Kendall Crouch
Kendall Crouch has helped his students make informed career choices by developing cooperative science education in the Ottawa area. Through the program, his students have had placements at the National Research Council, the Ottawa General and Civic hospitals, Carleton University, the University of Ottawa and local computer labs.
During his 31 years of teaching, Kendall's students have included many men and women who have gone on to earn senior degrees in science and mathematics. Nonetheless, his teaching has included classes for students at all levels of ability. He has also taught all-female science classes, and science courses in French. His students characterize his teaching style as quiet, democratic, helpful and fair. Over the last 15 years, his students have placed first, second or third 11 times in the team-of-eight competition in the annual Sir Isaac Newton physics contest.
Approach to teaching
"There is not a more enriching experience for science students than contributing in a meaningful way to research projects in the community."
My philosophy of cooperative education is the result of contemplating two related problems:
- students in their final year of high school must choose an education and career path to follow based on very little experience; and
- one of the major challenges facing teachers is providing suitable enrichment for gifted students to maintain their interest in school and help them strive for excellence.
Cooperative education can help solve both these problems. It is a way for students to earn credits in a work environment away from the school that provides them with a wide variety of experiences to help them make informed decisions about their education and careers.
A co-op placement can either reinforce a chosen path or, if students find that they are not suited for this line of work, save them time, effort and money. Other students use the experience to narrow their career choices. Co-op placements in more than one setting can help them decide.
Transferable experience
The biggest challenge when starting a cooperative education program is recruiting the students and the supervisors. We found that if you can convince the top students in the school of the benefits of co-op, and then find them placements that produce positive experiences, they can help you — in an assembly, for example — to recruit other students the following year. We found that the top students have a lot of influence on students at all levels. There was only a limited program in place when we applied this approach to promoting cooperative education. Within a year, the number of students interested increased to the point where we almost had more than we could handle.
At Hillcrest, students can earn a maximum of four co-op credits in a given year. Each credit involves 110 hours of work. Typically, a student will make up the entire four credits with one or two placements. It is important to remember that the students must have time both to be trained and to work long enough to contribute something to the organizations that have provided the placement. If students are given more than two placements per year, they will not have time to complete much real work.
It is also important that students have sufficient background in the related science for their placement — the credits must be linked to in-school credits that students have recently earned or are currently taking. For example, students that we placed at the Heart Institute had to have sufficient background in biology and chemistry to handle the work. This ensured that they were able to make a valuable contribution during their placement and, most importantly, conformed to the basic principle that a co-op program should show students the relationship between what they are studying at school and what goes on in the real world.
The teacher/advisor is responsible for providing each student with a suitable placement, in which he or she will work under the watchful eye of a workplace supervisor. Depending on the time committed by the students, they can spend three to five half-days a week at the workplace for either a full or half academic year.
Finding suitable placements obviously depends on what is available in the community. If the facilities are there, how can anyone refuse the help of a bright, enthusiastic young person, free of charge? The only cost to potential supervisors is time spent helping educate a youngster to perhaps follow in their footsteps. If co-op works as it should, everyone gains!