The public school board in Thunder Bay is launching a pilot project this summer aimed at helping Indigenous students.
The 2016 budget for Lakehead Public Schools includes funding for two “graduation coaches” — with one each at Hammarskjold and Sir Winston Churchill high schools.
Board superintendent of education, Sherri-Lynne Pharand, said the goal of the project is to help students, particularly from remote communities, during what can already be a difficult jump from grades eight to nine.
“We know that many of our students not only transition from grade eight to nine within the city, but many come to us from [remote] First Nation communities,” Pharand said. “They’re here without their family.”
“When you are also completing that transition without your family’s support network here, then it makes that transition that much harder.”
Sherri-Lynne Pharand says the idea of “graduation coaches” has already proved successful in other cities. (https://www.lakeheadschools.ca/)
Pharand said the graduation coaches can help students with a wide variety of things, like adjusting to life in the city — including learning the transit system, or finding out where to go to get required volunteer hours for their high school diploma — or connecting them with recreation opportunities as well as academic support.
“Whatever it is that the students require support with, the graduation coach will be there to support them, and it really will be based on an individual plan, really getting to know each and every student,” Pharand said.
The coach will also help facilitate communication between the student, their boarding home and their family and home community.
Planned five-year pilot
Similar programs have been successful in Edmonton and in the Kenora area, Pharand said.
The board completed interviews for the positions this week, she added, and the two successful candidates will start work in August by doing outreach to families.
The plan is to pilot the initiative for five years, Pharand said, as that will give the board time to follow the students entering grade nine this year right through to graduation. She added that the coaches will be available to students already in high school.
Indigenous students will also be able to access support from the coach year-round, and outside school hours, Pharand said.