has led to new courses for junior high students at St. Francis of Assisi Academy in Foothills County.
The school, part of Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools, rolled out the new options this fall after staff members were asked to pitch ideas that would pique students’ interest and enhance offerings at the school.
“Teachers were given that kind of challenge, I guess you could say, and they responded admirably,” said principal Jaime Leidl.
Ideas had to be tied to fine arts, athletics or career and technologies.
Teachers submitted about a dozen possibilities and students selected their favourites. Eight new courses were chosen to go with the traditional offerings like drama, physical education or art, Leidl said.
The new options available this year to Grade 7 to 9 students at the K to 9 school are STEM, coding, social history of physical education and sport, film studies, hockey skills and development, sports medicine, pyrography (wood burning) and textile art.
Students can take up to eight options each school year, he said.
“We want kids to not just take the same option over and over again," Leidl said. "We want them to experiment and be exposed to fine arts, to athletics, to career technologies.”
St. Francis is considered a small school, and the additional options are in response to significant growth over the last few years, he said.
"The options that we were delivering before, they had run their course," he said. "They weren't student friendly."
Leidl said he’s proud of how school staff responded and came up with ideas to improve student learning at the school.
“These teachers had to put in a lot of work over the summer, developing their courses, developing their resources, and getting ready to teach this course,” he said.
The courses were developed in a couple of ways, he added.
Programs from Alberta Education were used if available, or teachers were able to borrow from existing locally developed courses and build a program.
“(Teachers) were given the freedom to create a course that they were passionate about,” he said.
“The whole idea is to get kids excited about something either new to them, or that they really enjoy and are passionate about outside of the traditional academic learning, and then make that come to life here in our school.”
