MEDICINE HAT, AB – What started as a response to the challenges city schools faced early in the pandemic became permanent last September.
Now, Medicine Hat Public School Division’s Hub Virtual School is ready to grow.
Principal Warren Buckler says online school or virtual school options have been around for a while but believes the live, real-time classes the Hub offers is unique.
“Our teachers meet with the students from 9 o’clock until 3 o’clock,” Buckler explains. “We try and make it as close to a regular school experience as possible where you have live classes with your teacher where you’re logging in from your kitchen table or your desk as opposed to sitting in the classroom.”
The student-teacher ratio for the Hub is the same as it would be in a normal classroom, about 25-30 to one depending on the grade level.
The format and size of class are much different elsewhere, says Buckler.
“So when you look at a virtual school in Calgary for example the student-teacher ratio is 117 students to one teacher. So the kids get materials from their teacher and then kind of limited interaction with their teacher throughout the course of the school week.”
The Hub is currently providing 230 students province-wide full kindergarten to Grade 9 programming and some options for junior high students.
In September the Hub will begin offering high school classes to students Alberta-wide.
“Our hope is to be able to offer the entire academic program of studies. So all the different streams of math and English and the different sciences for our high school kids next year and then a selection of options that we think will work better online. We’re probably not going to have shop class,” he says with a laugh.
He says the program is largely the same experience that kids will get at school in terms of the learning with some adaptations for at home.
For example, some students who struggle with anxiety are given certain accommodations at school to help them get through the course of the school day.
“A lot of those accommodations that we give to students with anxiety are just universal strategies for our kids which means everybody gets to write their test in isolation, and you know they don’t have to worry about the crowded hallways and that sort of thing. It works,” Buckler says.
About 150 students at the Hub this year are from Medicine Hat. The remainder are spread across the province from Milk River south of Lethbridge to Hythe near Grande Prairie.
Buckler says feedback has been positive about the program and he wants everyone to know about the Hub option that is working for many families.
For more information on the Hub, visit the MHPSD website.
