By Greg Nikkel
Award-winning teacher at the Weyburn Comprehensive School, Margot Arnold, shared about her entrepreneurial classes as she spoke to the Weyburn Rotary Club recently. Her classes have won which have won provincial and national awards, along with awards for herself as a teacher.
She noted she had business in her genes, as her grandparents started a business in Weyburn in 1932, and her grandmother was also a teacher and a role model for her growing up.
Arnold also pointed out the positive influence of Rotary member Ray Hamm, who is a former teacher and who encouraged her to pursue classes as a mature student at the University of Regina, which led to her current position as the business education teacher at the Comp.
Arnold was presented with the Sask. Business Teachers Award of Merit, and nationally, she won the Prime Minister’s certificate of achievement for teaching excellence, for the success she has enjoyed with the Junior Achievement program at the Comp.
She has had 10 student companies since 2014, and there will be one this semester in the current school year. Of these student companies, three have been companies of the year, along with one that was a finalist, plus many students in those companies have been awarded for their own achievements.
Two students were Achievers of the Year and one was a finalist, one was a president of the year and four have been finalists, and two have been finalists for leadership awards. Three companies won awards for product design, including the company called “Overtime”, with a Gold Wing player as the president.
Arnold related one story where a woman was at the Comp for a volleyball tournament and saw a poster for their lace and lanyard products, and ended up placing a $500 order for products.
One student had told her that she had no idea what to do after graduation, and after being a part of a company, she is now a student at a business school at the U of R.
“They come out of that with all kinds of skill sets. I’m more of an advisor, but I want them to come up with the ideas and make them the best they can be. You have to step back as a teacher and let them take the reins. If they fail, they fail – but I don’t want them to fail,” said Arnold.
She noted she is particularly proud that two years in a row, one of her companies earned a national award as a Junior Achievement Company of the Year, something no other Saskatchewan school has been able to achieve before.
The companies have also supported local charities through the proceeds of their companies, with a total of $6,801 raised to date.
As a result of all the accolades, a film company was contracted by the Sask. Teachers Federation to come and do a short documentary on the program, and it can be viewed on YouTube as “Margot’s Story”.
