A community service fair took place at Medicine Hat Public School Division's central office on Friday. Classroom support teachers, counsellors, family school liaison workers, administration and others attended the event to engage with representatives from various community service organizations. - NEWS PHOTO SAMANTHA JOHNSON
A community service fair took place at the central office of the Medicine Hat Public School Division on Friday afternoon.
“We have 20 community services spread between three rooms. The purpose of this community services fair was to bridge education and community supports,” said Greg Ferris, coordinator of diverse learning services with the division.
It was a good turnout with 20 out of the 21 services invited attending the event. Not only were division employees connecting with the community organizations, but those organizations were also connecting with each other.
“We wanted to offer this to our classroom support teachers who are working with teachers on programming for students with diverse and complex learning needs,” stated Ferris. “We started to invite our counsellors, our family school liaison workers and administration because we wanted everybody to have knowledge about the supports in our community that they can provide to family, students and teachers.”
Ferris says he believes this is the first time this type of event has been held by MHPSD. The classroom support teachers wanted it and the fair was fully supported by the division. From there the concept grew and it seemed like a good opportunity to bring everybody together into one place for an afternoon.
“The plan was to provide each person that came with a thinking guide,” said Ferris. “Ideally, they go around and collect information about each community service, potentially with a student or family in mind or maybe a classroom that could benefit from some of the services they provide to education.”
From there, staff could have information readily available to support students and families.
Ferris is looking to gather some feedback from the organizations that attended and also from classroom support teachers at their next meeting. The idea is for the fair to become an annual event and hopefully it will continue to grow with each year.
