Turn and face the strange...
ch..ch..changes...
The school we knew once as Chateaugauay High which morphed into H.S.Billings, is adding on another block!
When you all came out to the high school in May you would have seen on your tour that the hallway down past the caf led to where we used to go for shop, auto mechanics, electrical shop and woodworking ..had changed, or grown. The growth was called NOVA Career Education Centre which focuses on even more shop like development but with design and auto-cad and Display techniques along with Welding Tech and Hair dressing and many other 'job getters'.
These types of things are selling! - That is to say, kids after going through the Nova Centre, end up getting jobs at fairly decent starting salaries. So, the high school is focussing on getting kids jobs and not simply preparing for Cegep and University.
What you see below, is the current "add-on" that has been in the process of construction since after the reunion. "Super NOVA" centre (my name for it). They are expanding where the money is - getting kids jobs!
Now all they need, (also what we needed 'back in the day') is to add some classes on "Entrepreneurialism" and independence - how to run your own business, how to make money, and make it work for you, rather than the other way round,- and of course, instead of how to get a job, - how to 'own a piece of the market' and employ people while maintaining independence, wealth and lifestyle! (Only in Private School you say?)
Wouldn't it be nice to learn how to have investment pay your bills with 'passive' income so you can be free to choose what you love to do and then do it?
Please do not confuse this "independence" with 'retirement'.
What am talking about is the freedom wealthy kids have from birth onward. ..'not having to work to live, but rather having the ability to simply choose what you love to do (creatively) and do it, whether paid or not, - since their passive income from 'wealth' or rather 'investment blocks', pay the bills instead of employment "earned income'. Now there would be an education. Learning how to be "employed" almost seems akin to 'nuveau slavery'.
Am I complaining? No. I just think a new curriculum with the focus on entrpreneurialism and independence should also be focussed upon.
I should tell the legend of Norman Perry - who was one of our class mates up until grade 6/7.
2 comments:
Sounds like you yourself should be applying to teach that course, Les. Billings needs you!!
I actually offered Billings my time as a volunteer a few years back, but it seemed- if I am not mistaken, that individual (math)teachers whose classes I would be injected into for brief periods over the course of a year, were not in favour.
For two summers I did accept this position in one teacher's class, as a volunteer 'drop in' lecturer in a summer program run by McGill University in a Montreal High School in NDG.
Can you imagine teaching ages 8-17 in a hot muggy class (no a/c) for two hours twice per week and making the experience of finance and investing fun? But it was just that!
I still have the booklet created by the students with all their signatures and comments on how much fun and learning they had in that summer class.
It was interesting in that on some days the students would go home with some new strategy or comment and the next day we would have drop in parents and grand parents!
This stuff is not difficult, but there is a modest learning curve on language, but it is not unlike the process of learning to drive a car or bicycle. One must learn to get on, follow a route, and know when to get off or stop. None of these is without RISK, but being aware of risk is like knowing how to drive defensively.
L
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