School division hires graduation coach for Carpenter High School

A new position has been added at Meadow Lake’s only high school to boost graduation numbers.

Graduation coach Pat Gervais was hired by the Northwest School Division to bring the numbers up from 70 to 80 per cent at Carpenter High School.

Gervais will focus on getting students ready for graduation by instilling them the belief that there’s more to life than just today.

“It’s giving them hope for after graduation that ‘I’m going to do this’ or ‘I’m going to try to be a doctor or whatever,’” Gervais said. “It’s getting them in the frame of mind- if they come to school every day, if their attendance is good and work on the attitude, they can succeed.”

As a parent, Gervais said the best thing to do for a child is to encourage them to attend school every day.

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Ideally, she would like to see the senior students do weekly check-ins to see where they stand with studies and assignments. She said the meetings don’t need to be formal and can be as simple as a five-minute chat in the hallway.

While the positon is new to the NWSD, it’s not for Gervais. For the past six years, she’s worked with the Meadow Lake Tribal Council as a graduation coach on a community approach.

“I’m taking the approach I used with them and using it here now in finding ways to get students in the building. If we can get them here, interested and engaged, we can get them to graduate,” Gervais said.

Before her position with the Tribal Council, Gervais was a teacher with the school division and said a lot of the students she had then are in high school now. 

“(They) recognize me so there’s a bit of a connection that way,” she said.

On the job for nearly a week, she added the welcome’s been warm and she is looking forward to the job at hand.

Colton Swiderski is meadowlakeNOW’s municipal affairs, crime and court, health and education reporter. He can be reached at cswiderski@jpbg.ca or tweet him @coltonswiderski.