By Evan Midford, Website & Social Media Coordinator
Argyle School is an alternative high school for students in grades 10-12, up to the age of 21, who thrive in a more flexible and personalized learning atmosphere. Students develop as independent, whole learners thanks to a holistic approach. Instructors are less interested in handing out a curriculum and hitting benchmarks, and are more interested in helping the students find out more about themselves through their specialized courses.
“We ask ourselves, ‘Who are we? Where are we from? What is our purpose? Where are we going with that purpose?’ And we find that this focus helps students to better understand how the knowledge that we’re trying to give them applies to them, as opposed to just throwing a whole bunch of learning at them and expecting them to be able to regurgitate it,” says teacher David Brown.
Granting Access and Building Strong Foundations
Sport Manitoba partners with Argyle School to support physical education programming, which the students wouldn’t otherwise have access to. The school uses the courts at the Sport Manitoba facility during the week, as they don’t have a gym at their high school.
A typical week includes some hours of gym time where students play sports like badminton and basketball. They also participate in programs where they can round out their physical capabilities, like weight training or yoga meditation. Exercise programs vary from low-to-moderate to high-intensity, and are built into complementary sessions where they learn about body image and self-esteem.
“Physical education and understanding about health choices, diet, and all those life skills are very important to the kids that we have. We have a lot of kids who are at risk of not completing their education and subjects like physical education and art are just as important as core subject areas to these kids,” says David.
“Often taking care of themselves or even just making healthy choices is not high on the list of priorities for any kids, let alone the kids that we have. What I’m making clear to our students is that this isn’t about sports and it’s not about creating athletes. This is about trying different activities, hoping that there’s something that you like, and learning how being active can help you with your four big questions.”
An Alternative State of Mind
Like all schools in Manitoba, Argyle follows the learning outcomes that are laid out by the government, but because they’re an alternative high school, they can structure some of those outcomes around specific learning that focuses more on the progress that students have made versus the actual skill level that they’ve reached. There is more freedom to experiment with creativity and there are many different options for demonstrating knowledge and capacity. One big area of focus is community.
“We see a lot of issues during the walk that we take from Argyle to Sport Manitoba. We might see the results from addictions or homelessness. But we also see people working together and kids playing,” David says.
“We try to explain that every single community may have some issues but they also have benefits, and it’s constantly about reinforcing the notion of what they can contribute to their own community and less about what you’re taking away. So the fact that Sport Manitoba exists here and so close by, we take advantage of that, but we also discuss how that’s come to be and how all the stakeholders have responsibilities in that area.”
Fostering Personal Growth, Inside and Outside the Classroom
For Argyle, it comes down to interacting with the students’ community on a different level. They aim to outline how both the practical real-world experience and educational classroom experience are important, but also focus on how they complement each other and how having both of these kinds of experiences can influence personal growth.
“Through this partnership, there are so many different offerings that kids can usually find something that they can connect with,” he says, “and being able to do that outside of a school class, outside of the school, I think is extremely positive.”
“The staff at Sport Manitoba are fantastic with the kids and they’re really approachable. I think they understand some of the challenges that our young people are coming into the building with, and that makes it really easy for me to remind our students to shelve what we’re dealing with temporarily and try to enjoy the moments that we’re in.”
Teamwork, Confidence, Communication
The key takeaways are not that the kids learn to play various sports, but rather about the skills they learn while participating in sports. It’s about teamwork and confidence, anxiety management, and putting themselves out there, listening, and communication.
“My approach has been to give the students some responsibility in helping set up the community norms of our group. I take care of providing the opportunities and showing them some of the basic skills of the sports and try to work with them, but I need them to have a say in how it’s going to go,” says David.
“I guess the success story so far is that I still have a full class that’s coming to phys-ed every week. I don’t know how that would be done if we didn’t have Sport Manitoba as a partner.”
