PRINCE ALBERT — The next generation of St. Mary High School students had a chance to look at their future school on Thursday night when the school hosted a one-day open house.
Plans to have future students visit on Wednesday as well were scrapped due to the STF’s extracurricular withdrawal of services. Ecole St Mary Principal Dwayne Gareau said they were happy to host future students.
“This is an exciting time of year for families and staff and the school,” Gareau said. “It's just always refreshing to see all these excited faces coming in and into their transition into the school. I never lose sight of that, that this is an exciting time for them.”
An open house fits under the criteria of an extracurricular activity, so St. Mary had to cancel. Gareau said that because of the cancellation, Thursday turned into a much busier night.
Gareau said the biggest change for students will be the size of the school. St. Mary is a lot bigger than any elementary school in the city. The St. Mary principal said that alone can take some time to adjust to.
Gareau and vice principals Jason Bourdon and Lydia McLeod explained different parts of the school and the school culture. Then they took students on a tour of the whole building, showing off classrooms and different programs available for students.
Gareau said they want to create an atmosphere where students can picture themselves taking those classes.
“We like them to see the whole building because we always say this—even to the students when they are touring—they don't know what their interest may be until they see it,” Gareau said.
Throughout the tour, future students and their parents made stops in Learning Leader classrooms for Science and other courses. Gareau said that they wanted to give students as much of a sense of the building as they could.
Students who couldn’t make the evening tour had the opportunity to do a shorter tour during the school day.
“I have already taken a couple because they can’t make the one night that they like to still come for a tour, so they're taking some small group tours,” Gareau said.
“(There are lots) of compliments we get on the building, the cleanliness, how well taken care of it is,” he added. “It’s a really unique building. I travel around to many high schools in this province and we, in terms of what we have here at the school, would rate as well as anyone in the province.”
The tours are open to those enrolled in the Catholic Division, out of town or in other school divisions. Gareau said that with so many great high schools in the city, there is a lot of choice, and that competition makes all schools stronger.
“We want parents, families, and students to have choice,” he said. “We want to show them what we have to offer here. We always say we don't want every student in the city to come to this building, we want the ones who want to be here.”
Gareau is a St. Mary alumnus as well as a teacher and said it was a culture that has been built through both his predecessor Mark Phaneuf and himself.
“I graduated here in 1998 myself,” he said. “I went to school here and it's something we always continuously work on and we reflect. We reflect on what we're doing well, and what we need to do. We don't just settle, on what do we need to do better. How can we adjust because if you get complacent sometimes, then the more complacent you are, the less you're looking to be innovative and stuff.”
