Moncton high school recognized as one-of-a-kind in Atlantic Canada

Inside the walls of Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton N.B., collaboration is at the forefront of every lesson plan.

For the last three-and-a-half years, the school has been working towards being recognized as a Professional Learning Community Model School and it recently received the prestigious designation.

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“You have to show that you’re using the best practices and creating a collaborative community culture within your teachers and your students," explained principal, Gary Wilson.

"You have show that you have a focus on learning and you have to be able to show over a continuous number of years growth in learning on both the tests that we administer here at school and any type of provincial or national tests."

The designation is given through a company called Solution Tree, which is a professional company and publisher of educational material.

Breaking it down, Wilson says it means that all teachers are working together and making decisions as a team on how they assess, teach and help students in order to have a more seamless collaboration across the entire school.

“That means if you’re taught math 9 in one class and you go to another teacher who teaches the same class, because we have 16 Grade 9 math classes, we want to make sure the quality of the education isn’t dependent on the teacher because we’re working together,” he said.

“When we’re teaching things, we really look at three criteria’s. So, does a skill that we’re teaching have leverage? Are you able to use it not just in your course, but in other courses? Are you able to use this skill not only in Grade 9, but is this a skill that you’re going to need when you go to Grade 10, Grade 11 and is it a skill that you’re going to need later on in life?”

It’s also more than just a title. Grade 12 student Griffin Cassidy says he’s noticed a difference from Grade 9 before the school really started applying this method.

“It’s a lot about applying our knowledge and not just memorizing this formula. Especially in math and science and then in classes like English, it’s really about self assessments and self guided learning and you reflect on how you did, which allows you to be able to improve,” he said.

“If you make a small mistake, but if you still understand it, you can still get a four, which shows that you fully understand it, and it's more about how much you understand it compared to how good you did on a test,” he added.

Vice-principal Shelley Gingras says receiving the designation is a culmination of decade's worth of work, but especially over the last few years.

“I think that it would be easy to think that people thought this was a lot of work and it is a lot of work. It would be foolish to not recognize that. But I think overwhelmingly our staff thought it’s so great that we have a unified vision of what we’re going to do moving forward and now we have a set of criteria of what that’s going to look like for everyone,” she said.

As for the students, Gingras has also noticed a difference on how they approach their learning.

“They’re not talking about, 'How does my grade get higher? How do I get more points?' They’re talking to us about, ‘I want to improve my learning.’ They know where their learning needs to improve so that their grades can improve and that’s such a different conversation,” she said.

Now, after years of hard work, Harrison Trimble has joined a very exclusive club.

“There’s 10 model schools in Canada. We’re the only model school currently in Atlantic Canada and outside of the United States there are only currently six model schools that are high schools,” said Wilson.

He adds that this designation is only the start and it just gives the school extra motivation to do even more in the future.

“It’s important for our community and for our province to see that there’s high quality learning going on,” he said.

“I can tell you that the students we’re producing in 2024 are the best students that we’ve ever produced. They’re the kindest, they’re the most educated, they’re the best critical thinkers.”

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