Roberta Vyse and Norm Lee
Roberta Vyse and Norm Lee have helped create a "learning community" at Bird's Hill School in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Roberta and Norm have involved students, parents, educators and stakeholders within the community in an approach characterized by entrepreneurship, partnership and technology. They have involved local professionals as mentors, encouraged female students to pursue careers in science and technology, and created partnerships with businesses that contribute educational opportunities and resources to the school.
Under Roberta's leadership as principal, the school has become a "living laboratory" of education, and has received numerous distinctions, including the Grand National Award for Excellence in Business-Education Partnerships from the Conference Board of Canada. The school and its entrepreneurial approach to education have been applauded in Manitoba and beyond.
Approach to teaching
"Our mission is to prepare students to have successful lives after they leave high school, and that has to start here."
Partnership is important because it helps educators realize that many people in the community are stakeholders in the educational process. Educators can enlist these stakeholders and open up new areas where they can make meaningful contributions.
We both, but particularly Roberta, work to develop more entrepreneurial approaches for the school. This means taking the required risks to develop innovative products or services for the education marketplace. We then combine efforts, often with the help of other organizations, to bring these plans to some conclusion.
This approach brings outside groups into education. Without these players, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Canadian education system to match the accomplishments of some of our competitor nations. We have, therefore, enlisted more than 30 businesses to help us.
Transferable experience
We never set up a partnership without first determining what educational needs we are trying to meet. For example, we set up our first partnership with Nortel (Northern Telecom) because we needed to expose students to new technology that was not available through the school system. We have addressed technology-related skills, career awareness and problem solving over the years.
Once we define the needs, we research the industry sectors that might be able to help. Finally, we look into particular companies that might be able to help us.
To succeed in this sort of program, you have to do your homework. First, you must realize that the cultures of business and education are very different. When we decide to approach a company, the first thing we investigate is its culture. We look at the company's annual report, its environmental record, its human resources policy and its production locations. We also look for evidence that the company is a good corporate citizen. The last thing you want to do is open the newspaper one morning to see that a company you are working with has been fined for its exploitive hiring practices.
We then try to determine if the company has needs that we can help it meet. Its advertising is a good place to start. If you look closely at a lot of advertising, you will see that it is not necessarily designed to sell products. Companies often have other goals. For example, many companies want to promote safe use of their products.
Once we have a relationship, we try to provide a service, some information or something else of importance right away, so that our business partner knows we can deliver on the other plans we have made. For example, one of the most important things we can do for our partners is provide them with publicity for the contributions they make to our school. We also invite company employees to our professional development sessions, provide them with educational training and act as consultants for their in-house training sessions.
We have full partnerships with companies such as Nortel, the North West Company and C-Mac Industries. We also have links with a variety of companies, government departments, public utilities and university departments that provide us with expertise, personnel, innovative ideas, equipment and, on occasion, funding.
Our business partners are the mainstay of our mentorship program. Our students have worked with professionals in more than 40 high technology fields. Mentorships comprise four to eight half-day sessions over several weeks during which a teacher, a small group of students and the professional focus on problem solving, career awareness, technology and future developments in various industries. We also run these programs in cooperation with university faculties to show students what a university is and why they might want to go on to further study.
The partnerships have been very important in bringing new instructional and professional development ideas into our school. The school has won 14 awards, some for projects based on suggestions made by business partners. Aspects of the school's organization, such as self-directed work groups and the use of total quality management, were developed with input from our partners.