Student: Allison O'Neill

Placement: Centennial Hylands Elementary School

Centennial Hylands is a diverse Elementary school that offers special individual teaching to students who struggle in big class environments or have special needs. Centennial Hylands also has a French immersion program for certain grades. The vice principal Wayne Peeters and principal Tammy Flemming work hard to manage and provide a safe environment at the school.  Mr. Whitten, my supervising teacher, uses his lunch time to help students with robotics and is there to encourage them and help with problems they run into.

As a teacher's assistant in a grade 4 classroom I spend most of my time helping students one on one, focusing on their individual learning plans. While Mr. Whitten my employer teaches lessons I often take students out of the classroom to work on goals, that include reading, working on math problems, language skills etc. I plan to work with another teacher in the school, Mrs. Sutter, who works with kids who have special needs.  I look forward to working with her as it will help me learn different teaching techniques for certain learning disabilities. 

During my time at my co-op placement I have started to explore career opportunities. I have looked into becoming a special education teacher. From my tasks at my placement I have learned that I enjoy working individually with students so I am able to focus more on their individual goals. I could also see myself working as a child life specialist which is someone who works with children and parents in a hospital setting and helps them cope with challenges they may be dealing with.

At Centennial Hylands they are involved with a variety of different community events, such as an assembly on how to help fund a greenhouse for our First Nations community. They plan on running a bake sale to raise money to help provide affordable food for this community as well. Centennial Hylands plans on having a couple of spirit day but instead of traditional “funky hat day” or “green and yellow shirt day” they plan on April 13  having reusable container day and on April 26 reusable water bottle day. This is their way of contributing to help the environment by reducing their waste use.