Former Roving Campus teacher hopes to inspire school system overhaul

After years of teaching the conventional way, James Kostachuk is hoping that the Roving Campus program leads to more unique schooling.

Kostachuk attended the Rotary Club of Portage la Prairie's meeting on March 19, to speak on his experience with the Roving Campus, which gives those in need of high school credits the chance to earn them while travelling to different locations, as opposed to learning only in the classroom. He says that it's time for schools to abandon the standard classroom in favour of something more tailor-made for the students.

"The one thing I've learned about education is that we have to think about customer satisfaction, and the customer's the student," explains Kostachuk. "We need to find out what students need from the school system. For every student, it's going to be unique, and it's going to be different for every community as well."

Throughout his presentation to the Rotary Club, he mentions some of the projects they worked on, including creating a presentation about the history of Delta Beach, but only using items they found scattered around the area. Looking back on his time teaching before the Roving Campus, Kostachuk regrets not leaving the classroom sooner.

"I think of all the days that I spent indoors with students in, say, June," notes Kostachuk. "It's a beautiful day outside and we could be doing biology at Island Park or studying history at what was the residential school and, instead, I was in the classroom."

The Roving Campus has also found tremendous success, with roughly 40 students using it to graduate, with only two students being let go from the program.

In closing, Kostachuk says if we can mould education around the specific career goals of individual students, that's always going to be a winning recipe.