ARCHIVED—Recipient Bios
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Year: 1998 – Province: British Columbia
Certificate of Achievement Recipients
Shain Chisholm
School: Burnsview Junior Secondary School
Principal: Alexander John Watson
Grades/Subjects Taught: Secondary French immersion, humanities
Teaching Approach:
- bring the raw material of local, national and global concerns, problems and issues together with curriculum outcomes
- handle with critical and creative thought, inquiry, investigation and reflection
- foster learning in an historical and global perspective, and encourage finished products that students take pride in.
Outstanding Achievements:
Developed programs to offer students a wide variety of engaging lessons encouraging the use of French:
- during study of Les Filles du Roi, students wrote letters to prospective wives, choose them from a group, were "married" by "Father Chisholm," and spent subsequent periods "living" in New France, fighting scurvy, farming the land and repelling the British
- in study of the National Dream, students divided into crews, were given track and train and assigned to build, within budget and schedule, sections of the Canadian railway. Many different challenges faced by different areas of Canada teach appreciation of this engineering feat.
- on Subway Day, the class joins staff at a local Subway restaurant, make sandwiches according to exact directions, in French, of fellow classmates to test both vocabulary and pronunciation and sense of humour
- enrolment in French Immersion continues to climb (it is declining in other schools in the community) and now nearly one third of the school's students take classes in French.
Organized community service project:
- students volunteer at community organizations, homes for elderly, animal shelters and food banks
- learning opportunity promotes sense of responsibility in young teens, gives them pride in contribution and accomplishment
- arranged placements, prepared students, scheduled post-service school presentations.