Coulee Collegiate gives access to abnormal learners
The Medicine Hat Public School Division’s board met in person Tuesday evening at the school board’s office.
It was a rather light agenda for the evening. The big presentation came from Tim Bloomfield with Coulee Collegiate, which is a partnership between the public school division, Prairie Rose School Division and Medicine Hat College.
The goal of the collegiate is to help people get a diploma who are struggling to do so in a normal classroom setting, or did not get one in their high school years.
“All of our partners were doing similar things for our youth and similar outreach programs,” he said. “We decided to combine our programs to create some efficiencies and that’s where this came about.
“We’re trying to serve students in southeastern Alberta through one entity.”
Bloomfield explained both sides of the collegiate to everyone in attendance at the meeting.
“We have a face-to-face side where we have students who will come in and take classes,” he said. “We have Chem 30 classes that start at 9:15 every morning. We have English and math classes every day. Right now, students are not coming into class physically, but that is a college decision with their COVID-19 protocol.
“Right now we are teaching for 75 minutes each day virtually. Students need to sign in at the correct time every day.”
The other side is distance learning.
“Students can sign up for distance learning every day of a school year and finish every day of the school year,” he said. “Students are signing up with us daily. Our lowest day of enrolment was 10 students, our highest was 26. It has been a steady stream of enrolment.”
There are three main types of students who use the collegiate. Shared students are current high school students who supplement credits through the programming. Adult students can pay fees to get their diploma before tackling college or university. The last group of students exclusively work through the collegiate. The last group is diverse and can consist of someone who didn’t like a typical classroom, or someone who needs to upgrade classes.
Coulee Collegiate is located on the third floor of MHC above the library and is open to anyone in Alberta.
More information can be found online at www.beyondwalls.ca.