Elementary expands school

Construction has begun at Rotiwennakéhte Elementary School on modular classrooms for staff and students in the coming months, an upgrade that will give the school more room to expand services for students.

The additional space will be a one-story unit of three classrooms and office space for teaching, staff work, and to provide support to students, such as speech and special education services. 
More space will also open room in the classrooms and hallway, since some educational material and library books are slotted to move into the new space. It will also give the school an area to implement new projects with the students.
“We’re hoping with an extra room that it’s going to be like a multi-purpose, flexible space, where the kids can come in and work one-on-one with teachers, or a whole class can come,” said Rotiwennakéhte principal Melissa McGregor.

Modular classrooms will give the school more windows and offer a sturdier build compared to the school’s current temporary trailers, which serve as one classroom and six small offices.

“They’re tight where they are placed, and some of their offices don’t have windows, so it’s not the best working conditions, even for the children to have services in those spaces, it’s not the best. The trailers are also not the best quality; they’re starting to break down, there’s ants, and then sometimes there’s leaks,” said McGregor.

“We’d like to get ahead of that now and try to get into something fresh while we’re not dealing with any major problems.”

Once the modular classrooms are installed, the trailers will be removed, and students will regain a portion of the play yard.

“We’ve outgrown the trailer, and these new modules will help support our growing needs,” said McGregor.

And the new addition will also allow the school to use the round room without interruptions. The temporary trailers are currently installed past the round room. Many cultural events, such as drumming and singing, are held in the round room, but staff and students looking to access the trailers must walk through the events.

“When in the round room, they often use it for singing when they’re practicing, and it’s not the end of the world for people to pass through, but it’s just to be aware that there’s going to be a conflict between activities,” said McGregor. “Now we’re going to get our round room back.”

Modular classrooms will help the school meet the needs of a growing number of students, but also to have the space to offer new resources and innovative activities for students, said McGregor. The new classrooms will be multi-purpose, allowing staff to work in the rooms and do one-on-one sessions to better help and meet the needs of the students.

“We are excited about a lot of the different activities and ideas that we have,” said McGregor, “And that’s really about being able to give them more individual attention to focus on strengthening our curriculum.”

As students enter their last week of school, construction workers prepared the grounds for the new building and will pour concrete for a new hallway to connect the school building to the modular classrooms.

Students have lost part of the school yard for these final few weeks of the year due to the construction, but McGregor hopes the modular classroom will be complete in time to welcome students in the fall.

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Hadassah Alencar, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter