The Learning Connection, the Grande Yellowhead Public School Division’s alternative school, is opening its doors in Jasper.
Midway through the first semester of the 2014–15 school year, TLC plans to open an auxiliary office of its Hinton school, which will operate out of the Robson House. According to TLC’s principal, Stuart Graham, it will make access to its courses much easier for Jasper students.
Graham said that every year between 10 and 15 students from Jasper take courses at TLC, and they have to travel to Hinton as often as once a week to do so.
With the auxiliary office starting up in early November, students taking advantage of TLC courses will no longer have to make that journey. Graham said the office will employ one full-time teacher, who will be available three times a week.
This means students who thrive under one-on-one instruction will get a lot more out of their TLC courses.
“If they’re a student who really likes one-on-one with a teacher, or really likes a face-to-face environment, then we see them a little more often,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to do with the Jasper satellite office—is to give them that one-to-one experience without having to travel to Hinton for it.”
TLC was established in 1996 to give students who “need something different from a traditional high school” a place to pursue their secondary school education. The school operates under the GYPSD umbrella, and has four locations (Hinton, Edson, Grande Cache and Evansburg) plus the soon-to-be-open Jasper office.
More than 300 students take courses with TLC each year, and the school employs about a dozen staff.
It offers any course required to complete a high school diploma, and the flexible nature of those courses means it’s a tool utilized by all kinds of students.
“People take our courses at the learning connection for a number of different reasons. [For example,] lots of them are there because they are involved in other activities that don’t lend themselves to full-time attendance at a school,” Graham said.
That means it’s perfect for students who have to dedicate a lot of time to a ski team, or whose financial circumstances force them to miss traditional classes for work.
Graham is also excited at the prospect of offering more opportunities to the service-industry population in Jasper.
“Jasper is unique in that it’s the one community in our district that has a tremendous service industry population—and we want to start to explore the opportunity of what we have with that community,” he said.
Graham said some of those employees have requested a chance to get their high school diplomas, and he hopes to see people taking advantage of TLC’s courses to upgrade their education, or obtain a diploma if they don’t yet have one.
Although TLC plans to “start off slow” with its office in Jasper, Graham pointed out that the Evansburg school also began as an auxiliary office, but because of community response became its own school within a year. Depending on how much use the Jasper office gets, the same might happen in here.
Trevor Nichols
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