New program widens career pathways for students

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Sunny South News

By Cal Braid
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Last month, Grades 7 and 9 students from Vauxhall High School attended a tour of Triple M Farms just north of Taber. It was one stop on the day’s three part tour of southern Alberta farms, and part of a pilot project for the new Southern Alberta Collegiate Institute. The school runs a program whose mission is to provide hands-on experiences to Grades 7 to 9 students in the fields of agriculture, trades, and health care. The farm tour workshops served to expand their knowledge by exposing them to ‘on the farm’ careers as well as the research and behind the scenes jobs.

Lori Adamson, the junior high program teacher at SACI, talked about the new program and its ambition to widen the pathways to career success for young people. 

“We are in partnership with seven school divisions –Horizon, Westwind, Livingstone, Palliser, Lethbridge Public, Grasslands and Holy Spirit– as well as the Lethbridge Polytechnic where we are housed. Our program leads into dual credit programming for students in high school (another section of SACI), which will hopefully lead to an awareness of ways that their interests and skills are needed in the agriculture industry.”

 The career pathways are formed from the hands-on learning experiences that gradually narrow from broad exposures and activities. Those culminate with dual credit courses that provide a head-start in post-secondary study. Crucially, those career pathways are directed by student choices and may look different for each individual.

 After the field day, Adamson said, “They had some hands-on experiences at each workshop. For the farm tours they bagged potatoes, hand made some french fries, picked pumpkins, and learned to rope some horns on a hay bale.  Students also learn what type of background they would need if they want to work on a farm someday.”

For example, M.D. of Taber Reeve Tamara Miyanaga, who hosted the workshop at her family’s Triple M Farms, gave the students about as thorough a lesson in potato farming as could be squeezed into a one hour session. She used visual materials, including a poster board that listed the various jobs related to farming: engineer, accountant, irrigation tech, agronomist, truck driver, labourer, researcher, mechanic, electrician, bookkeeper, and more.

  “Because we work with seven school divisions, the workshops we offer with E3 are spread evenly amongst the divisions,” Adamson said. “Teachers express interest in coming to certain workshops and we try to get everyone a spot to try one of them. Students come for one day with their teacher and participate in activities led by E3 staff. We anticipate that we will have approximately 3,300 students through the program during this school year; this is 140 classes for all the workshops we are doing in the three areas. For the agriculture portion, we will see about a thousand students. The dual credit program through SACI has more in depth learning opportunities where students in grades 10 to 12 are able to do some learning alongside students at the polytechnic while still attending their high school.”

 The pilot phase this fall will allow each division to send one class to each of the six pilot workshops. Locations may include Lethbridge Polytechnic, Kate Andrews (Coaldale), another school site, or field trips. A transportation budget has been allocated equally for each division.

 The Southern Alberta Collegiate Institute building will be under construction at the site of what used to be the Barn on the Lethbridge College campus, and is expected to open in the spring of 2025.