One of the ways to work together for student success is to find ways to talk and learn from each other in our school community – staff, students, and parents – about what is working well and what could use some fine-tuning at our school. To help that discussion, we recently met with a group of people who are representative of our diverse culture (various ages from teens to adults, various programs, students and parents) here to talk about their thoughts on a variety of topics related to LEC. One of the things that was discussed was "what is working well for students here at LEC, and what is not working?" Check out some of the students' and parents' comments below:
What works well at LEC:
- It’s a school of positive hope
- The encouragement students get, often after being discouraged about education before
- Flexibility, caring & willingness of staff to help the students
- Students / parents being able to manage the courses they take at times that work for them
- Everyone is here because they want to be and is trying to succeed
- There is an atmosphere of success here, all the staff put in extra effort to help students succeed and finish
- People smile and are friendly here; it’s a happy place where people talk to one another
- Students can work at their own pace and are able to finish quickly if they want to
- Being able to choose the hours that work for each student, can work and go to school on the same day if needed
- Having a child-minding centre on site
- If it doesn’t work out here the first time or you need to leave, you can come back and try again when you are ready and no one looks down on you
- offer more electives to go along with the academics we already have
- more options for some courses instead of only being offered in the evening
- child minding also available at night
- before they enrolled at LEC themselves, they heard things and were told things about LEC that were inaccurate and gave them the wrong perception
- need to get the word out better about how good we are as a school; people ‘out there’ often don’t know about what LEC offers and what it can do for students
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of what is working and what needs work. Some of the suggestions are things we can look at and see what we can do, while other things might cost too much or not be practical, but they are still things to consider.
So what do you think? If you are a current or former student of LEC, why not add your two cents worth below by clicking on the word "comments" and let us know what is working or has worked well for you? Your success story might be the inspiration to help someone else stick it out and realize they can succeed too. If you have some suggestions for things that could be fine tuned, add your thought on that as well!
Great to hear about all the great things happening at your school. When I was a VP at Poppy, I always appreciated the flexibility of LEC. You were there for those kids who struggled in a regular high school setting (for a variety of reasons) but still had a ton of potential and a bright future ahead of them. Keep up the great work. Shawn
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