MELFORT — Grade 12 Melfort and Unit Comprehensive Collegiate student Louise Lacroix has been selected to be on the province’s 2019-20 youth council.
With this position Lacroix hopes to address mental health accommodations in schools, teacher-student relationships, as well as harassment between fellow students – which she believes isn’t being addressed properly.
“Right now there are no strategies for fixing it or helping it,” Lacroix said.
She said, in her own personal experience, punishing someone for harassing other students doesn’t end or change the behavior.
She believes situations of harassment, including cyber-harassment, should be addressed in a way that that works toward a solution to stop the violence.
“We should look into prevention and have it not happen again throughout the next years to come,” Lacroix said. “As I am graduating this year, I want to see a change in our youth. I think that this council will be the first step to changing things throughout the schooling system.”
As members of the 2019-20 provincial youth council, Lacroix will have the opportunity to address issues directly with the education minister and other government members. It also serves for the student members to provide guidance to government on how to better engage with other students.
Each council member attends a different school division and brings their own unique perspective, skills and background.
Mental health accommodation is another issue Lacroix hopes to address.
“I definitely think I want to address more mental health issues because that has become more apparent in recent years, especially this year in schooling,” Lacroix said.
“With mental health there’s a lot more cases of say depression or anxiety or things going on in the school that can be easily prevented, such as a kid is stressed with homework and has a lot of anxiety about it.”
She said this could be potentially accommodated by teachers giving their students more time on assignments.
“My personal life is very busy, so I do get stressed with school assignments too or exams coming up. I think that having a flexible schedule or more flexibility within the curriculum and within the school day would help quite a bit.”
Lacroix said she also hopes to address and work toward fixing student teacher connections.
“It could be anything from being able to go talk to your teacher about why this assignment is late or why you didn’t make it to class yesterday without being stressed about having to talk to your teacher on your own time,” she said.
“I think teachers nowadays are more focused on teaching their students what needs to be taught and are not as much focusing on students as people, as a child still growing and developing. Right now I feel teachers are just trying to get all the knowledge into students as fast as they can.”
Lacroix said every student is different and has different learning strategies that work for them.
“Having the teachers rush through everything they aren’t able to fit to all the different students’ needs.”
Lacroix said she doesn’t have a specific solution to address the issue, but wants the government and the education ministry to know that needs to be changed and improved upon.
She received her position with the provincial youth council on Oct. 8.
