Creating bonds with Belgium
Local French Catholic school board expands international education
Building on its initial foray into international education a year ago, the local French Catholic school board announced this week it’s part of an agreement to partner with four Belgian school boards.
The agreement, which involves Ontario’s other seven French Catholic school boards, was a year in the making.
“It’s all about the sharing of expertise,” said Joseph Picard, director of education for the Conseil Scolaire Catholique Providence.
“By tapping into other countries, we learn and we get better.”
Picard, who oversees a school board that extends from Windsor to Owen Sound and the Grey Bruce Peninsula, said the agreement would initially be felt more at the board’s upper levels before working down to teacher and student exchange opportunities.
He envisions the agreement working very similarly to the one struck with school boards in the French cities of Lille and Lyon a year ago.
“It started with principals from those two cities spending a week here seeing what we do,” Picard said.
“The plan is to have some of our people go over there next year.”
Picard said international education is an area the Ministry of Education has been urging all school boards in Ontario to explore further since 2015.
He called the partnership with the Belgians “a natural fit because of the similarity of languages.”
“Globalism is the environment our students are going to live in,” Picard said.
“Being exposed to different ways of doing things and different cultures to operate in is something we have to expose students to.”
As the collaboration with the Belgian boards grows, teachers and students will get opportunities to go to Europe on exchanges to learn. There will be regular video conferences and professional development for the two groups.
“With France, we’re having regular interaction,” Picard said. “We’re pursuing doing research in education in the area of the neurosciences.”
Though the board’s international program is really still in its infancy, Picard said there are already areas that each partner has expressed looking at more closely.
French and Belgian officials are curious about co-op and High Skills Major programs and how they’re integrated into high school and post-secondary institutions.
“In France, they’re very successful with their strategy for Early Years Learning,” Picard said. “That’s one thing we’re very interested in.”
He added the Europeans also have developed very specialized schools for the trades and specific skills.
“They have these specialized schools over there for things like culinary arts,” Picard said.
“It’s like High Skills Majors, but more intense. There are elements of that we want to look at.”
Picard said these agreements are just the start of the board’s plan to expand the number of international students enrolled.
Currently, there is one international student at E.J. Lajeunesse, but Picard said the hope is to recruit five to 10 students for next year.
The board is also in discussions with creating partnerships with schools in Spain.
There is already a program in place that allows students to go to the Mexican city of Monterrey for a month to be immersed in the Spanish language.
“When we were working on our strategic plan a few years back, students and parents told us one element they favoured was multilinguistic opportunities,” Picard said.
“What better preparation for a global market than helping students learn multiple languages by going abroad and being immersed in the culture and language.”
It started with principals from those two cities spending a week here seeing what we do.