Students in Rocky Mountain House now have the opportunity to learn from a school in Red Deer.
At the Confluence Campus in Rocky, a building that encompasses schools run by Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools and Wild Rose Public Schools, as well as the Aboriginal Resource Centre, a new Campfire Room has been set up to facilitate online learning for students who may need that extra push to achieve high school graduation. Students using the room will be able to tap into programming offered through the St. Gabriel Online School based in Red Deer.
Wild Rose superintendent Brian Celli said the Aboriginal Resource Centre was created a few years ago to focus on cultural and spiritual teachings. While it has been a positive addition, the Campfire Room is intended to provide complementary academic supports.
“We need to make sure that we’re providing them with an appropriate program to take them somewhere, to where they might envision themselves in their futures. The Campfire Room is our attempt to begin to address a real need for very flexible and mobile learning environments for kids,” said Celli.
The project is a partnership between the two school divisions and Red Deer College, which has operated classrooms at the campus in the past. In the classroom, which will be staffed by a half-time teacher, students will be able to register in whatever program run through St. Gabriel that they need.
Students who need to catch up, have an opening in their timetable or who are falling through the cracks due to poor attendance can access the programming. Celli said the partners are also looking at creating other locally-developed courses, including one through which students could get a certificate in Aboriginal Studies.
“It’s going to work out really well because we wanted to do this for a while, but we didn’t really have good access to the types of online courses that we needed, so this was a big step to be able to partner with (Red Deer Catholic and Red Deer College) around that,” said Celli.
A few students have already enrolled in courses through the initiative, with Celli expecting the program will experience strong growth.