Recipient Bios (wz00818)

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Year: 2001 – Province: Alberta

Certificate of Achievement Recipients

Fred Sproule

School: Victoria School for the Performing and Visual Arts
10210-108 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta  T5H 1A8

Principal: Jennifer Allen
School Telephone: 780-426-3010
School Fax: 780-498-8727
School website: victoria.epsb.net
Grades/Subjects Taught: Grades 10-12, social studies, world religion

Teaching approach:

  • Students and teacher should work together for the benefit of the student.
  • Integrate all facets of life into the social studies classroom.
  • Recognize that a formal education is only one facet of life.

Outstanding achievements:

Employs love and talent for teaching to share his love of subject with students, and make complex concepts simple:

  • presents balanced and thorough lessons in history, political science, geography, including many views of historical events
  • designs interesting assignments and presentations, sparks lively discussions when a change of pace is necessary
  • constantly revises lessons and assignments to better address students' learning styles.

Students achieve remarkably high success rates:

  • 98.5 percent of senior students reached Acceptable standard in provincial exams
  • 100 percent pass rate for International Baccalaureate (IB) exam, 30 percent of IB students achieved highest ranking
  • over 95 percent retention rate in class; students who leave course do so as a result of external conflicts with other courses.

Leads in development of curricula and teaching material:

  • invited to consult on new social studies curriculum throughout Western Canada
  • wrote Classroom Assessment Material Package and developed a series of instructional units and articles for textbooks for all provincial secondary social studies courses
  • writes and marks provincial diploma exams.

Rave reviews:

Fred Sproule . . . inspires those that he has taught and worked with. He has also been the single most influential individual of my teaching career. Fellow teacher

Bad behaviour and lateness are rare in his classes because students view such things as insults to a man for whom we share a great personal affection. Student