Skip to content

New school year and new optimism for R.D. Parker Collegiate

For those of us who may have spent many years in school - along with parents of students - we all know the "real" new year's day is two days after Labour Day - Wednesday, Sept.

For those of us who may have spent many years in school - along with parents of students - we all know the "real" new year's day is two days after Labour Day - Wednesday, Sept. 9 this year - which marks back-to-school until next June for both high school and elementary school pupils in Thomson.

Jan. 1 - well, that has the distinction of being the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars, but Sept. 9 is the date we have our eye on for a new year and new beginnings, especially at R.D. Parker Collegiate.

The transition at R.D. Parker Collegiate actually began last year, but should pick up in earnest this academic year, as a new management team, if one can describe a principal and three vice-principals as such, settles in at the helm.

Last school year started out with long-time principal Kathleen Kelson at the helm and three vice-principals, Eric Overall and Warren Hingley, both brought out of retirement for their posts, along with technical vocational vice-principal Grant Kreuger.

By Jan. 12, as the second semester rolled around, Kelson was gone to the newly-created post of "school district community connector," to in the words of the board of trustees, "meet with students, families and school staff, encouraging communication and understanding through the development of personal relationships" so students would "have every chance of succeeding in the public educational system."

Overall moved up to the post of acting principal for the remainder of the school year. Rob Watt, a teacher at R.D. Parker since 1995, replaced Overall as a vice-principal Feb. 2. Overall and Hingley have returned to their well-deserved retirements.

Kreuger and Watt are staying on as vice-principals, joined by Wally Itson, a Californian best known as a popular music teacher working with the school's music bands. Itson, originally from National City in San Diego County, California, who has also taught in Colorado, as well as the Los Angeles and Orange County areas where he was born and raised, previously traded in a music-teaching role to work as a vice-principal, so he has experience in both areas.

The most significant single move, however, is bringing in Ryan Land as the new principal. Land, who holds a Bachelor of Education, Bachelor of Arts and a Masters of Education degree with dual specializations in educational leadership administration and curriculum and teaching and learning, comes to Thompson with his partner Carmilla and their four children.

Land has worked in many schools throughout the world, including Leicester, England; Winnipeg and Ste. Anne in Manitoba; Humboldt and Blake Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan; as well as most recently in Ghana, where he was the founding principal of the first Canadian international school in West Africa.

School District of Mystery Lake Superintendent Hugh Fraser, in announcing Land's hiring April 28, noted he has "experience in multicultural settings, he has taught in First Nations communities and he has that experience too. He's dynamic; he has a lot of energy. When we spoke to him he convinced us that he was just so excited and so interested in coming to our community and he and his family had actually spent a lot of time researching Thompson before he made the application and they decided that this was the kind of community that they would like to come to, this is the kind of challenge that he would like to accept."

Indeed, it should be a big enough one for anyone.

Fraser also deserves a good measure of credit here. He grew up in Thompson and lived here in some of its earliest days when it was still part of the Local Government District of Mystery Lake prior to 1966.

In February 2007, Fraser, too, was tapped to come out of retirement and serve first as assistant superintendent for the school district, where he quickly concluded there was a "dire need" for administrative restructuring.

Fraser, who taught for many years and was a vice-principal and principal at R.D Parker before he left to become principal at Windsor Park Collegiate in the Louis Riel School District in Winnipeg, also served as president of the Professional Association of Principals. He was also the president of the Canadian Association of Principals, and served on the board of the International Confederation of Principals.

Under the leadership of both the trustees and Fraser, a team from the University of Saskatchewan was brought in last year to conduct an external review of R.D. Parker. The review had input from students, teachers, administrators, support staff and parents or guardians. The report, released last fall, highlighted the divergent views the groups often had of the high school and was critical in a number of areas including academic leadership by senior administration.

Fraser, for his part, has been a strong advocate of the R.D. Parker Collegiate Advisory Council for School Leadership, the parents' council reinvigorated recently by among others, Danny Morris, owner of Mystery Lake Body Shop, and Eric Sefton, a business loans consultant with the Communities Economic Development Fund (CEDF).

When it came time to hire a new principal this year, the board of trustees, chaired by Thompson Public Library administrator Cheryl Davies, set up consultation meetings with staff, students and parents to get feedback about what each group would like to see in the new principal and vice-principal.

Clearly, the groundwork has been prepared. It's now time to see what R.D. Parker Collegiate students, teachers and staff can reap from what has been sown because as long-term investments go there is no more important one that a community can make than in the education of all of its children.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks