While the Alberta government might call April 25 to May 1 education week, if you were to ask James Bartram, every week would be education week.

Bartram, stewardship education project lead for Parks Canada and Grande Yellowhead Regional Division, said education is an ongoing process that can take more than 50 hours a week and is most productive when the teacher is passionate about engaging youth.

He’s one important cog in the wheel that saw the Palisades Stewardship Centre, just north of town, get $2.3 million last week for infrastructure improvements. According to Bartram, the centre has turned a corner, with its first employee hired which means it will no longer be a one-man show. “We’re starting to get to the point where you’ve got other people to do stuff which is great and that’s how you build it,” he said.

Given the man came to Jasper with just $100 in his pocket and worked at the Tramway for his first month, Bartram has established himself as a renowned teacher within the community over the past 14 years. His caring nature for children shows when he speaks about the students. “Your goal as an educator is to make yourself obsolete, you know, when those kids would come back and after two or three years of school they’d be showing me stuff,” he said. “That’s kind of the definition of success for an educator: when you go full circle and your kids don’t need you anymore.”

The joy of watching his “kids” grow into adults and move into the world is an obvious reward for Bartram who said he enjoys the feedback of a small town, which ensures he’s doing the right thing as a teacher and successfully educating his students. “If you’re teaching in a big city, and I’ve done that too, you never really know if your having an influence or if it’s positive,” he said. “You never really get that feedback, whereas when you teach in a small town the kids will come back and visit you, or you’ll start to notice things are changing or you’re starting to have a bit of an influence and that’s one of the big rewards, I think.”

The Palisades Centre is the result of Bartram’s desire to give children more than what was already available. “When I came to Jasper all the things that drew me to Jasper weren’t really happening in a formalized way for the kids. There had been great programs in the past but they’d run for a couple years and fizzled out for whatever reason,” he said. “There was no real outdoor education program and no environmental education program and they were things I was interested in.”

So, Bartram put together a program for the kids based on transformative education, or the question, “What are the touchstones in a kid’s life that will really influence the kind of adults they become?” Researchers have found that adolescence is a key time when people are open to new ideas and role modeling is particularly influential, he said.

“When you look at adults with a caring concern for the environment, they’ll attribute that to a single significant experience in a pristine environment as a youth,” he said, adding that this type of research was of particular interest to an organization such as Parks Canada, whose mandate, according to its website, is to “protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage and foster public understanding, appreciation and enjoyment in ways that ensure their ecological and commemorative integrity for present and future generations.”

Bartram points out that the moments don’t need to be large in scale, like climbing a mountain, but can be similar to moments that connect people with one another, like sitting around a campfire. “It’s the shared common experience,” he said. “With a ski hill, or with the forest, that’s wrapped up, that’s part of it.”

Pestering former park superintendent Ron Hooper for several years paid off for Bartram, when Hooper asked him to put together a business plan that would sell Parks Canada officials on the idea of an educational development centre a the Palisades. Drawing on previous experience, a younger Bartram just out of high school and wanting to explore the outdoors of Europe with the company Outward Bound, paired with an academic background that gives him a “quirky skill set” including a Master’s in Education Management, the teacher put together a plan that couldn’t be refused.

“So much of that is the stars aligning,” he said, adding other plans had been put forward that were just as unique and with the same educational offerings. “The difference with our plan is that we came together at the same time as Parks Canada was really focusing on the integrated delivery of the Parks mandate. Instead of thinking strategically in five year blocks, they’re thinking strategically in 100 year blocks.”

Bartram worked for Outward Bound, which is now a key player in the Palisades, back in Wales as a youngster so he understands from personal experience the kind of relationships that can be forged during expeditions, campfires and the variety of experiences that outdoor education can offer.

“It’s kind of like I’ve almost come full circle,” he said. “I’m almost doing exactly what I was doing when I left high school.”