By Greg Nikkel
Two teachers from the Weyburn Comprehensive School, who have each received awards this year for their excellence in teaching, shared thoughts about their profession and why they love doing what they do with the Cornerstone school board on Thursday.
Margot Arnold, who teaches the Entrepreneurship classes, won the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence, and Karen Kennedy-Allin teaches physics, and was presented with the Canadian Association of Physicists’ Award for Excellence in teaching high school physics.
Arnold explained that her main efforts are in teaching the Entrepreneurship 30 classes, which have in turn won provincial and national awards for the student companies that they have set up and run in the past few years. The teacher said she actively seeks to push her students beyond their comfort zone in taking on these projects, and said her motto to them is, “Good enough never is.”
“If I don’t give them a little nudge, they’ll just stay in their comfort zone.”
The classes make use of the computer technology of the computer lab, but also of the Practical and Applied Arts (PAA) classes, which have helped in the manufacture of some of the products the students have sold.
The students learn about business and business etiquette, they hone their research skills and communication skills, and learn how to make themselves more employable for when they leave high school and go on to a career or higher education.
Asked if students know what they’re getting themselves in for when they sign up for her class, Arnold said they don’t always realize just how much hard work is involved. “There is no prerequisite to come into this class. Some have a real love of business, and others have no real idea,” she said, noting the first four to six weeks is curriculum-based with lots of theory, but then they have put that theory into practice with the student companies.
One requirement was that each company must donate at least 10 per cent of their earnings to a charity of their choice. Since starting with the Junior Achievement program in 2014, there have been 10 student companies who have raised collectively $5,090, not counting the funds raised by this semester’s group.
Kennedy-Allin was very humbled to receive her award for teaching physics, and noted part of the reason for being nominated was her involvement outside of the Comp with the Perimeter Institute on Theoretical Physics, based in Waterloo, Ont. “I use inquiry-based learning. As a mother of boys, I know it seems easier for girls to be successful than boys, and I did some research on that.”
“We know there are typically differences between the way girls and boys learn, and I gathered ideas from my colleagues around the province, and from across the country and around the world,” she said, using what she gleaned from this research to set up hands-on physics projects.
These projects have included constructing a rollercoaster with steel ball bearings, and building mini-catapults for launching marshmallows, with the requirement in both cases to understand and to practically use the principles of physics in their projects. Not only do the students have to use the principles in the construction of these projects, but the assignment includes their actual calculations and explanations for how such principles as velocity, acceleration and kinetic energy are demonstrated. “The best part for me is seeing the kids light up. They’re doing it because they love it … I feel very honoured to work in a school that encourages innovation in the classroom,” she said.
