Hay River, N.W.T., principal wins national recognition

Principal Carolyn Carroll sits at the back of Stephanie Patterson's Princess Alexandra School classroom in Hay River as students catch and throw a ball around her, speaking French phrases as it is passed around. 

Patterson's class is one of the Intensive French classes, a new program Carroll introduced. Although the students have only had the class for a year and a half, the language flows easily as they spout short phrases.

Carroll seems at home in the classroom, and indeed spent more than 20 years at the front of classes around the Northwest Territories before she became a vice principal in 2008. 

Carroll was excited to show off Patterson's class; she credits her teachers and students with the success that, this week, won her an Outstanding Principals award from The Learning Partnership. 

"You can't be an 'outstanding principal' without having outstanding teachers," she says.

"I have fantastic teachers here, there's fantastic kids and parents, and I work in a really great community." 

Data collection

The award is given to 40 principals across the country; Carroll was the only winner this year from the Northwest Territories. Carroll will travel to Toronto at the end of the month to receive the award, then stay a week for a learning session with other principals at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management.

The South Slave Divisional Education Council credits Carroll with developing a system of data collection that has been implemented across the region. They say the system has helped boost student achievement by creating an evidence-based method for teachers to keep track of where students need the most help. 

"We plan based on where the students actually are, we set school targets and goals, and a big emphasis on literacy and numeracy," she says. 

Math scores at Harry Camsell School, the other of the two schools where Carroll is principal, have risen in just a few years from below to well above the Canadian average. Today, 43 per cent of students achieved "above average" or "superior" scores in 2015, compared to 20 per cent nationally.

She wants to build on that success with a renewed focus on literacy as well as math pilot programs. Indigenous cultural appropriateness is also a priority for Carroll, who brings elders into the classrooms, incorporates Dene laws into the school, and is working on learning languages herself.

She says the award was unexpected. 

"As teachers, we work hard and we don't really expect rewards for what we do," she says. 

"We do it because we love it."