Back to school is just around the corner and DVSS principal Curtis LaPierre is excited about new prospects this coming year.
    The junior high and high school continues to see growth. LaPierre expects the school will have between 470-480 students.
    Every Grade level from 7-12 will have three class groupings,” said LaPierre. “It hasn’t been that way in decades.”
     This year is adding three new teachers all with international experience.
    We are always looking for opportunities for kids,” said LaPierre.
    The school welcomes Alex Dextras, which will be teaching junior high and high school math. He has just completed three years of teaching math in China.  He speaks English, French and Mandarin.
    One of the new additions is a familiar face. Drumhellerite Jason Audio-Aiken joins the staff. Audio-Aiken will also be teaching junior and senior high math. In addition, he spent two summers teaching senior high math in China.
    The school also welcomes Lisa-Marie McDonald, who will be teaching junior and senior high Social Studies and English. She also has a degree in music. LaPierre says she spent July teaching ESL in France.
    The school is taking on some new programming. It is able to offer French and German, as well as Spanish through the outreach school.
    “In the second semester we are going to try something completely different. We are going to run a multilingual speech lab,” said LaPierre. “We are going to offer six different languages that students can choose from. We’ll use Rosetta Stone for the introduction and then we’ll pair that student up with a first language speaker from the international program.”
    This model allows them to offer the language training from Grade 7-12 and also allows not only the language learner to get credits, but also the trainers they are matched with.
    “In Western Canada, the majority of the population speaks one language, for kids to have the opportunity to pick up a language, and the opportunity to pick the language they want to study, opens the door even further for them.”
    Facility-wide, the school saw a complete redesign of it’s wood working facility. They have also upgraded the computer labs and putting a push on coding in Computer Science as well as multi media training. There are also two new Google Chrome carts and another iPad cart. There are also new upgrade to furniture, interior and exterior upgrades to the building and sire.
    School commences Tuesday, September 1.