Start-of-Year Interview with Ms. Bell

Start-of-Year Interview with Ms. Bell
By Hana Hollingshead

H: So, what were you doing and where were you before working at Templeton?
B: I spent the last four years being the vice principal at Gladstone. And then, before that, I was a teacher in the Coquitlam school district, for a really long time.
H: Do you remember your very first time walking into Templeton, what your first thoughts or impressions were?
B: Well before I knew I was going to come and work at Templeton, I came and watched some games in the gym. So, I’ve definitely been a part of the gym and the enthusiasm of the Templeton sporting life, which was really fun. And when I came in to visit with Mr. Tuerlings and Mr. Gock, I really felt that Templeton had a very calm and friendly vibe to it. There was a good feeling in the building; I was excited to come here.
H: Do you have any favourite moments so far this year?
B: I got to go on the grade 8 trip to Grouse Mountain, and that was really fun. To go and do all those things and to just be outside with the grade 8’s and getting to interact in nature was a lot of fun.
H: What has been your biggest challenge so far?
B: Learning who everybody is. [laughs] I’m not sure that I know all the teacher’s names yet. I think I do, and I’m trying to learn as many student’s names as I can, but it’s a lot of people. That’s definitely the biggest challenge.
H: So, something that everyone, especially the 11th grade students were wondering, what would you say led to the difficulty scheduling and accommodating classes this year? Has there been any initiative or planning from the VSB to prevent this in the future?
B: What a thoughtful question. So, without going to much into the inside baseball of it all: Every year, when students make their course selections, the admin looks at those selections and says: “these are the classes that we need to have”. And there were kind of two things that I can see happened at Templeton: One, is that the school district looks at numbers, and says “there aren’t enough students in that class so you can’t run that class”, and so a bunch of classes got closed. But it also seems to be that what students requested, and what they actually wanted, were different. So, I know that a bunch of students came back in September and said: “oh but I wanted to be in biology” but they had not chosen biology and thought that they could just add it in September. There were some last-minute things, and there were some things at the district where they said “we’re gonna take away these classes, you can keep those classes” and there was a lot of backing and forthing with what classes we were able to offer. And so, for next year, to try and not have such chaos, we will firstly really give the message to students to be really thoughtful in their course selection, so that the numbers we have when we’re starting to build the schedule are as accurate as they possibly can be. Also, we are hoping that the district does not cut too much from us.
H: If money and logistics were not a problem, and you could magically snap anything in or out of existence, is there anything you would do to Templeton?
B: Put in elevators and find a way that you could cross over to the third floor from the other side of the third floor. Those are the first two things that I can think of.
H: What about this year are you looking forward to the most?
B: I am looking forward to learning all about Templeton and getting to know everybody, the staff and the students. And really just becoming a big part of the community here. It seems like a really great community and I’m really happy to be here.

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