The Alberta Teachers’ Association

 
Photos by Laughing Dog Photography 

While struggling with serious challenges, teachers in small-town Alberta are embracing new opportunities

I make this comment after a driving tour of tiny Kirriemuir, Alberta. Running furiously alongside the car, just a few metres beyond my passenger window, is a large black mutt, her tongue lolling and fur flying. We’re halfway up to highway speed and the dog is still keeping up.

“Oh, that’s Juno,” replies my tour guide, principal Kevin Van Lagen. “She’ll go right for the tires, too. She’s going to get hurt someday.”

Located partway between Consort and Altario in southeastern Alberta, Kirriemuir consists of a general store, an agricultural feed business and a mobile home. The feed business is where Van Lagen’s wife works. The mobile home, a trim brown trailer, is where they and their family lived for their first two years in the area.

In fact, the community-owned mobile home was one of the attractions that the locals used to lure Van Lagen out of Lethbridge to take the principal job at Altario School—this after having had six principals in the previous six years.

Van Lagen’s original plan was to stay for three years then move on, but instead he and his family have put down roots on an acreage that sits within a stone’s throw of the school. 

“I just don’t want to be in the city,” he says. “I sit on my porch and I look for miles and it’s quiet. I hear the coyotes in the distance. It’s a peaceful way of ­living—when I’m not running like crazy.”

Great expectations

Based in Hanna, Prairie Land School Division serves about 1,400 students through nine schools sprinkled across an area encompassing more than 15,000 square kilometres. 

Van Lagen is principal of two K–12 schools, in Consort and Altario, both small farming communities located 50 kilometres apart on the rolling plains that are much closer to Saskatchewan than Highway 2. Altario is a twelve-minute drive from the Saskatchewan border.

Van Lagen’s bearded face tenses as he outlines the challenges faced by residents and teachers in the area. Topping the list is a lack of specialized health ­services. While there is a health unit with a nurse and a hospital with a doctor, the emergency department is open only sporadically, and there is no dentist or eye doctor. The lone mental health therapist went on leave, and the child mental health therapist moved away and has never been replaced.

“Access to any mental health supports are nonexistent right now besides what we can offer as a school,” Van Lagen says. “We have students and their ­parents who are struggling mightily with ­mental health concerns and there are no ­supports—none, zero.”

Accessing specialized services means the time and expense of travelling to larger centres like Red Deer, more than two hours away. On the rare occasion that a specialized professional visits from the city, the first thing they do is look at their watch and state when they have to leave due to the long drive.

This lack of services means a lot of expectations are downloaded onto the school.

“I have teachers come in [my office] and say ‘I’m done. I’m finished. I got nothing left in the tank … there are so many needs in my class,’” Van Lagen says. 

Unlike larger urban divisions, Prairie Land doesn’t have a roster of experts it can dispatch from central office, and each school is the only one for miles around. 

“There’s nowhere else for these kids to go,” Van Lagen says. “Whoever comes through our doors we accept, and we have to try to create a program for them, even if we don’t have the expertise.”

Assignments may vary

Teaching in a rural setting defined by small schools and small student ­populations means taking on highly ­varied assignments. 

In Altario, elementary teachers teach triple grades ( 1–3 or 4–6). Junior high teachers also teach triple grades (7–9) as well as some high school courses. For a secondary teacher, a typical assignment could be something like this: Science 7–9, Science 10, Math 20–1, Biology 20 and 30, Science 30 and Health 7–9. 

At most, secondary teachers teach a particular course once a year, but some courses are taught every second year (to Grade 11s and 12s).

“You rarely get to become that expert teacher, that master teacher in one subject area, simply because your assignment is so varied,” Van Lagen says.

One way that Prairie Land deals with low student numbers across multiple locations is extensive use of video conferencing. For example, in the Math 30–1 class at Consort School, there are six students in the classroom and five others on a video screen. Each of these virtual attendees is sitting alone in a room in a different school. The teacher is also present via videoconference; she’s in her basement in Spruce Grove.

“You can’t put a Math 30–1 teacher in front of three kids, but I can put her in front of 12 to 15 kids by adding different sites throughout the division,” Van Lagen explains.

Videoconferencing creates a number of challenges for teachers, who must consider how to reach students who are not physically in the room. It’s more difficult to build relationships, both within the classroom and beyond (teachers can’t connect with students in the halls or at lunch). 

Returning assignments means scanning and emailing them to each individual student, and because there are students from multiple schools in one class, the teacher must log into multiple platforms when completing a routine task such as assigning marks. 

The key to making it work is preparation.

“If there is any gap in planning, the class will quickly fall apart,” Van Lagen says.

Despite its challenges, he says videoconferencing is enabling the division to keep schools open, allows students to meet more people and is preparing ­students well for post-secondary.

Smells like a barn

Van Lagen’s countenance brightens as he outlines various projects that have him feeling positive about the future, the most notable of which is the Altario School of Agriculture.

The program began a few years ago after staff held a brainstorming session aimed at creating a special identity for the struggling school, which currently has only 60 students.

“We do agriculture well—let’s ­celebrate that. Let’s embrace that,” Van Lagen explains.

In the fall of 2016 an old outdoor arena was transformed into a school/community garden. Now the school plants a garden each year and uses the harvest in its hot lunch program. The program has since expanded to include the raising of steers (two last year), with the meat also used by the hot lunch program as well as community meals and other fundraisers.

Last year the school board approved the purchase of a barn, which was erected behind the school. Water and power have since been added and additional ­pasture area is in development, all to better equip the school to raise a wider variety of livestock, such as sheep, chickens and turkeys.

The school’s website now contains a group photo of staff and students in front of the new building along with the quote: “The best classrooms smell like a barn.” The community at large has also embraced the agricultural focus, raising or donating more than $75,000 for the program.

“The community is great and they support us a hundred per cent at all times,” says Maggie Baier, a teacher of 35 years at Altario School. 

“I think our agriculture program is number one. We’re ­forging forward without anybody else having done it before. That becomes a challenge but is also very exciting.”

“The school has truly become a community school,” Van Lagen adds. “People speak of the school with pride.”

Stepping stone or permanent fit?

From a social standpoint, teaching in a small, tight-knit ­community has its benefits and drawbacks.

“If a community turns against you as a teacher, you’re hooped,” Van Lagen says. “You can’t hide. There’s no anonymity.”

On the other hand, there are “all kinds” of social activities, such as potlucks and impromptu gatherings at the community hall.

“It’s kind of like going back in time,” Van Lagen says, “where the neighbours just get together and sit on the front porch.”

Throughout Alberta, it’s no secret that young teachers aren’t flocking to rural areas—Van Lagen has seen some job openings attract only one applicant—and most who come don’t stay long term.

“We get these great young teachers out of university and they last one to three years, have a significant other somewhere else … and off they go again,” Van Lagen says.

Those who stay tend to fall into one of two categories: they were originally from the area or they’ve found a life partner since moving there.

Van Lagen has participated in recruitment drives at ­universities, and he actually urges young teachers to use rural experience as a stepping stone. At job fairs, the common message from large urban boards is to get on the sub list, whereas Van Lagen can offer full-time contracts.

“You come and you teach for a year or two. If rural life is not for you, you move on with some great experience,” he says.

Some, like Van Lagen himself, find that the rural setting actually is for them. Not only does it provide a welcome ­respite from the traffic, bustle and anonymity of city life, but it also allows for deep and lasting bonds with students and their families as well as a greater variety of rewarding professional opportunities.

“If you’re willing to embrace this way of life, you can have a really great career in rural education.”