After two years as R.F. Staples principal, Courtney Lawrance is leaving her post to become Living Waters Catholic School Division’s associate superintendent of learning this fall.
“I just want to say thank you to Pembina Hills and my staff and my students here at R.F.,” she said. “It’s a wonderful division to work for and I’ve been blessed to work with really talented, caring teachers. I appreciate the work we’ve been able to do over the two years together. It would not have been the same without their willingness to look at change and do what’s in the best interest of kids.”
Starting Aug. 1, Lawrance will be based out of Whitecourt and will serve schools in the Edson, Whitecourt and Slave Lake communities as associate superintendent of learning.
“The piece that I like best is that I get to work directly with schools and administrators, teachers and kids to improve learning, so the pieces around high school redesign, early learning,” she noted. “I think it’s going to be a great opportunity to experience new schools and to work with new people.”
Her teaching career has spanned 16 years, five years as a principal and vice-principal three years before that.
She said she was asked to apply for the role by the school division’s recruiter and thought an interview would be good experience to keep her skills fresh.
Now as the chosen candidate, she expressed her excitement for new responsibilities that would help her continue her professional growth.
“Sometimes things work out differently than you necessarily think they’re going to, but I’m very lucky that they chose me for that position and I feel like it’s going to be a good fit.”
In fact, it must have been fate that initially brought her to Westlock.
“I have a lot of experience teaching up north and I always used to think it would be really nice if I could teach in Barrhead or Westlock, and then this job happened to come up and I applied and I was the lucky candidate, so I think it was a little bit ‘meant to be.’”
With that in mind, she is heading back into somewhat familiar territory. She has worked for two Catholic school divisions in the past — Holy Family in the Peace River-High Prairie region and Grande Prairie Catholic — in both rural and urban settings in the north.
Prior to R.F., she was principal of St. Joseph Catholic High School in Grande Prairie.
Lawrance will transition out of her role here in early July and a candidate should be selected by mid-June.
Although her stay at R.F. has been short, she highlighted her accomplishments around high school redesign.
“We brought in our flex block, which is Focus 40, where kids get an opportunity to do work with teachers,” she said.
“If they’ve fallen behind or they need extra help, it’s a block in the day where they can get either some quiet time to work or they can get individualized instruction.”
She added that another part of high school redesign was creating new learning spaces in the school, like the senior high lounge that students can access all day.
“If they have a spare or their teacher lets them work outside the classroom, they’re able to go to our student lounge,” she said.
“We’re in the process of constructing our junior high student lounge. That should be open for September and it’s our construction kids that are actually building our junior high lounge, so I think that’s going to be a nice circle of kids creating a learning space for other kids.”
As for challenges, she noted declining enrolment as one faced by rural schools. Although she said R.F. has been lucky so far with higher than projected enrolment, the trend is pointing to a decline.
“If you look at where our numbers are right now, we’re at 750. In the past, they had over 1,000 kids that attended R.F. so that’s been a challenge, but I have a very good staff and we have very good kids and supportive parents.
“We’ve made some tough decisions and changed some programming, but we’ll weather those pieces. It’s all about the people that you work with.”
