Student Services

Daniel Klapper — Vice President of Student Services at Western USC

Daniel Klapper — Vice President of Student Services at Western USC
About Daniel Klapper

Daniel Klapper is the USC’s Vice President of Student Services. In this role, he works with all USC-led services to provide the best experience and support to Western Undergraduate Students. 

He is responsible for the oversight of the PurpleCare Trust, Clubs System, Peer Support Centre, Food Support, the USC’s new professional development program, as well as to support the good governance of the University Students’ Council. 

Connect with Daniel Klapper: Email | Instagram | Linkedin

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Western USC

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma, and today we are joined by Daniel Klapper. Daniel serves as the Vice President of Student Services for the University Students Council of Western Ontario, where he oversees a comprehensive network of support systems designed to enhance the Western undergraduate Student Experience. His responsibilities span crucial student resources, including the Purple Care Trust, Club System, Peer Support Center, food support initiatives, while also driving the USC’s new professional development program. Beyond direct service delivery, Daniel plays a key role in maintaining good governance practices within the USC, ensuring the organization remains responsive to student needs.

Sam Demma
Daniel, thank you so much for taking some time during this busy season to come on the podcast.

Daniel Klapper
Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. Super excited.

Sam Demma
Introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got into the work you’re doing today with the USC.

Daniel Klapper
Sure, sure. So I guess beyond the nice introduction you had there, obviously my name is Daniel. I’m the Vice President of Student Services. But beyond that, I’m an ex-Western student as well. So I graduated last year. But this year has been super exciting for me because obviously working for the USC has been such an amazing privilege and such a unique experience as well. So super excited to kind of dive into some of that and tell you about a bit of the experiences and some of the programs that we’re working on as well. Speaking of programs, you oversee so many different programs with the USC.

Sam Demma
Tell me about some of them. Um, and any of your, uh, not that you have favorites, but any of the ones that you’re very passionate about. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the student services portfolio is unique because, um, it encapsulates so much.

Daniel Klapper
So whereas other portfolios, they have advocacy initiatives and they cover advocacy kind of broadly. The student services portfolio, um, is a little bit of everything. And I guess for background, for most people who don’t know much about the USC, it hasn’t always been like this.

Daniel Klapper
So the student services role, this is the second year that it’s actually being conducted like this before the USC operated with a vice president of governance and finance. And there were all of these little portfolios that kind of were spread across the organization, either under programming or under some advocacy initiatives. The club system was kind of here and there, a little bit of everywhere. And then they kind of realized, they’re kind of neglecting all of these portfolios because they get overshadowed by the big things like concerts, orientation week, the massive programming that the university puts on. And then also getting overshadowed by like the year over year advocacy initiatives that the USC does. And so what they did was they transitioned the role from a finance role where a student would kind of oversee the budgets. And then we obviously, we have full-time staff who deal with all the accounting. So they moved that and they kind of pooled all of the services and initiatives together and threw them under one portfolio and that becoming the student services portfolio. So that’s kind of how we came to be. Obviously, like you said, we have food support, peer support, the new professional development portfolio, which has been kind of like a majority of what I’ve been working on this year is kind of getting that up and running. That’s a little bit of a passion project of mine but we also have things like Pride USC, grants and recognition which are super important so that that touches on like the scholarships and then the LGBTQ support as well from from the western side but kind of a lot of portfolios and then the REACH program as well, which technically isn’t a service, but touches on that as well. And that one’s near and dear to my heart because I actually got my start in the USC in second year by volunteering for that program.

Daniel Klapper
So kind of a full circle moment is it’s the first thing I started with. And actually when my contract ends this year, it’ll be the last program that I actually hold. So kind of a fun full circle.

Sam Demma
Tell me more about the professional development portfolio that you’ve been spending a lot of time working on.

Daniel Klapper
Yeah. So the professional development portfolio came from, uh, our president currently Emily Klagen. So she, when she was running her, her campaign, uh, she was pretty heavy on increasing the professional development support that undergraduate students have access to. Um. And so when I was hired, we started looking to, how can we make the university experience enjoyable beyond simply hosting concerts and offering services to students? Like, what are they lacking? And what we kind of figured is students need jobs. They need the connections. They need the network that at this point, everyone knows how hard it is right now to get internships and get jobs, and to kind of get that extra experience beyond your education. And the professional development portfolio was the USC solution to that.

Daniel Klapper
So we host events like the peer AI learning sessions, which are essentially students teaching other students from various faculties how to use artificial intelligence to increase their literacy with AI and kind of just overall level the playing field when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence in classrooms. We also have something coming up called the Professional Development Gala, where we get a bunch of professionals from various industries. So we’ve got some lawyers, some consultants, some publishers, doctors, and we get them all in the same room. And we’re essentially extending the USC’s alumni to the undergraduate student body. Because, yeah, that’s one of the nice things that the USC has is they have a really, like extensive, you like alumni network. So there’s hundreds of people who have worked for the USC over the last 40 so years. And they’re all really connected and they always come back and they always participate in events.

Daniel Klapper
But usually it’s just the executives who have access to those individuals, right? Like there’s some really great people. So we wanted to kind of extend that network to students this year and make sure that they have an opportunity to chat with people and see what’s out there. Kind of same that we have this year.

Sam Demma
That’s awesome, man. I think about some of the most meaningful experiences I had in school and it wasn’t so much the lessons learned in the classroom, although those are also very important. It was those extended opportunities where I was able to ask questions. I was very curious about to industry professionals or when people took the time to provide me with unique opportunities that really helped me develop my soft skills. It sounds like the professional development portfolio really does that. I know that REACH also does that for a different subset of students.

Sam Demma
Tell me more about that program and why you’re so passionate about it.

Daniel Klapper
Yeah, so the REACH program is similar. I guess you could consider it professional development for grade seven and eight. So it’s been around for a while, actually. So it started in 2004. This is like the history of the REACH program here as a history major. But so started in 2004, and they called it the choose your own adventure game. And so the idea was, you get 250 or 300 grade seven and eight students, and they come onto campus and they do a choose your own adventure, where you pick different classes. And by the end of the weekend, you kind of see where your career is heading based off of the decisions that you made throughout the weekend. Funnily enough, we got or we as in the USC was actually sued because choose your own adventure is a trademark for that book that they made. So they actually, in like the mid 2000s, they were sued for using the name, Choose Your Own Adventure, and they swapped it over to the early outreach program. So that’s kind of how that name came about. The idea is kind of similar, same idea, but we’ve kind of switched it over. So essentially we take 300 students from various grade schools from across the London Middlesex community. We try to pick the schools that are feeder schools into the high schools that have the lowest dropout rates or the highest dropout rates, sorry. And the idea is to bring them on campus. They stay at Ontario Hall, which is one of the nicest residents on campus. They eat there. They have parties in the Wave, which is our restaurant and bar on campus. Obviously everything’s shut down, no alcohol or anything like that, but they have the opportunity to kind of like hang out in the same spaces that undergraduate students do. And they really connect with it. And they have the opportunity to talk to university students. Over 80 volunteers come out and really just have a good time.

Daniel Klapper
And then on top of that, they get to hang out with some professors. They go to mock classes. So they’ll go to anthropology class, and like, dust things off of dinosaur bones or make slime in the chemistry lab. So the opportunities there are kind of endless. But the real goal is that they go into high school the year after. And that weekend long experience really has a profound impact on them. And they leave thinking like, hey, like university is something that I’m capable of doing. It’s something that it’s accessible to me. And it’s not just for students who have 100% in all their classes. And it’s not just for students who come from wealthy families, like there’s opportunity for financial aid.

Daniel Klapper
We teach them how to write a resume so that they can get jobs. Really anything that’s just going to set their mind in the right track so that when they do get to high school, they start thinking about like, how can I improve my grades? How can I improve my extracurriculars?

Daniel Klapper
And like I’m setting a goal for myself that Western is where I want to go. And we’ve had a pretty good, like proven track record. And we have some students now who volunteer for the program who actually attended the program when they were in grade seven and eight and actually went to Western because of the impact that the program had on them. So has a special place in my heart because of great relationships, but also seen how it affects students that young really how much of a positive impact it has on them.

Sam Demma
I always tell people I think the most important gift you can give a young person is belief in themselves. And I think it’s any human being, not just young people, but when you are exposed to that at a much younger age, it can change the course of your entire life. It sounds like that is the impact that the program is having, and I hope it continues long after you transition as well.

Daniel Klapper
And hopefully no one gets sued.

Daniel Klapper
We’ve, we’ve upped the, uh, the parameters for like making sure it’s all, all set in stone and everything we’ve, we’ve gone to the point now, post COVID where we’re running the same program year over year, it just gets better and better. So it’s in a good spot and hopefully it can continue. I’m sure I’ll come back to volunteer even when I’m back in my master’s.

Sam Demma
You work in student services. You support the diverse needs of the entire population across the campus. How do you determine what students need? There’s a lot of schools that have students and they wanna figure out out what do we, what clubs do we start? What, what services do we promote and provide? How have you guys kind of figured out what, what students need on campus.

Daniel Klapper
Yeah, it’s actually, I would say that is the most like difficult part of working for a student union is like, you would think it’s so obvious and that students are so straightforward with what they want. But it’s actually much harder to engage with the student population than like at face value what you would think and it’s not as simple as going out or putting a survey out of like, what do you want? Because there’s the saying like, if you build it, they will come but we’ve we’ve learned very, very many times if you build it, they sometimes don’t come and there’s no reason. And so it’s this like continuous effort, honestly, not even on my part, but mostly on our student engagement part. So Shreya, she works full time as the vice president of student engagement. And that’s kind of her job this year is really figuring out like, how do we talk to the students who aren’t part of that bubble, who look at all of our posts, right? We have a pretty good following on Instagram. around 40,000 students, but the student population as a whole is much bigger than that. So how do we get the student who doesn’t want to come to the concert? They don’t want to come to craft nigh.

Daniel Klapper
and they’re not interested in any advocacy initiatives. They just want to go to school and come back? How do we make sure that we’re also servicing those needs, even if they’re not voicing their opinion, right? And that’s been a challenge. I think we’ve done a great job this year, in particular with the UA and EA roles, which is University Affairs and External Affairs. And then as well as our president going out and talking to students, kind of meeting them where they’re at, doing a lot of initiatives in the atrium, which is like the big building that we have here, right in the center, and just kind of, whether it’s doing a kahoot to kind of tell students about what we’re working on, or doing a massive survey with some giveaways, just kind of like making sure we have an informed decision as to what students want. And then the other time, other times it’s kind of just a guess, right? Like we were students ourselves once, so we have a unique perspective as like as to what is required. So the professional development is a perfect example. When we’re planning these events, we’re not necessarily going out and asking students like hey would you come to a gala if we host it? It’s more a personal experience that if I was in second year, if I was in third year and the university invited me to a gala with 30 to 40 professional individuals and they charged five dollars to get in, no chance, like no chance I’m passing that up, right? So like those are the types of things where it’s not always necessary to kind of hear feedback from students but it definitely does help make an informed decision of whether or not the program continues or whether or not the services actually being used. So lots of feedback, but also just personal experience and trial and error, I guess.

Daniel Klapper
You’re so close in age still to a lot of the students and you can put yourself in their shoes and understand some of the challenges they’re going through.

Sam Demma
It sounds like the $5 professional gala night is a massive success. Is it really highly attended by students and something that you guys do every year?

Daniel Klapper
Yeah, so we this is the first one that we’ve done. So it’s happening on March 19th. So we’re tickets are still up for sale. So we’re still pushing that and making sure that every student knows about it. Sometimes, like I said, Instagram can be an awesome way to get the word out, but honestly, sometimes we have to reach out personally.

Daniel Klapper
Like we’ve got 230 plus clubs, a lot of them being business clubs, women in leadership, STEM club. And sometimes we just reach out to them like, hey, we’re hosting this event, we’re thinking of you and we’re designing it.

Daniel Klapper
We’d love for you to come out and that’s sometimes the best way to get people out. With the AI stuff too, we’re reaching out to the people who are interested in that. So when we were hosting our most recent session was in January, we did applications of AI in entrepreneurship and business and we made sure that we involved the Ivy students in the conversation and the BMOS students because they’re kind of the ones who are looking for that type of info. So we’ve done a pretty good job at kind of pushing our events.

Daniel Klapper
And honestly, we have a full time team who works on promotions, all the graphics, all the social media as well. And they’re absolutely killers at what they do. So I can’t take any credit for it because I’m not great with the whole social media thing. it for it because I’m not great with the whole social media thing, but it’s definitely, definitely an art of knowing when to post, when not to post, when to repost, and they’ve got it down to a T, so they do a pretty good job. When you think of events that the USC hosts that are classics, like people love them, and maybe you’ve heard from other people on the team that we’ve done these for the past 12 years and it’s always a hit. Are there any ideas that another school team listening to this could think about replicating on their campuses? I know there’s a lot of educators also listening that want to engage their students in grade 12 and grade 11 and they might be able to borrow some ideas. Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Klapper
I mean, one of the things that’s nice about this job is we’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of student councils from across Canada. So we attended conference in British Columbia called SUDS hosted by the AMS over at UBC. And it was fantastic. We got to talk to hundreds of other student leaders and really get to hear about what are they working on? How does their club system work? How do you guys host events? Really at the end of the day, it comes down to money. And I think that’s an issue that everyone faces is things are expensive. One thing that we’ve noticed this year is beyond the classic, like if you were to ask a university student at Western, what’s the classic event at the USC hosts that everyone’s gonna go to? It’s always the concerts. So we’ve set a pretty big name for ourself by bringing some pretty big artists like Sway Lee, Quavo, all these really great, Josh Ross, another one country artist. But beyond that, I think the smaller programming, which is what Sarah Fullerton, our vice president of programming, has done a really great job of this year, is finding the students who don’t wanna come to the concerts and hosting things like craft night. We’ve done paint and sip where we host wine nights in the wave and you get to come out. 20 bucks gets you two glasses of wine and a canvas and paint all set up, ready to go.

Daniel Klapper
Bingo was huge. We hosted bingo a couple of times. Sells out instantly. Battle of the bands has been really cool. I actually just was sitting in Sarah’s office right before this watching rehear- or like audition tapes of students who want to show off their talent, they want to show off the band that they have, and those are cheap events because we don’t have to pay anyone to do that, but it gives students an opportunity to come out and really engage with each other, sit in the smoke, grab a drink, grab some food, and just listen to other student artists. I think those have been super successful this year. And I think probably something that the USC will continue to do. Another thing that we brought back is, not every school has this, but it’s not hard to do. But we have like an auditorium that can be turned into a movie theater. And post COVID, it kind of was abandoned.

Daniel Klapper
We hadn’t used it in a while. So one of the initiatives that Emily proposed in her platform was movie nights. So we’ve been doing like Tuesday movies, free to come. You’d basically just show up, first come, first serve. We’ve been buying the rights to like old movies.

Daniel Klapper
So Halloween, we went and watched The Shining, they had some horror movies, and then Christmas movies, and then now they’re doing classics. So you can go on a Tuesday night, first 25 people to show up get free popcorn. So those are all things that we don’t have to pay much for. But we see awesome engagement from the students. And it might not be your 4000 person concert, but you compound those small events over and over again across various areas of interest on campus. And by the end of the year, you have a student body that’s really gotten to experience something awesome with their peers.

Sam Demma
One of my friends is obsessed with marketing and he says, someone has to interact with your stuff for seven hours before they make a decision to feel like they’re a part of your products and services and a part of your mission and your movement. And I think about it from the same perspective of students on a campus.

Sam Demma
Even if they just attended the concert, maybe it’s still not enough for them to really feel like they’re involved. They got to have these other touch points throughout the year, which are all these other amazing opportunities for them to build more relationships, meet new people, steal some popcorn and watch some movies.

Sam Demma
I’m curious when you think about your own professional development in this role and in other roles you’ve been in, are there any resources or people or mentors that have had a really monumental impact on you? And if so, like what were those resources or people and what did they do for you?

Daniel Klapper
Yeah. So, I mean, I’ve had a pretty unique university experience that I think most people don’t typically have in the sense that I probably did more work for free extracurricular wise than I did school and so I spent all of my free time whether it was with the Pre-law society participating in mooting competitions or mock trials, or last year I was on the social science student council running their finances. And I found that to be the best way for me to kind of interact with people because I came in second year after a year of COVID online, right?

Daniel Klapper
So I showed up to the university with my three closest best friends. We lived in an apartment together and our second year we did nothing. We went to class, we came home, we watched movies, we made food and repeat. We didn’t know that the USC existed, we didn’t know who our president was and we didn’t know that there were clubs available to us. And then in my third year I started to think and I was like, you know what, like it’s about time I get out there and start testing out the stuff that’s available to me.

Daniel Klapper
So I looked into the club system really. And I looked at, at the time I wanted to be a lawyer, and now I’ve kind of pivoted more to the business side. But at the time I looked at the pre-law society and was like, oh years older, but they’re running all these awesome initiatives. And I looked at the vice president of finance for a club or the president of a club, and to me, they were like the highest of high that you could get at university. And I looked at them and thought, like, I wanna be one of them one day. I wanna be a president of a club.

Daniel Klapper
I wanna help organize the budget for the pre-law society or the mooting society. And so I just started showing up. And when I started showing up, I noticed that I call it like the snowball effect. But before I knew it, I was going from one club and then I was on an executive team. And one guy was on an executive team for another thing. And he’s like, hey, come out to our one networking event. And next thing you know know you end up meeting like this spider web of people who are all connected on campus. And in the end it resulted in me having this job because by the time two years had passed I went from not knowing that the USC existed and thinking that being a part of a club was untouchable, something that only the highest of high people could achieve to overseeing the entire club system in two years. And so I always think about the people that I met along the way who kind of introduced me. So whether it was the social science president from two years ago, Bianca, or like looking at the USC president that time, which was Ethan Gardner and thinking like, hey, these people are pretty accomplished and they kind of, like just listening to them talk, even though I didn’t really have personal relationships with them, just like seeing that they were able to do it

Daniel Klapper
and that they also came from like a social science background, really inspired me to kind of get involved. Although my friends never kind of came with me, so my roommates never got involved on campus. They stuck to their studies.

Daniel Klapper
Mind you, they’re engineers, software engineers, and medical science students. So I’m sure their classes were a lot harder than the history student who had a bit more free time on his hand. But yeah, all those club presidents and then the USC execs really inspired me to kind of get involved and kind of make a name for myself on campus. And then eventually the job opened up for this and put my name forward and it worked out well so far.

Sam Demma
It sounds like it has, and I’m sure it will continue to. I’m so grateful that you took some time to come on the show, share some of your lessons learned in education and the work you’re doing, share some ideas around supporting students. I hope that the rest of the academic year goes really well. I’ll be rooting you on from the sideline. Good luck at the golf tournament we’ll touch base again soon.

Daniel Klapper
Awesome. Thank you. Pray for good weather.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Daniel Klapper

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June 5, 2025 by Education Student Success 0

Robert Audet — Ottawa Campus Director at Lambton College

Robert Audet — Ottawa Campus Director at Lambton College
About Robert Audet

Robert Audet is an innovative leader in the educational sector with over three decades of experience. His entrepreneurial spirit has been a driving force behind his commitment to enhancing student services and educational opportunities. Robert’s most notable achievement is spearheading the establishment of an International Campus for Lambton College in partnership with Saint-Paul University in Ottawa, a project that reflects his dedication to expanding access to education.

Throughout his career, Robert has demonstrated a unique ability to build sustainable business models that serve students effectively. He began his journey by launching the first bookstore at Collège Boréal as a multi-stakeholder co-operative, successfully integrating various student services such as a cafeteria and temporary employment agency. His work with Desjardins and Laurentian University further underscored his commitment to fostering cooperative development and supporting individuals in their entrepreneurial pursuits.

At Cambrian College, Robert had the privilege of bringing together six areas of student life and services under one umbrella. This experience deepened his understanding of Indigenous culture and values as he collaborated with the Wabnode team. The knowledge he gained is something he is eager to bring forward in his current role, working with the Indigenous Centre at Saint-Paul University.

Robert is a firm believer in nurturing talent and guiding individuals along their unique paths to success. He emphasizes the importance of supporting both students and employees, recognizing that everyone has their own journey. By focusing on individual strengths and providing tailored support, Robert ensures that each person can thrive in their educational and professional endeavors. His collaborative approach and commitment to stakeholder engagement create an environment where innovation and growth flourish, ultimately leading to a more enriching educational experience for all.

Connect with Robert Audet: Email | Linkedin

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Lambton College
Saint-Paul University
Collège Boréal
Laurentian University
Cambrian College,

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam, and today we are joined by a special guest, Robert Audet. Robert is an innovative leader who has dedicated over three decades to transforming the education sector. His entrepreneurial spirit has consistently driven improvements in student services and educational opportunities throughout his career. Most notably, Robert spearheaded the establishment of Lampton College’s international campus in partnership with St. Paul University in Ottawa, demonstrating a commitment to expanding access to quality education. He also spent a lot of time this weekend shoveling snow. Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast here today.

Robert Audet
Good morning, Sam. It’s my pleasure. I was looking forward to this chat and leaving the snow behind. Please take a moment to introduce yourself and explain what got you interested and involved in education. You kind of covered a little bit of what I’ve been doing. I guess I got hooked into education back in the 90s where I was working for a financial cooperative and then I got an opportunity to work for Laurentian University in a special project to help people on social assistance create their business plan, teach them some courses, some life skills that they needed to start a business and actually help them start their business. And so it was a very small team. So I got to teach courses. I got to bring in guests with special knowledge for our students and actually see them through the incorporation of worker co-ops and actually see them start their own businesses. And that got me hooked because the feeling of seeing them progress and getting their independence and just doing so well, that was enough for me. So when the French college in Sudbury opened up and opened up their first campus, Collège Boreal, I had the opportunity to go there and start a multi-stakeholder cooperative to run a lot of their student services. So I jumped on that opportunity real quick, started their cafeteria, their bookstore, their pub, their food services for the daycare center, et cetera, et cetera. So it was so overwhelming at the time, but at the same time, so challenging, so it just hooked me right in. And I’ve been mostly in the educational sector or there for a couple of years for most of my career after that.

Sam Demma
When you were helping with the student run businesses, would you consider your personality more like Robert or Kevin O’Leary?

Robert Audet
Not Kevin. I definitely always, I mean, especially, you know, that first initial project was done as a multi-stakeholder co-op, which was the first in Ontario. We were breaking ground. I had to make sure we had partners from the student body. First of all, I had nine students on my board of directors. I had three people from the college. It started with people, high-profile vice presidents in the college. And then I went out into the community to make sure to get some partners in there as well. So, you know, you try to get the expertise around the table. So, you know, you try to get an accountant at the table, you try to get a lawyer at the table. Little ways of saving money when you need some advice from your friends in the community, but it was such a collaborative approach, you know, creating it as a multi-stake cooperative, multi-stakeholder cooperative, that, you know, it was really about building all those relationships more than anything else.

Sam Demma
I think that’s the heart of education, building relationships with stakeholders, with community partners, with the students we’re aiming to serve and support. And you’ve been doing it for over three decades in education. I’m curious over the 30 years, like what fundamental changes have you observed in students’ needs and expectations? Maybe first when you started, what’s different about education today than it was then?

Robert Audet
I mean, I think what’s different is that we have a lot more diversity on any of the campuses right now. And there’s a lot of changes happening to international students coming to Canada for the last little while, let’s say since January. But so that’s different in the sense that, you know, some of the needs of the students could be different adapting to a new country, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it hasn’t really changed. If you really, if you really go down to what’s important when you’re dealing with students over there, like, like you mentioned three decades, I feel old now. No, it’s experience, it’s wisdom. But if you think about it, the reason I say it hasn’t changed is you have to take each student for who they are and try to bring them to the next level. And every student has their own journey. Yeah, they have a common thread of being in a certain program together or they have a common thread of coming from a certain area or, you know, they’re varsity players or whatever, whatever brings them to your campus. That’s just the start. Now you gotta, you gotta build trust with that student. You gotta make sure that they understand that they have someone on campus that they can go to if they meet any barriers or struggle with anything. And once that is built, then you can actually help them, well, actually to be able to help them to get to the level they need to be, you need to understand them. So too often people will say, we’re just here to lecture them. They have to figure it out their own way. But once you understand, and then I have the luxury of having a smaller campus here in Ottawa because we’ve just started a year ago, but the beauty of that is that you can actually meet your students. You can actually have some conversations, see what they’re struggling with, and make sure that they’re connecting with someone on the team. And that hasn’t changed, whether I was working for 20 years in student services at Cameron College or here at Lambton College in Ottawa, that has not changed. You have students, like I’ve met some students over the years, so many great relationships, you know, and I’ve learned probably more from them than they’ve learned from me just because they were growing through at times easy stuff, but at times very difficult things. And the fact that they trusted you to be there along with them to get them through that, I probably gave more to my worth of life and appreciation for life than anything else. And so I’ve worked with students at all levels, whether it was just to try and pass a course so that they can get to the next level, or whether it was to help them fit in to the college system because they had no friends, or whether it was to become one of the provincial leaders influencing where education is going.

And all of those were just as important as the next one because that’s where they were and that’s where they need to be. And then you look back and I guess I get to look back because it’s been 30 years. You look back at how well some of those students are doing. It’s just so much, it’s so rewarding. It’s just, that’s all I can say, very rewarding.

Sam Demma
That’s such a key idea that the external changes, the environment may change, the technology may change, the technology may change, the subjects we focus on may change, but the human being is the human being. We have similar human needs, whether it was 30 years ago or now, and making people feel like they have a person on campus who can support them, building trust, building the relationship, those things haven’t changed. One of my favorite speakers and authors is a gentleman named Jim Rohn, and he’s passed away now. In one of his lectures, he would always tell a story of a company that hired him to come and deliver a speech at their company to talk about the future of their industry, because they thought he had some great insights on it. And he said, he went and delivered a speech and he said, folks, I can confidently tell you that the industry is gonna be just like it’s always been. Unless you change, unless you change. And that made me think of what you just shared now about the fundamentals of building connections with young people. And that makes me curious when it comes to supporting young people and building that trust, what things can educators do to ensure that that trust gets built and they do feel supported and, and encouraged.

Robert Audet
It comes down to listening and listening to actually absorb what they’re going through, not just listen to pretend you’re listening. It’s really that simple. It’s making connections with people. And sometimes it’s harder. The bigger your campus is, like we had, my last campus, we had 6,000 students. I can’t say I knew every student. It’s just not possible, right? But the team that I led, though, we made sure to stay open to any student that would. So we wouldn’t say, oh, you know, if a student comes to me and it’s not my area, but they’re comfortable talking to me, we wouldn’t say just turn them away. We would make sure to bring them, actually walk them to the service they need, make the connection with them. And if they still felt more comfortable coming by my way first, my door was open, right? So it’s really about just listening and making that connection because the needs will vary drastically from each student.

Sam Demma
I think that listening is difficult in a world where there’s a distraction everywhere we look, whether it’s our phone buzzing, another conversation, an email popping on our computer screen. Listening sounds simple, but it’s sometimes very difficult to do. So I appreciate that reminder and I think it’s a timely one. When you started the role, I’m assuming someone didn’t pull you aside and say, Robert, it is your responsibility to build a partnership with St. Paul University. Can you talk about how that partnership was built and the value it’s provided to both campuses today?

Robert Audet
That’s a great question actually. And no, that’s not how that went down. The relationship was already started when I was hired on to come and start the campus, I guess, and manage the campus. They even had hired a few employees. And we’re a very small team right now in Ottawa, to come and start the campus, I guess, and manage the campus. The AIA even had hired a few employees, and we’re a very small team right now in Ottawa, seven plus our faculty. But it is a fantastic partnership. We’ve been growing the common areas, we’ve been growing how do we help each other in doing wellness activities, how we collaborate on different things, how we potentially work on research projects together, et cetera. But the idea was to develop a public to public institution partnership so that we can offer great programs and have the resources we needed in Ottawa to quickly be able to welcome new students. So they had room in their residence, for example. So we negotiated some rooms in their residence. So when students showed up, if they didn’t wanna stay on campus, that was fine. We would help them with housing as well, but they would have an opportunity to go there. So everything’s nice and close until they get used to our snow, our mountain of snow, since our first term was in January. But last year was nice.

Robert Audet
It was an easy winter. But you know, that’s just an example. We’ve collaborated at so many levels and having, being in this historical building here in Ottawa, I mean, I won’t be able to quote you on what year it was built, but I’m pretty sure it was in the 1800s. And it’s slowly being, you know, redone and modernized here and there, but while keeping its charm, right. And so every time I get visitors from our Sarnia campus, which has been there since 1966, they go, I can’t believe the atmosphere here. I want to move to Ottawa just to work in that building. And I go, yeah, I agree. It’s small enough that, you know, it’s a friendly atmosphere with the three partners, actually, Collège Boreal is on campus as well. And we’re building that relationship and we’re having a blast. We’re doing an EDI event in March coming up. And it’s fun because, you know, I had to take a step back when I was approached with the idea, would you apply for this job? Because my wife had just accepted a job here in Ottawa. And I’m like, yes, I should, and I will look into it. But what’s interesting is I had to take a deep look inside myself and go, I’ve done a lot of startups.

Robert Audet
Like even when I went to Cambrian College, it was a new startup, was a new student’s life center. Then I took on, I kept growing the department, right? It became six departments in one. And it was just, for me, it’s all about startups and making those relationships. So I was like, do I have another startup in me? That was the question. And I was like, yes, I do have another startup in me. I think I go to Ottawa and I have some fun. I meet some new people and I’ve been meeting some interesting, our faculty that we’re recruiting, industry experts, we’re having a blast with that. Like developing the relationship with St. Paul, like, you know, going to skate on the canal, uh, you know, building those relationships just to be able to have those conversations and build those relationships. Uh, Ottawa is just fantastic to be in. I I’m going to enjoy it until I, uh, until I retire here in Ottawa and then, and then I’ll go back home, but I have to visit Ottawa now that I know it.

Sam Demma
It sounds like you might have another startup in you after you leave this role. Maybe it’s something related to a business that you’d like to start after you finish. I don’t know, but I get the sense that maybe you will continue doing something.

Robert Audet
It’s funny you say that because I have, I was talking with one of the researchers from the university the other day and he goes when you do retire, you know You have a very good skill set on organizing people and getting stuff done So he says it’d be a shame for you just to put that to rest and I’m like, I’ll have to give it some thought I was thinking retirement man. I’m going cycling. I’m going kayaking But but time will tell right

Sam Demma
When it comes to entrepreneurship, I think there are so many skills that are so important for educators and students to carry forward. It sounds like you’ve surrounded yourself in the startup world and in the entrepreneurship world for a very long time, whether it was helping students start their businesses or literally building and starting departments on campuses. What are a few of the entrepreneurial traits that you think are important for educators and students to live out and carry forward each day?

Robert Audet
This almost sounds like one of my, it’s a different question, but I love the question, but I’ll spin it back a little bit. I’ll spin it back to a question I got when I was doing the interview for this position. I was asked, what are your number three traits that you’re looking for in an employee? And I remember saying, initiative, initiative, and initiative. And they’re all going, well, that’s one. I’m like, yes yes now let me explain right so so initiative is you know if you know something needs to get done get it done or find the right people to get it done or build the relationships that will get you there sometimes people try to take shortcuts though they try to get it done quickly and sure it gets you a quick result but if you time take the time to build the relationships around it not only will you get. But if you take the time to build the relationships around it, not only will you get it done, but you will get it done with buy-in. You will get it done with people that are wanting to see you succeed as much as they wanna succeed, because usually you help them succeed. If you’re entrepreneurial, I’ve had a few small businesses in my early career as well. If you wanna succeed, you only succeed by helping others succeed at whatever your services are. So in education, we’re helping people create careers. They come back and support the college as with the foundation or even just come in and do a presentation, support our students, take a co-op for our students, employ one of our students that’s just graduated. So you should never take a shortcut. It goes back to building those relationships, getting buy-in and building that respect.

Robert Audet
I have no doubt in my mind that if I ever in need of something, I can pick up the phone and call one of my many friends that I’ve made over the years and say, you know, do you have a contact that could help me with that? And we’ll find a solution. The one thing I have used in my entire career, well, I shouldn’t say my entire career, but after I heard it, which is probably close to 30 years ago, is, I don’t know who the author was, but it’s a statement that says, there’s no such thing as a problem, only opportunities to find solutions. You know, that inspires me every time I hear it, even though I’ve known it for like probably close to 30 years.

Robert Audet
Because if you go in with that mindset, you’re not just stopping at, I did my task today. You’re looking at how else can we make this better? You’re looking at who can I bring make this better? You’re looking at who can I bring in that will develop this with me? How can I surround myself with people that are smarter than me, that are better than me in so many skills, especially as I get older? I’m like, you know, you asked me what’s different and I said nothing. Well, that’s not true. I’ll tell you, technology is different. We just had a session on AI and then a session on academic integrity and how AI can impact it, etc. to help our faculty understand all the changes that are happening. And you know, am I the best person to actually offer that session? No, but I surround myself with people that have that high knowledge of AI, right? So it’s really about creating all those connections and always trying, if you’re entrepreneurial, stay a step ahead of the game. Wake up before everybody else, start your work before everybody else, try to know what’s coming ahead at you so you’re not surprised. And you’re likely finishing your day later than most people do. And as you get older, I guess harder.

Sam Demma
I’m taking a big theme away from all that around preparation, you know, preparing, taking initiative. I had a conversation with my uncle about, you know, how do you identify talent? And, and, um, the word for initiative he used was hungry, you know, same, same idea, like you go and get the work done. And he said, hungry, humble and smart. And the humble piece is also huge, you know, just reminding ourselves that we still have learning to do. We we are always students of the of the craft we’re working towards. And I think it’s just such an important reminder. There’s been moments in my life where I’ve really burned the midnight oil and read all the books. And then moments where I stopped reading as many books as I used to. And, and I catch myself every once in a while, why, why did I stop? You know, why did I, why did I get out of the game? You know, and, um, it’s, it’s, it’s really cool to hear about your passion for education.

Robert Audet
It’s not just about the books. The books are important, don’t get me wrong. There’s ways to fast track them nowadays too. Compared to the good old days when you read every word. I think for me, I’ve learned I learned more from everybody I meet, which is why I was looking so much forward to this interview, right. Then having a chat with you, because it doesn’t matter who you’re meeting with. If you’re actually taking the time to, to sit in and be present in that moment, you’re going to learn something every time. And I don’t care how old you are, how young you are. When sometimes people tell us stuff and we’re not ready to hear it or we’re not ready to absorb it and it comes back to us later and that’s okay but that and I guess that goes back to when I was saying you take every student to where they are and bring them that extra level right so sometimes it could be taken a student that is you know just barely surviving and you bring him up to you know oh I pass all my courses and they’re celebrating and they’re happy with that. And then you see them again two, three years down the road, now they’ve learned how to learn and they’re actually able to take on bigger challenges. And sometimes it’s actually just trying to keep up with a student that is so brilliant. You can’t keep up with them, but you support them and you eliminate barriers for them to make sure that they can keep running as fast as they can because they’re just a shining star going through the world. And you do your best to support that, like even though you can’t keep up. And you know what, that makes me happy because that’s the future. If I can’t keep up on with some of our students, that’s, that’s, that’s awesome.

Sam Demma
The mark of a great leader is when their students surpass them in many ways, you know, that’s why you build people up and lead them. And I am so grateful for you taking the time just to be here today to share some of your ideas around education, some of the things that have stayed the same and things that have adjusted or changed over the years, the importance of collaboration in working with other partners in the community and other educational institutions to drive forward common goals. Your passion for education is very obvious, and I hope as long as you continue to work in it you feel the same way about it and after you finish I will look forward to watching your business unfold. forward to watching your business unfold.

Robert Audet
Absolute pleasure, thank you.

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The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

April 24, 2025 by Director of Education Education Student Leadership Student Success 0

Erika Rath – Director of Student Services at The Sacred Heart School of Montreal

Erika Rath - Director of Student Services at The Sacred Heart School of Montreal (Part 2)
About Erika Rath

Erika Rath is the Director of Student Services and teacher at The Sacred Heart School of Montreal. Erika has been working in the educational field since the late 1990s. She was always involved in her community recreation programs and worked as a camp counsellor and director for several summers.

While studying in Cegep and University, Erika worked with pre-school children and led classes for parents and young toddlers. In 2004, while completing her Bachelor’s degree in Human Relations at Concordia University, Erika became a teaching assistant in the department and realized that she loved working with people and leading groups. After finishing her BA, she decided to obtain a certificate in Teaching English as a Second language so that she could travel the world and teach. Before making any firm plans, she was accepted to do her Master’s in Educational Psychology at McGill University and was also offered a job in a learning centre at her old high school.

Both opportunities led her to realize that working with students was her passion. She went on to teach English and Social studies at the high school for 5 years and then was accepted to do the one-year teaching program at The University of Toronto.  Upon returning to Montreal, Erika was finally able to use her TESOL certificate and worked for Concordia in the continuing education department.

On a whim, Erika applied to The Sacred Heart School of Montreal and was hired for a part-time position. Over the years, Erika has been fortunate to experience a variety of roles within the school. She has taught English, been the Student Life Coordinator, the Director of Academics, helped out with enrolment and advancement, advised students on post-secondary choices and more.

Currently, Erika oversees all of student life, the boarding program, the grade 12 program, the discipline at the school and teaches the PD-personal development class to all grade levels. Erika is passionate about educating the whole student and hopes to help in their growth and development by creating an environment where students can talk openly without fear of judgment.

Erika is the proud recipient of the 2021 Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

Connect with Erika Rath: Email | Linkedin

Listen Now (Part One)

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Listen Now (Part Two)

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Erika Rath Personal Blog

TED Talks

Trunk or Treat

Award for Teaching Excellence

National Coalition-Girls School (NCGS )

Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS)

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma (00:01):
Erika welcome back to the high performing educator podcast. This is your second time on the show. It is a pleasure to have you here today because you’re celebrating a huge milestone because of the impact that the program that you’ve been running in your school is making, why don’t you introduce yourself in share a little bit about that milestone moment?


Erika Rath (00:24):
Sure. Thanks. Sam for having me again, I, love being here. So yes, I’m the director of student services at the sacred heart school of Montreal in Montreal, Quebec. And I’m also a teacher. I teach a class called PD – personal development. And basically I was given the award for teaching excellence for helping to empower young women and and you know propel them forward to be change makers and, and make a difference in this world. And I think in order to do that, we have to understand who we are and where we come from and be vulnerable and be open to having challenging and sometimes conversations. So the class is pretty unique. I see the students for one hour, every eight days and it’s not mandated by the ministry, so there’s no homework, there’s no grading, there’s no marks, which is great for them. And for me, of course, and it gives us the ability to be ourselves and see where the win. Of course, I go in, obviously with a plan, a video to share an activity that we can work on, but it’s amazing to see that the, the, we, we find ourselves going in different directions based on what we need that particular moment.


Sam Demma (01:37):
Students often hear the word PD when they have a day off No, we, we have a PD day and every kid goes home to watch Netflix and eat chips and teachers go and improve their practice or teaching. What inspired the creation of a, a PD class for students. And what does the content and the curriculum actually looked like in that Classroom?


Erika Rath (02:05):
Sure. Great question. So, so first of all, here we call it a P day. So we try not to confuse the students with PD and PD, but, but it’s funny because teachers when we have PD days or we have we do professional development, right? So that’s, so it’s, it’s a bit similar in the sense that for the students, we are, we’re growing, we’re personally, we’re developing ourselves. And so the, the course is not something I created it already existed before I even came to the school, but it was called GI and that was general instruction. And so when we think of what is generally taught, you know, that could be a whole gamut of things. And of course what did, was, I tried to modernize it a little bit and realize that you know, there are certain things that still were really important, like mass etiquette, right?


Erika Rath (02:52):
Like how to sit properly in a chapel or in any place of worship and be respectful. But there were some other things that I just, you know, maybe weren’t my forte or I didn’t know them well enough. And so I, I kind of said like, let, what else can we be teaching? So digital citizenship and literacy, like what, what is your place online? How to, how to be, how to act online, things like that. And then also just like looking back at my own experience in high school and thinking like, what were some of the things is that I was missing there? Oh, like a place to have a conversation about how I’m feeling as a woman or as a teenager growing into a body and, and, and a discussion around that. And, oh, I’m sure if I’m feeling that 10 other students are feeling that too. Could we at least try to be comfortable in an uncomfortable place together and come together through that that, that the, the sense that we’re the same and how could we connect over that? And so that’s really kind of where I was teaching general instruction, and then I thought, I don’t want it to be so general anymore. I want it to be a little bit more about our growth and development. What could we be calling this? And we played around with some names, and that’s what we came up with.


Sam Demma (03:58):
You mentioned sometimes you go to the class and obviously you have ideas of activities, videos to watch. What are some of the resources, maybe books, videos that you and the class work through to prompt some meaningful discussion, maybe, you know, name a couple of those resources that you think might be helpful if someone else’s listening and will wants to have a meaningful discussion with a group of young women.


Erika Rath (04:23):
Sure. So I, I mean, I’ll be honest. I use a lot of videos from Ted talks. I really, I think those are great. It’s great to see people you might not really ever get to see in, in real life. You know, just walking down the street or in your community. So I use a lot of that. I short snippets I use a software called my B, so what I’ve done is it creates like a portfolio system for the students. And so what is really cool is that they can see kind of their growth and development over the course of five years. So, wow. How did I respond to a reflection in grade seven and then, wow, I’m now a mature young adult in grade 11. How do, how am I responding a little bit differently, maybe to a similar topic, but we’re delving in a bit deeper.


Erika Rath (05:02):
I also bring in a lot of guest speakers because let’s be honest, I’m not an expert in everything and, and any, you know, in all, in all of things. And so I think it’s really important to have people who know a lot more or who are more research based than I am coming in. So, you know, like mad will come in and do a talk about driving under, under the influence. We’ll have guest speakers about mental health coming in. We might have residents or doctors in, in in from different hospitals coming in to talk to us about different things. I, I wanna make sure that the students are getting the right information. And if I don’t know it, I, I don’t wanna pretend to. So I don’t think there’s any, you know, anything, there’s no shame in saying, I don’t know, but let me figure out how I can know it and present it to you in the best way.


Sam Demma (05:50):
That’s awesome. And the sharing of uncomfortable things like you mentioned earlier, yeah. Often happens when trust is built. At least that’s how I look at it when I am about to share something that I think is very private or maybe a little bit embarrassing or something. I only talk to with some of my best friends. How do you think you build, build that trust with a student and a group of students to this degree where they’re willing to share this uncomfortable conversations?


Erika Rath (06:27):
That’s such a great question. I mean, trust is definitely not built overnight. And, and I find that I’m in a bit of a difficult position here. As a director of student services, I’m also in charge of discipline at, at the school. And so I, I don’t want a student to feel that she can’t come tell me something just because I might have given her a detention the week before for uniforms or lates or, or whatever else the, the infraction might have been. So it’s really hard to juggle the two, but I think being approachable, you know, like the door to my office is always open. Also just being physically close to the girls and where they keep their belongings, that helps. But also, like I often tell stories about my own childhood or my, my parents or my family or what it was like growing up.


Erika Rath (07:07):
And then I think it’s like, oh, Ms. Roth is sharing. She’s putting herself out there. She’s being vulnerable. She’s trusting us with this story. Then they do learn to trust me also, I do wanna have a good of time with them. I do wanna share, I do wanna address topics. The other part of the job, the discipline part is not the fun part. It’s not like I get joy outta that. It’s just that that’s part of what I have to do. And, and the truth is that’s a teaching, that’s a teachable moment as well. Like we’ve asked you to do something. You might not agree with it. But we’re asking you to do it. We’ve given rationale and we’re asking you to follow it the same as at work, right? Your boss says you have to come in at eight 30. Well, you like to sleep until nine 30. Well, you have to figure out how to get there at eight 30 and, and be respectful and do that. So I think it’s about life skills and realizing that we work with a lot of different people. We might not always like the rules, but we still have to follow them. You know, we can find out why there are rules. But I think it all really comes back to the trust, the teachable moment. And hopefully the girls can see me like and separate the fact that the discipline is involved.


Sam Demma (08:11):
I love that. A big part from talking to you previously, I know a big part of your work is also encouraging service, the importance of giving back. And I know right now you’re doing some unique things in this school, not only to give back to the students, but also to fundraise and give back to the community as a whole. What are some of those things that are going on that you think are unique ideas that other schools may be able to implement and also touch upon the importance of service?


Erika Rath (08:38):
Sure. That great, great high. I mean, we’re so devoted to service. It’s, it’s one of our our goals social awareness, which empowers to action. And so this year’s a little bit tricky again with COVID. We often do huge boxes of food in every Homer homeroom. Every student is responsible for bringing in, you know, like ketchups and mustards and cereals and things like that. We also do toy drives and warm, mittens gloves, hat, socks. Unfortunately, a lot of the places that we support have reached out to us and said due to, to limiting of space and just with COVID, they don’t want the actual items this year. So everyone’s donating money so that we can buy gift cards at grocery stores to donate to needy families so that they can have a Christmas meal on their, on their table.


Erika Rath (09:22):
In addition we’re selling hot chocolate at lunch, just raising money in, in different ways. We have a spare change challenge. So we decorate those huge water bottles and the grades have to put change in their water bottles and grade who raises the most money in change will win like a free dress day or a pizza lunch in the new year. You can also kind of like if you have a rival grade, you could stick bills into their ch into their jug. And then it kind of like offsets their amount, but we’re still obviously raising money. So it’s still good. And then an idea that we came up with this year, which I’m super proud of, which a lot of fun is a call the advent calendar. So everyone knows, you know, you get an advent calendar, you open it up every day.


Erika Rath (10:02):
There’s a little chocolate. Sure. That’s a little fun surprise. We, the school, we are the advent calendar this year. And so students have prepaid for the entire month of December and every day they come to school and we dispense a small all gift to them. That was a surprise. The night before we might email them with a clue, or we might tell them, you know, it’s a free dress day tomorrow because you bought the advent calendar passport. Today they got to pie a teacher or their class rep we’ve given out like 10 bits. We will give out things like Christmas cookies. And then on Fridays, we double up the gift, cuz they’re are not here on the weekend. So we raised quite a bit of money that way, and it’s just nice to see students participating and having fun and doing good for the community. And, and I want them to understand that it’s an integral part of who we are, but we can also have fun in a meaningful way as well.


Sam Demma (10:53):
When you say Tim bits, do you mean Tim BES?


Erika Rath (10:56):
So we, we got this Tim bits. Yeah. Now I’ve been wanting to see the Tim BES. So we, we we had preordered, so we just got a lot of Timbits


Sam Demma (11:04):
That’s so awesome. And this past year has been unique for you as an educator because it’s been full of transition, you know, COVID slowing down, hopefully fingers crossed, not speeding up a good in with new variants and whatnot. How have you continued to educate yourself and you know, continue with your own PD and personal development. What are any conferences you attended over the past year, since we last spoke that you found meaningful or resources that you’ve you’ve read or watched that you as an educator thought were helpful, that someone else may been it from?


Erika Rath (11:38):
That’s a great question. I, I think it’s the students that really continue to inspire and, and energize me this year has been so much better than last year. You know, I feel like we’re kind of back to normal just with the mask, which is fine. You know, we’re all used to wearing it. It’s part of our lives. We had our first school assembly in September and I could feel the buzz in the room and like just the sheer, like wanting to be together and the applause and the raw rawness of it. I, I was sitting in, in the chair at the front and I could feel tears coming down my cheek because I was so happy to be happy and so happy to be like, oh my God, we’re together. This is actually happening. And it, it made me realize like the togetherness, the community that we have is I always knew it was important, but we had been missing that for over a year.


Erika Rath (12:27):
We did it in other ways online and things like that, but it obviously wasn’t the same. It just, it made me realize how much the girls need each other. And it, it made me quite emotional. So I, I can say that, yes, I attend PD and, and it’s always good, but I feel it’s, it’s the learning I get the day in and day out here that I think really propels me to do more good. I really, I do some work with NC a national coalition of girl schools. I do some work with C a I S Canadian accredited, independent schools both fantastic organizations that I love doing PD with. And obviously our sacred heart network as well. It’s, it’s amazing, you know, winning this award actually people from the network started reaching out. Can we talk about your class? Ask, can we talk about PD? And all of a sudden I’m on zoom calls, sharing with people like around the world at sacred heart, which is such an amazing opportunity. So the PD and the connecting and, and the networking has been really good, but like I said, it’s the girls, it’s, it’s really the girls.


Sam Demma (13:29):
Yeah, it’s so cool. And if someone’s in another school wanting to start something similar with a group of girls, how would you instruct them to start? Or where do you think they should take their first step to bring something like this to life?


Erika Rath (13:48):
I would love that first of all, anyone can reach out to me, you know, through you. That’s not a problem. But also it’s so funny, your, your question just sparked like a, like a memory for me. I was doing a bachelor’s in human relations at Concordia university. And everyone was like, what is that? And I’m like, it’s a way to learn how to talk to people and run groups and be a leader. And it’s funny for our field placement for our, our stage. We had to find, we had to come up with a program, design it and implement it. And as I look back, I, I realize now my program was done in an elementary school with grade five and six girls for eight lunch times. And I ran activities about body image. Ah, and so I’m thinking back now and I’m like, oh my God, this was kind of like in me the whole time, like, I feel like this is a way, like what I was of meant to do. So I think if you have an idea, you, and you wanna like, just run it by your students and they’ll tell you if it’s good or not, like, believe me, I run a lot of ideas by my students and they’ll be brutally honest. So but they’ll tell you, you know, like I think, I think there’s a lot of like power in at least trying. And I know it’s hard to like sometimes put yourself out there, but these conversations are too important to not be had.


Sam Demma (15:00):
Yeah, I totally agree. And if someone does want to learn a little more about how you run the program and potentially even have you give them a little blueprint or the first steps to try it in their school, who knows maybe this program grows and becomes its own thing that other educators, you know, can learn from you and implement in their own schools. But if someone does want some more information and has some questions for you, what would be the best way for them to get in touch, reach out, ask a question.


Erika Rath (15:29):
Sure. That would be my email, erath@sacredheart.qc.ca. I check that all the time. So that would be the best way to reach me.


Sam Demma (15:37):
Awesome. And as we enter the holiday season, depending on when this interview comes out, it might not logically make sense. So , as we enter the hypothetical holiday season any last words any last pieces of wisdom for an educator who might be listening anything you wanna se share or send as a parting word?


Erika Rath (16:01):
So I think just, you know, we are all looking forward to the holidays, cuz I think we do need a break educators work really hard. We’re with students all the time. We’re on all the time. And I say this to students too. Like we all need some downtime to be with our friends and our family and then, and to come back, you know, refreshed and energized in the new year. I think it’s really important to do something for yourself to take a little bit of time for self care and also to continue realizing why we do what we do for me. It I’m, I’m passionate about it and brings me a lot of joy. And so I just think it’s important to give back at this time some time for yourself and, and, you know, be happy to be with family and friends and enjoy the moment and be present.


Sam Demma (16:43):
Erika, congratulations again on the huge milestone and award. So deserving enjoy the holiday season and we’ll talk to you soon.


Erika Rath (16:52):
Sounds good. Thank you too.

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The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

November 21, 2021 by Guidance Counsellors Student Activity Director Student Success Teachers 1

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