The Alberta government has been running a series of youth forums across the province as it prepares a revised Education Act, but only one such forum, in Jasper last week, was conducted entirely in French.

The forum brought together high-school students from École Desrochers and French-immersion students from Jasper Junior/Senior High School to discuss education issues and share their thoughts with representatives from Alberta Education.

Their ideas will ultimately be compiled into a report that will make its way to the desk of Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk as he prepares a new Education Act for the province.

“The hope is that we will have a revised Education Act tabled in the spring,” said Kelley Beitel, a senior manager of student engagement, who helped host the forum in Jasper.

The students were broken up into a series of working groups and, throughout the morning on Dec. 13, came up with dozens of answers in response to four questions about improving education. Each group then narrowed their list of answers for each question down to two “nominees” which were then voted on by all of the forum participants.

The four questions the students had to answer were:

• What do you think you should be learning to prepare you for life after high school?

• What does it look like when you are learning at your best?

• How can we make schools more welcoming and safe environments?

• What can be done to help more students complete high school?

That last question, in particular, generated a flurry of ideas. One of the working groups absolutely couldn’t narrow their lengthy list of suggestions down to two and ended up submitting three answers. 

“We believed that all three of the ideas that we had forward are original thoughts that might not come up with the other groups,” said Gabriel Kreiner, a Grade 11 student at École Desrochers. “We couldn’t let one of them go. We had to have all of them.”

“That question was pretty much the biggest question,” added Sabrina Charlebois, also in Grade 11 at École Desrochers.

The three answers the students came up with were: providing more opportunities for extra-curricular activities to count as school credits; engaging with struggling students in a more loving and encouraging way; and making post-secondary education accessible to everyone.

The group was particularly passionate about that last point, noting that the cost of university and college tuition is a barrier for many students and could deter some young people from completing high school, since post-secondary education seems out of reach anyway.

“They feel strongly that everyone should have a shot,” said Denise Moulun-Pasek, a representative from Alberta Education, who was a part of the same working group.

Kreiner was not only a participant in that day’s forum, but is also a member of the Minister of Education’s Student Advisory Council, a group of 24 students from across the province who meet several times a year with the minister to discuss education issues.

Kreiner told the other students that having their ideas passed on to the minister means there is a good chance some of those ideas will make their way into provincial education policy.

“If you want to have a direct influence on education, you speak to the Minister of Education. That’s where you need to be,” he said in French. “It’s an incredible opportunity.”